{"id":698,"date":"2018-09-19T13:01:52","date_gmt":"2018-09-19T13:01:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wri-101c-f18.andrewrippeon.com\/blog\/?p=698"},"modified":"2018-09-19T16:14:18","modified_gmt":"2018-09-19T16:14:18","slug":"then-and-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wri-101c-f18.andrewrippeon.com\/blog\/blog-09\/then-and-now\/","title":{"rendered":"Then and Now"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fredrick Douglas, a former African American slave, writes about sound in the context of slavery in\u00a0the\u00a0Narrative\u00a0of<\/em>\u00a0the\u00a0<\/em>Life<\/em>. He talks about sound in all sorts of contexts, such as the sounds of the slave driver’s horn, of the overseer’s voice, and the noises of the slaves themselves. Douglas explains that the slaves would use song as a coping mechanism and as a “testimony against slavery,” writing, “they (slaves) breathed the prayer and complaint of souls boiling over with the bitterest anguish” (Douglas 14). Slaves used song as a way to deal with their pain and unhappiness and Douglas explains that it’s a common misconception that slaves would sing songs of contentment. Similarly, Stoever explains the concept of the “sonic color line” in the introduction of her study called\u00a0The Sonic Color Line.\u00a0<\/em>She talks about the racial politics related to sound and the racial barrier that is set by society to create various groups of sound, more specifically black and white. This method of discrimination dates back to American slavery, which Douglas clearly explains when he talks about the relationship between slavery and music.<\/p>\n

Today, this divide undoubtable still exists. There are countless examples of the “sonic color line,” that is defined by Stoever, in modern music. Some of these examples include how white Americans react to songs such as “Work” by Rihanna. Rihanna uses patois in the chart topping song “Work”, which a lot of white Americans ignorantly called “nonsense” instead of opening their mind to different black cultures. While white listeners may hear Rihanna’s “broken” English lyrics and think it’s gibberish, she is actually crafting a cultural dancehall song using language from Barbados, which is where Rihanna is from. White ignorance is outdated, yet so societally prevalent and this idea of a “sonic color line” seems to be an unfortunate and unavoidable method of separating cultures. I am curious if this sound base form of segregating different groups of people could ever be avoided. Could society ever unite with something as beautiful and unifying as song, or will races and cultures continue to be separated?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fredrick Douglas, a former African American slave, writes about sound in the context of slavery in\u00a0the\u00a0Narrative\u00a0of\u00a0the\u00a0Life. He talks about sound in all sorts of contexts, such as the sounds of the slave driver’s horn, of the overseer’s voice, and the noises of the slaves themselves. Douglas explains that the slaves would use song as a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-698","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-blog-09","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wri-101c-f18.andrewrippeon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/698","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wri-101c-f18.andrewrippeon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wri-101c-f18.andrewrippeon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wri-101c-f18.andrewrippeon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wri-101c-f18.andrewrippeon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=698"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.wri-101c-f18.andrewrippeon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/698\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":711,"href":"https:\/\/www.wri-101c-f18.andrewrippeon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/698\/revisions\/711"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wri-101c-f18.andrewrippeon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=698"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wri-101c-f18.andrewrippeon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=698"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wri-101c-f18.andrewrippeon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=698"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}