“People are capable of knowing what is best for themselves, to the best of their abilities.”

Professor O’Malley took the time to explain how this statement ties into our lesson for the day, but our discussions always seem to start with a fun call-back to our previous lesson. After learning a bit more about beats, particularly how cord progression is very similar in many modern songs, we turned to the book that we were supposed to have read by this class. Speaking personally, I think Miller had an interesting presentation of how he saw the folk music and how he compares it to country music, though I will say that I feel he wasn’t necessarily impartial. Maybe biased is the word I’m looking for, as it is something that we discussed in class.

Well, we discussed the Folk song aspect in class at least. When Professor O’Malley inquired what we consider Folk music to be, I didn’t really have an answer. I honestly considered folk music to be similar to country music, almost to the point of them being identical, but Professor O’Malley offered an explanation.

To explain, we discussed the topic of Romanticism. It doesn’t really apply to love, more like something that is not rational. Humans are not rational creatures, as we sometimes do things that are against our best interest, yet we romanticize aspects of the world around us even though it’s not logical.

Professor O’Malley tied this in to nationalism. Even though there is no rational explanation, we tend to think that our country has a collective “soul”, and we cling to aspects of our culture to represent this “soul”. Folk music is born from American’s desire to have something that speaks to their nationalist views of this country, something that is ironic, considering how most country or folk songs nowadays are attached to white people, yet a famous folk musician that Professor O’Malley talked to us about was a man named Huddie Ledbetter, a black man that was seen as a folk person, and even forced to perform barefoot and in a hillbilly outfit despite him wanting to perform in a more dignified manner.

While all of this is nice to learn, I think I am more looking forward to what we can learn about the United States from music, and how the development of music ties into the development of American culture over the years.