Critical Review: Hayes

Critical Review: Hayes 2004

Hayes’s article “Fear of (and Fascination With) a Black Planet: The Relocation of Rap by White Non-Urban Youth” focuses on white suburbia’s fascination with hip hop. He used 2003 Scottsville, Ontario as his subject and found that the fans wanted to be “gangsta” but when put in an atmosphere similar to that portrayed in the songs, the romanticism of the hip hop world they thought they knew vanished. Hayes's article focused on the disconnect between hip-hop-obsessed white suburbia and the reality of the hip hop scene outside of their safe ground of suburbia. 

I constantly find myself at odds with how I feel about this topic. While I have found many white people who are fans of hip hop minus the romanticism of gangsta life in suburbia, there are so many who are ignorant to their own play into the stereotypes placed upon urban life and those who wish to imitate it.

Discussion Question:

Is it possible for white fans of hip hop to be as authentic as fans of color? Will society ever let white fans to be considered legit? Or will they always be considered "whiggers"?

Critical Review: Cohen 1997

Critical Review: Cohen 1997

In the article, "Men Making a Scene," Cohen writes about the predominately male rock music scene in Liverpool. She writes about how the scene is predominately male because of the exclusion of women from the basic elements of learning music in their youth to their attendance at different concerts and venues. Cohen doesn’t believe that the rock music naturally male but a product of the pre-existing male dominated culture. She believes the Liverpool rock scene to be “shaped or constrained by conventions of behaviour and thought within the general ‘rock world’, but also by local conventions.” The result is men making a scene.

Discussion Question:

If the pre-existing social conditions and conventions didn’t exist, would punk exist? Even further, would punk be considered punk without the male dominance?

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Fieldnotes: (693 words)

05/23/2009

The Bear Necessities Commencement Concert

05:00 pm

As a member of the Brown’sTones (my acappella group) and I race to see the Bear Necessities Commencement concert, I can’t help but wonder: what songs will they sing? What traditions do they have for their last concert? Will someone cry? How late are we? 

We arrive 15 minutes late but they haven’t even started yet. We take a seat towards the middle and I look around and see some people I know and some older people who I am assuming are family. Alum, Jed Resnick, comes down and introduces the Bears and they do their usual run down the aisles to the stage. They clump into their arch, the pitch pipe blows they start singing their Stevie Wonder Medley. 

Federico Rodriguez ’09 and his falsetto come out front and center singing Signed, Sealed, Delivered (I’m Yours). I know and love this song because it’s on their new album and I listen to it constantly. Next up to sing the second solo, My Cherie Amore is Ellis Rochelson ’09. I’ve worked with him before and know his voice well, but there’s a little more heart this time, probably because it’s the last time, for a long time if at all, that he will be singing this song. Matt Bauman ‘10 takes over with Superstition and gets crowd up with a more up-tempo song. Then a face that I know well but haven’t seen singing with the Bears all year, Brandon Chinn ’09, takes over the solo that belonged to an ’08 alum, and sings For Once In My Life. I’ve always heard about how it was so weird this year to see the Bears without him, and now I understand why. He seemed to fit right in, even though he had sung with them all year. Fed comes back with his soaring falsetto to round out the song and they reintroduce themselves as they always do.

Alex Werth ’09 then starts the perc (percussion/beat boxing) for their signature song Zoot Suit Riot. Fed is the soloist and it’s a favorite among regular Bear Necessities audience members. During the breakdown, there’s the usual call and response routine, but Fed prolongs the breakdown and states, “I don’t want to leave the Bears.” I feel a pang of realization. He wont be back next year to sing this song. After the song concludes, they then have a member of the Bears, Michael Warton ’12, come up and say a few words about Fed and present him with a teddy bear made at the Build-A-Bear factory personalized just for him. I realize then that this is their tradition. And it fits perfectly.

As the concert continues, each senior gets a bear and sings a solo. But there is one special moment that occurs that touches the hearts of everyone in the audience and takes my fandom for the Bears to an entirely new level. Matt Bauman tells the audience about how when on tour, the Bears stayed at senior Pete Cipparone’s house and found out that his father was a huge a cappella fan. They also found up that his favorite song was Brandy. The Bears did the song in the past and it was on their last CD so they pull their resources together and learned the song for his dad. But an added bonus was that they had both Pete and his dad solo the song during the concert. My fellow Brown’sTone then said after the performance, “That was so cute. I think they’re my favorite now.”

They closed out the concert with their alumni song Streets of Philadelphia. The alums and current members hit the stage in two rows, with the seniors in front holding each other and swaying from side to side. It was so beautiful and heartfelt with loads of added riffs and high notes that may have been off-key for half a second, but showed the pain of leaving, along with the joy of singing with their brothers just one more time. 

As we left, me and my Brown’sTone buddy gushed over the concert and then remembered our own and how we too soon had to say goodbye to our seniors.

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Fieldnotes: (784 words)

05/23/2009

The Jabberwocks Alumni Arch Sing

12:00am

Wayland Arch

Nearing the end of Campus Dance, a few friends and I decide to go see some of our friends and tons of old Jabberwocks in their alumni arch sing for their 60^th reunion. We rush over to Wayland arch at about fifteen until midnight and I see a friend who was a member of Harmonic Motion another Brown University a cappella group. She says she is about to have an arch sing with her group at the same time and I am a little puzzled. But I go over to see some of my friends just outside the arch and about 3 of them are Jabberwocks. Brian Cross ’12 offers to show me a warmup that they do that consists of approximately 3-4 parts with a cord found in most songs. Two other Brown’sTones are with me, fresh off of our own alumni sing so we are pretty game for it. We start to sing with them and more Jabberwocks, old and new, join in. We sing everything from the Police to Rihanna to Alicia Keys. But then we hear a lot of ruckus and singing coming from the arch. 

We go over and see Harmonic Motion trying to have an arch sing while being heckled by a few Jabberwocks. After about five minutes of trying to sing without being screamed and booed at, HarMo gives up and leaves. A few of my friends come over saying, “They may be good, but they are some assholes.” I can’t help but agree. 

The Jabberwocks applaud as HarMo exits and they begin their arch sing and the numbers are enormous. They have probably over 50 people clearly making them more of a men’s choir than a cappella group but it’s no matter. They start off with their signature song, “Me and the Boys” and plenty of alums are after the solos. It looks like the most fun ever pretty much and I’m pumped to see this. Erik Abi-Khattar ’10, the new Musical Director is shouting out and conducting keeping this sing together. Plenty of the Jabberwocks, new and old, are drunk and drinking as they sing making it even more of an event. They move on to a song I’m not familiar with but the campus celebrity Andy Suzuki ’09 is singing the solo so everyone’s happy. He’s taken the year off of Jabberwocks to pursue music full time, but he’s a staple to the group and everyone is happy to see him with the Wocks again. I must admit, it’s the first time I’ve been impressed with his voice since I first heard him sing in the beginning of the year. They then move on to their version of the Jackson 5’s “I Want You Back”. The alums are not familiar with the new choreography and look a little thrown off but they sing along with it anyway. 

After another song that everyone knows, the alums start calling out the name of a song they want to sing. They start screaming out “LET’S SING OLD JOE!” All of the younger Jabbs are screaming “No!” and trying to find another song to sing but the alumni are pretty persistent. My friend and Jabberwock Malcolm Shanks ’11 comes up to me after its apparent they are going to sing this Old Joe song and says, “Now I want you to listen very closely to this song, it is racist as hell and I will not be singing it.” So as they start singing it, I realize it’s an old minstrel song. A lot of the newer members aren’t singing, Malcolm is pretty tight-lipped as he promised and Brian Cross just looks terrified, not sure whether to sing or not. One thing I see that surprises me is my friend, who for his sake I will not name, who is a person of color, part African-American, singing right along with the alums as if the song isn’t racist at all. Part of me wants to run up to him and slap him across the face, grab him by his collar and take him back to his dorm, but then another part wants to continue to videotape the event, so that I could show him later on. 

After they conclude the minstrelsy, they start up singing their alumni song, the Jabberwocky and a current Wock comes up to recite the poem. They then conclude the arch sing and I’m left wondering whether or not I should have enjoyed that or not. There were an equal amount of pluses and minuses. I kept thinking about that as I went back to Campus Dance. The heckling, the racism and the arrogance butted heads with the fun, the talent, and the performance.