I think its funny that Ernest mentions ranking human attractiveness . (2). While humans do do it, part of the reason behind it, is that there are scientific studies as to why certain people find others attractive. With straight males, there is a scientific ration for hips to waist, and that subconsciously, men know what this perfect ratio is. There also have been studies with symmetry and what men find attractive. Case in point, on a recent episode of the TV show Criminal Minds, the unknown subject (UNSUB) was attracted to murder those women who had dystopia which means that their eye sockets are not symmetrical. Now granted it caused the UNSUB to murder but in another person it may be found to be attractive.
Hakanen writes "Radio stations use them to develop playlists and fine tune their appeal" (4). However, for users like me, I don't listen to the radio unless it's NPR. I do listen to Pandora but those "stations" are based on what the user likes so if I don't want to hear Katy Perry I don't have to. Ever. So I think it a couple of years, a lot of charts that Billboard has will be obsolete because people won't be listening to the radio as much. That being said, it is a little sad for me because every Sunday morning when I was growing up, we would listen to Casey Casem and we got out of church just in time to hear the number one song in the land.
Hakanen goes on to talk about their research models including looking at the the history of "charts" and then what they reflect of the market. One thing to note that has just happened dealing with charts since September of 2010 is that the singles and albums of the tv show Glee have broken all kinds of records... BUT and it's a huge one (:)) is that 98% of the songs on that show ARE NOT original! They're covers. So even though the charts say that Glee is the number one selling band/artist, whatever it's not really true because all their stuff is covers. So it's important to know about the songs on those charts.
Next, a look at the article Human- Centred Musical Studies: Towards a charter of Musical human rights by Gino Stefani
This article looks at whether there should be specific code for human rights in terms of music. . I get where they are coming from but... I don't think they realize the definition of Genocide which is:
"...violent crimes committed against groups with the intent to destroy the existence of the group. Human rights, as laid out in the U.S. Bill of Rights or the 1948 United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, concern the rights of individuals" (United States Holocaust Museum encyclopedia).The USHMM also spells out Genocide as it relates to the UN definition. Unfortunately, I don't think Stefani understands that music falls under human rights as well as part of the underlying definition of genocide is the destruction of cultural property, which music falls under. To destroy a group, part of what you have to do is tear down their culture against themselves as well as the surrounding populations to get them to see it as a bad thing. An example of this, is that during the Holocaust, the Nazis persecuted Jewish musicians and banned all music that was written, sung, or produced by Jews.
Next an article titled Analysing popular music: theory, method, and practice by Philip Tagg.
This article looks at why popular music should be analyzed and what the point of that analysis is. the first page of the article looks at a pop music conference and the stereotypes that were protrayed in other media (1). While I understand that there is significant studies on popular music, I do think it is a little strange to have a conference on them. The article also mentions physical stereotypes that they thought would be at the conference.
This article also looks at how popular culture has affected different areas such as the communication process as well as looking how the listener interprets the song and how the artist interpret the song which was interesting because they can and more the likely probably are two (or three or four) different things.
For articles, we finally look at Music, History, Democracy by Paul Oliver. This short article looks at short papers presented about how songs are influence by current political events as well as how they influence the events themselves. There was a short obiturarie on Ewan MacColl who wrote one of my favorite songs "The First Time Ever I saw your Face" (though not the Roberta Flack version... I hate that version). Here's Leona Lewis singing it:
And a male version
Review of Amnesty International's website
Good site but what do the Beatles have to do with Amnesty International? I'm very confused why the Music for Human rights page is all about John Lennon... Frankly I think the website is poorly designed as it tells NOTHING about music for human rights... just about Lennon.
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