GWSS Blog Post #4

GWSS 241 Blog Post #4

Adubbs

Following our Ofrendas for the Future event over the weekend, combined with this week’s materials, and our discussion around the Black Lives Matter movement I personally found this week to be very emotional. I have always viewed music as an intersectional and inclusive space where humans can come together to enjoy a universal language because as an avid music-lover and concertgoer this is what I have experienced. However, as this class and this week’s materials have highlighted, the commercialization of music helped cultivate a culture-for-profit which contributes to the systemic and institutionalized erasure and discrediting of people of color, despite their meaningful contributions.

As we read in chapter four of American Sabor, “early hip hop musicians were reacting to the physically barren landscape of what they referred to as “the ghetto” – an urban neighborhood where low-income people are concentrated and neglected”. Hip hop was born from the creative responses of these marginalized communities to create space for Black and Brown youth to express themselves through the art that is known today as emceeing, breakdancing, deejaying, and graffiti. And as we learned through our readings, “Latin@s were deeply involved in both scenes despite being invisible in media” (MHP). Mainstream media was and always has been problematic in this way. Since reporters can take whatever images and words that will help write the most compelling stories, critical parts may be left out or altered in a way that misrepresents what is actually happening. We are still seeing this today with the recent Black Lives Matter protests across the Unites States and other parts of globe.  

For my DJ selections I wanted to share J. Cole’s “Be Free”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9IsM0RX7cc

Jorja Smith’s “Blue Lights”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8YwnQMQuJI

I chose these two songs specifically because they directly address the war on our Black community by the police force. In J. Cole’s song we see painful imagery of Black and Brown folx being attacked and beaten by police. In the song we hear audio from Michael Brown’s friend who witnessed his brutal and unjust murder. In Jorja Smith’s song she sings about wishing she could turn police car lights into strobe lights or fairy lights, so as to signal something other than fear. The song shares a message about how young Black boys shouldn’t have a guilty conscience but that they do because the police are always after them, despite having done nothing wrong. However, to connect this to my points above, media often paints people of color as “thugs”, thereby justifying the deadly actions of the police. But songs like these expose the truth about what’s happening in our communities.

Last but not least, I would like to conclude my post by paying my respects to all of the Black lives that have been robbed, especially the recent lives of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and Tony McDade.