In the time since I have last posted, the class has done some more civil rights stuff, and we’ve moved on to music of the same era. So like, country, blues, rock n roll, all that jazz (jazz too, I guess, if you’re in New Orleans.

When thinking of an idea for my next reflection, I wanted to see how the music genres we listen to today have come about, and what they all came from. So I looked at some wikipedia pages and a couple timelines to try and link them together. It too me quite a while to get an actual coherent timeline of my own, and it was really messy (the struggle of using actual paper).

I then found an app to make it pretty, cause it was not.

When making it, I added the origins of each genre, as in what race created it. I found it interesting that mixed music inspired black music, but white music only held country and classical. I would assume this stems from the fact that music has always been a staple of the culture of black americans, in religion, hardships, and entertainment, while white americans could usually take or leave music up until a certain point in time.

Another thing I found interesting was that I couldn’t really find anything on some of the genres we have today. It’s almost like music like dubstep and electronic music came out of nowhere. And while I can find when and how genres like pop were created, theres no indication as to when pop music went from what it was created as to… like, this.

I also wanted to find a way to experience all the different kinds of music. The best way I could think of was to sing them, so that’s what I did. I skipped the slave songs, because there’s no way I could sing a slave song, they’re hard to sing alone, and it felt kind of wrong. I did my best to go in order, but it was kind of hard after awhile. I stopped once I got to disco, hip hop, and rap, because I couldn’t find any of those kinds of songs I could play on ukulele. I then piled clips of all the songs I learned together.

Oh, and for the love of god, I am sorry for how out of tune the soul part is.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5oRQQZ1R6LA