andyzeport

[andyzeport]

Rationale

The issue I chose at the survey is Gun Violence because I noticed that in recent hiphop music; The content of Gun Violence had increased drastically. It is not to say restricting the artists’ artistic expressions, but those kind of promoting violence and gun violence will somehow affect groups of people. The current gap will be that the songs with positive content, or those that advocate peace were not being promoted widely enough, and only a few artists really making those kind of songs. 

This related to Black Popular Music because I aim to make a hiphop song that talk about the negative side of rapping gun violence in hiphop music and how we should treat each other equally and the value of lives. By the mean time, it should also talk about not to restrict the expression but to make it a proper way to contain certain things.

As a crew, there are different roles that are needed. Since it is a music, we’ll need the same procedure as most songs will have. The roles including, producer, singer, songwriter, sound engineer. We can do the singer-songwriter which the singer writes his/her only lyrics. Besides from the musical side, we also need people who are good at designing so that we can make a poster, including the cover of the song (maybe some web design as well but not necessary). Also, we need people who good at promoting the song, including the use of social media platforms, contacting the resources possible, etc. It is kind of similar to the final event that we preparing.

The aimed audience is broad for this one, including college students, hiphop music lovers, etc. Since this is a trending issue recently, I believe lots of people will be interested to give the song a try. Also, the genre of the song matches the trend as well. Historically, hiphop was created the latest. In the Black Popular Music timeline, we had Blues, Jazz, those kind of genres ahead of the birth of hiphop. In the beginning, hiphop was not popular, but as for now, it is one of the most popular genre in the music industry. 

As for hiphop groups, many artists are African-Americans. Just like other African-Americans, they had suffered from the inequality throughout history. Through years of learning, and exploring, I know more about this inequality in the society and why this issue is crucial. The topic is important because there were tragedies happening that relate to the gun violence and I think we should somehow try to prevent those things from happening.

For this one, I aim to reach probably around 10,000 people. Through medium like Spotify, Instagram, Youtube, Soundcloud, etc.

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Reflection

In this week's Garofalo's reading, we had a wonderful discussion, which is deep and make me think about the issues that the black people were being treated differently during the early stages of music industry.

The article talks about the early stages of ASCAP that the members of the organization were mostly white, and ASCAP could shape what the public will be listening to. And basically all the music industry is about money / capital-intensive industry. People don't usually treat black musician properly on the amount money they should receive. In the article, on Page 123, the Blues artist Jimmy Witherspoon did not get a penny of royalty, also the story that the music company executives feeling shocked when he heard early stages of Atlantic was paying black musician royalties.

Those stories reflect the position that the black artists had to face in the early stages of the music industry. Maybe now, all the artists are having royalties, but there are absolutely unfair treatments toward African American artists.

For this week's practium day, I found it really interesting to develop the whole picture about the music evolution. From the early spiritual to Jazz, Blues, Hiphop. We came up with the idea that we can add narrative, and the whole class's participation was fantastic and I'm really looking forward to do this one.

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I really like the discussion we had on Thursday. It made me realize that the sexuality, gender, play a huge role in the music industry, either from the past or present. So, I took some time thinking of the culture hero in my own culture, but it is hard to pick one. I think of Jackie Chan, Bruce Lee, who broke the barriers, build the representation of Chinese kungfu / action movies, etc. There are absolutely other culture heroes when we talking about music and gender in music. For instance, we had what we called the Pop Diva of China, Faye Wong, a phenomenal female artist. Many people considered her as an iconic figure of music and female power. https://open.spotify.com/artist/3df3XLKuqTQ6iOSmi0K3Wp?si=iMuM45uDQTur3frz-nWADQ

There's a quote on Page 9, talking about the improvisation for female musicians, they had to play quickly, aggressively regardless of the satisfaction of the music. I just felt it's frustrated that when you have to sacrifice the aesthetic side of the music, to compensate and overcome the stereotypical idea that "women play like girl". It kind of kidnapped the thoughts of those musician simply based on their gender, I believe that no matter what, the music side can embrace all ideas, either fast, slow, aggressively, smoothly, all those feelings can be created, and the way they require female to just play quickly is unacceptable for me.

Recently, there were lots of female power emerging in the hiphop music industry, which is nice thing to see. From those past years, the main music / hiphop industry had so many female rappers, like Cardi B, Doja Cat, Latto, Saweetie, Lizzo. It is always a great thing to see that the industry has this diversity, that many female powers are now being accepting by people. Also, from the last week's BET award, the new upcoming female rapper GloRilla won the "Breakthrough HipHop Artist Award". It will definitely motivate more people, especially female, to try and break into the scene.

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Ken Field

It came to my mind that what he said how he came into the field of Jazz music. He mentioned the artists that influence him such as John Coltrane and other groups, etc. And he is well aware that there is this sort of cultural appropriation for him, as a white man, to play Jazz, which is a black music. It reminds me of how I came into the field of Hiphop, many artists influenced me as well, like Eminem, Kanye West, etc. Because I write English lyrics as a yellow skin Chinese guy, I had thought about this cultural appropriation thing before too. I agree with what Ken Field said that we can incorporate our own cultural music into this form of music. Just like Wu-Tang Clan, a classic old school hiphop band, borrow the idea of Chinese Kungfu element into their name. As I continued to working on music, I tried to use different forms of traditional Chinese instruments (Pipa for instance) as well as words related, such as Fengshui.

I really like his idea when he mentioned the Cultural Construction that the four different artists should be in the four corner of the room instead of coming to the middle and form this homogenous feeling. For me, combining different elements of music into one is quite difficult, some iconic sound, or instrument dont always work well on each other. I tried in high school that to create this hiphop & Jazz fushion, with the help of my music teacher, it went pretty well and I like that outcome. From what Field said about this four-corner idea, I will pay attention in the future musical work on combing different styles. The key point is to showcast their individual characteristics.

Another point that I find interesting was that when Field talking about the cultural appropriation thing, he mentioned that many White musician would use the Black Blues Music, which developed in the black people's own enviroment, community, and the Whites just used that as a way of profiting. It related to how the music industry now, how white people were on the executive board and made decision. It also connects with the reading that during the period when sheet music is popular, many middle-upper class white people started to learn to play piano and it was a symbol of great taste.

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In the Ragtime article, one thing that stands out to me is the the poster of the Cakewalk. I think it has the build the foundation for nowadays album cover & posters.

So on page 147, this poster including the two main characters, together with the singer names, the title and the main composer. At the bottom there’s the publishing info. It reminds me of the modern day album cover. How artists themselves use their figure as the main cover and there’s those cool fonts for their names and there are logos of the publishing & recording company. Here I gave the example of Lil Baby's album cover. It contains the those components as well. The label logo, names and the title.

So I really feel like those sheet music examples kind of influence a lot of the nowadays covers. It involves a series of evolution, and by the same time, many music genres were created, Jazz, Blues. From what I know that most Dirty South HipHop Album Covers follow those same elements. And it was a vital factor in hiphop industry.

On Page 158, it points out a couple of names who involved in the performing of ragtime. Tom Turpin, as said in the article, was probably the best example of performer-composer. I assume we relate this type of person to singer-songwriter of today's industry. One thing I noticed that, in the article, points out the Harlem Rag could inspire young amateur player, able to show them how to put excitement into it. I find this teaching-style of music really appealing. Not like today that you can hardly get things learned out of the songs, but to learn through either work with the songwriter or attend classes, etc. Now I have this idea of how we can help the youth, the audience we aiming at, to build this teaching style of music.

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PRAISE POEM

From the city upon the Yangtze river

Stand tall on giant’s shoulder

Yellow skin under the sun

Like a lion out on prairie 

Like a meteor tearing the sky

In this world Discovering the uncertainty 

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Antebellum article thoughts

After reading this week's antebellum article, I have some thoughts on the couple lines. The first one is "contrasting industrious black workers with the indolent Whites above them...was a common themes in Black songs", this quote reflects the reality that during the slavery, the whites enforced the black to work and they could profit from the working of the black. Also, throughout the non-physical rebellion, black people continued to use music as a tool to express their unfairness and spirituals, etc. Nowadays, in the music industry, lots of executives are still white people. For most hiphop artists, if the board assume the artists is not promising anymore, they would give up on the artists immediately by stop providing them with resources and restraining them from publishing music. I assume this is kind of distorted way of treating black people unfairly. Many people stood out and seek for actions to stop those things from happening. Many other artists started not to share their publishing right with publishing company. Like what Kanye West said a couple days ago, those people with power got to decide the fate of the artists and this type of hierarchy not fair from my perspective.

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The videos we went through during class, such as griot, the wedding dance, etc, make me realize how music & dance are a crucial component of Africans lives. It is spiritual, but also inherited the old traditions from the ancestors. The power of dance is able to connect the entire community also impresses me. While people were dancing, either as performance or for fun, the audience were participating as well, such as clapping.

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"Survival sometimes means not responding to oppressive behavior directly. To do so could result in physical harm to oneself, even death". This quote reminded me of the reading that when Africans were forced to become slaves and they were deprived of their right to use their instrument but they still used their body as a way of music, communication. The perseverance spirit within African people is noble. They did not resist through physical contact, because it might lead to death as the quote said, this way of resistance is not easy and still, they endured and survived

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In the video, Dr Kofi Charu mentioned a lot of his concepts within it. For instance, the one that attracts me the most is what he called the fifth element of hiphop which is knowledge of self. He said the use of dynamic mindfulness which enable us to reflect on ourself, to truly understand ourself. This idea does not only apply to black music or black culture, it is sort of a universal idea that every ethnic group should somehow try to practice, to understand themselves completely. Also, he mentioned that the nowadays hiphop music has changed its initial purpose, it has been capitalized and sell it back to the people of this culture. I do understand the way Dr Kofi mentioned this problem and this is one of the most controversial topic in hiphop these years which is today we do not have artists like back in the time, such as Tupac, Eazy-E, etc, those guys reflect their social issues through the lyrics, and for now most people make hiphop music that will commercially being valued as successful music but forget to use it as a piece to share their voices (there are artists that are still focusing on doing so, such as Kendrick Lamar, but not everyone)

The educational experience of Dr Kofi and the practical work of helping the community, teaching the youth is what I consider a vital part of understanding self. He mentioned the quote from KRS-One which emphasize the idea of history and origin, so in order to let that idea flows into next generation and build a right concept of what is hiphop, the combined literacy through the production of hiphop, in the meantime reflect social justice. By doing so, like Dr Kofi said, can get some of them off the streets, but besides that, I think the idea of origin is built in their mind. They will understand how to use the culture as a tool to reflect on social issues and let the voices be heard. 

Intertexuality is a key component of the production of hiphop music. It’s basically bringing the old pieces of either music, literature into the new pieces. In hiphop music, sampling is one of the most important measure to say whether this beat is a hit or not. Throughout the hiphop history, there was a period of time of what’s called the Golden Age, when people were able to sample basically whatever they want and it ended since there are laws on copyrights published. As for now, artists like Kanye West, still using their excellent sampling skills to inherit the idea of sampling, also as a way to tracing back to the African American origins.

[andyzeport]

ME!

Hi world, my name is Hengyi (Andy) Zhu. I'm from Nantong City, Jiangsu Province, China. If you are unfamiliar with the city it's fine, it's located next to Shanghai and at the northern part of the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River and here is one of the pics of my hometown.

I'm currently a third-year at Northeastern University and my major is Music Industry & Communication Studies. Outside of school, I'm the manager of ATM Hanson & BombZ, we together founded the label TheEastwood. In the meantime, I am a singer-songwriter, we used to perform in different clubs, and I held my first own show in 2019.

I had my first internship in BMG China in the summer of 2021, and it made me realize what I really want to do in the music industry. I aim to find another co-op in either Universal Music Group or Warner Music Group and my main focus will be A&R.