Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Who am I? A question of identity

Who am I, is a question that can be said to be getting more difficult to answer in this day and age. Identities are shaped in part based on how a person wants to shape it. The case of Frida Kahlo provides an excellent example of how self identity can be constructed to a degree by how a person chooses. Although Frida was the daughter of a German immigrant and a person of Spanish descent she still largely identified herself as a Mexican. President Obama of the United States is another example as he was the son of an African immigrant and a White woman, he chooses to identify with the African-American racial group. With the advent of the Second Media Age the ability to shape identities as a person chooses to do so, has grown in ways that might have been unthinkable even 100 years ago. No longer does a person’s identity have to be ground solely on the basis of racial classification or ethnicity, but the manner in which a person chooses their identity has grown far beyond that.

The American Heritage Student Dictionary defines culture as “The arts, beliefs, customs, institutions, and all other products of human work and thought at a particular time.” As Krug said, self, culture, and technology not only reflect but create each other. The technological advances of the internet have led to massive changes in American culture. Terms like tweet and google which refer to internet functions have entered the vocabulary. People spend hours working on their internet profiles and searching for work on the internet. The internet is used now for banking, social networking, shopping, music, movies, school, researching, news, maps, and many more things that were formerly handled offline. The culture of this country has grown with the changes brought on by the internet, as the culture of the internet has grown to mirror the culture of America. These changes in culture and technology have as could be expected lead to a change in a how a person views their self and constructs it.

The modern self though is not purely shaped by one’s own desires. Particularly in this time outside forces and events beyond one’s control helps to shape a person’s identity. It can be argued that the modern self in the Western World is more constrained and manipulated than at any time in human history. In modern America, people are bombarded by advertising and images from advertisers who are trying to build brand loyalty from consumers of ever younger ages. The internet allows advertisers to directly tailor advertising messages to us based on the sites we have visited. In the year 2000 only ten media conglomerates controlled more than two-thirds of the annual worldwide revenue of the entire communications industry. (Steger, 2003, p.76) These media conglomerates play a vast role in what we watch and even how we think. As Krug said what we think of as choice is actually just wearing the clothes differently, as conformity in thought seems to grow more by the day. Not having the right thoughts or not being politically correct can be disastrous in many careers.

The quotes by Morgano and Barr given for this assignment are closely interrelated. The internet as a form of communication is more open than any form of mass communication available. The internet provides a platform for people to stay in touch with friends and family, but also gives them the opportunity to meet other people that it would otherwise be mostly impossible to connect with without the net. Consequently some people feel free when on the internet talking about their selves and speaking with others. They can construct their identity in a way that may be fact or fiction for all to see on the internet. But, as Morgano mentioned some employers have used internet sites to see how potential employees really are when those people let their guards down. The internet lets these employers see these people in a way how they generally never would be able to. And with people posting information about their selves, an employer can see if a person is truthful, lying, or hiding information that they might not want a potential employer to know. Social networking sites have thus become one of the best ways to do a background check on someone and find out partially who a person really is.

Identity as an issue is an issue that will continue to change in the years ahead. Technology has brought great changes to how we view and can view ourselves. The ways in manipulating identities and changing them will continue to shift as technology and culture changes.

Reference
Barker, Chris. 2008. Cultural Studies Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Steger, Manfred. 2003. Globalization: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press

Analyzing Orchestra Conductors

Of the 5 orchestras I chose, 4 of them are in the New York area and 1 of them is in Boston. They all shared the same characteristics of having White males as the conductor.

The Astoria Symphony Conductor- Silas Nathaniel Huff- White Male
Long Island Philharmonic Conductor- David Stewart Wiley- White Male
American Symphony Orchestra Conductor- Leon Botstein- White Male
Brooklyn Philharmonic Conductor- Michael Christie- White Male
Boston Civic Symphony Conductor- Max Hobart- White Male
In analyzing the data compiled in Part 1 from the entire class the results were out of 52 conductors 44 of them were White while 1 was Black, 4 were Hispanic, and 3 were Asian. 47 out of the 52 conductors were males, with only 5 conductors being females. The orchestras profiled were from throughout the country with there being no chance of a regional bias coming out through the numbers. The numbers showed that no matter from what part of the country an orchestra was it was likely that the conductor/musical director would be both white and male. In deciphering why such a small number of women and minorities make it to the positions of conductor and musical director there are many factors to consider from a lack of training programs to prepare women and minorities to a position leading some of these orchestras, to exposure to classical music itself, to a tradition that would prefer that the leaders of orchestra are White males. All of these might account for the lack of women and minorities among the numbers of orchestral conductors. Another more controversial idea might be the idea that perhaps the reason for the lack of women and minorities among conductors is a lack of ability in comparison with the white males who dominate the field. If not that perhaps a lack of ability exists for the women and minorities who are qualified to be orchestral conductors but the numbers are so small hence their lack of representation. The numbers show that for a non-White male to even make it far in the field of conducting takes extraordinary work.

The lack of women and minorities among the ranks of conductors in the United States is one that is proven both a casual glance and an in depth study of numbers. The lack of women conductors is also an issue in Britain where apart from Jane Glover in the Royal Academy of Music, there are no women in any of the higher positions in the orchestras of that country, while in Lisbon, Portugal half of the 6 conducting jobs that are available feature women in those roles. This shows that given the chance women can rise to the top of the conducting field given the proper opportunity in the biggest cities.

Minority conductors face added pressures that women do not face with the foremost of them being racism and lack of opportunity. According to black musician Aaron Dworkin classical music has yet to even being to confront the issue of racism. In an analysis of 200 symphony orchestras in the U.S. in 2000, 1.4% of all musicians were black and 1.9% was Latino which was actually a declining number from the early 1990’s. For minorities to even aspire to being the leaders of orchestras the actual number of minority musicians must go up. Another thing that would have to be addressed in creating higher numbers of minority conductors especially among blacks is to increase their exposure to an art medium that has traditionally not seen black participate in it.

The stereotypical view of orchestral conductors as an upper class white male is part of the reason for the lack of women and minorities among orchestral conductors. Classical music is a music that is strongly tied to tradition, and the traditional elements of classical music have never seen women and minorities go far. The music played is often times music composed by European males such as Mozart and others. In Italy Julia Jones becoming the first women to conduct Wagner was a major thing due to the perception of Wagner music perhaps being beyond the reach of a woman to conduct. The traditional view of women as not being strong enough to lead and command men is a giant problem for women hoping to rise up in the ranks. The upper-class traditions of classical music also work well to bar many minorities especially blacks from getting involved in classical music from the outset, since blacks have been traditionally at the bottom of the class scale in the United States. All the upper-class trappings that are associated with the music are beyond the reach of many blacks and unless there are school programs are some kind of endowment program being used for blacks, many of them are never exposed to classical music.

References
http://bostoncivicsymphony.org/
http://www.astoriamusic.org/
http://www.americansymphony.org/
http://www.brooklynphilharmonic.org/index.html
http://www.liphilharmonic.com/index.html
The Guardian. Accessed from http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/tomserviceblog/2010/jan/22/women-conductors-julia-jones
The San Diego Union Tribune. Accessed from http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20051016/news_1a16conduct.html
The Free Library. Accessed from http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Classical+music:+Black+and+Latino+musicians+hope+to+change+the+image+...-a0157950599
BBC. Accessed from http://www.bbc.co.uk/musictv/maestro/news/do-men-hog-the-podium/BBC. Accessed from http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/7612180.stm

Minority and Women conductors

The lack of women and minorities among the ranks of conductors in the United States is one that is proven both a casual glance and an in depth study of numbers. The lack of women conductors is also an issue in Britain where apart from Jane Glover in the Royal Academy of Music, there are no women in any of the higher positions in the orchestras of that country, while in Lisbon, Portugal half of the 6 conducting jobs that are available feature women in those roles. This shows that given the chance women can rise to the top of the conducting field given the proper opportunity in the biggest cities.

Minority conductors face added pressures that women do not face with the foremost of them being racism and lack of opportunity. According to black musician Aaron Dworkin classical music has yet to even being to confront the issue of racism. In an analysis of 200 symphony orchestras in the U.S. in 2000, 1.4% of all musicians were black and 1.9% were Latino which was actually a declining number from the early 1990’s. For minorities to even aspire to being the leaders of orchestras the actual number of minority musicians must go up. Another thing that would have to be addressed in creating higher numbers of minority conductors especially among blacks is to increase their exposure to an art medium that has traditionally not seen black participate in it.

The stereotypical view of orchestral conductors as an upper class white male is part of the reason for the lack of women and minorities among orchestral conductors. Classical music is a music that is strongly tied to tradition, and the traditional elements of classical music have never seen women and minorities go far. The music played is often times music composed by European males such as Mozart and others. In Italy Julia Jones becoming the first women to conduct Wagner was a major thing due to the perception of Wagner music perhaps being beyond the reach of a woman to conduct. The traditional view of women as not being strong enough to lead and command men is a giant problem for women hoping to rise up in the ranks. The upper-class traditions of classical music also work well to bar many minorities especially blacks from getting involved in classical music from the outset, since blacks have been traditionally at the bottom of the class scale in the United States. All the upper-class trappings that are associated with the music are beyond the reach of many blacks and unless there are school programs are some kind of endowment program being used for blacks, many of them are never exposed to classical music.

References
The Guardian. Accessed from http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/tomserviceblog/2010/jan/22/women-conductors-julia-jones
The San Diego Union Tribune. Accessed from http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20051016/news_1a16conduct.html
The Free Library. Accessed from http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Classical+music:+Black+and+Latino+musicians+hope+to+change+the+image+...-a0157950599
BBC. Accessed from http://www.bbc.co.uk/musictv/maestro/news/do-men-hog-the-podium/
BBC. Accessed from http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/7612180.stm