Today’s class provided more fodder for the old brain, which is always a good thing. As a ditsy teenager, I loved music but never thought that deeply about it. I can see more and more why Professor O’Malley speaks of music being “politicized,” back to our discussions about Miller’s Segregating Sound and up to our class today in which we talked about disco, rumba, and other types of music. I didn’t realize that disco had been “coded” as African-American and gay. And in all the times I heard Desi Arnaz sing “Babaloo” I never realized that this referred to a deity. We’ve seen numerous examples now of how music has been used to promote social agendas, some of which are pretty disturbing, such as the minstrel shows and the cake walk. How interesting that we still have vestiges of these, such as the cake walk. But at some point the original intent or use of such traditions becomes separated from current use. For example, the modern “cake walk” doesn’t bear much resemblance to the original spectacle of watching slaves dance for prizes. Now it is a fun carnival game for anyone, and how many people know where it came from? Another example is the way Garage Band “appropriates” many musical forms so that anybody can use them whenever they want. This is similar to the minstrel show appropriation of African-American sounds. I doubt people who use Garage Band are aware of this kind of connection. Garage Band is also another interesting example of displacement of space and time, When we add various loops to our own piece of music, we don’t know who created it, or when, or in what context. It becomes a strange kind of entity made up of pieces that can span decades or geographical boundaries or multiple races and cultures. So how is something like this “categorized,” which is what humans like to do? What is its meaning? Who “owns” it? We’ve talked a lot about the freedom of information, and as more and more of it becomes “free” or appropriated, there will be more and more questions and issues about how to handle it.