Miller’s book Segregating Sound and our class lectures have provided so many different themes and sub-themes that my brain is swirling. The main theme in Segregating Sound is the musical “color line” that evolved in the South during the 1880s to 1920s (and beyond), that grew out of segregation, the establishment of the American Folklore Society, and the invention of the Talking Machine by Edison. Each of these areas leads to many sub-themes (folklorists, authenticity, isolation, white people’s motivations in performing in minstrel shows, and many others) and questions. For example, why did it take so long for the music industry to look at the South as a market for music, when they were able to successfully create numerous international markets? Why did the American Folklore Society promote themselves as a “scientific authority” when they were fitting the information that they gathered into their own preconceived mold? What weird impulses led to minstrel shows and boundary transgression? But there is one sub-theme that I really wanted to address, which is the fascinating concept of displacement in time and space. We encountered this idea in Carr’s book The Shallows, when he was discussing inventions that changed the way humans think, such as maps, books, and mechanical clocks. These were more than conveniences for people – they actually changed the way people thought, and the way they viewed the world. Carr’s analysis of how the Internet is affecting the human brain is another indication of displacement in space and time for people, a dramatic shift in how people process information. Miller’s book has many examples of less comfortable sorts of displacement. Segregation had a huge impact on African-Americans, so much so that many of them found life intolerable in the South, which led to the Great Migration of the early 1900’s. Many went north, others became traveling musicians to escape the Jim Crow South, with its forms of oppression such as the “imprisonment” some sharecroppers experienced on the plantations, and the horrors of the “spectacle” lynchings. This is a physical and mental displacement, and while it led to success for some, it must have been a terrible ordeal for others in many ways. Leaving the rural South and migrating to a big city with completely different customs and a totally foreign atmosphere would be very disorienting. Like the ones mentioned in Carr’s book, advances in technology during this time would also cause a sense of displacement. Time zones, the telegraph, the railroad, the talking machine, the industrial development of southern rural areas (such as in the mountains), and the ability to order items by  mail are just a few examples of the huge shift people of the South were experiencing in the late 1800s and early 1900s. In addition, folklorists who collected songs in the interest of recording them for posterity descended on the South, yet they mostly manipulated what they found to fit their own ideal picture of folklore. For example, John Lomax portrayed Muddy Waters as “unclean” and primitive, and he insisted that Ledbetter be photographed in overalls and bare feet, instead of a suit, which is what he wanted to wear. This insistence on publicly portraying a stereotype instead of reality must have been frustratingly disorienting. Lastly, this displacement extends to music, in the displacement of the beat found in various forms such as early jazz, reggae, and swing. This was a deliberate displacement that came out of experimenting with music to create a new kind of expression. This is such a complicated topic, as are all of the themes found in Miller’s book, but they are ones that are worth exploring. Miller’s book provided a tremendously eye-opening look at an era that was far more complex than most people would think.