For this week, I read up on a short study (“Using Popular Music to Teach Sociology)\u00a0done where sociologists\/teachers used popular music to teach sociology to students. Although this study is older, I believe conducted in the early 1990s, I thought that it still had relevant points when it came to what people learn from songs and how they can look at music with a sociological imagination. Some of the responses that the researchers received, such as: “I like the music because it does help me relate to the subject matter;” “Entertaining, thought-provoking, it spells out concepts and makes them easier to understand;” and \u00a0“Selecting music that represents the frustration of the job helps one to remember what alienation is.” (Walczak & Reuter 1994:268). \u00a0Thus, sociology through music (lyrics) was easier to think about, visualize, and remember for people. Reading this study was extremely useful, and I’ve been trying to find a similar one with more modern examples (the songs they used, I believe, were from the 80s and early 90s). And it would’ve been nice to read about a study that was more in-depth and elaborated on the benefits of teaching sociology through music.<\/p>\n
The other reading I did, That’s the Joint! The Hip-Hop Studies Reader (2004)<\/em>\u00a0by Murray Forman and Mark Anthony Neal,\u00a0were a few various chapters and sections about the rise of hip-hop in the 90s and how it started to evolve when it grew in popularity. It talked about the three founding fathers of rap\/hip-hop (Kool DJ Herc, Afrika Bambaataa, and Grandmaster Flash) and each of the things they contributed to hip-hop as a foundation and art of expression. This book and the chapters I’ve read from it so far emphasized that hip-hop is a medium for storytelling, and that’s how it started and why it grew in popularity. It wasn’t until Grandmaster Flash’s “The Message” and “New York, New York” that paved the way for rap to become a form of social protest, musical creation, and cultural expression (Michael Dyson 2004:62). I also thought it was important and relevant about the market success of rap and hip-hop, first dividing it between hardcore<\/span>, defined as “social consciousness and\u00a0racial pride,” versus\u00a0pop<\/span>, defined as the “exploration of common territory between races and classes, usually devoid of social message” (Dyson 2005:64). This led to radio, some music companies, and audiences to prefer pop over hardcore rap because of its simplicity.<\/p>\n Moving from here, I’m planning to analyze song lyrics of significant songs like “The Message,” as well as look into other artists who have songs known for impactful social messages and providing sociological insight. I also will be going more into the evolution of hip-hop and rap and to understand what brought the genre to focus on social commentary on American society. \u00a0In the meantime, I’m also hoping to find a similar study as “Using Popular Music to Teach Sociology” to see how people receive sociology through more digestible mediums. Besides gathering songs for next week, I’m also hoping to analyze music videos and other visual aesthetics that allude to social messages artists discuss in their songs and conclude how that may impact audiences’ perception of systemic issues in society.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" For this week, I read up on a short study (“Using Popular Music to Teach Sociology)\u00a0done where sociologists\/teachers used popular music to teach sociology to students. Although this study is older, I believe conducted in the early 1990s, I thought that it still had relevant points when it came to what people learn from songs … Continue reading “Progress Notes: Week 09”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":15,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-23","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/sociology-3010-spring-2022-djuntura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/23","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/sociology-3010-spring-2022-djuntura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/sociology-3010-spring-2022-djuntura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/sociology-3010-spring-2022-djuntura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/sociology-3010-spring-2022-djuntura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/sociology-3010-spring-2022-djuntura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/23\/revisions"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/sociology-3010-spring-2022-djuntura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/15"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/sociology-3010-spring-2022-djuntura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}