kebailey

May 8, 2019 by kebailey

Identity and the Mix

Sound has always been a part of my life, and I have come to hear sound in a different light during this course. My perspective of sound changed while studying class listening and readings. I realized that sound is more than something that we hear, and it can possess various implications in your life. The writing projects we have done in class gave me the opportunity to utilize my sense of hearing in a way that I otherwise would not. Writing project one and two allowed me to observe voice and sound. I learned that you can draw meaning from sounds without language and voice can have different cultural interpretations. Writing project three introduced me to the concept of soundscape and allowed me to view how sound plays a role in my own life. A soundscape can be any acoustic environment. Before I didn’t think of the role that sound played in my life or how sounds are interwoven into my soundscape. After reading Paul Miller/aka DJ Spooky the Subliminal Kid, I learned about his concept of multiplex consciousness. He believes that our identity is a mixtape, composed of different sounds from different cultures and samplings from multiple spaces. Now, I view environments I am exposed to as a soundscape composed of mixing sounds that are a part of my identity.

I have heard a variety of sounds from different environments throughout my life. Going to different schools, playing different sports, and investing in my hobbies are a few examples of the environments I have been exposed to. These environments have generated various sounds from the screaming of coaches to the silence of classrooms to the clapping sound of skateboard wheels rolling over brick. Reading R. Murray Schafer changed my view of my environment by introducing me to the concept of soundscape. A soundscape consists of sounds produced in locations or by objects. One of my hobbies is skateboarding, and I observed the daily spaces that I skate through for writing project three. Before I started on writing project three, I did not acknowledge any of my environments at an auditory level. I only thought of interacting with the physical aspects of my environment, paying attention to the physical characteristics of objects. However, I transitioned to address the sounds in my environment after understanding what a soundscape consists of. While working on project three, I believed that my soundscape consisted solely of the sounds that I heard. In writing project three, I stated, “Even though I encounter other people in my soundscape, their soundscape and my soundscape are different because of noise.” That statement is true, but I realize now that our soundscape is still comprised of what we consider noise. I also realized that what is music to my hears, is noise to someone else. Even though I enjoy the clapping sound that my skateboard makes on brick, someone else considers it to be disruptive.

My outlook on my environments has further transformed. Soundscape is now a concept that I take into consideration when acknowledging my environment, but I also believe that soundscapes possesses a part of my identity. When I first read Rhythm Science: Paul D Miller, aka DJ Spooky that Subliminal Kid, Paul Miller’s concept of multiplex consciousness confused me. In his book, Miller claims, “…the twenty-first-century self is so fully immersed in and defined by the data that surrounds it, we are entering an era of multiplex consciousness.” (Miller, 61) After applying his claim to my soundscape, I realize there are more traits in a soundscape than I previously believed. In writing project three, I stated, “The second recording is a segment of the daily trip from Alvarez Union to our dorm.” Besides the sounds I have heard riding to union on my skateboard, there are various sounds I hear while venturing through campus that I can connect back to a previous environment, like my hometown, and I realize that those sounds are a part of me. I know what certain sounds are based off previous experiences. Paul Miller would argue that the sounds from my environments have aided in creating my personal identity. Miller asserts, “Identity is about creating an environment where you can make the world act as your own reflection.” (Miller, 61) Personal identity is more than just race or ethnicity, our place of birth or familial ties, it involves the experiences from different cultures and environments we encounter. The sounds I experienced while working on writing project three, and the sounds I experience in general all interconnected in my conscious which contribute to my identity.

I previously thought that my soundscape only consisted of the sounds entering my environment. I stated in my essay, “Soundscapes interweave as you move throughout your environment.” This claim meant that your soundscapes are in a constant state of change as you move throughout your environment only confined to you. My view of soundscape was limited to the point that I thought it was a closed space as I move around. Now, I believe that soundscape is a sound version of a mix that is open to all sounds after reading Rhythm Science: Paul D Miller, aka DJ Spooky that Subliminal Kid. Miller addressed, “That’s what mixing is about: creating seamless interpolations between objects of thought to fabricate a zone of representation in which the interplay of the one and the many, the original and its double all come under question.” (Miller, 33) He is discussing the mix, and I interpreted this quote as when we encounter objects of thought, we affect them by creating new meaning. The mix pertains to how we recontextualize experiences which defines the zone of representation. The zone of representation is like your characterization because your identity is based upon the recontextualization of these objects. I established a new meaning for my earlier claim about soundscapes. Soundscapes interweave such that your soundscape mixes with another person’s soundscape. Even though soundscapes are depictions of our own interpretations, people will still manage to experience others’ soundscapes. Our soundscape experiences mix with others’ soundscapes to form our personal identity.

My current understanding of soundscape resulted from the understanding of mix. The mix alters the traits and functions of the soundscape. While working on writing project three, I thought that soundscape consisted of pure sounds which is the reason why in my recordings for the project I remained quiet. This prevents any mix from occurring; while there will still be meaning, it hinders the recontextualization of objects. Schafer seemed to restrict the experience of soundscape by ignoring objects of thought and allowing nature to have its own natural mix. However, Paul Miller has the opposite philosophy. He would rather you create an environment that defines you based on the reflection of your experiences. You can only know your true self by learning from experience, as you change so do the sounds and objects you encounter which is why Miller states, “Any sound can be you.”

April 12, 2019 by kebailey

My Soundscape

Abstract

I do not typically interact with my environment through an auditory level. The purpose of this project was to examine my daily soundscape by listening to the sounds of my environment. I recorded three videos of my friends and me skating to and from our daily places on campus. Two videos are about thirty seconds long while one is about fifteen seconds, but I was silent in all videos. I analyzed the sounds that I hear on my skating ventures. This project demonstrates how I have become marginalized in my environment due to my soundscape.

We fail to realize the world contains more than just what we can see. The world we live in is a grand soundscape, but we focus more on sights than sounds. A soundscape is a deeper illustration of our landscape. However, it is difficult to examine a soundscape when you do not know when to listen and what to exactly listen. It is easy to get caught up in personal affairs and school work as a college student, which causes us to not acknowledge our environment. We are so focused on other things that we do not notice the sounds around us. I have experienced that first hand while at Davidson because I have failed to acknowledge the sounds within my environment on a daily basis. For this project, I chose three areas outside that I venture to the most on campus in my spare time. Furthermore, I recorded my friends and myself skateboarding like on a normal trip to these areas. Skateboarding is a part of my life on campus, and I wanted to capture and analyze that soundscape since I normally do not exert attention to the sounds in my environment. My soundscape is unique because skateboarding is not prominent on Davidson’s campus which marginalizes my soundscape.

Soundscapes possess various aspects which makes it important to establish the definition of a soundscape. Places that people spend the majority of their time in are their daily soundscapes, but any environment can be a soundscape. On campus, I can view a classroom as a soundscape, the basketball court as a soundscape, and an outside environment as a soundscape. My friends and I enjoy skateboarding, so I tend to ride my skateboard everywhere when I finish my classes for the day. A soundscape includes any acoustic environment, though. According to Schafer, “A soundscape consists of events heard not the objects seen.” (Sterne, 99) So a soundscape is not just a visual setting nor a single setting. Soundscapes can interweave as you move throughout your environment. Schafer also asserts, “noise pollution results when man does not listen carefully.” We tend to choose and pay attention to the sounds that we only want to focus on which often causes noise pollution to be resisted by noise abatement. When you examine a soundscape, you should observe it in silence to focus on the auditory level instead of the visual. I recorded my friends and myself skateboarding in three areas on a daily basis. I was silent in my recordings in order to draw more attention to the auditory aspect of my environment.

The first recording displays my friend and me skating from the parking lot in front of the President’s house to our dorm. The video is only a segment of the venture because I stopped recording before we actually arrived at the dorm. We skate in the parking lot in front of the President’s house because it is the best surface to skate on that is closet to our dorm. In the video, we skate over two different surfaces. We started on the pavement in front of the President’s house then moved onto the brick and then back onto the pavement in the parking lot in front of our dorm. In the video, you can notice the difference between the sounds of the two surfaces. The friction between the pavement and rolling skateboard wheels are the cause of the sound. Skating in front of the President’s house you can hear the friction is a little rough but steady. However, there is a clapping sound when we skate over the brick which is a very loud, disrupting sound. After we skate back onto the pavement, there is a noticeable difference between that pavement and the pavement we started on. This pavement has a deeper tone than the previous meaning that is a lot rougher. Schafer mentions soundmarks as a feature of soundscapes. A soundmark is a sound that sticks out from the environment, calling attention to itself. The clapping sound the skateboard makes rolling over brick is a soundmark because that is an identifier of skateboarding. When other people hear the clapping over bricks as in the video, they associate that with people riding skateboards.

Video_1 Download

The second recording is a segment of the daily trip from Alvarez Union to our dorm. We tend to ride pass a lot of people who are walking on this trip because Union is where the majority of people spend their time whether it be for food or to study. There are two major sounds in this recording: the lawnmower and the skateboards. The lawnmower makes a “vroom” sound which is very loud at the beginning of the recording, but it drowns out as we as skate further away. However, the clapping sound that the skateboard makes rolling over the brick shows exactly how disruptive it is. The clapping sound still manages to be heard over the loud “vroom” of the lawnmower. Notice in this recording that none of the people who we pass talk to us. It is also important to notice how one person was wearing headphones. Even though I encounter other people in my soundscape, their soundscape and my soundscape are different because of noise. Schafer asserts, “noises are the sounds we have learned to ignore.” (Sterne, 96) The person wearing headphones is a prime example. He is wearing the headphones for a particular reason: to rid of the noise in his soundscape. The sounds he does not want in his soundscape is the “vroom” of the lawnmower and the clapping sound of the skateboard rolling over the brick. However, my soundscape constantly consists of the clapping sound and for it to be seen as noise demonstrates how my soundscape is marginalized.

Video Download

The third recording is my friends and me skating down a hill by the Baker Sports Complex. The complex is where we play basketball. It is far from our dorm, but we make the trip more enjoying and shorter by riding our skateboards to the complex. Skating near the complex is one of my more favorable locations because there is a smooth surface to ride on. The two main sounds in the recording are the wind blowing and the wheels rolling against the pavement. Both sounds are things I enjoy hearing in my soundscape. However, the sound of the wheels masks the sounds of the wind blowing, but you can hear the waves of wind brushing past when I point the camera down toward my board. The smooth surface is hard to find on campus because the majority of the pathways are composed of brick. Paying close attention to the sound of wheels rolling against the pavement makes me realize how much I appreciate skating on smooth surfaces which does not happen often.

Video Download

Skateboarding is an uncommon form of activity on Davidson’s campus. My skateboard marginalizes my soundscape as other people label me which creates another identity of myself in other peoples’ soundscapes. Different aspects of my recording display that perception. Schafer states, “From society we will learn how man behaves with sounds and how sounds affect and change his behavior.” (Sterne, 96) There was one encounter with a campus police officer where my friends and I were standing with around with our skateboards. The officer asked if we attended Davidson, and he asked if we were just riding because no tricks are allowed. This occurrence displays how the sounds of my skateboard affect the people in my environment. Some people view the sound of my skateboard as noise, and a common way they attempt to ignore the noise is wearing headphones. It also presents that Davidson campus is not as open to the sounds my skateboard produces. This project can answer one of Schafer’s questions: which sounds do we want to preserve, multiply, encourage? I possess a different soundscape than most of the other students on campus. In my soundscape, I enjoy the sound of the friction between the pavement and my skateboard wheels which is why I skate everywhere to increase those sounds. However, other students view the entire campus as their soundscape and may not want to hear similar sounds as me. People may want more or less sounds in their soundscapes based on their interests.

Bibliography

Schafer, R Murray. “The Soundscape.” The Sound Studies Reader, ed. Jonathan Sterne, Routledge, 2012, pp. 95–103.

March 26, 2019 by kebailey

African American English

Iggy Azalea sparked discussion in the music industry because of her emergence as a popstar and a rapper. Azalea’s vision was to become one of the top white artists in the rap industry. She dropped out of high school at age sixteen and moved from Australia to Miami. Controversy arises because Azalea is a white, Australian female rapping in black tones. At age eighteen, a producer named Mr. Lee helped hone her rap skills. Azalea rose to fame in 2014 with her big hit “Fancy,” but her career quickly became labeled as another bad white rapper. The article The Making and Unmaking of Iggy Azaleadisplayed the criticisms of her career. It mentions a quote from pop artist Halsey, “She had a complete disregard for black culture…I watched her career dissolve and it fascinated me.” She was the center of controversy about culture appropriation and authenticity in hip hop. Critics of Azalea becoming a white rapper emphasize how dialect is racialized. Today’s society links voice and dialect to specific communities and cultures. Voice is implemented through discussion, music, reports, and other aspects of communication. It is an imperative agent in society today because it intensifies culture discernment.

Voice and dialect are linked to specific communities, and African-American English is a prime example of this. African-American English (AAE), also known as blaccent or Ebonics, refers to the distinctive speech of the African-American community. Slang words such as ashy—the whitish appearance of black skin when dry—are common in AAE, and it is not restricted to particular regions. However, there is more to AAE than just slang words. Its pronunciation includes the shortening of words through the omission of the final constants in words and dropping the b, d, and g at the beginning of auxiliary verbs. For example, omitting the d would result in “Ion know” for “I don’t know.” Another example would be the pronunciation of ‘past’ shortened to ‘pas.’ John R. Rickford, Professor of Linguistics at Stanford University, declares, “These distinctive Ebonics pronunciations are all systematic, the results of regular rules and restrictions; they are not random ‘errors’–and this is equally true of Ebonics grammar.” (Rickford) It is also very common in AAE to fabricate sentences without present tense “is” or “are,” as in “John trippin’.” AAE is prominent among black comedians, singers, and especially rappers, in speech for dramatic or realistic effect. However, other people, black and white, view AAE as an indication of limited education due to the barrier to socioeconomic mobility.

Iggy Azalea has received criticism for her appropriation, but the discussion also includes her mastery of blaccent. The article How Iggy Azalea mastered her ‘blaccent’ discusses how Azalea’s songs embody a more sophisticated understanding of how black artists speak. The article mentions two linguists Maeve Eberhardt and Kara Freeman who listened to and analyzed her discography. In their paper for the Journal of Sociolinguistics, they argue “…that the rapper’s songs reveal remarkable fluency in the sounds of syntax and of what linguists call African-American English.” (Guo) However, the controversy over Azalea’s blaccent is due to her personal identity. She is a tall Caucasian female with blonde hair and an Australian accent. Many critics and artists find it offensive that she implements the blaccent because it is not hers. They see it as a mimicry of black speech. Rapper Jean Grae described her voice as a “verbal blackface.” (Guo) Even though Azalea still speaks with an Australian accent during interviews, she owns her blaccent as she believes, “I don’t think the voice makes me fake, it makes me an artist.” Her statement is acceptable because even though society links dialect to specific speech communities, all dialect is shared between communities and cultures which merges all dialects together. A prime example of merging dialects is how black comedians use a white tone during comedy shows. In Kat Williams “Kat Williams: The Pimp Chronicles Pt. 1”, he jokes about the need for white friends and imitates a white person’s tone of voice.

According to Guo, the “ai” sound in words like “time” and “rhyme” are abbreviated in AAE. (Guo) “Time” is pronounced as “tahhm” because only the first vowel is said. Azalea makes this pronunciations multiple times in “Fancy.”She spits, “Better get mymoney on time, if they not, decline. And swear Imeant that there so much that they give that linea rewind.” She also repeatedly implements a common AAE pronunciation of “that” by replacing “th” with “d” to say “dat.” She raps, “Still stunting, how you love dat? Got the whole world asking how I does dat. Hot girl, hands off, don’t touch dat. Look at that, I bet you wishing you could clutch dat.” Azalea’s latest release “Sally Walker”has reached sixty-two on Billboard Hot 100 Chart. However, her comeback single has drawn some comparisons to rapper Cardi B’s top hit “Money.”Cardi B is a prominent African-American rapper from New York City. Fans noticed how “Sally Walker” resembles the beat to Cardi’s song “Money” which lead to rumors about Azalea trying to steal her style. The producer of both artists J White declares that the rumors are not true. However, this comparison allows us to place both songs side by side and gain a larger insight on how fluent Azalea’s blaccent is compared to an artist with a prominent blaccent.

While there has been controversy about Azalea’s appropriation and her establishing her blaccent, the use of African American English has a bigger impact. The article Speaking Black Dialect in Courtrooms Can Have Striking Consequencespresents the issue of court reporters making errors while transcribing sentences that are spoken with a blaccent. That leads to the bigger issue of consequences of AAE. The reporters were not intentionally transcribing incorrectly, but it is a result as a lack of understanding of black dialect. This could lead to bigger consequences, as misinterpretations in courtroom transcripts could have negative results for defendants’ official court records. A larger implication is that the justice system is not affording a sense of fairness to people because the system is not responding to their language and there is no attempt to do so. People that also use AAE are condemned for doing so because they are seen as improper or uneducated. However, there is nothing incorrect or improper about the inheritance of AAE, but society has created negative stereotypes about how the way it is perceived. The article also emphasizes, “Decades of research has shown that the way some black people talk could play a role in their ability to secure things like employment or housing.” (Eligon) Black people who use AAE also struggle to find jobs and housing due to the negative stereotypes about black dialect.

Communication has become even more important over the past decades. Music is a big example of how voice is used in communication, and Iggy Azalea’s music career is a prime of example of culture discernment. However, AAE does not just pertain to African-Americans. All African-Americans do not speak African American English, and not every who speaks AAE is black. White people can adopt AAE if they grew up around black friends. Most people tend to switch between standard English and AAE anyway. The creation of the term AAE displays the fact that society links voice and dialect to specific cultures and communities.