GWSS: assignment 3:

The connection that I made between Tuesday and Thursday's readings was the interesting comments and ways in which individuals can express and portray political messages through music.

In Young's article he also shows music as a vessel that allows artists to express their journey and reflect on their own political beliefs that have occurred due to their lived, cultural experiences. Young explores the many "references to slavery" that happen within hip hop music. Many artists link this to the modern day inequalities that many African-American face, for example, Sam Cooke comments on how this traumatic and exploitative past has lead to a "new generation of slavery". This shows the artists use of music as a political statement.

In The Guardian article, How #BlackLivesMatter started a musical revolution, it also explores music as a means of communication and as a potential political platform. It explores how the #BlackLivesMatter movement empowered artists such as Beyonce to express their political advocacy through the medium of song; Brooks' piece comments on how these recent movement in music encouraged her to perform a "black is beautiful" anthem. It then states, "Lamar and D'Angelo have been championed by critics for making musical statements" and "wrestling with institutional racism". Upon reading this paragraph I explored Lamar's track, FEAR. FEAR touches on many systematic racial issues within the USA, such as the criminal justice system, he performs: "I’ll prolly die from witnesses leavin’ me false accused". This links to Young's writing, as one could interpret the American justice system as a modern form of slavery, with astonishingly high numbers of African American individuals being convicted and sentenced to jail in comparison to to other racial groups.

DJ selections:
My DJ selections for the week are:

Kendrick Lamar, BLOOD.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcnNvy_svTE
I chose this song because the Guardian article I had read reminded me of this song when it spoken about making musical statements. One of the lines, "and we hate popo, wanna kill us dead in the streets fo' sho" made me think about how Lamar was using his status and his music to call light to the issue of police brutality and to the #BlackLivesMatter movement.

- Lizzo, Juice and Megan Trainer, All about That Bass
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaCrQL_8eMY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PCkvCPvDXk
I chose these songs because it shows the other ways in which music has been used to convey messages. Whilst these have not focused on the Black Lives Matter movement, they have focused on the recent body positivity movement. This movement celebrates bodies of all types, advocates against digital editing/photo enhancing and encourages people to embrace their bodies. It does this through lyrical choices (stating how being a "curvy" girl is great and you are still beautiful) and showing a variety of music video participants who all look very different in terms of size.