I remember when I was first introduced to Pandora. It was fascinating to think that you could just pull up a website that would play what you wanted without having to choose one song after another, playing constant DJ for yourself. Streaming has become widespread, with many different services, both paid and free. A person […]

In many respects, American music was greatly influenced by Latin Americans. As Cubans and Puerto Ricans moved to New York, they brought island sounds with them. There are several iconic Latin songs such as “La Bamba.” Latin rhythms can be heard in popular themes such as that of Mission Impossible. As Latin inspired music grew, […]

Week 10 was about copyright and sampling. Copyright is one of the many powers that corporations hold. They are able to own material that might naturally be free to share, such as art. Corporations are an interesting phenomenon because they are entities that possess the rights of people. When a person starts a corporation, that […]

For the Digital Scavenger Hunt assignment, we are to search for the earliest references to a musical term such as salsa, jazz, mambo, hip hop, etc. I  chose to search for the genre of “Disco.” On the Google Books Ngram Viewer, it shows that disco started to increase around 1975. This corresponds to a search […]

This week was very interesting. We discussed how Claude Shannon worked to separate information from meaning, which led to the creation of the binary code computers use today to communicate. Binary would allow computers to operate and send information more efficiently. Binary code is very interesting because it reminds me of how the brain works. […]

In week 7 we talked about more in depth about migration. Throughout the United States, as it became more developed and the politics changed, migration was very prevalent. With this movement of people, new styles of music began to emerge. In DC, African Americans developed Go Go music, while white people who came to the […]

This week we talked about the blending of different styles and how music can be very meaningful to displaced people. Music, especially in the beat or rhythm, can provide a sense of comfort. For example, we talked about how Camila Cabello’s song “Havana” may not be very meaningful to most people, but it might be […]

This was perhaps the most disturbing lecture of the semester. In the late 1800s, white people would do minstrel shows in blackface. It was most shocking to me that the banjo was presented in these shows as an African instrument. However, today it is a hallmark of white country music, such as in the Appalachian […]

In week 4 we discussed signal and noise and the rise of the ARPANET. Signals are always complicated by noise, because noise is ever-present. That noise can hinder the ability to receive a signal. I think that this probably presents a large issue as industrialization continues because there is more and more information and sound […]

Week  3 of the course covered a wide array of topics. Among them were the Second World War, the Cold War and the military industrial complex. HIST 390 comes in through the history of computing. The weapons and weapons systems created by the superpowers during these conflicts required a vast amount of funding and research […]