HIST390

Professor O’Malley talked about radio broadcast being scarce and how TV followed a similar pattern to the radio. Television began to appear in homes in the late 40s and in most cities, there were probably only 6-10 TV channels available. TV was scarce in the sense that there were only four national stations: ABC, MBC, CBS. There were regulations for example, we compared how to be able to fly, a license must be obtained by the FAC and radios also had to obtain a license to broadcast through the FCC and these forced TV stations to also get licenses. Such regulations in tv included: unable to show obscene images/scenes. For example, not showing a woman and man sleeping in the same bed as tv was abstain and it had to speak to everybody. To avoid censorship, The National Association Radio and Television Broadcaster set up its own codes.
We learned about the regulation such as the presentation of cruelty, criminality shall be presented as undesirable and unsympathetic, the presentation of techniques of a crime in such details as to imitation shall be avoided, law enforcement shall be upheld, etc… These regulations have changed over time as now a day we see tv shows and movies showing scenes doing the opposite of these regulations. There is showing of crimes, robbery, terrorism, violence, sex and other not so desirable scenes. I think it’s even safe to say that shows like this have a higher rating and it’s what the audience like and expect to see. Also, since the broadcast was scarce it makes sense to avoid obscene content. Such scenes could have an influence on the audience/society. As we saw on YouTube, The Jade Helm 15 conspiracy, the audience actually believed the false information. False accusations can lead to unfortunate situations like the one in Comet Ping Pong Pizza where Edgar Maddison Welch of Salisbury NC drove up to DC with a semi-automatic rifle, walked into the store and fired three shots into the ceiling because he believed there was a child sex ring in the basement, which was not true, and he did not find any evidence of it.

Latin music is a huge influence on North American music

Cuban and Puerto Rico migrants come to New York with a distinctive style. We listened to music influenced by Cuban style like “Oye Como Va” by Carlos Santana, who is a Mexican American artist. The music that was created in New York moved by the West Coast, played by Santana. We also see how New Orleans was influences by Cuban style, the mambo. In the 1950s and 60s there is a “mambo craze”.

History of La Bamba

We watched the original version of La Bamba (1925) and videos of different versions of La Bamba like the Mexican version and La Bamba by Ritchie Valens.

Lambada We compared it to Lambada which was originated in Brazil. Lambada is jumpier and faster. There is a Bolivian folklore version of the Lambada which I have danced but it a faster rhythm. Then the lambada was recreated by a French artist, which sounded relaxed yet jumpy. We see how it was recreated in a modern/disco version by Jlo and Pitbul. This song was recreated by different countries, artist and cultures with very different backgrounds yet still had a little bit of the original song.  Additionally, Don Omar, a reggaetonero also recreates the lambada for the Fast and Furious movie and recorded in Brazil.

Displacement persons are the story of the USA. Displaced from England, from Africa, from Europe, from Asia and from Central and South America. Displacement is a major engine of cultural innovation and creativity.

Tango-

We listened to tango, which originated in Argentina, and listened to a more upbeat influenced tango by Lalo Schifrin- mission impossible (1966). According to Professor O’Malley, Brazil and Argentina are the Latin countries more musical influential.

We learned about the process of making music and all the steps to record a single, finding a record label, manager, going to the studio to record it, sign the copy rights and marketing. I particularly did not know the process of music and of course, I found this to be a long and expensive process. We talked about how our generation does not like paying for music and somehow do not recognized the hard work of artist behind their music. Needless to say, our generation has more expenses to worry about such as education and housing; therefore, we rather find a way to download/stream free music. Someone in the classroom also mentioned how artist profit so much from their concert nowadays. Also, artist earn money from sources like Pandora, iTunes, Spotify, Tidal, YouTube. etc.  At the end of the day, artist still make their profit and recognition from their music.

Copyright

How do you acquire property without taking it by force? One example from class was that you could trade for it. You acquired property by mixing labor with earth- classic answer comes from John Locke, in the treatise on government. What about ideas? Are they an example of mixing one’s labor with the earth? I think yes, because we are laboring (thinking) and coming up with a plan or proposition. Dominant forms of intellectual property include patents, trademarks, and copy rights. Unlike patents and copyrights, trademarks do not expire after a set term of years.  After it has expired, it’ll become public domain. First US copyright act was in 1790, the term was 14 years and renewable for 14 years in author was still alive.  We learned terms like corporation which is a fictitious person. A corporation can sign contracts, own land, pay wages, hire and fire, and testify in court.  We want to create corporations, so we can sell shares of the corporation; this is how stocks work. It is a disembodied, immortal being. Corporation can own intellectual property. We saw the copyright duration and the mickey mouse curve.

–        The case for extension of copyright intellectual property is property- is does not matter who made it, it matters who own it.

–        The case against extension of copyright intellectual property is not physical property perpetual ownership of intellectual property retards innovation chokes creativity and enclosed our common heritage.

Disney profited from public domain sources and recreated movies such as The Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, Chicken Little and Mulan.
I believe there are other organizations that are also profiting from public domains like these movies. For example, CW has created a show called  Once Upon a Time, where princesses like Belle from The Beauty and the Beast, Cinderella, Mulan among others come to live. These organizations are obviously protecting themselves legally a they must have copyrights and lawyers assessing them.

Copyright sampling and Hip Hop

We watched YouTube videos showing different singers like Chuck and Loui sampling, also Diddy taking sounds and lyrics from The Police. While doing my digital scavenger hunt, I noticed that Cardi B used “I like it like that” chorus by Pete Rodriguez.
There are two kinds of sampling; digital audio which is grabbing a small piece of music and putting it in another song. By the late 1980s “digital samples” had become more affordable. We also watched a few videos of Djs doing table turns, which I found to be so hard and interesting as the sounds/rhythm changed. It was a way of making music from scratch, which is not as common now a days as the majority of artists used technology to make their hits.

Digital Scavenger Hunt

I chose to do research on boogaloo because I had never heard of this genre before. Once I listened to it reminded me of salsa; they sound familiar, but boogaloo sounds jumpier. Boogaloo is a genre of Latin music and dance which was popular in the United States in the 1960s. It originated in New York City mainly among teenage Latinos and is categorized as soul, rhythm and blues, mambo, son Cubano. Some of the instruments used to create this rhythm are the piano, congas, trumpet, trombone, bass guitar, double bass, electric guitar, bongos, saxophone, güiro, and timbales. I searched it on Google Ngram Viewer and the term was indeed first used in the 1960s. Its highest peak was in the 1970s then decreased in the 1980s and gained its popularity again in 1985, of course losing its popularity as the time passed by and new music was created. One famous boogaloo song is I like it like that by Pete Rodriguez. I found this interesting as today’s top artist Cardi B, remade this song more “modern” but still use its chorus.  This is a perfect example of how music from the past influences todays music.

One of the early references I found was New York Amsterdam News (1962-1993); New York, N.Y. [New York, N.Y]18 June 1966: 22. Boogaloo Spectacular at Apollo in 1966, but it had details about a show that included fashion show with the latest Boogaloo clothes and The Reuben Orchestra which was playing the “modern” Boogaloo hits. Another article from the same newspaper I found was the Vest Pocket Boogaloo Party. A lot of the articles I found were mostly party flyers and not much of back history.

The Novice in archives/Internet history

The result has been a revolution in control over information, and in the ways, we understand authority.

We talked about credentials. Back in the day only people with authority could get access to history information, but that has changed. We have easy access to documents that used to require credentials. What took months to do now it only takes a couple of minutes to do, find or access. We mentioned the causes of the Civil War and an example of authority was brought up when professor O’Malley said the cause of the Civil War was slavery. He is the professor with authority and stated slavery was the cause.

There are sites that claim that African Americans fought for the confederacy. For example, the Virginia 4^th grade text book that said 50,000 fought which was incorrect. There are several evidences that African Americans were sent to the war for support. The reason why there are African Americans in photograph is because they were paired with their owners for support, not necessarily to fight for confederacy. We go back to having easy access to documents that may be perceived as something there are not. For example, the photographs that include slaves. People without the correct knowledge or sources may think they went to war to fight along the white soldiers, but in reality, they were forced to go.  Additionally, there were those who were enlisted in the army and the main question is, why did they do it? Butler believed that once they enlisted then it would give African Americans to be included as citizens. But once again, none of the documents we read are not trustworthy because they are still suspicious or questionable one or another way. The point of this lecture was “The novice in archives”- the fact that you can go online, fight an evidence and make a conclusion supporting your point. Our responsibility as a generation with easy access to evidence/history is to make sure we have the correct and legit sources of information. This is even highly requested throughout school/college to prevent plagiarism or simply obtaining false information.

Wikipedia and Crowd sourcing

We learned about Encyclopedia Britannica- almost everyone had one of this back in the days. I did not have one, but my aunt did.

One crucial point Professor O’Malley mention is that things get better as people use them. The easier access we have to information the better it gets. I agree with this as more people have access to information or website, they get to see what needs improvement and can either fix it or give feedback for other users to fix it.
We also learned about the Four Freedoms-
Freedom 0: the freedom to run the program for any purpose

Freedom 1: the freedom to study show the program works, and change it to make it do your wish

Freedom 2:  the freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor

Freedom 3: The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public

The idea of copy rights did not exist. For example, the only reason we know about Socrates is because of Plato.
Crowd sourcing- the more people you put in a problem the quicker the problem will be solved. We see this through Linux operating system as many people work on it to make it better.
Wikipedia started in 2001 and now is the number 10^th more used website. We see Wikipedia as an example of crowd sourcing because people from around the globe have access to it and are constantly adding and updating information.
What I obtained from this lecture is the understating of how open sources work.

We started class by watching videos of James Brown and Bob Marley. We see how Africa is involve in both types of music.

Digital tools are supposed to empower us, so we will learn how to operate these tools.

A History in Recording:

Sound in a medieval cathedral- echoes like crazy. Hard to tell the original source the priest from the echoes. We talked about the catholic approach and how Catholics do not read the bible like Christians do. In the catholic church, the priest reads the bible, and this is because people don’t have the education to read it and understand. The point the catholic church wants to make is for people not to understand what’s happening, rather experience the “holy” moment and not understand why and how.

We learned about different religions and how some religious traditions are hostile to “graven images”- in Islam, you cannot depict Allah or Mohammed. In Judaism, you cannot write the name of G-d. In some forms of Protestantism, you can’t have picture or status of Jesus. These are false, lies, dangerous-representations. You want as much as possible the direct contact with ideal, not imitations of it. Personal experience: my dad was christian, and my grandma was catholic. They would often get into “arguments” and question each other religions. For example, my dad would ask my grandma why she prays to a statue that is not God; insinuating her religion was a lie. My grandma would ask why he didn’t believe in Virgin Mary, who is holy and should be prayed to and idolized.

History of Distribution

Origin of Genre – Migrations. Movement of black and white rural people to cities

We started off by watching videos of different music (pushy rhythms). African American music was more pushy and loud, once again race influenced.  Washington DC has a lot of white country folks. There are different guitar styles. White folks who moved to the DC are played distinctive guitar styles. DC also has characteristics of GOGO. The migration also caused Arlington county, VA population to grow; people who moved to Arlington came from places like West Virginia

We learned about Jimmie Rodgers, the first country music star. Spoke to a black and white country audience, but it sold more to white audience. Also about Bob Wills- he dressed as a cowboy, his music was faster, but he still used the Hawaiian guitar. Same music just dressed in different clothes. We got to compared Hank Williams, who also had the same music style with the Hawaiian guitar. Although this song is a country song, the lyrics had nothing to do with a farm or crops. It talked about the urban life and cheating.  By listening to this song, I learned that the Hawaii guitar is used in many genres and I also learned that it requires to pay more attention to understand what it is about and not assumed this kind of music is talking about farms.

Segregating Sound: Inventing Folk and Pop Music in the Age of Jim Crow

I enjoyed reading this book! It literally explained the process of segregating sound.  As I was reading it, I couldn’t help but to think of how racist it was to listen to music based on race and region. When we hear/learn about the racial segregation in the United States, we or at least I don’t think into further details like the music. As the book stated, the blues were African Americans and the rural white southerners played what came to be called country music. This book explores the power of southern music between 1880s-1920s. Karl  Miller shows that these southerners played all types of music; folk songs, blues, Tin Pan Alley tunes, ragtime, ballads, and popular hits and that black and white collections were similar, reflecting a common musical world/taste. Miller ways of explaining how the folklore was created and where it came from definitely kept me interested throughout the book. Now, I have a new point of view about what it is “black” and “white” music. While reading this book, I also had a better understating of what the minstrel shows were and it also made it a little bit easier to understand the way we learned about the minstrel shows in class. Overall, I found this book to be very educational and interesting!

New World Beats

This context was about clapping during the beats. There is also clapping on the wrong beat and genres having their own clapping beat.
We learned about The Great Migration- African American leaving the rural south. During this time, 1920s race records began to appear which means only black American artist. African Americans started their music in plantations and took it with them once they migrated to different states.

The Hawaiian guitar plays its role in this era. Its comes back into this period of time music. We learned that many genres include the Hawaiian guitar for example, I Be’s Trouble by Muddy Waters which was a plantation recording version. Many songs have different versions. There are songs played by Mississippi plantation and a country band. (same song different rhythm, genre, jazz)

Let’s start by saying that this week’s context was very controversial!

American Popular Music: An Introduction

The Mistral Show-  US form of entertainment developed in the 19th century of comic skits, variety acts, dancing, and music, performed by white people in blackface or, especially after the U.S. Civil War, by black people. I personally believe this was very racist and unfair to black  men as their talent was stolen and did not receive any credit for it. Minstrel Shows helped to invent whiteness in the United States by painting your face black it brought attention to the whiteness.  This was literally cultural appropriation.  What makes it cynical is the fact that Yellow Rose of Texas was written by a white man, black painted face and used to march in war. This lecture goes to show how everything was race related in the past and it was allowed and seem as something normal. We also talked about how technology makes it so much easier to create rhythm, music. This has a good and bad side to it. Some “artist” creates a piece of music online and sell it making it unfair to the real artist who take their time to learn how to play an instrument and create a piece. In other words, why hire a musician to record their piece when you can make it on the computer or simply find it online, buy it and save money. It takes the hard work from those artists. On the good side, it makes it easier to create a piece of music or any sound, especially for us who will be doing it as our final project.

This week we watched 3 YouTube videos prior to class. Video of The Past which was about the information age. This video explained how people used to communicate through signals. There was always problem every time information was sent to one place to another. There was always noise between signals and everything time the signal was increased so was the noise. It wasn’t until Claude Shannon, the most important man we have never heard of changed the world forever by creating the pixels. It was easier to communicate. the second video, How Does the Internet Work, explained how the Internet works. I learned to think of networking as a game we agree to play by the same rules. Every date has its own IP address, it travels in tiny packets of data  from where it is and where is going to.
The third video, History of Internet mentioned that in back in 1957 computers only worked on one task at a time. This is called batch processing which it became very ineffective. Also, computers kept on getting bigger and bigger which were a problem for the developers  I learned about The ARPANET, RAND, NPL, and CYCLADES, the organizations that are the foundation for our modern internet.
These videos were an introduction to what we learned in class. We learned about the information wanting to be free and how it’s useful when its shared. This week contained different details about the beginning of the Information Era. First, it started with the transistors which allowed computers to be smaller, more efficient and more powerful. We also learned about Hypertext, a text in which some or all of the words or ideas are linked to other things; its not linear, it does not have a start point, or an end point. For example, Wikipedia is a Hypertext. In this era we also learned about higher revolution technology. The Revolutionary Idea- you are able to form your own path through the information.
In 1920, there was one radio station in America and the only people who heard it were experts trained by  the Navy Signal Corps in WWI. Ten years later, there were 100s of stations and millions of radios in nearly every home. Going back to the Internet, it could be compared to two of the biggest things back in the day, the radio and TV. The technology made a huge progress. We get to enjoy the results of the work put in the past. We can now use radios and the Internet without any restrictions. Technology (phones, laptops, iPads, etc)  is basically used for everything nowadays.

Week 4 included a lot of war history and how this introduced todays new technology. I learned about Montgomery Meigs who  introduced the rationalization of life, Max Weber a German sociologist, and Vannevar Bush’s famous letter. Bush’s letter in other words said we publish too much information and are not making use of it. I personally agree with this. We have a plethora of information either online or libraries, but we don’t make the appropriate use of it. We continue to create books, magazine, journals, etc. and I’m confident to say that not all of it is being read by our society. This is where the memex comes in, the internet of the past. A desk that stored all the information. You were able to photograph it. The idea was to find something useful, you photograph it and read it. Yo could also write comments. We have a much better version of it now and somehow we area not taking full advantage of it. Additionally, WWII is an example of extreme elaborated command and control system. For example, the office of price control, which was empowered to set prices and to establish rations for good and deemed vital like gasoline, rubber but also 90% of food for sale; food prices could not se raised. Other topics related to this was the transistor, the Audion, vacuum tube, and CERN.
Lastly, My main lesson from week 4 would be “the more you are individualized the less free you are”