Summery of the Week

Disclaimer:
To begin I would like to let everyone know that may be reading this that I am a horrific speller. So be aware that there most likely will be many errors in what I say. This blog is a summery of what we talked about in class, written from the notes I took there. I would also like to say that I believe Mr. McPhee chose me to do this first week because I was late to class that day. I don't really believe what I just said but lets pretend I do.

Anyways on to the summery for the week of september 11th through the 15th.

Day 1: I was doing homework when I looked at the clock and realized that it was 3:05 rather then 2:05 like I had thought. Realizing I was 5 minutes late I grabbed my stuff and ran over to the science building arriving 7 minutes late. When I arrived Mr McPhee was in the middle of explaining what I am doing right now, the weekly summery. Oddly enough I was the person chose (at random he says) to do the first weeks notes. After saying that he chose me because I was late I took out my notebook and began to take notes.

The class began with many questions about our blogs. Most of the people in my class did not know what we should write about, and Mr McPhee attempted to remedy this. (I don't quite remember everyones name yet so please bare with me not mentioning and specific students) After some discussion we his on the fact that your blogs can be on all sorts of things, but if now and then you are able to link it to the class that would be best. Blogs are supposed to be you writting about what interests you (or complaining about what annoys you) so you can do it on any number of things. For this class, however, we should try now and then to hit on somthing relavent to the class. For this we can discuss what we thing of chapters in the book, music concerts you go to, or really any idea that comes up in class that you would like to list your thoughts on.

From there we went on to spend the rest of the hour discussing our performances. People did not know what exactly we were supposed to do, I myself am still unsure as to what I will be doing, maybe if I learn enough guitar by that time I will play something, but you never know what will happen. Anyways, we can do our projects on anything that you can relate to class, but you must be able to respond to questions about it. Music, art, videos, if you can relate it to class you can do it. Mr McPhee also offered to perform for us in a multitude of ways, including: Singing, Acordian, Drums, and Harmonicas.

Finally on the first day we were told that Open mic night will be thursday the 21st in Oyate for anyone who is interested.

By the way, I'm sorry if Im being long winded.

Day 2: I was not late this time.

Class began with a little discussion about what good things have happend to us so far in college, but it quickly moved on to a question someone had raised a few days before; Why were there so many musicians with blind in their names? Our class discussed this and I will now go through much of what we said as quick as I can. Most of the musicians with blind in there name were actually blind (there were a few impersonaters). But why were there so many blind musicians at this time? Our answer was that at the time there was little blind people could do, and it is said that the blind develope better sences of hearing. Music was a resonalbe option for these people and could allow them to get by. From there we briefly talked about a armless guitar player...

From there we talked about what Mr McPhee had been wanting us to talk about: why was the poetry reading metioned at the begining of Deep Blues? There where many ideas put forth and I will do my best to report on them. What this section is showing is the differences in culture between the Blacks and the Whites of the time. While white (middle class and the rich mostly) people listend to poetry and folk balleds the black of the time were creating there own poetry inside of blues music. Blues held influences from the African American culture brought over with them from Africa. Africa had very differnet music then then Europe, so it is no suprise that African American music went in a differnet direction from what Whites were doing at that time.

There was a visable cultural seperation between the two groups. Whites that socialized with blacks were rare. When Lomax (that recording guy) was going onto plantations to record black music he was nearly arrested for not getting permission from the plantation owner to talk to them. Times had it so that if blacks and whites talked to eachother, and somthing was seen as in appropriate, blacks were liable to get hurt or killed.

This section speaks to the improtance of poetry, and music being a powerful form of poetry. Blues is evendice of a culture mostly ignored for quite a long time. The fact that Cagen and black culture was mostly ignored shows a tendency to ignore or downplay the importance of other peoples cultures.

That about sums up what we discussed in class this week. Im sorry if i wrote a lot.