As far as I can see, back in 1984, people used it to refer to black communities that people believed had a strong unpleasant body odor, which they called a funk or referred to as funky. in Ki-Kongo, the term lu-fuki was used to praise a person for their art, which may have been adopted and modified in America, praising black artists for their hard work and artistic skills. This is still a term used in the Kongo. It is thought that the music that black people were making, that had a strong, earthy, and distinct quality, was described using this word and the meaning was transformed.

James Brown really revolutionized Funk music with his work in the 80’s. His Funk Beat was a highly syncopated and aggressive rhythm that was kind of a blue print for many funk artists who came after.

The whole thing about music being mathematical and rational is something that I really get excited about. I learned how to do fractions because I played the piano when I was a kid, and any music theory student will be the first to tell you that there’s a lot of hidden math in music. I had never thought about how music is written into the universe. Why do we have the notes we do? What is the logic behind music? To make a chord, you need three notes (one is a root note), and a note a third away, and a fifth away – which is a MAJOR chord, which is comforting to listen to compared to a minor chord. 

I think it is very interesting how minor chords sound sinister and dangerous compared to major chords to westerners. I don’t really know why they do but even I feel kind of uncomfortable listening to them, even though the notes should be harmonious together. I wonder if there is any evolutionary reason behind this.

I think that sampling is a really interesting way to build upon musical history. I don’t really see anything wrong with it and feel like it should be encouraged. In other forms of art, people have influences. In many cases, famous works of art are very heavily influenced by other pieces. For example, Andy Warhol’d “The Last Supper” is an amazing piece that is really similar to Da Vinci’s “The Last Supper”. When you look at American Gothic again, that is a piece of art that is heavily parodied and influences so many newer pieces of art that try to get the same feeling or message across. Art will always have influences, and I don’t think it is a bad thing.

I really admire the premise of crowd sourcing. It relies on intrinsically motivated individuals working toward the greater good and helping each other. The idea that in a larger group of people, you’ll get better results and better information makes sense. I can also understand why it would be worrisome, because often the loudest people in a group will not be the most factual or correct ones. There are so many examples of vandalism on wiki pages and misinformation.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/alanwhite/spectacular-acts-of-wikipedia-vandalism?utm_term=.rcnOplW8B#.yrJZN4OGW

The link above is an example of a hypertext, which I had NO idea had roots on the older paper encyclopedias. I think that encyclopedias are kind of dated at this point and that people don’t really need to spend money on them, but I feel like if I had been alive a longer time ago I would have been the type of person to buy a set. I’m so glad I grew up in a time where most information is easily accessible through a computer. That’s why I loved Richard Stallman’s freedoms of software and his idea of copyleft. I feel like the more people have access to things, the better they’ll be. More people will be willing to fix and improve information and software, and more people will be using it which is good for them.

Crowd sourcing can be good for everyone. For example, WAZE is an app that uses crowd sourcing to help notify drivers of things on the road like blockages, traffic, police officers, etc. The more people use it, the better and more accurate the alerts become. Also, people like me who never update the app with information because I’m too afraid to do it while driving can still benefit because there are enough people who have passengers in their car who can update it for them and they help the rest of us.

A lot of citizens don’t quite know how to describe what being American is. Our nationalism is thin, and famously hard to describe. I think that as a daughter of an immigrant it is very true that many immigrants don’t really know what being an ‘American’ means in a way they can put into words. When my mom is with her family and her friends, she is Korean. They are her community. When she is at school or at work, she is an American. She is a citizen who deserves respect and all of the rights she earned when she became a citizen. It is kind of weird to see her shift identities so fluidly, but it also makes sense. America doesn’t have a cultural identity that is as prominent or strong as Korea, and my mom identifies so much more with the Korean culture that she grew up with. At the same time, she’s proud to be an American and chose this country because she loved it. I have always thought it was so interesting how people can move here and still retain so much of their culture and still be American.

When I think of ‘American’, I think of the painting American Gothic by Grant Wood. It has become an Icon that so many things have parodied. I don’t know why I feel that this painting just personifies America. It reminds me of the frontier that a lot of people associate America with, farming, white people, and work ethic and ruggedness.

Grant Wood traveled to Europe and his art was greatly influenced by artists there. This painting is a result of his Iowan farm roots and European influences. The painting is an example of how America is a collection of cultures and identities that form one nation.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lf3ER5Ope_s

“History does not belong to you” is something he kept saying at the beginning of class. I remember liking history in High school because I had a good teacher, but I hate museums because I constantly get scolded for trying to touch things. In my mind, if there is not glass to block me, I always assume that it is OK to touch. I obviously am not well liked by museum guards.

Talking about authority reminded me that history is always told from a perspective. Even in textbooks it is. I don’t necessarily think that is problematic to, for example, raise the lunch counter to encourage people to think about civil rights instead of lunch. That’s the point of the museum. The whole place is supposed to encourage people to think about history. Those people went to the museum to think about it. I don’t think it’s wrong for them to think about lunch and reminisce, that’s still American History, but they chose to go to a curated collection of artifacts.

I do, however, think that it is wrong to misrepresent things the way they did with the example of an internment camp room. This is what I didn’t like about history; it is always biased based on who is telling it and people can never separate emotions from it. It really frustrates me that the exhibit was set up like that and I don’t think that it is useful to anyone for the room to be presented like that. That is not history, and even if it makes people feel better about what happened, it is essentially a lie, which COMPLETELY DEFEATS THE PURPOSE of even going to a museum in the first place, those people may as well have read a children’s book talking about internment if they didn’t want to see the truth.

I think it’s really funny when the people on Fox News say that people should keep their politics out of music, because music has never been not political. It has always been about displacement and taboo topics and breaking boundaries.

I couldn’t stand any of the songs that were played today. They sounded like donkeys. I hate yodeling. I had always thought that these songs were trying way too hard to be country, and I guess I was right. They were presenting stylized versions of what they thought was folk and country. It just so happens that it all sounded terrible.

The idea of folk music being something that is disconnected from commerce is such an oxymoron. They would go to people who were disenfranchised and hadn’t been discovered and loved them for those reasons. Then, they’d make them rich and famous which completely ruins their original appeal. It’s like when annoying hipsters love small bands and want them to be successful, but when they finally gain success they complain that the band ‘sold out’ or became too mainstream. This is something that happens so often.

I also think it’s kind of rich that country music has so many elements that come from African music and Hawaiian music. I’m from Kentucky, so bluegrass and country is something that I was very familiar with before I actually started to listen to stuff that didn’t make me want to shoot myself and I had never known that those sounds were adopted by people who were most likely racist toward the people they were trying to sound like.

I HATED the song about the ‘dark skinned Filipino’ that the stupid cowboy sang. I absolutely hated it. I am Korean and I’m from Boone County Kentucky. Me and my family were the on ly not white people I knew for a while, and we were definitely the most ‘exotic’ things many of those people had seen. They made a big deal about it. I don’t look very Asian, so I don’t really have to deal with this, but my sister definitely has to deal with a lot of really creepy people basically fetishizing her because she is Asian. It is something that a lot of Asian women are subjected to; Asian women are usually characterized as subservient and exotic women that are easy to get. This song was so annoying. I found it to be racist and insensitive and it wasn’t even catchy. It basically portrayed the woman as an object. He may have loved her, but he didn’t describe her as a person.

It really disgusts me to think about our country’s history. Not only because it was full of such racism, but also because it really wasn’t that long ago. I hadn’t known about some of the things that happened in America like spectacle lynchings, but it honestly didn’t surprise me. The thing that really shocked me was that they were a family event. Respectable people would dress up to watch a black person get murdered. It doesn’t seem like the kind of thing that refined people would enjoy, but who am I to talk? I wasn’t there.

When the professor talked about race records I could see that they were kind of an illogical invention. He was trying to convince us that music was integrated even though society was not, and it wasn’t hard to see. Blacks, whites, Americans, and immigrants worked together to make music that would sell. Behind the scenes, it didn’t matter where a sound came from or what color the person who played it was, it just needed to sound good. And as long as people didn’t know that it came from an integrated band, they’d be happy to listen to it.

Racism is something that defies all logic and I think that music is something that might have helped some people realize that in some small way.

Today, at least O’Malley didn’t say the N-word. But we talked about what is legally considered ‘white’ and why it’s not related to skin tone. I think about this a lot being mixed race. I’m half Korean, and I look pretty white. I don’t really consider myself ‘white’ because culturally, I grew up really involved with Korean traditions and culture and grew up in a neighborhood with a lot of Korean neighbors so I was constantly surrounded by other people that I related to. My dad is the white parent, and he isn’t a part of my life. I am sure most people would consider me ‘white’ because of the way I look, but I don’t know. I don’t think that I’d legally be considered white. It’s a messy area.