Exploring Music and Culture: A Synthesis of Three Sources

The Role of Music in Dependent Conditions

1. The music and/or the appreciation of the music in the article on Tom Zè, Ramsey’s vignettes on teaching and Lil’ Wayne, as well as Lomax’s video seem to depend on a certain condition or set of conditions. Using these three sources as support, show how the above statement is so.

2. How do the three sources deal directly with notions of distinct culture? In other words, how do the subjects form a certain identity? How does the music and perhaps the cultural identity that the music embodies enrich the lives of the participants in the culture(s) as well as those who encounter it outside of the time and place from which it originated? 

3. Tom Ze claims, “purists are boring.” Is anything pure? If the answer is “no,” and it probably is, how has Ze, as well as the other participants in the musical culture found in Ramsey’s article and Lomax’s film, “taken plagiarism into [their] home[s],” figuratively speaking. Explain.

Above are three topic choices that ask you to synthesize aspects of the three sources discussed and written about in class (David Ramsey’s “I Will Forever Remain Faithful,” Jeff Stark’s “The Politics of Plagiarism,” and Alan Lomax’s documentary film, The Land Where the Blues Began). Address your claim in a 4-5 page, double-spaced paper.