Some thoughts on our discussion of Gov. Blanco's speech

First, let me say that I'm generally very pleased with the level of in-class discussion. Almost everyone has contributed in both sections, and we've gotten into some significant and interesting issues. If we keep that up, we'll be in great shape for the rest of the semester. (I am, however, less impressed with the blogging. While there have been a few people that have done some nice writing, in general there's been very little beyond the initial assignment.)

So, all that said, I keep thinking about our discussions Thursday of Gov. Blanco's speech. It was, again, a good discussion with broad participation, but the discussion in both sections ended up being (to my ears) much more about her presentation style and general choice of topic than about the actual content of her speech. We can debate all day whether she should have said more or less or whatever about Katrina, her life, blah, blah, but the fact is that she gave that speech and said those things, and our discussion (and the few blog posts on the subject) didn't really address her statements with much depth.

There were quite a few things that I thought might warrant discussion, most of which never came up. At the very beginning, for example, she said "Life is simply not fair". Is everyone comfortable/happy with that sort of blanket assertion? If so, do we just accept it, or do we work to change it? You were told to "Put yourself in a position to make a difference... No one is going to do this for you.". Do you agree with this exhortation? Why is this important (or not)? What are you doing (or not) to put yourself in such a position, and why?

Some other lines I found noteworthy:

• "Don't let stereotypes shut you out of any career."
• "You don't have to know everything, but you have to be willing to learn."
• "Ignore the false prophets - be true to yourself."
• "Stereotypes can be broken if we all work to defy expectations."
• "Focus on the value of diversity."

Lastly, what did she mean by "Be open to committed living"? What does that imply for you here at UMM? For you in this class?

Thoughts?

It would be good to post about Blanco on your blog

I would encourage everyone to post some sort of (thoughtful) response on their blog to Blanco's presentation last night.

Note that I didn't say "I require everyone...". You are adults, and ultimately you have to make your own decisions about how to get the most of your life here at UMM. I can make suggestions, but I can't (and won't and shouldn't) follow you around making sure you do everything I suggest. I think you ought to attend events, take notes, reflect and discuss things with the people around you, and post to your blog as part of a larger discussion. What you do, however, is ultimately up to you :-).

Reminder: Blanco chats today

A reminder that Governor Blanco is available to talk with FYS students (you!) today from 10-noon in the Science Atrium and 2-4pm in the LaFave house. For those who don't know where the LaFave house is (which is probably most everybody), it's the building marked 65 on the bottom left of this map. To get there go out the main entrance (4th Street), hang a left on College Avenue (the first street), and go about one block down. It's the house with all the U of M colored flags out front. (It looks just like a normal house, because that's what it was until a few years ago. Don't get confused - you are in the right place.)

I hope to see you there!

Initial blog assignment

Think of this as being one of those blogging memes, where one blogger "tags" another blogger with a set of questions (sometimes profound, sometimes ridiculous), and the recipient of the tag is then expected to write a post on their own blog addressing the given questions. Thus everyone in the class (including me) is now "tagged" and should write up the answers on their own blog (which we'll set up in class today). Feel free to answer these either in a single, longer post, or a set of smaller posts. (Using smaller posts may be better strategy since you can then break the task up into more managable pieces that you can sneak in between other bits.)

So, the questions:

• Why did you sign up for a roots music FYS section? (It's totally OK if the answer is something like "I didn't really want to, but everything else was full.".)
  
• If you could take 5 pieces of music with you to a desert isle, what would they be? (The definition of "piece of music" here is always tricky. Think "song", but I'll let you get away with a more extended piece like a symphony. A 4 CD compilation of 70's punk just isn't going to count as a single piece of music, though, no matter how cool it might be.)
  
• What's a piece of music you associate with a parent, grandparent, or someone you know well that's at least a generation older than you. (I'm particularly interested in people like grandparents that are two or more generations older than you, but I realize that not everyone is going to have an association for that.)
• If we all decided to replace the national anthem with a new song, and everyone agreed that you got to choose, what would you recommend?
• What kinds of music related performance stuff (if any) do you do? I interpret this pretty broadly so it can be playing one or more instruments, singing, dance, DJing (dance or radio), etc. (It's totally OK if the answer is "None".)
  
• Given the readings and what (little) you know about Governor Blanco, if you had a chance to ask her one question, what would it be?

This is due at the beginning of class on Tuesday, 5 Sep 2006. Given the many distractions of the long weekend, I'd recommend doing it right away.

Opportunities to meet with Governor Blanco

As part of her visit to UMM next week, Governor Blanco has agreed to arrange several times where she will be available to meet with (FYS) students, answer questions, and discuss issues. None of these times are while our class actually meets, so I can't require you to attend any of them, but I think this is a pretty excellent and rare opportunity, and as intelligent, enthusiastic (new) members of a community of ideas, I would hope you would take advantage it.

The schedule as I understand it gives you the following opportunities (and you may attend any or all):

• A punch/cookies reception at 8:30pm in the Student Center just after her convocation talk on Tuesday.
• From 10am-noon on Wednesday in the Science Atrium (the big open space one floor up from the bookstore).
• From 2-4pm, also on Wednesday. The location for this has not yet been finalized.
  

If you can come to one of these, you'll probably get more out of it if you have a question or two worked out in advance. You may never get to ask it, but if there aren't many people there everyone (including you and the Governor) will appreciate a question or two to get things going. (Long awkward silences aren't lots of fun for anyone.)

I've added all these to the calendar at the bottom left, but remember that the darn times are still Pacific, so you need to add two hours :-( !

The lost year: The failure to rebuild

Another UMM faculty pointed out a recent article in the New Yorker entitled "The lost year: The failure to rebuild" (available on-line here). The piece is about the complex history and politics in New Orleans, and the many problems and issues in rebuilding (or not) since hurricane Katrina, and highly topical given next week's visit by Governor Blanco. The complex racial and ethnic history of the city differ quite a lot from the history of the cajuns we've been reading, but both are indicative of the incredibly rich and varied cultural rivers that are brought together in Louisiana. The article also makes painfully clear how even terrible disasters like Katrina aren't free from politics and economics, issues of skin color and class.

And even in a piece about hurricanes, both natural and political, music plays its role:

I had glimpsed that stubborn affection in October, when the first secondline since Katrina wound its way through the debris-strewn streets of Treme. The secondline is the quintessential traffic-disrupting New Orleans art form; in this case, the Black Men of Labor, a social aid and pleasure club, marched in matching yellow print shirts, with matching hat bands and parasols, while the Hot 8 Brass Band followed behind them, blasting music into the mostly vacant neighborhood.

One thing I find odd about the article (esp. given the broad range of issues it covers) is that it says nothing about the larger questions of whether we should expect more massive storms like Katrina as a result of climate change. 'Cause if the answer is "Yes" (and I've certainly not seen a convincing argument that it's "No") then that has profound implications for these issues of rebuilding, and makes the failure of FEMA and others to objectively and scientifically identify the highest risk areas particularly troublesome. (Note that I'm not suggesting that all such high risk areas be abandoned without discussion. But certainly that data is vital if good long-term plans are going to come out of those discussions, and people should understand the implications of increased storm activity for a re-built New Orleans.)

The other thing I find troubling, and this is a complex issue we're probably going to wrestle with all semester, is the assumed relationship between hardship (in this case poverty) and cultural innovation. Much (probably most) of the music we'll listen to this semester was made by people were by no means wealthy, and in many cases extremely poor. A remarkable thing, then, is this wonderfully rich and valuable music that they brought out of that experience for all of us to share. Is hardship necessary for the creation of certain kinds of great art and innovation? Do we collectively need places like the Lower Ninth Ward to create new cultural ideas? If so, are those new ideas worth that price? Who makes those judgements? The children growing up there, or reasonably comfortable folks at a distance (like us)? How do we even begin to talk about such things in a meaningful way?

'Nuff. Feel free to discuss further in the comments section of this post.

Cajun readings/listenings for the first week

The bulk of the course will focus on blues and country, since these are arguably the forms of roots music that have had the broadest influence on music around the world. We will, however, explore other types of roots music (e.g., gospel), and our keynote FYS speaker (Governor Blanco of Louisiana) gives us a nice excuse to start with cajun and zydeco, two wonderful local Louisiana musics that reflect the complex and amazing history of the cajun and creole peoples of the region. (Make sure you mark 7pm, Tuesday, 5 Sept, for that talk, as attendance is required as part of the course. We'll talk more about that when classes start.)

The main purpose of this post is to share links to some useful resources. We'll have to get up and running really fast (the Governor's talk is the second week of the semester and we only meet twice a week), so hop to it!

History of the cajuns and overview of cajun/creole music:

• http://www.lsue.edu/acadgate/music/history.htm
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cajun

A large and wonderful collection of (mostly) very early cajun recordings:

• http://npmusic.org/artists.html

There's a ton of good stuff here, but you need to be pretty open to these scratchy old recordings. Remember that this stuff was recorded on what we would consider pretty primitive equipment, and most of these early musicians were used to performing without amplification, so they often just blow out the poor microphones. Still, there's some wonderful ballads and dance music here. Try to imagine these people sitting on a porch, or playing a party in someone's living room, then try to combine the readings and the music to create an image of who these people were.

Some names or songs to particularly check out:

• "Evangeline" by Iry LeJeune
• Amede Ardoin
• Dennis McGee
• The Falcon family
• Amedee Breaux
• Blind Uncle Gaspard

When we meet tomorrow I'll show you how you'll be able to come in and listen to lots of music, and we'll start with some (more) modern descendants of these musicians like Clifton Chenier. For the most part these aren't available for free, though. One pleasant exception is Buckwheat Zydeco (who played in Clifton Chenier's band for quite a while) who has several complete songs available on his website:

• http://www.buckwheatzydeco.com/bwzydecomusic/bwzydecomusic.html

I especially recommend "Hot tamale baby". It's worth going back and forth between Buckwheat's more contemporary songs and the early stuff and think about how things have changed and (perhaps harder, but more important) how these things are connected (what's remained much the same).

Some (limited) biographical info on Gov. Blanco

Our convocation speaker this year is Kathleen Babineaux Blanco, Governor of Louisiana. She was actually scheduled to come this time last year, but Hurricane Katrina rolled in and she (quite understandably) felt she needed to remain in Louisiana. Her convocation is 7pm, Tuesday, 5 September, in Edson Auditorium. Attendance is required for all FYS students.

Her life history is very interesting and quite unusual for someone at that level in any field. She was a stay-at-home mom for many years, and then a high school teacher. To quote the Governor's official bio

Governor Blanco began her career as a public servant in 1984, when she became the first woman ever elected to represent the people of Lafayette in the state Legislature. Five years later she was elected to the Public Service Commission, where she became the first woman to serve as a Commissioner and, later, as the first woman to chair the Commission (1993-94).

She then served two terms as Lieutenant Governor and was elected Governor in 2004.

The official bio doesn't say much beyond what I've said here, but it's also worth noting (especially in the context of our course topic) her cajun heritage, giving us that nice segue into some cajun music to start the course with.

For an alternative bio, check out her entry in Wikipedia. Note the announcement at the top that "The neutrality of this article is disputed." Going to the "talk page" for the entry reveals an interesting (if sometimes tedious and mudslinging) discussion that raises some important points about what it means to be neutral in this sort of writing. While that discussion isn't always at the highest level, it does provide a nice example of a careful, critical reading of a text, and spending some time reading both the entry and the discussion would be worthwhile.