music created conflict between racial and gender classes. In his book, All Shook Up: How Rock ‘N’ Roll…
I do believe that Black Power rhetoric is an useful organizing tool, with in reason. I also believe that confrontational rhetoric should not be relied on to help create a movement. The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense is prime example of how using black rhetoric can help spread awareness of your cause. However, black rhetoric causes those you are criticizing to become alert and may even cause them to retaliate. Just like what was brought up during the lecture, the Black Panther Party didn't necessarily plot to kill policemen. Yet, they commonly referred to themselves as want to kill the "pigs" and even made cartoons depicting it. The fact that they were not actually randomly killing police men is completely overlooked by the fact they…
tals and sexual vigor.) The Caucasian has used his gun (his proxy penis) to conquer Africa- and with its liberal and profitable distribution within, he keeps it torn and asunder. (So too with his guns and drugs he keeps destabilized our American communities.) For liberation, it is for us All of color to abandon his ways that we have adopted, and revive our social and spiritual traditions.…
Chapter 4 in the book Dancing in the Street: Motown and the Cultural Politics of Detroit by Suzanne E. Smith focuses primarily on Motown’s popularity and “the question of the relationship of the negro artist and his or her art to black struggle”(Smith, 139). Langston Hughes believed that “all forms of black culture, including popular music, confronted these issues (black struggle) in some way during the civil rights years, and Motown music was no exception”(Smith, 139). Throughout the chapter, the author discusses the evolution of Motown during an extremely pivotal time in the country, and the artists associated with this genre.…
“Black Talk and Pop Culture, by Leslie Savan is an essay taken from her 2005 book, “Slam Dunks and No Brainers: Language in Your Life, the Media, Business, Politics and Like, Whatever”. It describes how the Black language has integrated itself into mainstream culture. One might be surprised on the African-American origins of certain commonly used words and phrases. The essay has many examples and details about how the Black language infiltrated pop culture over the years and how it has finally been widely accepted.…
Smith does an excellent job and service to the story of Motown Records in her presentation of the Black Forum subsidiary. In Berry Gordy’s autobiography, this label, which featured recordings by Martin Luther King, Ossie Davis, Stokely Carmichael, and Langston Hughes, receives barely a mention in a single paragraph. However, given the title and its publisher, a large component of the audience consists of different facets of music historians, scholars, and students who already possess some knowledge of Motown. Smith’s sections on the history of Motown do not provide any new or compelling accounts that were not already available and rely heavily on secondary or already published autobiographies and interviews.…
“JAZZ” is a documentary by Ken Burns released 2001 that focuses on the creation and development of jazz, America’s “greatest cultural achievement.” The first episodes entitled, “Gumbo, Beginnings to 1917” and “The Gift (1917-1924), explain the early growth of jazz as it originates in New Orleans and its expands to Chicago and New York during the Jazz Age. In assessing the first two episodes of Ken Burns' 2001 documentary, "JAZZ," this essay will explore the history of jazz, the music's racial implications, and it's impact on society. In doing so, attention will also be given to the structure of the documentary, and the effectiveness of documentary film in retelling the past.…
During the 1940s race records as a distinctly separate catalog of recordings waned due to several factors. The United States' entry into World War II curtailed the production and consumption of recorded music. In 1942 the government rationed shellac, a key component in the manufacture of record discs, which limited the number of releases. Likewise in 1942, the American Federation of Music announced a ban on all recording and as a result the studios were closed for two years. Following the war and the lifting of the recording ban, recording resumed with verve, but the industry concentrated on mass-market sales and neglected their race catalogs. Small labels that emphasized African-American music emerged in the Midwest and South and challenged…
The evolution of musical theater in America can be viewed through many lenses. Through the lens of hindsight, it is easy to reflect on the treatment and portrayal of African-Americans in the contextual fruition of live entertainment in the United States. Dating back to the later half to the nineteenth and into the early twentieth century, ethnic representation in musical theater underwent a gradual change paralleling a shift in societal opinion toward racial equality. Though by today’s standards, its depiction of African-Americans may seem archaic at best, Show Boat changed the way audiences viewed musical theater through its success as the first show to deal with racial issues in the United States.…
Starr and Waterman suggest that the popularity of Minstrelsy can be understood as more than a projection of white racism and that “working-class white youth expressed their own sense of marginalization through an identification with African American cultural forms (Starr/Waterman 2007, p.19).” In addition, it was during the Minstrel era that “the most pernicious stereotypes of black people,” including “the big-city knife toting dandy (the “bad negro”) - became enduring images in mainstream American culture, disseminated by an emerging entertainment industry and patronized by a predominantly white mass audience.” (Starr/Waterman 2007, p.21).…
In this paper, I think that the history and development of southern folk music may serve as an important role for seeing and growing of the southern race relations. I am not suggesting a causal relationship but an interactional one. Both the southern race relations and southern music are reflections of the social structure of the rural south. In the segregated south, white and black musical customs display the same differences, which have historically characterized white/black relations. This is not a lyrical study. Rather, it is a socio-historical analysis of regional popular culture, which focuses upon the interaction between two important features of that culture, race,…
Ashley Montagu contributed many works involving anthropological concepts, however two of his major works involved changing the mentality of how race is approached. The first piece that Montagu was known for was Man’s Most Dangerous Myth: The Fallacy of Race, which was written during a time that race ws a determinant of one’s intelligence and self-character. He states that within the study of biology, “-race is defined as a subdivision of species … In this sense, there are many human 'races.' But this is not the sense in which many anthropologists, race-classifiers, and racists have used the term,” (Montagu 1945). This called out many scientific individuals who had used race as a determinant of each person’s ability to cognitively function and their ranking within the hierarchy of humankind. He admitted within the piece that there are differences physically with each distinct race, however due to the mixing of many cultures there is no district races and that there are just mixed ethnic groups (Montagu 1945).…
Throughout recent history, it has been very apparent that times have changed dramatically. All aspects of culture have changed tremendously since the 1900’s, or even the 1800’s. One part of culture that has always been changing is the views people have towards different groups of people. As societies views have changed about minorities in the early 20th century, those views have continued to change about the roles these minorities take on in the world of music. To fully understand this situation, and why people have the views that they do, let us take a look at two very significant pieces in history.…
Teja Arboleda, an assistant professor at the New England Institute of Art in Brookline, Massachusetts teaches race and ethnic courses. He plans to use entertainment to teach about race and cultural diversity. A clear example of this is his case study “Race Is A Four Letter Word”, in which he discusses racial stereotypes that he has experienced in his travels around the world. To prove his point Mr. Arboleda talks about his personal experiences as well as those of his family. In order to persuade his audience he connects with the emotions of the readers through the use of racial slurs that he has experienced personally.…
This research involves discovering how the Transatlantic Slave Trade and the diversification of West African culture shaped musical styles and contemporary genres that influenced music globally. The goal is to show how the Transatlantic Slave Trade guided people to the Western world who brought their own distinct musical styles to combine with pre-existing music traditions and create new genres that evolved continuously and grew into music that is played today. The research is important because it proves that contemporary music genres such as hip hop, jazz, and tango grew from fundamental West African styles brought to the Americas by the slave trade.This has been done by examining genres of music that unfolded in post slavery United States…