Of all the music, this week's was probably my favorite -- especially the sea shanties. I love being on water and everything that has to do with water so the whole time I was listening to the music, I imagined sailors on the ship singing these songs to get them through the journey.
I really liked the reading for this week as well.
In the Dawidoff reading about the evolution of country music, I found this transition to commercialism very interesting. Suddenly, "country was now fashionable in places - New York City, LA, Clereveland, Seattle - and among people - well-educated professionals, teenagers - that contradicted old assumptions about the music" (14). This quote is fantastic because you can replace "country" with anything else that suddenly becomes popular and it will explain exactly how and why something went from being organic to being commercial. As soon as something becomes popular, it brings revenue, and as soon as money is in the equation, the motivation behind doing it changes.
If you keep reading, this is exactly what happens. "the country charts were dominated by a series of handsome, video-friendly young swains dressed in boots, snug jeans, and the inevitable Stetsons that won them their nickname "'the hat acts.'" All of a sudden, there is an "image." The image sells. If country music wasn't popular, if it was something else, these hat acts would probably be the stars of that too. The whole article reiterates this point... "they've taken the heart and soul out of country music." (19)
It reminds me of a conversation about farmer's markets I had with my friend's father, an American who lived in Serbia. They had moved back to the US and he said that the thing he missed most about Serbia was the farmer's market. When I asked him why, he said, "the farmer's markets here are not real farmer's markets. These people have never been on a farm in their lives, they have no dirt under their fingernails."
My art for the week was inspired by where I was when I sang one of the songs for the first time. After listening to the playlist over Thanksgiving break, I was in rowing practice and I was rowing in a single and I kept singing "Blow Ye Winds, Heigh Ho."
I really liked the reading for this week as well.
In the Dawidoff reading about the evolution of country music, I found this transition to commercialism very interesting. Suddenly, "country was now fashionable in places - New York City, LA, Clereveland, Seattle - and among people - well-educated professionals, teenagers - that contradicted old assumptions about the music" (14). This quote is fantastic because you can replace "country" with anything else that suddenly becomes popular and it will explain exactly how and why something went from being organic to being commercial. As soon as something becomes popular, it brings revenue, and as soon as money is in the equation, the motivation behind doing it changes.
If you keep reading, this is exactly what happens. "the country charts were dominated by a series of handsome, video-friendly young swains dressed in boots, snug jeans, and the inevitable Stetsons that won them their nickname "'the hat acts.'" All of a sudden, there is an "image." The image sells. If country music wasn't popular, if it was something else, these hat acts would probably be the stars of that too. The whole article reiterates this point... "they've taken the heart and soul out of country music." (19)
It reminds me of a conversation about farmer's markets I had with my friend's father, an American who lived in Serbia. They had moved back to the US and he said that the thing he missed most about Serbia was the farmer's market. When I asked him why, he said, "the farmer's markets here are not real farmer's markets. These people have never been on a farm in their lives, they have no dirt under their fingernails."
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| A Serbian "pijaca" |
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