Chapters 3-7

What I found to be particularly interesting within these chapters was the discussion about the power that music had on culture and identities. I can’t even imagine what life and culture would be like if music did not exist. Music shapes our identities and, as the text says, it comforts us through transitions. I find it amazing how sound and music developed and began the rise of popular music and many other genres to follow. The spread of popular music developed much like newspapers, and books. What sparked its growth was the ability to mass-produce the sheet music. This allowed for music to change from being a rarity to something common and easily accessed. With this came the Jazz movement, which was significant because of its integration of many different musical styles such as African beats, blues and gospel. This enabled the development of even more styles of music such as rock and roll, which also combined various elements of music. With this increased interest of music different cultures started integrating with one another and became exposed to different lifestyles and voices. Music also served as a way for people to cope with the stress of current events, such as the atomic bomb, the Cold War, and the red scare. What is amazing is how music had the ability to blur boundaries between races. It also blurred the distinction between “high and low” culture, masculinity, femininity, the country and city, and the north and south. Music was and is a way to voice oneself and respond to emotions, events, politics, and so much more. During the rise of popular music, groups did just that. Today such vast majorities of people own an Ipod or music player of some sort. Many people use these devices to drown out other noises in city streets or just to zone out and enter a different world. Thinking about where we came from to how we developed now is incredible and kind of scary when you think about how much of a hold it has on us. It has almost become a necessity to obtain and listen to music. It is also incredible to think about how much music there is and how much noise we’ve made and continue to make daily. All of this would not be possible without the efforts of modern technology.
Throughout the chapter on television, I could not help but feel annoyed. I am not a supporter of T.V. for many reasons. I feel that the representation of “reality” is extremely out of touch and detrimental. I cannot stand how the required attention span for any given program is really not very long, due to the fact that there are constant interruptions with advertisements. I feel that if you are going to watch something and get involved in the story there cannot be these interruptions. To be actively thinking about what you are watching and getting absorbed into a film there cannot be advertisements about tampons, or cleaning solutions for the kitchen. Also, I feel that it is completely impossible to compare a book with watching T.V. So few children read these days that it is depressing. I fear that there will be such a small amount of imagination left in the youth because visual information is just handed out to not only them, but everyone for that matter. It is as if we are too lazy to create these places in our minds, which I believe is where the true images lay. When we create images in our head we tend to make it exist with what we know (or don’t know) and what we’ve experienced in our lives. This makes the story more real and personal to me because no one else can access what world you create. The textbook argues that even though it has its down sides, it has provided a great deal of information to us. I’m not sure if one can even say that information has been truly valid though because of the different opinions of those reporting it and choosing to have others report. News is often biased in some form, and is often dramatized. I find it so hard to trust anything anyone says anymore.