This week we had the opportunity to research a music genre of our choice. I decided to research boogaloo because I hadn’t heard of this word before and I thought it was a funny word. Looking at Google Books Ngram Viewer, I found that Boogaloo was not heard of until about 1962 and had a peak period around 1970. Boogaloo is an a form of latin music incorporating R&B, mambo, and rock& roll. It seemed that most artists did not devote an entire album to this particular music genre, yet artists still created boogaloo type music. Around 1970, salsa started emerging as a type of music, making boogaloo old news in a sense. Although, a few artists included boogaloo in their albums for comic relief. From my perspective, boogaloo wasn’t a popular type of music and it seemed that other genres took over the music industry.

I find it really fascinating how computing became a phenomenon during the Vietnam War and Cold War. The area of spending was mostly put towards computers, especially since digital computers replaced analogue computers. These computers were made with vacuum tubes and when you had to replace a bad tube, someone had to check the 19,000 different possibilities. Wouldn’t you love to have that job? It must have taken forever to find the right tube. It’s really interesting how dependent people became on these computers, and here we are today in the modern world, still very dependent on computers. The evolution of computers is an interesting topic and it was intriguing to learn how they transitioned from analogue to digital.

Reading “Segregating Sound”, there was one particular idea that stuck out at me. It was the thought about how folklore studies and the music industry helped create a “musical color line” that played along with the Jim Crow laws, separating white Americans from African Americans. I agree with this thought because I do believe white Americans were caught up in the defining line of race, that it overflowed into how music correlated with people. An example of this music defining line would be how blues came from African Americans, whereas country music came from white Americans. Its thoughts like these that really show how the Jim Crow laws affected people.

A figure that emerged out of this era was Lead Belly, who was a folks blues singer, songwriter, and guitarist. He was born in Mooringsport, Louisiana and had a notoriously violent life. He committed a murder in 1918 but sang a song for the governor of Texas to get let out early. After trying to commit another murder in 1930, he was discovered by folklorists John Lomax and Alan Lomax. Learning about Lead Belly, I find it interesting that he was such a violet man, yet he played music very well and got out of prison multiple times. Honestly, I would call it luck that he was able to make music even though he ran into some issues, its quite interesting.

The real question of this week is why was a lynching an activity during the “Great Migration”? The other question is why was it put on postcards? I don’t understand the thought process behind such ridiculous ideas that people come up with. Honestly, I would not want to receive a postcard that has a picture of someone being lynched nor do I approve of what they did to the African American population during this time period. We also took a look at “race” records, how they appeared in the 1920’s. They were advertised to white people and African Americans. It is hard for me to understand how people bought these records as well as attended lynching events because in my mind, it is really awful and all around racist. I would never buy a “race” record, let alone attend a lynching event. It is absolutely disgusting that people used to do this as a regular thing.

This week we talked about minstrel shows, how white people would wear black faces to put on performances. I agree that this was a very strange phenomenon and I found it to be an awful way to put african americans down. I honestly had never heard of minstrel shows before this class and I couldn’t believe this was an actual event that occurred. When we examined the photo of Billy King, it was quite disturbing. His teeth were overly exaggerated and his expression looked as though he was in extreme pain. I think the idea of minstrel shows connecting to the idea of carnivals is something that is not surprising. In a carnival atmosphere, the idea is that the original rules are suspended and you are allowed to be something that you are not on a regular basis. I believe minstrel shows were an outlet for white citizens to explore the idea of being almost inhuman but at the same time it made for some really awful jokes towards the African American people.

A topic that stuck out to me during this week was the idea of having a sense of self verses intelligence. Sense of self is defined as the way a person thinks about and views his or her traits, beliefs, and purpose within the world. Intelligence is the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills. I believe these are two concepts could go hand and hand with each other.

When we were younger, we did not have as much knowledge as we do today. As we grow older, we are constantly influenced by the changing opinions of people all around us. By being influenced, it morphs our values and beliefs every single day. This easily changes of sense of self because we are acquiring brand new information that affects us in different ways.  So looking at these two concepts, they seem to go hand and hand because  our sense of self may be changing due to new information being acquired everyday.