Examining the Views of Ethnographic Writers Essay

Ethnographic research is the scientific description of specific human cultures, foreign to the ethnographer. Each ethnographer has his or her own way of conducting research and all of these different ideas can be transmitted and understood in a number of different ways. Because there is no one set idea of how an ethnographer should go about his or her research, conflicts arise. In Reflections on Fieldwork in Morocco, Paul Rabinow uses a story like process to discuss his experiences during his research in Morocco. This makes it easier for the reader to understand his ideas then just having a technical book about the many different aspects of Moroccan life that he may have discovered. In Writing Culture: the Poetics and Politics of

McBride begins the essay by telling the readers of his nightmare. He once feared that his daughter would arrive home one day with a stereotyped rapper husband with “ mouthful of gold teeth, a do-rag on his head… and a thug attitude” (McBride 1). He came to realize that he in fact, hip-hop, a genre that he once didn’t believe was music, had become one of the most known genres in the world. The speaker first heard his first rap song at a college party in Harlem in 1980. The jazz lover he was, cringed at the rap music he claimed to be so poorly thought out and written. For the next 26 years of his life, he went out of his way to avoid hip-hop music all together, as if It was never there in the first place.

According to Michael Rose, “Music plays an integral role in the life of Native Americans. It is used for ceremonial purposes, recreation, expression, and healing.” Present societies have become blind and unable to understand the spiritual roles our lives play within and from our own existences. As we are to stay blind, we are never to understand the true beauty and meaning the Southern Plains American Indian’s music brings. As we listen, we can only hope of understanding the dynamics of the native people’s culture through its selected art

While looking at the life of the popular musicians, Johnny Cash was considered one of the most rebellious artists who ever lived. According to Tunnel & Hamm, Cash was jailed to his so-called attitude (268). However, his music was termed as the seeds of unorganized political rebellion and the reason was because of his sharp criticism to political agendas in the United States. Another reason was because he was an Indian which came out as a threat to Americans who at the time did not overlook his race in any way (269). Johnny Cash’s interference with private and public politics made him becoming an activist, not just a musician.

With that of culture comes our identity through music. The “death of the blues” serves as an example in how culture is put up to the challenge of change. Melody, Chinatown, and Big Mat represent “the loss of folk culture which accompanied the Great Migration of Black people from the rural South to the industrial North” (Waldron 58). As we begin to read, we are able to interpret their lives and identity in the South through Melody’s music. This

For this essay I will discuss and analyze the “Five Themes and Two Streams” of popular music, in regards to the song “Little Boxes,” by Malvina Reynolds. This song comes from her album Ear to the Ground, and was released in 1962, around the era of summer of love, where conformity was becoming a easy target for folk singers and musicians. Malvina Reynolds a native of San Francisco, and daughter of Jewish immigrants, was a folk singer and political activist in the 1960’s and 1970’s,where her music put a great deal of emphasis on her text, rather than the formality of the music.

Ben Cauley raised his trumpet to his lips to play like he did so many times before at the corner of College and East McLemore in South Memphis. Only this time, Cauley wasn’t inside of the Stax Records building, the place where he recorded on dozens of hits by Otis Redding, the Bar-Kays, and Carla Thomas. He was outside the building about to perform on the street. For this occasion he wasn’t adding funky horn lines to a soul classic, but was instead about to play one of his saddest songs, solo, and Cauley knew sadness. On December 8, 1967, he survived a plane crash that killed Otis Redding, his bandmates in the Bar-Kays, and the pilot. He was the sole survivor. But on this December morning, Cauley played “Taps,” a simple song that signifies the end; the end of the day or the end of a life. For on this day, a valiant effort to stop the South Side Church of God in Christ from tearing down the Stax Records and Studio, a few inches from where Cauley was about to perform, came to an end. It also marked the end of the building that once housed one of the largest and most successful independent labels in history, but the building represented so much more. Without consciously knowing it,

Wattstax, a primarily black music festival, commemorated the seventh anniversary of the Watts riot in 1972. It took place in the Los Angeles Coliseum, where over 100,000 people were in attendance.“African American music in particular has been a medium of extraordinary public dialogue, shaping a mobilizing political constituencies”(Quinn, E. 21).

Folk music was shaped and influenced by segregation during the Great Depression between blacks and whites, which led to divergent forms of African-American folk music in isolated towns where black music could evolve from its African origins. Even before the Great Depression, earlier African American music styles have influenced the folk music of southern Appalachia. The banjo is one of the most important musical instruments playing in Appalachia folk music, and it is a little known fact that this instrument was introduced by African Americans, as well as African work songs and chants to this region.1 This paper will address how segregation between blacks and whites have influenced folk music, if at all, and if racial tensions

Glenn Frey, the co-founder of the Eagles, was a middle class kid living in the midwest. He dreamed of acquiring tremendous wealth in Los Angeles, but later realized that there are more important things than money. In their song, Hotel California, originally titled Mexican Reggae, they (The Eagles) express this idea to their audience through lyrics that convey the idea that there are more important things than just possessions, and there are negatives to the “American Dream. The audience in this could be the average person, yet, the rhetorical devices in The Eagles’ “Hotel California” are intended to reveal to the audience that there are negatives to the American Dream, and you shouldn’t change who you are in order to make it rich.

While many may argue that the rise of hip-hop is a major triumph, Questlove worries that by becoming so pervasive, the genre has, to a certain degree, become “invisible.” Instead of serving as “resistance to mainstream culture,” he believes hip-hop is now “part of the sullen dominant.” Questlove further laments that nowadays hip-hop is not as much a form of protest art; it has been marginalized, and its themes have been narrowed into ideas “mostly about [artists’] own victories and the victory of their genre.” Countless critics have made this same complaint—that hip-hop music is largely dedicated to lyrics about women, money, and fame.

African American tradition was a key dynamic in presenting the banjo and its techniques to mountain whites. Foundations from African American folk traditions were passed through the musicians and influenced the development of the mountain string band (Wells, 2003). Between 1930 and 1940, Southern Appalachia focused on the reinforcement of handicrafts as a plan to discover the assets of American folkways. The influential role and cultural change expose complications of defining a group of people and their culture along with the managing social and political improvement in Appalachia. Multifaceted interactions between artists, social activists, government officials, museum supervisors, design specialists, and middle-class customers who helped

In respect to the media, Havens attests that “. . . all my friends died of the business — not the drugs,” and when deep in the media’s grasp, “You lose your sense of self” (Havens Article). He was able to survive both personally and musically by separating himself from the media. Eventually, the mass demand would force the gatekeepers to let through some popular

Some may argue that the sixties displayed a decade of leaderless communities, major protest, white lash, and violent responses to what was called the Civil Rights movement. Although popular leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcom X made changes in these communities, their efforts were short lived, (and a dialogue is still be had). While Anderson’s approach to discuss the events of the sixties showed readers his unbiased focus on social protest, racism, riots, and other injustices done in the U. S. to minorities, Anderson failed to correlate how much of an impact music had on the communities by misinterpretation and inaccurate quotes to lyrics. This paper will discuss the narrative’s mastery of laying out the history of an entire

Since the beginning of its art form rap music has been subject to scrutiny throughout its existence. In a Theresa Martinez reading from the semester, the author describes rap music as a resistance. She builds on a theory of oppositional culture that was composed by Bonnie Mitchell and Joe Feagin (1995). In this article, “POPULAR CULTURE AS OPPOSITIONAL CULTURE: Rap as Resistance”, Martinez explains how African Americans, American Indians, and Mexican Americans draw on their own cultural resources to resist oppression. She states that this very resistance to the dominate culture in