HUM 221: More poetry by Joy Harjo, more questions (plus the same three)

Friday (weather permitting), we'll read more about Joy Harjo, a Creek/Muscogee poet originally from Oklahoma who now lives in Albuquerque and spends a lot of time in Hawaii. She's a member of the American Academy of Poets, who have a brief biography and links to poems called "Deer Dancer" and "Equinox." In "Deer Dancer" she tells about an ugly incident -- a Native American woman who takes her clothes off in a bar, and the people there -- at least the Native Americans -- see something proud and good about their heritage in:

... the stranger whose tribe we

recognized, her family related to deer, if that's who she was, a people

accustomed to hearing songs in pine trees, and making them hearts.

Harjo also calls her "the proverbial dream girl, the face of the moon." (There's the moon again, in another bar. What's a nice moon like you doing in a place like this? What's the deer-dancer woman doing in a place like this? Or, as Harjo asks, "That's what I'd like to know, what are we all doing in a place like this?" What's going on here?)

Harjo writes a lot about alcoholism and other social problems. But she also writes a lot about how we come to accept who we are, and how we reconcile ourselves with the world. "Deer Dancer" concludes:

The music ended. And so does the story. I wasn't there. But I imagined her

like this, not a stained red dress with tape on her heels but the deer who

entered our dream in white dawn, breathed mist into pine trees, her fawn a

blessing of meat, the ancestors who never left.

Can you see any images in the poem, any action, any narrative that shows Native American people in very seedy circumstances? Like in a cheap bar? Dancing naked on the furniture? But can you see anything in Native American culture still shining through in spite of the circumstances? What would it mean to be like a deer? In Native culture? To us, in our culture? To you? What are deer like? Are they graceful? Are they natural. Do they belong in bars? Think about some of these things.

What is Harjo saying about Native American culture and values and Native hope for the future? About her own personal values and hope for the future? What can she say to all of us about our values and our ability to overcome mean circumstances.

Joy Harjo is very big on reconciliation, on working through personal difficulties. And she's very big on the Muscogee culture. In a poem called "Autobiography," she tells the history of her people -- how they were forced west in the 1830s and their land was stolen -- and how she came to accept her heritage one night nursing a drunk she found on the street, a drunk from the Jemez pueblo who reminded her of her father. She ends the poem:

I have since outlived that man from Jemez, my father and that ragged self I chased through precarious years. But I carry them with me the same as this body carries the heart as a drum. Yesterday there was rain traveling east to home. A hummingbird spoke. She was a shining piece of invisible memory, inside the raw cortex of songs. I knew then this was the Muscogee season of forgiveness, time of new corn, the spiraling dance.

See how "Autobiography" works through difficult issues and comes out talking about spirit, forgiveness, new life? Does "Deer Dancer" do something similar? How do you respond to the poems?

Blog your response to these two poems by Joy Harjo, "Deer Dancer" and "Autobiography." What do they tell you about Muscogee culture? What do they tell you about Harjo? What do they tell you about yourself? Remember the three questions I asked the other day to get you thinking about your response to a poem? Well, here they are again:

1. What about this work stands out in my mind?
2. What in my background, values, needs and interests makes me react that way?
3. What specific things in the work trigger that reaction?

Post your response -- at least 4-5 sentences long -- as comments to this post. Please note: If you were taught in English class never to say "I" in a paper for school, you're off the hook in this class! There's no way you can write about these questions without saying "I." That's what they're all about.

HUM 221: Wednesday, back to Plan A

For today's in-class discussion assignment, scroll down to what I posted Tuesday, Jan. 22, on Creek/Muscogee poet Joy Harjo. It's under the heading

HUM 221: Blogging the arts, questions to ask
yourself (and keep asking all semester) ...

There's some stuff to read, some questions to write about.

Unless we get a really lively class discussion going, I want to also look at some of the webpages on Native American values that are linked to our syllabus for HUM 221.

Dena'ina: 'The language of their place'

Last week we read about the extinction of the Eyak language of southcentral Alaska, as Eyak elder Marie Smith Jones, the last native speaker, died at the age of 89. Today we'll read about efforts to revive a related language, spoken by the Dena'ina (d'NAY-na) people whose ancesteral home includes Anchorage and Cook Inlet, the body of water that leads out from Alaska's largest city to the Gulf of Alaska and the Pacific Ocean.

Most logical place to start is the Dena'ina Qenaga portal page. Let's translate. "Dena'ina" is the name the Dena'ina people give to themselves. It means, simply enough, "the people." In Dena'ina, "Qenaga" means language. Dena'ina Qenaga is a project of the Alaska Native Language Center at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, and it is funded in part by a grant from the National Science Foundation. The ANLC has done a lot of work not only to record and preserve the language for scholars, but to bring it alive for the Dena'ina people.

Linked to it is a website called Kahtnuht'ana Qenaga: The Kenai Peoples Language. It's about the dialect of Dena'ina spoken by members of the Kenaitze Indian Tribe on the Kenai Peninsula along Lower Cook Inlet south of Anchorage.

(A tangent, as long as we're talking about languages. "Kenaitze" may look Native American, but it's an English version of the Russian name for the people of lower Cook Inlet. Alaska, of course, was first explored by the Russians and was a Russian colony for a hundred years. "Kenatsy" in Russian is the word for a flat, barren landscape, and it gives its name to the Kenai Penninsula [pron. Keen-eye], too. The Dena'ina call it "Yaghanen," which means a good land.

(Or is it a tangent? If the Russians and the Americans can't get a tribal people's name right, who's going to?)

Let's surf around the Kenai website. A map showing Images of Dena'ina Territory shows why the Dena'ina think theirs is a good land. Click on the yellow dots to see photos, and the place names in Dena'ina and English. Cook Inlet is the body of water that stretches north and east from the Gulf of Alaska, at the bottom of the map. One of the dots at the end of Cook Inlet shows you Anchorage (you'll recognize the one with buildings), and the Kenai Peninsula is the landmass south and east of Cook Inlet that looks like a splayed-out baseball glove.

Lots of other information on the Kenaitze website, including a pull-down menu with a lot of vocabulary lists. Check out the ones on mammals, fish, "houses, shelters & caches" ... how does language reflect the way they live? How does the way they live reflect language? There's a lot of information about Dena'ina subsistance traditions in those words.

Also linked to the Dena'ina Qenaga website is an Alaska Public Radio Network show on tape recordings of traditional music dating back to the 1950s. Listen for the plank drum. It's a traditional Athabascan instrument, and it has a harder, sharper "clack" than a skin drum, at least to my ears. You'll also hear about Dena'ina traditions and how they've changed since the 1950s, when the tapes were made.

If you want to know more about how a non-English language works than you ever imagined was possible, open Peter Kalifornsky's story of "Putting Up Fish" and click on the explanations of the Dena'ina sentences. See how they take a word and add on meaning with different prefixes and suffixes? Amazing! Then consider most human children are already fluent in their native language, meaning they can form complete sentences even though they continue to learn more vocabulary lifelong, by the time they are 5 or 6.

But maybe the best place to get a feel for the Dena'ina language is a story that anthropologist Alan Boraas tells of the time he and a Dena'ina elder named Peter Kalifornsky recited the Pledge of Allegiance at a school assembly, Kalifornsky in Dena'ina and Boraas translating, and how the children reacted to hearing their language spoken, some of them for the first time. Here's Boraas:

Two hundred grade schoolers make a lot of noise even when being shushed by their teachers, and I was a little ambivalent when we stepped to the microphone. I cleared my throat, Peter cleared his, and we began:

"Dek'nesh'uh bet'uhdi_t'ayich"' Peter read. "I pledge allegiance" I repeated. "Naq'ach' k'iniyich'," "to the flag," "ts'e_q'i k'i_anich'ina," "of the United States of America."

As we read, the children became curiously silent. Johnny stopped pulling Sally's pigtails, Betty and Amy stopped giggling, and Ricky, off in his own space, suddenly was captivated. As one, they stared intently at the frail old man speaking a strange language they didn't understand. They were not confused, but awed. Even the school district administrators paid attention.

The children seemed to sense that this was the language of their place. An ancient language with ancient roots. Though they came from many backgrounds, subconsciously they seemed to want to connect to those roots. After the program was over I stood to the side talking with some acquaintances, and I happened to look over toward Peter. Forty or so kids had gathered around him. They were quiet and respectful with a look not so much of admiration, but of wonder. It was as though there was something missing in their lives that this mysterious old man and his ancient language could satisfy. They would draw near and reach out their hand, and he would reach out his and touch them. Then they would drift away and others would press to the front for a chance to touch the hand of a man who held the secret to their connection to their place.

Finally, check out a 2004 public radio story on the Dena'ina Language Institute at Kenai Peninsula College. You will hear the sound of a language slowly coming back from the brink of extinction.

HUM 221: A language died this week

An 89-year-old grandmother who died in her sleep Monday at her apartment in Anchorage was the last native speaker of the Eyak language. With her died a language that linguists reckon was 3,500 years old ... and a whole way of thinking.

What do we lose when a language goes extinct? In class today we'll read The Anchorage Daily News' obituary of Chief Marie Smith Jones and a 1993 feature story about her fight to preserve the language and culture. She worked with Michael Krauss, a linguist from the University of Alaska Fairbanks (who became fluent but wasn't a native speaker). As a result of her efforts, future scholars will be able to study the syntax and morphology (word formation) of the language. But it will be a dead language, like Latin or Babylonian or ancient Greek.

We'll also watch a video of Smith Jones saying a prayer in Eyak.

The words won't mean anything to us. But as we watch, please remind yourself: This little old lady in the beaded hat was doing something, saying something that nobody will ever be able to do or say again.

What do we lose when we lose a language?

In a brief editorial today (Friday) in The Independent, a British newspaper, staff writer Rachel Shields quoted Steven Levinson of the Max Planck Institute for psycholinguists in the Netherlands: "When a language dies, a whole world dies. It takes millennia to develop, and is an artefact that contains within it a whole culture. This is a tragedy." Sheilds also gave Smith Jones' name in Eyak: Udach' Kuqax*a'a'ch.

Let's think about it. How does the language we speak affect the way we see the world? How do words affect the way we think about things?

Here's an example from Eyak that I noticed in the ADN stories. In the Athabascan languages of Alaska, people tend not to use "north" and "south," "east" and "west" when they're talking about directions. More typically they use words that would translate as "up river" or "downstream," because that's the way they orient themselves when they're traveling through the North Woods of Southcentral Alaska. Knowing that, Krauss was able to guess out where they might have lived many years ago. But that's not what's important here: It's the way the Eyak people used words in a way that helped them keep their bearings when traveling off roads through a wilderness.

Look for that again when you read the stories.

But we can find examples closer to home, too. If you know people who are bilingual, you probably hear them all the time.

How many words do you know that are hard to translate from one language to another? (Hint: Many of them we can't talk about in class!) Here are a couple we can: When a Mexican-American says "Ay chihuahua!" he or she isn't talking about a little dog. Norwegians have an expression they say when they're disgusted: "Uff da!" Try saying it out loud. You know exactly what it means. ("Da" is the word for "then.") But it just doesn't translate into English. The language is part of the way people think.

How many words or phrases do you know that carry more than their literal meaning because we've heard them so often, especially in emotionally charged situations? Home, mother, apple pie, singing "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" in the seventh inning. How would you explain them to a non-English speaker? "Ho ho ho" at Christmastime. "'Tis the season to be jolly." "You deserve a break today." "Be all you can be." "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil." How many words or phrases like this can you list? How do they shape your thinking?

What would you lose if you lost them?

Then think of Marie Smith Jones, of Udach' Kuqax*a'a'ch. What did we lose, all of us, when we lost the Eyak language this week?

Post your response to the message board. Here's how, recopied from my other blogs:

How to post your response

Scroll down to the bottom of this post. On the right side of the last line, there will be a link that says "___ comments" (with a number filled in where I've left a blank, depending on how many comments have been posted). Click on that link and fill in the comment field on the right. Sign in (make a note of the username and password you choose because we'll keep on posting to the blog), review your comment if you wish and publish it by clicking on "Publish Your Comment." Logical, isn't it?

HUM 221: Blogging the arts, questions to ask yourself (and keep asking all semester) ...

More questions than answers. That's what I want to leave you with in Humanities 221 (Native American Cultural Expression). We'll be talking about art, and we'll be talking about how art "crosses over" from one culture to another. I have some strong opinions about how that happens, and why it happens, what we gain from it and what we lose. (You don't have to agree with me, by the way. Just be ready to say why you do or you don't ... to argue the point, in other words.) Either way, I don't have a lot of clear-cut answers on any of this. It's a complicated, messy business. But people are complicated and messy, and so is art.

So let's get started. We'll look at two poems by Joy Harjo, a poet and jazz musician who is an enrolled member of the Muscogee (Creek) Indian tribe.

'Eagle Poem.' When was interviewed on Jim Leherer's TV news show, she recited "Eagle Poem," considered one of her best. Click here to follow the words. (She leaves out part of the poem. She's on TV, after all, and TV viewers have short attention spans. Right?) Then we hear some of her music, and she talks some more about her art.

Here's what's going on in "Eagle Poem." Harjo looks up in the sky and sees an eagle riding a thermal, circling around up in the sky. It fills her with awe. It's like praying. That's it. Simple. Direct and to the point.

Some things to think about, then write two or three paragraphs in answer. Eagles are messengers of God in her tradition. Kind of like angels in traditional Christianity. Does that work for you? And she prays by opening herself to nature, "[t]o sky, to earth, to sun, to moon." Can you see praying that way? Do you tend, like so many of us, to put religion and poetry in different "boxes?" What about religion and art in general? Think about different churches you may have attended, differences in visual art like paintings, sculpture, stained glass, etc., the different styles of music in different services. What's the same? What's different? How do you respond to a poem that's written by somebody who is obviously getting in touch with values from another culture that we may not share? Or are there values there that we all share, even if we express them differently?

'Remember.' Another of Harjo's most popular poems is called "Remember." There are two versions on the World Wide Web, one with musical background and one with Webtext explanations by Virginia Commonwealth University student Kellie Cruz. Here's a passage I like:

Remember the sky that you were born under,
know each of the star's stories.
Remember the moon, know who she is. I met her
in a bar once in Iowa City.

What do you make of that? (Personal disclosure: I've never been in a bar in Iowa City, but I used to go to Gonzo's in Davenport. I never saw the moon there!) When she was interviewed by Jim Leherer, Harjo spoke of taking old things in her poetry, tribal things, and making them new, rejuvenating them. Is that what's going on here? I don't know. What do you think? Here's another line that's sort of like that:

Remember the wind. Remember her voice. She knows the
origin of this universe. I heard her singing Kiowa war
dance songs at the corner of Fourth and Central once.

That's Fourth and Central in Albuquerque, by the way. Here's a picture. It's right downtown. Does it look like the place you'd expect the wind to be singing Native American war dance songs? Where you'd find the origin of the universe?

Re-read both poems. How much in them seems to reflect Harjo's heritage as a member of the Muscogee nation? How much seems universal -- in other words, common to all people -- and how much is a blend of the two? Are there some things about poetry, music -- the arts -- that transcend cultural boundaries? How do we respond to art across cultures?

Your in-class assignment for today: Watch the TV segment with Joy Harjo, listen to her poem, read it over afterward and post a good two or paragraphs (at least two or three sentences each) on your response to Harjo, her poetry and her music. Be specific. Don't be afraid to quote.

Here are some quetions that are designed to get you thinking. Ask yourself these questions:

1. What about this work stands out in my mind?
2. What in my background, values, needs and interests makes me react that way?
3. What specific things in the work trigger that reaction?

We'll ask ourselves variations on these questions all semester. Please note: If you were taught in English class never to say "I" in a paper for school, you're off the hook in this class! There's no way you can write about these questions without saying "I." I guarantee it.

Keep these three questions in the back of your mind. We'll keep coming back to them.

BBC: 'Bah humbug' to punkers' carol

Censorship can be a wonderful thing. If a British Broadcasting Corp. (BBC) radio station hadn't censored one of Great Britain's chart-topping Christmas songs this week, I wouldn't have known it existed. The song is "Fairytale of New York" by the Pogues, an English-Irish punk band and the late vocalist Kirsty McColl, and it was No. 1 in holiday charts even before the controversy.

A little back story. The Pogues -- and still are -- were a punk Irish band of the 1980s, fronted by Shane MacGowan. Sort of an early version of bands like Flogging Molly and the Dropkick Murphys today. In 1987 they cut "Fairytale" as a duet between MacGowan and Kirsty McColl, who later died in a boating accident. "Fairytale" has become a very popular Christmas novelty song in the U.K. It's about two musicians who tried, but failed to make it in the big city.

Some of the humor is teddibly British, but the tune is catchy in an Irish pub band-ish sort of way. And the video is a nice bit of black-and-white pastiche ... mostly scenes of New York, incuding pipers in a police band, and shots of MacGowan's and McColl's characters, both obviously drunk, all but shouting at each other. The lyrics feature a duet in which McColl sings:

You scumbag, you maggot
You cheap lousy faggot
Happy Christmas your arse
I pray God it's our last.

It's a nice bit. The melody is sort of an Irish jig, and lines like "You scumbag, you maggot" go rolicking along in 6/8 time. The internal rhyme is appealing, too.

But, to make a long story short, BBC decided "faggot" would be offensive to listeners and took to playing an edited version.

Reaction was swift.

Interviewed on another BBC station, McColl's mother, Jean McColl, told another BBC show host she thought the decision to pull the original version was "pathetic ... absolute nonsense ... too ridiculous."

And a spokesman for the Pogues put it in perspective for The Guardian, a London broadsheet.

This song now goes with Christmas like the Queen's speech and mince pies, and all of a sudden it's offensive. It strikes me as very odd and I'm sure the band will be very amused.
One last word. In an interactive feature on the BBC website, readers were asked, "Should radio stations censor The Pogues' Fairytale of New York?" Answers (at 9 a.m. CST today): Yes, 4.61 percent; No, 95.39 percent (10,288 votes cast). And one reader/listener, identified as Sophie Shinigami of Belfast, gets the last last word in a pull-quote:

"No! It's a cracking tune about two people having a blazing row at Christmas. They're meant to be offending each other!"

The video is fun to watch, even though it trades on an outdated stereotype of New York City and I suspect a lot of it goes right over my head since I'm not British. I'm grateful for the censors at BBC Radio 1 for calling it to my attention.

Ole Amund Gjersvik: Jazz bass player

Heard this afternoon on Radio Norway, an instrumental piece titled "Joik" by Ole Amund Gjersvik. He plays acoustic bass, according to his website, and he makes his living as "a freelance doublebass player and composer." His styles include "jazz, blues, pop, rock, country, folk, Argentinean tango, bossa nova, samba, Greek and classical music." I think I heard them all in "Joik," which is a style of Lapp or Sami traditional singing.

"Singabahambayo" (and how do you spell that again)?

Singabahambayo (known variously in English as "We are marching for freedom" or " "Hallelujah! We sing your praises") is a South African song from the struggle against apartheid. YouTube has a fine video clip of the St. Olaf Choir singing it and a chorus from Georgetown University singing a gospel version. The video from Georgetown is grainy, and St. Olaf's shows illustrations from a children's book titled "Bongo of the COngo." But they'll give you an idea of the melody and two very different arrangements. An Australian named Karl Aloritas has a four-part arrangement, on which he has waived copyright, posted to Karl's Choral Music Webpage ... along with other choral works from "Now is the Month of Maying" to "Bogorodyitse Dyevo," a hymn to the Virgin Mary from Rachmaninov's Vespers. Also MIDI files of parts on all his songs. A website well worth checking, especially if you like choral music and can't sight-read any better than I can.

Best background on Singabahambayo I found on the Internet is from an eighth-grade lesson plan by Amy Thomas of West Chester University:

This song is in reaction to the apartheid that was once a part of South African society. The words are translated to "On earth and army is marching. Weíre going home. Our hearts are filled with song. We sing out strong. Halleluia." The words show the importance of music in the African culture. The game involved with Singabahambayo relates to actions of the people of this culture as they marched together toward freedom. When people join hands with each other during the game in the song, it is representing the unity of the blacks in South Africa during their struggle for freedom. African music demands much participation through singing, moving, dancing, and drumming. This song involves many of the characteristics common to African music. This song also includes a polyrhythmic percussion section and repetitive phrases, which are typical of African music.

Great song.

Soulfège: Band features 'Afro-diasporic Groovalicious Funkadociousness!'

A band mixing the sound of Afropop, hip hop, soul and, yes, I can hear a little gospel, Soulfège is based in Boston, now doing a Sweet Mother Africa tour. Infectious music.

Also an awesome example of a band using new media. You've read about "sticky" websites? (If you're not sure, see below.) Well, this is how a sticky website works. Here's the band, in their own words:

So what is Soulfège? Glad you asked. Put it like this - if Fela Kuti, Bob Marley, Lenny Kravitz and Gwen Stefani were all jammin' with the same band, it would be this one.

Fusing funk, reggae, hip-hop, and highlife, Soulfège is more than a band...it's a big FUNKY band.

Electrifying audiences, from Boston to Ghana and beyond, with its positive vibe and relentless groove, the members of Soulfège have performed with and for some of the world's most talented artists and distinguished dignitaries, including Debbie Allen, Janet Jackson, Steven Spielberg, Bobby McFerrin, Nelson Mandela, the Reverend Al Sharpton, Dr. Cornell West, and Al Gore.

The group is known for building sonic bridges that fuse the influences of the African Diaspora into a musical vision all its own. Soulfège not only shines with creativity, it thrills audiences with a golden foundation in rhythm and harmony.

In general, the band tries to present a positive view of life and of culture, both American and African. Frontman Derrick N. Ashong, who is from Ghana, told The Boston Globe the band "was in a position to help change misperceptions on both sides." Says Daniel T. Swann of the Globe:

Soulfege has one foot in Africa, one in America. Its core members -- Ashong, Jonathan M. Gramling, and Kelley Nicole Johnson -- were brought together by their alma mater, Harvard, where all had been in the Kuumba Singers, a gospel choir. But Ashong was born in Ghana, and many of the band's lyrics reflect a connection to the African diaspora. "Yaa (dis be fo radio)," for example, includes lyrics in Ga (spoken in Ghana), as well as in Portuguese and English.

Plenty of YouTube clips and other eye candy -- ear candy? -- on their website. Quotes from and links to the Globe's laudatory story on the band and the SMA tour.

Here's how Erin Jansen's NetLingo.com website defines sticky content:

Information or features on a Web site that gives users a compelling reason to revisit it frequently. Stickiness is also gauged by the amount of time spent at a Web site over a given period of time. This is often maximized by getting the user to leave some information behind on the site, such as a personal profile, an investment portfolio, a resume, a list of preferred cities for weather reports, personal horoscopes, birthday reminders, and the like.

How many sticky features do you see on the Soulfège website? How many do you see on NetLingo, for that matter?

HUM 223 - Final Exam - Fall 07

HUM 223: Ethnic Music
Springfield College in Illinois
Fall Semester 2007
http://www.sci.edu/classes/ellertsen/humanities/hum223syllabus.html

Music is your own experience, your own thoughts, your wisdom. If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn. They teach you there's a boundary line to music. But, man, there's no boundary line to art. -- Charlie ‘Bird’ Parker

Final Exam – 1:30 p.m., Dec. 5, 2007

Below are three essay questions – one worth fifty (50) points out of 100, and two shorter essays worth 25 points each. Please write at least two to two and a half pages (500 words) on the 50-point essay and one page (250 words) each on the 25-point short essays. (This means you answer all three questions.) Use plenty of detail from your reading in the textbook, websites we have visited on the Internet, videos and handouts, as well as class discussion, to back up the points you make. Your grade will depend both on your analysis of the broad trends and the specific detail you cite in support of the points you make. This is an open-book exam. It is due at the regularly scheduled time for our exam, 1:30 p.m., Wednesday, Dec. 5.

1. Main essay (50 points). On July 5, 1954, Sam Phillips of the Sun record label in Memphis heard a group of white musicians jamming on “That’s All Right” by African-American blues artist Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup. It was like nothing he’d ever heard before, and he had them cut a record right away. According to Robert Palmer, author of Deep Blues, that record was “the beginning of something very, very big, something anybody could have predicted, nobody could have stopped and perhaps only one person, Sam Phillips, could have started.” It was also an example of cultural appropriation, or expropriation, which occurs when an art form crosses over from a minority to a majority culture. More occurred when white British musicians like Eric Clapton and the Rolling Stones adopted the blues style and made it their own in the 1960s and 70s. How well, in your opinion, does blues transcend cultural and racial boundaries? What was lost when the music crossed over cultural boundary lines? What was gained? Be specific.

2a. Self-reflective essay (25 points). What do you consider the most important thing you have you learned in HUM 223? Why do you say it is the most important? What did you learn that affected your taste in music for better or worse? Be specific. Consider what you knew at the beginning of the course, what you know now and what you learned. In grading this essay, I will evaluate the relevance of your discussion to the main goals and objectives of the course (in the syllabus posted at the address above); the detail you cite to support or illustrate your points; and the connections you make. So be specific.

2b. Short essay (25 points). Gospel singer Mahalia Jackson once said it made her “so sad and so sick” when she heard a gospel song performed in a nightclub “packed with white people who were laughing and eating and drinking and hand-clapping.” She added, “When they take gospel singing into nightclubs and put out ‘pop gospel’ records, they are blaspheming against the Holy Ghost.” Yet gospel is one of the most important sources of American popular music, and songs like “When the Saints Go Marching In” and “Amazing Grace” are beloved by religious and secular audiences alike. What is lost when the music crosses over to a secular audience? What is gained? Again, be specific. Always be specific.

Mahalia Jackson link for HUM 223 final

On our final exam, I have quoted Chicago gospel singer Mahalia Jackson, who once said it made her “so sad and so sick” when she heard a gospel song performed in a nightclub “packed with white people who were laughing and eating and drinking and hand-clapping.” She added, "The dignity of a colored church and of all religion was being debased so that a few people could make some fast money." If you want to know more about what she was thinking that day, it's in an item I posted to Hogfiddle March 11 on "expropriation" and "commodification."

First, we should realize other gospel musicians see nothing wrong with singing in nightclubs. Some of them, in fact, say it's a way of proclaiming the gospel to sinners. And bluegrass bands always include a gospel number in every set. So it's one of those issues where people can have honest differences of opinion.

But while she didn't use the words, Mahalia Jackson clearly thought the gospel music was being commodified and expropriated for financial gain. A couple of big words here for simple concepts. Commodification just means taking something and making a commodity out of it. And a commodity is something you can buy and sell. A lot of the time it's used when things you don't ordinarily find in the marketplace -- in this case, religion -- are improperly bought and sold without due regard for the feeling of people to whom they have a deeper meaning. Expropriation is another word for something we're already familiar with -- cultural appropriation. It's what happens when an art form, or another form of cultural expression, crosses over from one culture to another.

But "expropriation" has more negative connotations. It's used most often in a context of European settlers taking things of spiritual or artistic value from colonized peoples -- for example the ancient Egyptian and Iraqi artifacts in the British Museum in London -- or of white Americans taking over American Indian dances and spiritual practices without giving due compensation to the people who originated them. The fight over "Chief Illiniwek," for example, was a fight over what many Native people saw as cultural expropriation.

On a lighter note, the English girl mentioned in Dennis Bloodworth's book (see below on Nov. 15) who wore a dress on a ferryboat in Hong Kong proclaiming in Chinese characters "Good stuff inside: price cheap" was expropriating something -- in this case, the material the dress was made of -- and losing something in the translation!

BenU: Spring mass comm. internship

Project Return, an ecumenical social service program that works with mothers returning to the Springfield community from prison, can use an intern to work with the director in creating or updating a flier, newsletter, website or other promotional material. (More details below copied and pasted from their informational flier.) They are expanding their services and community education efforts, and this would a good experience for an intern who already has some motivation toward social justice issues and an interest in public relations. Internships are open to mass communications students at Benedictine who have a 3.0 average or better.

The intern would work with my wife Debi Edmund, who is Project Return's new director. Before seeking her master's degree in Child and Family Services at the Univerity of Illinois-Springfield, she was a public relations consultant for the Illinois Association of School Boards and is a former features editor of The Rock Island Argus (where I met her). So she is an experienced communications professional who has combined her mass comm. skills with another line of work.

PROJECT RETURN
Our Mission
Project Return’s mission is to help incarcerated mothers reintegrate into the Springfield community by matching each returning mother with a team of trained and supported volunteers for one year. We also educate the public about the barriers these women face as they seek to make a successful re-entry into the community.

Our Program
Paid staff and trained volunteer Partnership Teams help participants address immediate challenges: complying with the conditions of parole, achieving financial stability, finding immediate and permanent housing, accessing health care, reconnecting with family and friends, and resuming parental responsibilities. Without such support, released inmates are at risk of returning to criminal activity, substance abuse, or other self-defeating behaviors. Project Return hopes to break that cycle, benefiting both the clients and the community. Our comprehensive, individualized re-entry services begin prior to the individual’s release and continue for up to a year after release. Services include assistance in finding or accessing short term and permanent housing, employment, education or employment training, child care, health care, mental health care, counseling and addiction support services, reliable transportation and safety net resources. It is hoped that each participant will leave our program with improved self-esteem, better mental and physical health, and increased self-sufficiency, thus reducing the chances that she will re-offend and return to prison.

The blues, Elvis and a cheap Chinese dress / HUM 223 READ BEFORE FINAL EXAM (BTW, DID YOU NOTICE THE HINT?)

One of the concepts we've been dealing with in HUM 223 is cultural appropriation. It can be controversial, and there are subtle issues raised by it, but basically it's simple. It's what happens when something crosses over from one culture to another. It's one of those subjects the contributors to Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, have argued about and changed from time to time in efforts to reach a consensus. But here's how Wikipedia defines it now:

Cultural appropriation is the adoption of some specific elements of one culture by a different cultural group. It denotes acculturation or assimilation, but often connotes a negative view towards acculturation from a minority culture by a dominant culture. It can include the introduction of forms of dress or personal adornment, music and art, religion, language, or social behavior. These elements, once removed from their indigenous cultural contexts, may take on meanings that are significantly divergent from, or merely less nuanced than, those they originally held. Or, they may be stripped of meaning altogether.

The Wikipedia article is worth reading all the way through. (Speaking of final exam hints, did you notice how I very thoughfully provided you with a link here?) It gives examples ranging from Elvis Presley and Eminem to Arab keffiyeh headdresses and "the use of real or imaginary elements of Native American culture" by non-Indians. (Chief Illiniwek has been edited out of it, at least for the time being.) But music is one of the primary forms of cultural appropriation all over the world. Certainly American popular music has been a product of cultural appropriation for nearly 200 years, as white musicians appropriated the sound of black spirituals, plantation cakewalks, ragtime, jazz, blues, R&B and, now, hip hop.

Is that a good thing? Is it a bad thing? Well, yes and no. It's good because the music that all of us enjoy is richer for it, but it's not so good when black artists -- or their cultural forms of expression -- get ripped off. Sometimes it's subtle, as occurred when a talented singer like Big Mama Thornton didn't make near as much money off of her jump blues version of "Hound Dog," which sold to a primarily black audience in 1952, as Elvis did when his cover of the same song reached massive white audiences and made No. 1 song on pop, R&B and country charts in 1956. Other times, it's in your face.

So cultural appropriation, like Keats' idea of beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.

One of my favorite examples of cultural appropriation comes not from music, and not from America, but a book by an English journalist named Dennis Bloodworth. He was a foreign correspondent for The Observer, a London newspaper, who spent many years in China and married a Chinese woman named Ping. In a 1967 book titled "The Chinese Looking Glass," Bloodworth explored such myths as Chinese who "cannot distinguish between 'L' and 'R' ... laugh when they are sad, and cry when they are happy," and he gave a sympathetic description of Chinese culture from the viewpoint of someone who could appreciate both an insider's and an outsider's perspective. He recalls traveling with his wife:

The best illustration of the dangers of cultural poaching was provided by an English girl we saw on the Star Ferry in Hong Kong ten years ago, wearing a smart little cotton frock, the material plain except for the same string of Chinese characters repeated at intervals. Ping looked sad, and I asked her what was so funny. The stuff had evidently been hanging in a shop window, she said. I objected that there was nothing very odd about that. No, she said, except you see the characters say: "Good stuff inside: price cheap." (8-9)

Poaching, of course, is hunting without a license. Like beauty and cultural appropriation, it's in the eye of the beholder.

Crossover song by Big Mama Thornton and Elvis

One of Elvis Presley's early crossover hits was "Hound Dog." It came out soon after he left Sun Record Co. for RCA Victor, and it was one of the songs that made him a superstar.

Here's Big Mama Thornton's "Hound Dog." I'll admit the video isn't very exciting -- it just shows a 78rpm record going round and round. But Big Mama's version of the song, recorded in 1952, is good jump blues about to take off into R&B and -- eventually -- rock'n roll. There's something sly and suggestive about it, too, that I can't quite put my finger on.

A clip from a TV show of the 50s shows Elvis' cover of the song. To my ear at least, his version is harder driving, and some of the sexual innuendo has been edited out of the song. Released in 1956, it's considered one of the first big hits in the brand new genre of rock.

You may prefer one version or the other, depending on your taste. They're both fine performances of one of the all-time great hit songs. And hearing them both will give you more of a feeling of how blues crossed over and became rock.

HUM 223: How to write about music

Based on reading your proposals, I'd say almost all of you have good topics -- and almost all of you would greatly increase your chances of getting an A if you write more about the music. Not just a biography of the musician. But his or her music, and how you respond to it. What does it sound like? How, specifically, does it affect you emotionally as a listener? Example: Don't just say Charlie Patton, the early Delta bluesman, is cool. Does Charlie Patton's intricate, polyrhyhmic playing -- even on a cheap acoustic guitar -- put you in a happy, upbeat mood? Or some other kind of mood? Does it reflect the rhythms of Africa? Can you hear what later guitar players like Robert Johnson and Eric Clapton heard in it? Does the way he growls his lyrics give him a primeval, almost dangerous sound? In your papers, I want you to engage the music, listen to some of it and record your response to it. Remember the three questions we've been asking ourselves all semester: What stands out? Why do I like it (or dislike it)? What, specifically, in the music does that for me?

Here's a really good link ... to a Dartmouth Writing Program tip sheet on how to write about music. Some overall advice:

Analyzing music is difficult. First, because music evokes powerful emotional responses, you don't often pay attention to what it is about the music, exactly, that moves you so much. Second, even if you are able to get past your feelings to describe what you hear, simple description isn't enough. You must be willing to interpret the music and then support your interpretation with evidence from the piece.

He say what? What does that mean? Basically it means what you've heard all the way from third grade to English 111 and 112: Support your claims with evidence. But this time, you get some of your evidence from listening to the music.

Although you're writing research papers in Humanities 223, I want you to do some of the things Dartmouth recommends in "review" papers -- in other words, to comment on the performance, even if you're hearing it on sound recordings, videos or YouTube clips:

In a review, you should focus on the form of the music. What sounds make up the music? How does the composer or performer fuse together these different sound elements? How do the different movements work together to create the music's overall effect? Remember to stay away from comments beginning with "I" that reflect only how the music affected you. Instead, question the music using criteria by which we judge excellence, and provide insight into those elements of excellence.

When you're writing for my classes, at least, that doesn't mean you can't make "I statements," by the way. It just means you have to back up your "I statements," your opinion with evidence. Which is what you do in college writing anyway. Right?

COMM 393: Reminder on Senior Portfolios

A copy of an email message I sent out this morning to students registered for Communications 393. I'm posting it to my blogs for communications students as well. I have great respect for the Benedictine/SCI grapevine, and I'll appreciate your assistance in getting the word out. -- pe.

A reminder: The end of the semester is only a month away, so it's time to pull together the material for your senior portfolios.

I will need to meet with each of you in order to: (1) inspect your professional portfolio; and (2) receive a Senior Portfolio Folder containing your self-reflective paper and copies of four pieces of work (artifacts) you have done for class, for internships and/or off-campus publications. You will keep your professional portfolio for use in job hunting, but Benedictine University will retain a Senior Portfolio Folder from each student for program assessment purposes.

I am developing a more detailed set of instructions, which I hope to email to you over the weekend, but I wanted to send out this reminder so you can get started how.

THERE ARE THREE parts to the Senior Portfolio procedure:

I. SELF-REFLECTIVE ESSAY. To be turned in, as part of the Senior Portfolio Folder, during a conference with me before the end of the semester.

The self-reflective essay will be 10 to 12 pages in length, in which you reflect on your experience as a communications major at Benedictine in terms of: (a) your progress toward developing or furthering your career goals; (b) your understanding of the profession, its ethics and its role in society. In this essay you should address the following program objectives of Benedictine's mass communications department:

1. Prepare graduates for careers in advertising, electronic and print media, journalism, public relations, publishing, writing or other careers requiring sophisticated communications skills;

2. Prepare graduates for continued study in graduate or professional school;

3. Develop the student's critical and imaginative thinking, reading and writing skills;

4. Develop skills to empower the student to communicate ideas effectively, through speaking, writing and the use of technology;

5. Develop skills for critical interpretation of the media;

6. Foster aesthetic understanding in both production and interpretation of media texts;

7. Develop knowledge of the methods to make responsible social and personal decisions;

8. Develop primary and secondary research methodologies;

9. Develop an understanding of the history, structure and operation of the mass media;

10. Provide an understanding of the impact of mass media industries and messages on the individual, society and culture;

11. Develop professional-level skills in written and oral communication for a variety of media and audiences;

12. Develop professional-level production skills for both print and electronic media;

13. Encourage the development of creative expression; and

14. Help the student develop a professional media portfolio.

II. PROFESSIONAL PORTFOLIO. To be inspected by me during our end-of-semester conference and returned to you. This will be a collection of your best work, preferably gathered in a presentation folder, that you can take with you on job interviews.

III. SENIOR PORTFOLIO FOLDER. To be turned in to me during our end-of-semester conference and retained by Benedictine. Since we will keep these folders, I will accept them in an inexpensive pocketed folder; you can find them in an office supply store or the school supplies aisle of most drug stores. In this folder, you will include: (a) the the self-reflective essay; and (b) at least one copy at least one piece of work (artifact) from each of the following categories:

1. A 300-level research paper written for a 300-level theory class (including COMM 317, 385, 386, 387, or 390, and 391 if it is a theory class). It must contain proper annotation, structure, evidence, and methodology. The student must have attained a grade of at least a “B” on the paper in its original form for it to be accepted for this requirement.

2. A print-based publication, defined as an original written or produced work fixed in a printed and published medium (including newspapers, magazines and newsletters). If you do not have print publication credits, class work for COMM 207, 208, 209, 253 (equivalent to SCI's COM 221), 254, 263 (equivalent to SCI's COM 222), 264, 337, 381 or 382 can be accepted.

3. A web-based publication, i.e. creation that has been exhibited on the World Wide Web and is created for a departmental publication, internship, or work-related experience. The Sleepy Weasel counts as a web-based publication. Any other web-based artifact, including blogs or personal Web pages, must be approved by the instructor prior to the submission of the full portfolio.

4. Brochures, fliers, memos or other work product, including advertisements, pamphlets, brochures, letterheads, scripts or other copy prepared for broadcast, memos, creative briefs, campaign plans or other tangible material written in connection with a college course or an internship.

I will send you a formal assignment sheet in a few days, and there is more detail available about the senior portfolios on the COMM 393 syllabus linked to my faculty page at http://www.sci.edu/classes/ellertsen/masscom/comm393syllabus.html

If you have any questions or comments, please don't hesitate to get in touch with me.

-- Pete "Doc" Ellertsen, instructor

HUM223: 'It's all music' -- blues and jazz

"It's all music." -- Duke Ellington

Duke Ellington, the jazz band leader, used to get impatient with critics who tried too hard to define things like jazz, or blues, or the difference between the two. He had a point there! But we're going to try anyway.

On the Humanities 223 blog, I'm starting to collect links to material that briefly explains blues and jazz ... and how the two types of music are related. A good place to start, as long as you go on and don't finish there(!), is the online, user-generated encyclopedia Wikipedia.

According to Wikipedia, blues is

... a vocal and instrumental form of music based on the use of the blue notes and a repetitive pattern that most often follows a twelve-bar structure. It emerged in African-American communities of the United States from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed English and Scots-Irish narrative ballads. The use of blue notes and the prominence of call-and-response patterns in the music and lyrics are indicative of African influence.

There's more, a lot more, on the page. Wikipedia defines jazz like this:

... an original American musical art form which originated around the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States out of a confluence of African and European music traditions. The use of blue notes, call-and-response, improvisation, polyrhythms, syncopation and the swung note of ragtime are characteristics traceable back to jazz's West African pedigree.

There's a lot in both articles worth studying, and we'll keep coming back to them.

HUM 223: Monday's video

Today, if the miracles of modern technology permit it, we'll try again to watch the second half of Clint Eastwood's TV documentary "Piano Blues." To recap, Eastwood interviewed the late Ray Charles in the first half. We saw a lot of Charles, a gifted pianist and multifaceted performer, and Dave Brubeck, who played a more academic or "classical" style of jazz but built on the work of black artists. Also clips of Duke Ellington, Nat King Cole and other jazz greats.

Today we'll hear from several New Orleans jazz and rock (or rhythm and blues) musicians, including Fats Domino and "Professor Longhair") and blues artists including Muddy Waters and Willie Dixon.

Questions to ask yourself -- and post as comments to the blog:

1. New Orleans is considered the cradle of blues, jazz and a lot of American popular music in the 20th and 21st centuries. Is there a distinctive New Orleans sound in the musicians you hear from that city? If so, how does it carry over into music today -- i.e. do you hear echoes of it in today's music?

2. We'll hear at least a little bit of Chicago blues. Ask yourself the same questions: What is distinctive about it, and what echoes of it do you hear in today's music.

Post your answers as comments to this blog.

'Stiklestad rundt Olsok': NRK links

The Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation (Norsk rikskringkasting or NRK) has links where we can [h]øyr gudstenesta frå Stiklestad 29. juli (olsokdagen) -- or we could if we had the right software on the Mac at home. If I'm translating the Norwegian correctly, it's a St. Olav's Day service at Stiklestad, a church at the site of the Battle of Stiklestad on July 29, 1030. "Olsok" is the Norwegian word for the festival of St. Olav. Program notes are as follows:

29. juli er det Olsok - eller Olavsdagen. Teksten står i Salme 33, 12-22.

Prof. Notto Thelle preker, Liturg er prost Nils Åge Aune. Kantor er Bjørn Bratsberg.

Olsokkoret synger - dirigert av Tore Erik Mohn.

Norsk salmebok: 743. 741. 802 (Landstads rev.). 711. 633.

Tone Fossum Olsson (trompet), Magnus Loddgard (piano), Hans Martin Molvik (trommer).

Salmene er: Fedrane kyrkje i Noregs land, Ljoset over landet dagna, Da Olav konge bøyde hodet, Du viste oss veien til livet og Som korn fra vide åkrer.

Tekstleser er Audhild Morken.

Later: Listened to the streaming audio broadcast this afternoon at the office, and "Ljoset over landet dagna" runs from about 12min to 18min. The hymn itself, sung by a mkxed choir supported by organ and trumpet, begins at 13:47. Very nice.

HUM 223: W.C. Handy, father of blues or jazz?

SOme rough notes before class Monday --

W.C. Handy -- "where the Southern cross the Dog"
Number 9 in a series of thirteen 60-second films produced, directed, written and edited by Robert Mugge for Mississippi Public Broadcasting. The host and music director is Steve Cheseborough. Tells the story.

The story of W.C. Handy first hearing the blues in Tutwiler, Miss., in 1903.

Here's what it may have sounded like. a sound file of Charlie Patton's "Green River Blues" with the lyric "where the Southern cross the Dog"

Here's the lyrics. You'll need to see them, because Patton's old Paramount recording is poor quality and his singing is hard to understand. Listen to how intricate his guitar playing is, though.

-- Wikipedia Creative Commons file -- blogger called gavagai -- "just a blues lover" who plays guitar, mostly in open G, and blues harp (harmonica), asks is this song the oldest blues? He makes a good case for it.

W.C. Handy is known as the "father of the blues" -- a Memphis band leader, very important, very good -- but not a bluesman. He took the blues and developed it into a commercial art form, more jazz than blues IMHO, but a very fine musician. A short but insightful biography of W.C. Handy on the 100th anniversary of his night at the railroad station in Tutwiler, Miss., in 2003. Puts it into perspective. Handy was a musician's musician. One of the great jazz artists.

Beale Street was the main drag in the black section of Memphis in Handy's day -- and a prime tourist attraction today -- and Hand's "Beale Street Blues" was one of his early jazz compositions that incorporated blues melodies and structure. Here is an excerpt played by the De Paris Band in France in 1960.