Long Essay-Paris Holmes

             For many years I listened to hip-hop, mostly all of my life. We consider it 'our music' or what I say, black music. Years ago I've registered for a music class at the community college I'd been attending, only three minutes away from my apartment in Jersey City New Jersey, catching the Bergen Avenue bus. I went in thinking I would be learning how to play an instrument like the bass drum or the piano. I was in to football a lot but I always wanted to learn how to play drums and the piano. Even at football games, I would dance to beat of the drums behind my coach's back. What I did not expect was that I would be learning the history of music and the way it was both seen and used by people psychological. As it turned out, my teacher assigned me to listen to this weird CD every night of class. Like all black kids from Jersey City, we were only used to hip-hop. Spanish music was even considered hip-hop because it had the beat over this familiar reggae type of sound. Whatever music we could dance to was considered hip-hop. Dance meaning breaking or pop locking. 

            This sound on this CD was familiar but I just was not use to it.  I couldn’t believe these songs had names for them. The first music we listened to was chamber music. Chamber music is basically classical music that’s performed in a small room or hall. I learned that because the way halls are built, performers could not get the exact sound outside of a chamber. “Like singing in the shower” my teacher said, “We all sound good in the shower but terrible outside of it”. The next type of music was baroque music. I forget what exactly this type of music is but I know you can its related to the renaissance era in 1600’s. 

            I literally wanted to bring a little pillow to class since other people were bored to sleep and he didn’t say a word to them. I guess college was different from High School. Finally the professor tells us his name that we should call him professor instead of teacher or Mister. Professor Rush became the first teacher I’d ever called professor. Professor was finished boring us to death with these old sounds and started to play some modern music. Then he touched on something that caught my attention. He played this tune and asked the class what did it remind us of. Immediately, I raised my hand. “I see you have your hand up, are you familiar with this tune, does it remind you of something?” he said, I said, “Yes, it reminds me of one of those diamond commercials during the holidays”. Then he showed the video with the audio and I was right. This class began to get interesting, it seem like everyone had left but they were sleep, texting, or chatting on Facebook. Professor Rush explained to me, that music is used everywhere, during the holidays, during weddings, during funerals, in movies. I thought hard for a minute to myself. He’s actually right. What really had me going was when he told us a story of how slaves used to sing songs to kill time.

            I wanted to know the history behind every music genre. I became very curious to find out. I found out that the reason why blues genre sounds the way it sounds is because around the time when it was first discovered or played, it was by blacks that were struggling. That’s why the blues makes people feel happy. This was a way for people to be happy when times were very hard. The blues type of music reminds me of two old friends, singing while sitting on the porch.

            Professor Rush showed us how music was used in film, especially silent film that had no dialogue. Music helped film tell a story without dialogue. The timing of a pitch or the whether the melody is major or minor determines the mood of the music. “You wont hear happy music in a film where someone important is being killed”, he said.

            Tuesday night, I’m listened to that CD my teacher had given me. My mother was surprised; my sister thought I was weird. I thought I was weird when I first heard the music but when I learned about the history and had gotten new insight, I found it very cool.

            Finally, he gets to rap, R&B and pop music, which made the class somewhat interested. But I was more interested in how the name rap, R&B and pop came about. Rap stood for rhythm and poetry, R&B stood for rhythm and blues and pop stood for popular music.

            Today in my music playlist my album consist of many different music genres no one would not expect me to listen to. I’m very weird when it comes to the music I listen to nowadays.

            The minute I get pull over for speeding by the cops, if they’re white I play a song called “Somewhere In America” by The Outfield. It works all the time, the minute they hear this song playing in my car they say, “You, listen to The Outfield”. They are always surprised that I’m playing one of their greatest songs.