For this assignment I chose the image of two immigrants from Turkey playing their music together.1 I chose this image because of the importance that music has in society. During the 1930’s there are new forms of music that are being showcased around the country and without international music influences certain genres may not have been able to rise. Documenting people in the 1930’s in America represents the importance of collaboration even if it is music. Playing music together and expanding on other culture’s music to create new forms of sound is a small but necessary step in the creation of a united culture through playing music. I asked the question here, how does musical influence represent the values of society?
During the 1930’s the Great Depression took its toll on American life and what better way to pass time than to play music? Sharing music with one another represents a community’s hobbies that perhaps only exist to pass time during a gray period of history. In an article published by the Los Angeles times, the author mentions that the Great Depression provided times of despair, fear, and an overall lack of morale. 2 Music gave the people of the time an opportunity to ease their minds and to not think of the despair that they are enduring together as a whole nation. In section VI of the American Yawp there is a discussion of “dislocated populations.”3 Dislocated populations also had the same need for prosperity as the Americans of the time. Regardless of why an immigrant chose to come to the United States, each individual citizens suffered through the tumultuous times. The power of music allows for people, both local and dislocated, to join together in collaboration of new music.
Exploring the different types of exhibits allow for users to understand resources (photos, recordings, etc.) within their own contexts. Glitching images provide the user with the opportunity to create a new form of analysis, depending on how the glitch is finalized. Although glitching is a user-created item, it can be a useful process to shed light on issues that may not be welcomed to discuss in the open. The photo from the Berkeley Folk Music Revival shows the audience who to focus on through the glitching process that puts the African-American man in the middle of the photograph rather than the two white musicians.4 My attempt at glitching could argue that the various colors within the picture represent the different sound of the immigrant’s music that influences society’s musical tastes and feelings. 5
- http://jessicadoeshistory.com/cnd/admin/items/show/174
- “How Song, Dance and Movies Bailed Us out of the Depression.” Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles Times, April 1, 2009. https://www.latimes.com/la-oe-dickstein1-2009apr01-story.html.
- Locke, Joseph L., and Ben Wright. The American Yawp: a Massively Collaborative Open U.S. History Textbook. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2019.
- Kramer, and Michael J. “Glitching History: Using Image Deformance to Rethink Agency and Authenticity in the 1960s American Folk Music Revival.” Current Research in Digital History, January 1, 1970. http://crdh.rrchnm.org/essays/v01-08-glitching-history/.
- http://jessicadoeshistory.com/cnd/exhibits/show/billy-pleasants—mary-and-har/mary-and-hartop-goshtigian-pla
