Today for class we had to read Millers “Segregating Sound” and I loved it!! I love the way Miller writes and I love the way he tells the information, when he describes the railroad tracks and the people, and the songs I can legitimately picture it in my head. It is the first book I have really taken to in the class. An idea that Miller discusses is that genre marketing drives people apart, which is so true, and you notice it a lot more now then ever. I always hear people talk about different artists and how they cannot participate in a certain genre because they are caucasian or because they are african american. We see society limiting music and putting labels on things , for what purpose? Instead of using music to unite people of different races in different genres of music, we allow these marketing moguls to infringe on that and exploit the drama in order to make money. I think thats my favorite part about Millers book is that he calls that out, I do not remember the quote directly but he said once in it, like can we not appreciate music alone do we have to tie race and culture to it, is it possible for music to be enjoyed because it can be? The world today is separated and music could be the one commonality but its not.

We later discussed the idea of the white migration in the 20th century where millions people ended up leaving the south to go live in the north and find employment, I found it super cool to find out that DC had a huge influx of “hillbillies” who came to DC to work in the military industrial complex, I also find it funny they called them hillbillies though they probably lived less then a few hours from DC. I also found out that there was a type of music called “redneck jazz” like what even is that.. and I had no idea go go was created by african americans.

Something that made me sad to learn about was when we started talking about how country music was made because people missed their past life, but then we started talking about Jimmie Rogers and how he had a very talented Louis Armstrong on his music and could not even mention his name or give him the credit he deserved because he was black. It then makes me think about Millers book once again because in a time like that, these people who were not being treated correctly should have been able to receive credit for their work but then we are tying their culture to the music and race to the music, and UGH I do not know what to think about this. ALSO, not even going to get into it but Fillipino baby, – HUGE NO. I hated everything about it and found it so offensive.

Later in the week we touched back upon Miller in the idea of Henry Thomas and whether he was country or folk, and how basically Thomas made a living touring on the railroad cars performing and moving throughout the different areas of the midwestern US. Then we branched into a conversation about do-ti and 1-7, and how blues essentially start on 1 and go back to 4 and then back to 1 and so forth. Unfortunately I do not hear this at least on my own I would not be able to identify it on my own. We then talked about how people believe that folk music came from poor, backwood, ignorant people but that is mean and definitely incorrect it actually came from the idea of pure strains of music, which I had never thought of before so I now have a little appreciation for the basis of folk music.

Furthermore we jumped into american nationalism and federal nationalism and to be honest i had a hard time grasping all of the ideas that the professor threw at us this day. We basically discussed that theoretically all citizens are equal because they follow the same framework provided for us by nationalism. The idea of romanticism was the response to common rationality and tended to argue that meaning and beauty were found actually found in the irrational, and that those things were the ones that bound people beyond the rational will.