Author Archives: Cynthia Wang

When I write songs, they musically fall into two vague categories. The first is heavily influenced by my affinity for country music (I know, I know, let the judging begin), and the second is my attempt to be edgier and more free form.

In the first category, I use what I call "real" chords – easily understandable chords like Gmaj, Cmaj, Emin, Dmaj, Dmin, etc. Sometimes with a 7 chord thrown in. Sometimes suspended. I'm finding these songs fall neatly into place – it's a structure that's easy to read, and you know when and how phrases start and end.

In the second category, I use what I call "made up chords". Ok. These chords aren't really made up. In music theory, there are names for them. They're just too much trouble for me to figure out exactly what to call the chord. (did I mention that yes, I'm a classically trained musician, but when it comes to guitar, I can't even so much as read music to translate it onto the instrument? And I can't translate the sounds/noises I make on my guitar into musical notation. And it's mostly because I'm lazy and don't want to figure it out) So I call them made-up chords. They consist of a lot of suspended chords, Major7 chords, and other ones that just don't make any sense (as for example, E fingering off the 7th fret or something)

Anyway, my point with the second category is that I never know when the song is finished. Because it's so free form, it seems to change every time I play it. I'm actually speaking from a current frustration. I've been working on a song the last two days or so, and want to finish it in time for my show on the 15th. And I think it's finished, but I'm not sure. Because it almost feels like it's half improvised.

It's also funny that sometimes it takes 20 minutes to write a song. Other times, it takes 20 minutes to write 2 words.

Disco. The images this word conjures up for me include the shiny ball above the dance floor, Saturday Night Fever’s iconic image of John Travolta (a movie, I’m sad to say, I have yet to see), and big hair. Growing up in a Chinese household didn’t leave much room for cultural exploration outside that with which my parents were familiar. So, like in previous weeks, this is new territory for me. I actually thought disco took place during the 80s, which just shows how ignorant I am of pop music before the turn of the century…

Echol’s brief description of the transition from the 60s to the 70s reminded me of a book I read a couple years ago called “Generation Me” by Jean Twenge, in which she talks about the current generation of people in their 20s and 30s who grew up with a focus on the individual rather than the collective, with the desire and drive to stand out, to be unique, being told from an early age that they’re “special.” Self-esteem became more important that productivity, and “A for effort” became the norm in schools. I wonder if this has anything to do with the cultural revolutions of the 60s, which brought out a consciousness of diversity and identity, civil consciousness which spoke to the importance of the individual, and resulted in a push for self-identification and standing up for oneself. Here is one interpretation that I do not necessarily agree with, but can (if I expand my mind enough) see the point — my mom once told me that to come out of the closet (as gay or lesbian) is a very selfish move, as it is tragic to one’s parents. It is interesting to me that she speaks from a culture that is more collective (Chinese), whereas in America, hiding one’s sexuality in order to appease one’s family, save face, and keep peace within one’s communal society would be unfathomable in, well, the liberal, diverse circles in which I live.

The continuity of disco on the dance floor is an interesting thought, especially since it seems to homogenize music – as Echols states, “songs that were easy to mix in and out of…began to dominate deejays’ playlists.” (Echols, pg. 9) Only certain songs that fit the beat and tempo of music were played and hence familiarized. Moreover, the embrace of  the “synthetic over the organic, the cut-up over the whole, the producer of the artist, and the record over live performance” (Echols, pg. 10) resonates with the popularization of techno and electronic dance music today, as Echols mentions in her Epilogue. Electronic dance music seems to be the updated disco of today’s music world, even to the point of “discofying” popular songs into a style with techno beats and pounding synthesized percussion.

Another interesting point to disco is that it seems to empower (at least economically in terms of visibility and record deals) marginalized minorities, especially black women, or the diva, with gay men as prominent consumers of this genre. Not to be grossly overgeneralizing, but the stereotype of the gay man as the diva suddenly makes more sense to me now… The point being is that it seems to me like one of the really significant things about disco was the fact that it is like a genre of subversion, a genre that was embraced by those in the margins – even the margins of the marginalized, as was the case of gay macho, and made the margins more visible than it were before. Echols makes the point that it crosses racial and gender boundaries that other genres may not. This probably says something about dance and rhythm as well…

And just another thing I appreciated about this book – the historicizing and summarizing of gay culture in America.

Reaction paper in the making…

But. I meant to blog about this sooner. I was at a wedding this weekend. It was a beach wedding. During the vows, you could hear what the officiator was saying (for the bride and groom to repeat), but you couldn't actually hear the bride and groom repeat it. I thought this was interesting in that sonically, the audience could hear what was supposed to be said, but the sounds of the bride and groom were reserved only for them. Perhaps that makes it more intimate.

Just a quick thought.

Also, ever notice that regular TV is louder than if you have a DVD in? I have to turn my volume way up when I watch a DVD.

Explanation of title: According to a Disney cast member we met today, people at Disneyland call the park "diz" or "the park" or "DCA" (for California Adventure)

Ok, on to other thoughts. Warning: Will be disjointed and not written very…intelligently… (or, eloquently) because I am very very tired (after spending the day at Diz), but wanted to get these thoughts up. Some of this is from today, some of this is from last month when I went.

Pirates:
1) It's like a movie. Where each room you pass is a different scene. And visually, it changes with each room you pass. Aurally, it fades, but remnants of the last "scene" or room still seep into the current.
2) There are two types of sounds on the ride – the produced sounds (or mechanical sounds), and the "real" sounds. The produced sounds are the ones that are recorded and reproduced. In pirates, this means the voices, the singing, the bullets and cannon shots, the dog barks, the instruments. Almost EVERY sound you hear on the ride is a produced sound. The real sounds are few and far between. Mostly sound of water. Or, for example, a great combination of the two are in the cannon battle scene. Where there are simulations of cannonballs hitting the water. The sounds of the cannonballs are all recorded, yet they blast water up, and the water hitting the surface of the, well, water from whence it came, is a "real" sound. There aren't much of these in ride.
3) The experience is so aurally immersive that you don't hear people talking, unless they're sitting RIGHT next to you. And even then, it's hard to hear them. Very much like a movie. Which I found was really the point (John Hench, head Imagineer, seems to imply) — actually, we went to check out the Little Mermaid ride preview in DCA, and the layout plans of the ride show each section as a "Scene". As in, "Scene 8 – Ariel's escape" or something like that.

Fantasmic:
One thing really struck me during the fireworks. They play music during the fireworks. And the fireworks visually works with the music. Like, you'd see a burst of something or other on the downbeat, or a significant syncopated beat in the music. HOWEVER. As we all know, the burst you hear from fireworks occurs later than the burst you hear (which, I believe, is simply due to the scientific fact that light travels faster than sound). So the SOUND of the fireworks is in complete disjunction with the music. And yet, it seems like people don't CARE. It doesn't seem to affect the experience in any way, as long as the visual falls in place with the music. This is not only another example of visual hegemony, but that people are so taken in by the produced-ness of the experience, that there is a certain kind of deafness to the VERY LOUD boom that comes with the fireworks – it's heard but not really heard. The loudest sound of this produced experience is one that is unavoidable, and yet somehow forgotten. It's an aural signal that is expected to be disjointed, yet doesn't disrupt the produced experience.

Main Street:
I have to go back and listen to this, but it seems like people are lethargic around 3pm, very lively heading back into the part (presumably after an afternoon nap) around 7pm, then restless to go home at around 10pm. I just remember 3pm being very quiet. And the produced music was everywhere on Main Street. Lots of swing music, some ragtime, some musical, marching band-type music, and the music is continuous anywhere you go on Main Street, although if you listen closely enough, you can figure out where the speakers are, even though Diz tries very hard to hide them and make the sound seem sonorously magically present.

Jungle Cruise:
If you're talking about produced sounds creating an immersive experience for the audience, the Jungle Cruise does not do this. Especially if you're sitting in the back of the boat, where the motor is. You can't hear the guide at all. An example where real sounds overpower produced sounds and punctures (a bit) this frameworked experience Disney wants you to have. There's an interesting performative thing here too. Imagine being the guide and giving the same spiel for hours and hours on end, and needing it to sound fresh every time.

Tiki Room:
The split between produced sounds and real sounds (in this case, the mechanical sounds made by the animatronics technology that moves the birds and flowers mouths) is most pronounced here, and the real sounds probably the most ignored. The mechanical sounds are really percussive, and very noticeable, that at first, I thought it was part of the music, and was thinking, "huh. that's clever. they use the mechanical sounds to add to the produced and recorded sounds to make it sound more percussive." Until the flowers started singing some aria-type number, and then (because I was paying so much attention to it), the mechanical sounds started being distracting and overpowering. But probably only because I was listening for it. Everyone else seemed to not notice it at all – it didn't alter their experience…or the experience Walt Disney wants them to have. Again, another example to check reality at the door, to be willing to look past the real and buy into the experience (and pleasure — this is talked about in the "Inside the Mouse" book) of the park – the fabricated and constructed one – to only experience what you're SUPPOSED to. It's all pretty totalitarian.

On a completely unrelated note, I realize that I can hear my neighbors' coffee maker early in the morning from my bedroom (my bedroom and their kitchen are adjacent) – and it has to be early because any later and I hear the faint occasional sound of cars in the street, which actually overpowers the very VERY quiet coffee maker sounds. And, when my ear is physically touching my pillow or blanket at certain times, I can hear my heartbeat. Sound travels through solids best, I guess. I mean, I know that sound travels through solids best, but I guess that's the explanation for the latter one.

Ok, I'm going to bed before people think I'm completely discombobulated. Good night.

On the heels of our genred, racialized discussions…white rapper from the UK. Talking about the NHS in peril. Awesome stuff.

I found Josh’s article fascinating, and an interesting introduction for me into the world of narcocorridos. Before this week’s readings, I knew absolutely nothing about Mexican music. (and honestly, I still feel like I don’t know much!) So, I think this response will be drawing comparisons to types of music and situations with which I am familiar.

The narrative style of narcocorridos to which the readings this week refers reminds me a little bit of country music – the telling of a story often centered around a character. With country music, though, there’s usually a moral point to the song or the story. Narcocorridos seem to celebrate crime and subversion. It is almost as if music itself is in cahoots with these ideas of subverting traditional power structures – women in the position of power with the example of Emilio Varela and Camelia le Tejana. Ragland paints a very interesting story of the tensions between Mexican and Mexican American culture – one that I’m rather familiar with as well, being Asian American and seeming “westernized” in the eyes of Asian friends, family, and acquaintances. The fact that Camelia was able to get away with murder and money, I felt, could be read a few ways. That it was ok because she was a woman, but not REALLY Mexican, and women are shady, subordinate creatures anyway, which doesn’t disrupt the social order if they deviate from it, because their position of less power. That it is empowering that a woman (regardless of nationality or culture) overpowers and outsmarts a man. That a woman had so much “visibility” or “aurality” – or “airtime” and given notice – that she was represented and given (quite a bit of) space in the musical narrative, that may seek to change the patriarchal hegemony.

Josh’s article quotes Mr. Quintero as saying that “songs for peace, or songs about ending violence…It’s not what people want to hear.” At first, that seems a bit disturbing. However, if we take ourselves out of the dichotomized framework of good and evil, legal and illegal, peace and violence, etc, can we start seeing the world more as relational rather than as absolute? Ragland also alludes to the complicated dynamics of the border, of nationality and identity, and of music. The narcotraficante lifestyle seems like it can be painted a bit like Robin Hood, where the questions of good and bad are thrown out the window and are, rather, replaced with questions of perspective, power, need, culture. If you steal from the rich (the drug-addicted North Americans) to feed the poor (shunting drug money back to Mexico to better the community) (Ragland, 166), is that really “bad”? The law may seem black and white, but morality is rarely that clearcut… as are the other strands of questions Mexican music plays with – culture, identity, nationality, race, gender, etc, and the movement across and between the Mexican and American frameworks for these.

I also wonder how narcocorridos compare with rap and the prevalence of sex and domestic violence and rape in rap music. I know very little about ether genre (oh, how problematic this idea of genre is, as we know), but it doesn’t seem as though rappers are killed like the Mexican musicians were…

One of the major things I got out of the Miller book was the idea that commercialized music was integrated into “folk” music, or southern music, rather than the other way around, of the Powers That Be appropriating “authentic” or “folk” music. I actually thought it would be the second way, although when one thinks about it, given the proliferation of commercialized music, it is not surprising that southern music would be influenced by commercialized music. It was interesting that Charles Peabody was dismayed to hear African American laborers singing commercialized “white” music coming from New York City – in that it exemplified the sentiment of the Jim Crow laws, wherein Powers That Be (usually white) wanted to put race and genres and music in separate boxes. The bleed-thru of commercial music into “folk” music, then, seemed to threaten the sacred tenet of segregation on which the Jim Crow laws are based, and hence threaten the hegemonic power of white folks. (who are, at the end of the day, still “folks” – more on this later)

Genres have always really bothered me. It seems to seek to put art and artistic endeavors (music, film, TV, etc — and people, as we see) in these tiny boxes. They put unnecessary boundaries and limitations on human expression, and seek to categorize and organize in order to control. We see this with film and TV genres all the time. Especially with the Emmys, what is “good” and what is “bad” is often based on genre – this is a “good” drama show, this is a “good” comedy show, and we will reward you for falling within the lines of genre, award shows tell us. Race, then, as Miller demonstrates, is an ultimate genre that then gets tied closely with art produced by racialized bodies. It is a type of genre that comes with even more historical power struggles than the genre to which I previously referred. Both, of course, are constructed, and are sites of power struggles. This idea of racialized genres is still prevalent in music today, although it seems less imposed upon by Powers That Be and more simply part of the hegemonic fabric of our society that comes from a history of slavery and oppression of non-white people.

Broonzy’s quote “all music is folk music” in the afterword of the book is poignant on many levels. On one level, he speaks of the challenges (and possibly inanity) of trying to categorize folk music, of trying to categorize what is “authentic.” On the other hand, I feel he makes a much broader statement about race and the perceived inferiority of African Americans or non-white musicians. He seems to react to the fact that non-Whites, and especially African Americans, were treated no better than animals, if we recall the slavery era. His comment about the horse speaks to this very clearly. This statement is poignant because it recognizes the dehumanization of black folks in the south, and seeks to bring an aspect of humanity back into the conversation, to remind people that, regardless of race, everyone is foundationally human.

One more quick anecdote that I won’t elaborate on too much (might be able to link it later to another blog), but I thought was relevant to this idea of racialized music. My friend Dawen performed at the Apollo in NYC last week. Did not win, but is interesting in that he’s a guy of Asian decent playing soul music. Dawen’s genre is R&B, another “traditionally” black genre. I’ve often wondered if Asian American musicians have a genre of music, or if we just bounce around, adapting other racialized genres?

My brother showed me this (right before going into surgery this past week …. so I guess maybe this is a lasting legacy of his underbite, which is no more)…

Anyway – I can’t decide if I think this is a joke or not, because it’s SO BAD…like, how can the producers not know that it’s so bad?!

In other, more pressing and scary news, there seems to be a memory leak in my macbook. WTF?! It just went from 7GBs to 1GB…and I haven’t downloaded anything.

Not a new concept, but talk about artificially created “natural” soundscapes.