Music is something that I have been such a huge fan of my entire life, so when courses such as this one focus on music, it makes the class that much more enjoyable for me. As such, discussing rhythm and displacement of a beat between the one and three counts to the two and four counts is not a new topic for me but always an intriguing one.  I still am fascinated by how much the feel of a song can change when moving the stress of the beat to different counts of the song.  It’s also interesting to me how similar in rhythm jazz and hip hop can be.  I’ve always known the genres share some aspects or influences but never realized, until watching the video of the drummer transforming a jazz beat into a hip hop beat, how similar the rhythm could be between the two genres.  It peaks my curiosity to find out how the two genres came to share such similarities.  Were the original hip hop artists from the early 80’s big jazz fans? Was the rhythmic structure of jazz just something that peaked the interest of those starting hip hop? I’m curious as to why the genres share those similarities.

Moving on we discussed the minstrel shows which were truly disturbing carnival-esque shows depicting and over-exaggerating stereotypes of African Americans.  I really do think there is something true about the theory that whites putting on black face and doing these shows was a way of saying they enjoy the traditional African American music but don’t want to take it too seriously and outright say that the music is acceptable.  So to keep with putting down African Americans but also wanting to perform a certain style of music, people turned the music into a racist and disturbing parody of an entire culture.  Now while these shows were blatantly racist and created offensive caricatures of these people, I’m not sure how it applies to a history of the digital past.  I feel like I’m missing something here, but I’m wondering if the connection will be made soon enough and tie together the pieces for me.  I’m curious to see if the politics behind how minstrelsy came to be and then die off has anything to do with digital progression and a push towards more modern technology.