Essays on Music

The classic 1952 musical, Singin in the Rain enlightens the viewer as to the many issues faced in the 1920’s as Hollywood transitioned from silent movies to talkies. Following the sensation caused by the first talking picture, The Jazz Singer, the fictional Monumental Pictures decides...

“Blind Tom” is not his name. Declared an “idiot” and promoted as “a gorgon with angels’ wings” in freak shows, “Blind Tom” was a character created to market the persona of black inferiority. Blind and cognitively disabled he was exhibited in public by his owner...

In Macklemore’s song, “Same Love,” he uses specific examples about equality towards the LGBT community to advocate homosexuality. He does this to change the way that todays’ society looks at homosexuality and same sex marriage. In this essay I argue that Macklemore is supporting same...

The development narrative in the documentary, Second Nature (1996), can be seen as story with a beginning, middle and end as defined by Roe (1994). Narratives frame the dynamics of a system and then discuss how they evolve to produce a set of outcomes (Leach,...

In the history of music, there have been great artists who have marked a before and after. Artists who have been spokespersons of a generation leaving an unattainable legacy. But between them, they emphasize two artists who revolutionized the form of singing, writing; and performing....

The documentary, “13th” by Ava Duvernay presented an incredible documentary in which she went in-depth displaying the prison house scheme in the United States and how it played a big part in racial inequality. Duvernay uses various sociological theoretical perspectives, particularly structural functionalism. The communities...

On Monday, September 24, I attended the Mobile Symphonic Pops 2018 Fall Concert in the Mary G. Montgomery auditorium. They played eleven pieces with an intermission in the middle. The music played had all different sorts of tonalities, tempos, melodies, and themes. Throughout the entire...