Thoughts on Who Knows What

I can’t stop hearing Hawaii in all the country music we listen to now! It’s kind of stressing me out in the most amazing way.

After our discussion about the steel guitars’ origin and how that is perpetuated in country music, my first thought was something along the lines of: “What? No way. Maybe it’s from Hawaii, but we must just be hearing it because we were primed.” And then I proceeded to hear it more. Now I can’t stop. It made me consider what that meant from a socio-cultural lense. Elvis Presley, known as the king of rock and roll is also well known for his use of steel guitar. I’ve always found that he is associated with Hawaii and wondered why. He wasn’t from there and nothing spectacular happened to him while he was there (that I know of, I’m not his biggest fan though so there isn’t likely something I’m missing). It appears I may have finally gotten my answer. This country music Hawaii contrast was only emphasize to me more with the example Professor O’Malley showed us of the quick country song he whipped together. The song very clearly read to me as country until he threw in the steel guitar, even then it still read as country, but it also emphasized the Hawaiian. It became a two for one song.

The GarageBand example brought my mind elsewhere too. Is GarageBand, in its entirety with what it does good of bad? On one hand it’s a great way to express creativity that wasn’t possible before. Some nobody with zero skills can open up the program and compose a song— even sell it given that Apple doesn’t copyright the sound bites. Is that really all god though? What does it say when we no longer need years or training and experience to become an important musician? Even more then that, what does it mean for the real people who recorded and preformed those clips? They get nothing. I don’t see how that’s fair. We learned of a sister site that contained clips of other exclusive paid sound clips meant for GarageBand. On it was a man who was on his death bed. In his life, he was and important figure in the music scene. To pay for his hospital bills, he agreed to selling his content. It’s terrifying. Not only is he selling a piece of his soul, but he’s also jeopardizing his future hiring opportunities. What’s going to happen after his hospital say? It’s not like he can just die, he had to go to the hospital and therefore he has to pay his bills. What now? I feel so bad. It makes me hate the people who would buy this kind of content. The world is all one big giant mass of people and it’s not always a good one.