On Sunday, November 24, 2013, our group visited BuzzMill, a 24 hour coffee shop, bar, and venue all in one, and it set our scene; local musical artists perform regularly on Buzzmill’s little stage. Collectively, our group chose this venue because it was free, not too far away from where each of us lived, and of course because it was a bar. Located off the east side in Austin, the venue has a fenced-in courtyard with a barbeque food trailer, a small stage, and various seating arrangements. What was most unique about the venue was the essence of a wholesome country setting. The small stage was depicted as if you were standing in a cabin home, made of long logwood with a few pictures nailed to the walls and dim lighting from a single lamp. Seating surrounding the stage consisted of long tables and benched seating to create a close atmosphere. Let’s not forget the large bear statue in the coffee shop! Based on our observations, we argue that BuzzMill creates a laid-back and communal type of musical experience that the folk genre encapsulates. [if anyone disagrees with this, I can take it out. I’m also not sure if this is a good thesis statement cuz its kinda like the one in the prompt] We chose the outside part of Buzzmill, a 24 hour coffee shop/bar/venue. The outside part is where musical artists perform. There’s also a BBQ food truck out there. We chose this scene because the show was free, and it isn’t too far from where any of us live. It is also a coffee shop and bar, which are both awesome. Based on our observations, we argue that BuzzMill creates a laid-back and communal type of musical experience that the folk genre encapsulates. We went to Buzz Mill, a 24 hour coffee shop/bar/venue on East Riverside, on Sunday November 2... ... middle of paper ... ...the background. However, the outside area situated the music central to the patio, where it was the main focus of the event. It is important to note that neither of these dual functions of space was without relation to the music. The music was equally present outside in its absence, constituting a background ambience that constituted an entirely different mood from the witnessing of a live performance that occurred outside. Outside concertgoers would frequently return inside to purchase a drink or food, where they would be exposed to the ambient feel momentarily, but then would return outside to hear the full force of the performers. This navigation of space creates a complex feeling as an audience member, for the experience was not a homogenous event, but rather a heterogeneous aural soundscapes that varied with the spatial vantagepoint from which it was consumed.
Ten minutes after lining up, I went inside the nightclub. From the door, I could hear the song and the beat of the bass so loud that my heart could feel it. Inside the nightclub, I saw people were dancing everywhere, on dancing floor, on their own seats, everywhere. They would dance and take a big gulp of their beer. Even the bartenders were dancing too, following the rhythm of the loud funky music. The rainbow rays of light moved through the club to make the mood even more exciting and funky.
Music is magical: it soothes you when you are upset and cheers you up when you are down. To me, it is a communication with souls. I listen to different genres of music. When appreciating each form of music, with its unique rhythm and melody, I expect to differentiate each other by the feelings and emotions that it brings to me. However, I would definitely never call myself “a fan of jazz” until I witnessed Cécile McLorin Salvant’s performance last Friday at Mondavi Center. Through the interpretations and illustrations from Cécile’s performance, I realized that the cultural significance and individual identity are the building blocks of jazz music that create its unique musical features and support its development.
Subotnik, Rose Rosengard. Developing Variations: Style and Ideology in Western Music. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991.
This essay is an ethnographic study of Whole Foods Market which is located in Kensington, London. Whole Foods Market is a niche supermarket that sells high quality organic and natural products at high prices. In this essay, I will provide a brief orientation of ethics with regards to the concepts of Corporate Social Responsibility - macroethics and Business Ethics - microethics and the theoretical frameworks of consequentialism, deontology and virtue ethics. I will be using deontology framework in ethics devised by Immanuel Kant to assess if the marketing strategy and the products sold at Whole Foods Market support their principle of ‘organic and natural’.
Our entire lives have been shaped by the events happening around us. Along with us many factors in our day to day lives have evolved too, including musical genre. One such genre is rock. Rock is a genre for the youth, by the youth, it has evolved to stay with the times and stand up for what’s right. In this essay I will prove why rock is a good example to show how genre has been defined, maintained, constructed and negotiated through the past 60-70 years since the very first Proto Rock song came out.
Although folk music played a big role in most of these artists’ performances, folk links back to the blues, and is similar...
Containers of silence called music rooms resonate with the aesthetics and affects of the body of a gallery space; white walls, floorboards to create optimum acoustics, and an ethereal sense of time and space. When presented in a gallery space, sound art’s well-known expansiveness and leakiness can be highly articulated. Steven Connor delves into the mixing and creating of sound through computerisation, as well as the habits of sound; it’s immersion, pathos and objectivity. 1. PARA:
Reflexivity is a qualitative method of research that takes an ethnography one step further, displaying the personal thoughts and reflections of the anthropologist on his informants. Ethnographies generally take an outside or foreign perspective of a culture, like reading a text, and reflexivity introduces a new component of inside description. Here, the anthropologist may describe personal interactions and experiences with natives and use this inside information to make additional conclusions about the people being studied. The ethnographer may also reflect on his ethnic connections with his informants, or his acceptance into the society, explaining that it provides valuable, inside knowledge of the culture and ultimately leads to a greater understanding of the native people as a whole.
When I was a kid my parents always took me to Nathdwara to take the blessings of Lord Krishna every now and then because my parents are so religious. So by going there several times I am also attached to that place. Actually Nathdwara is situated in Rajasthan state and I live in the state called Gujarat and in the city called as Ahmedabad. It takes six hours drive from my city to Nathdwara and this is the only nearest place where I could get mental peace. This is very important place for me and my family because it is a tradition of our family that whoever goes there gives free food to the hungry and poor people. We do so because we think that if we do good work in our life we will be allowed by god to go to the heaven. [The two states on the left are Gujarat and Rajasthan. One in light blue color is Gujarat with the arrows and on the top of it with cream color is Rajasthan. I live in the middle of the state and Nathdwara is at the border of the Rajasthan]
Personal experience and reflexivity should be used within anthropology as a tool to reflect on the culture that is being studied and not a refocusing of attention on the self. Works such as Dorinne Kondo’s “Dissolution and Reconstitution of Self,” use the idea of reflexivity as a mirror in which to view the culture being studied in a different manner. This use of reflexivity allows for the focus to stay on the culture being studied. A move away from this is the new branch of humanistic anthropology represented in this essay by Renato Rosaldo’s “Grief and a Headhunter’s Rage” and Ruth Behar’s “Anthropology that Breaks Your Heart” allows anthropologists to use reflexivity as a way to explore universal human feelings. For me, this is not the study of anthropology as much as self-reflexive psychology. The focus shifts from culture to self. The anthropologists completely understands the feelings of the people he/she is studying. I think that it is rather ambitious to state that emotion is univeral, and I do not think that it is the job of anthropologists to do so. The reflexive voice is a necessary aspect of ethnographic writing, but the anthropologist must be careful not to shift focus from concentrating on culture to concentrating on herself.
Kristine Forney, and Joseph Machlis. The Enjoyment of Music: Eleventh Edition. New York: W.W. Norton, 2011.
In itself, music has intrinsic value. From Ludwig Van Beethoven to Miles Davis, instrumental music can stand on its own legs, and have meaning that transcends grammatical meaning. However, the implementation of words that are either spoken or sung creates a new genre, and a different aesthetic. In a sense, this is literature juxtaposed over rhythm and melody. This has the effect of giving a more concrete meaning to the music, and more emotion to the words or lyrics. It is a matter of taste, and a subject of intense debate to try and say one style of music does this the best. Blues music, one of America’s greatest exports, is a contender for this title, and is also interesting in a linguistic sense.
James P. Spradley (1979) described the insider approach to understanding culture as "a quiet revolution" among the social sciences (p. iii). Cultural anthropologists, however, have long emphasized the importance of the ethnographic method, an approach to understanding a different culture through participation, observation, the use of key informants, and interviews. Cultural anthropologists have employed the ethnographic method in an attempt to surmount several formidable cultural questions: How can one understand another's culture? How can culture be qualitatively and quantitatively assessed? What aspects of a culture make it unique and which connect it to other cultures? If ethnographies can provide answers to these difficult questions, then Spradley has correctly identified this method as revolutionary.
Forney, Kristine, and Joseph Machlis. The Enjoyment of Music. 11th ed. New York: W.W. Norton, 2011. Print.
Then audience members who were perfect strangers who were screaming loudest would turn to each other with knowing glances and smile because they were sharing the same excitement and connecting with one another over their love of this man’s music. There was no pushing or shoving to get closer to the stage – it wasn’t that kind of crowd. Instead, there was mutual respect for one another’s space within the confines of the too-small venue. Nobody wanted to be the person who ruined it for someone else. It was this respect that made the audience members’ connections with one another that much stronger – we were all here to listen to this wonderful man’s music and see his performance – and, of course, we were here to enjoy it.