12 minute read
LIFE
PAGE 15
THURSDAY, APRIL 21, 2022 LIFE
Advertisement
OLD GOLD & BLACK
Adam Coil, coilat21@wfu.edu Josie Scratchard, scraja20@wfu.edu Jack Harlow uses his position for others
The Louisville rapper uplifts Black rappers in his fame and fortune
AMEYA BELLAMKONDA Contributing Writer
Jack Harlow's "First Class" wasn't just the song we wanted but the song we needed, and it dropped Friday, April 8. As we’re just coming out of a global pandemic, everyone from the girls to the gays to the theys is gonna be spending their entire hot girl summer blasting Harlow’s newest release. We needed a song to inspire the girlboss in all of us — and Harlow came through.
Harlow, known as the man who sni ed a Victoria's Secret thong that was thrown at him during a performance, is an ideal man that people around the world unanimously love. is is his second release of 2022, coming after his single “Nail Tech” — another certi ed banger. is song is inspired in part by Fergie’s 2007 song, “Glamorous”, where Fergie sings “G-L-A-M-O-RO-U-S, yeah G-L-A-M-O-R-O-U-S”. e similarities can be seen in Harlow’s chorus “I been a (G), throw up the (L), sex in the (A.M.), uh-huh (O-R-O-US, yeah).”
Harlow, 23, has won two Grammys for Best Melodic Rap Performance with Lil Nas X and Album of the Year as featured artist and songwriter. Harlow has also won two Billboard Music Awards for fan-voted Top Collaboration and Top Rap Song. Beyond just producing great music, Harlow is a stand-out for being a successful white rapper/R&B singer in a predominantly-Black industry.
Way back in 2017, Nicki Minaj made the comment, “It’s a great time to be a white rapper in America”, and she wasn’t wrong. While Harlow is immensely talented, a stream of white rappers followed the trajectory of Eminem, Machine Gun Kelly and Post Malone, all of whom have surpassed certain Black artists that may be better at rapping but fade in this industry.
No doubt, it’s hard to be in the spotlight as a white rapper as there are tons of judgments, criticisms and comparisons thrown around, but that doesn’t really matter when the spotlight is where the money gets made.
However, Harlow has been using the spotlight to highlight Black women and Black artists in general. He collaborated with Lil Nas X — an openly-gay, Black rapper — and on all his albums and in his music videos, he features women of color. While there is an argument to be made that it seems as though he’s sexualizing these women, it can easily be counterargued that this is due to the nature of rap more than Harlow’s desire to fetishize and sexualize women of color. ere has always been a fear that white people would one day take over the rap/hip-hop/R&B genre, but Harlow has always known his place. To put it simply: when talking about rapping and the in uence that the greats had on him, he talks about how he started rapping as a kid and was in uenced by some of the most famous Black rappers. Even further, Harlow has made Black Lives Matter posts and — during a freestyle rap — took time to address an incident of police brutality in Louisville, Kentucky, his hometown.
If you are looking for a rm stance on how to feel about Harlow, I am not sure I could fully give you one. But if he were here, I’m sure he’d say: “Why do y'all sleep on me? I need reasons. Uh, I got plaques in the mail, peak season.” So maybe let’s see if he keeps making people go crazy and producing absolute killer songs.
Photo courtesy of Flickr
Jack Harlow performs during Osheaga music festival in 2018.
MELINA TRAIFOROS Staff Writer
Dresses, balls and longing looks all create the intoxicating atmosphere of a regency drama. Netflix’s “Bridgerton” brings all three to our screens, following the romantic pursuits of a viscount’s eight children in upper-class English society. The second season of "Bridgerton" has captivated fans with another whirlwind love story.
Along with its success, a wave of critics has returned pointing out the show’s historical inaccuracies. Period pieces about the English regency notoriously lack diversity because their featured social circles historically included only white people. Unless they appear as servants, characters of color are glaringly absent.
“Bridgerton” subverts this norm by practicing seemingly color-blind casting. Many significant characters like Queen Charlotte, Lady Danbury — and even the main character Daphne’s love interest — are portrayed by people of color. According to writers, this alternate reality without racism is born of King George’s love for Queen Charlotte — he integrated society, so they could wed. Her character is inspired by the royal family’s reallife descendent who historians speculate had African ancestry.
The show most recently paired the family’s eldest sibling with Kate Sharma, who, along with her sister Edwina, travels from Bombay for England’s eligible bachelors.
Edwina actress Charithra Chandran told “Today” about the importance of dark-skinned women being the season’s most coveted debutantes.
Beyond subverting colorist norms, South Asian culture is seamlessly integrated into the plot. The sisters affectionately call each other “Bon” and “Didi”, which mean “sister” and “elder sister” in Bengali and Hindi and are signs of respect between siblings. Kate’s first on-screen words are a Hindi exclamation, Baap Re. Additionally, many bilingual fans applaud the portrayal of accent-switching, a common phenomenon where nonnative speakers of a language hide their accents when talking to native speakers.
Other scenes include the Sharmas oiling their hair — a popular practice among Desi women — and hosting a traditional pre-wedding Haldi ceremony. They sip Masala Chai instead of English Breakfast, and their wrists sparkle with gold bangles.
Should these details have been left out for the sake of historical authenticity? I think not, for more reasons than the interest that they add for the average viewer. Woman after woman has shared heartfelt reactions to finally seeing themselves celebrated on-screen instead of simply being exotic or undesirable.
Non-white women and girls deserve to see non-white characters in sweeping gowns waltzing to violin covers of their cultural music. They deserve to see the people who resemble them shine.
People of color existed in Regency England. They must have their trials recounted and stories told, but not every narrative needs to discuss oppression. There is value in creating a fictional world in which they are treated as they should have been all along.
A new method of teaching has been making huge strides but not without backlash
JOSIE SCRATCHARD Life Editor
The next big thing on the horizon of musical learning is "gullibology". Artists and music theorists have described it simply as revolutionary for its innovation in the music world, but what makes it so new and transformative? Gullibology is a method of studying music that requires no listening or playing at all — it is simply silent.
Since its recent founding at the Newport Conservatory of Music, it has become a universal sensation that institutions of higher education everywhere have been scrambling to implement into their curriculums.
The college’s academic coordinator and co-creator of gullibology, Dr. Ann Onymous, PhD., describes its origin.
“Gullibology was inspired by a combination of music theory, John Cage’s brilliant composition “4’33” and — believe it or not — the current rap industry. Yep, that’s right. Rap music has shown classical musicians and music theorists that rules are made to be broken, which has inspired us to eliminate sound in musical learning.”
Along with gullibology comes the hope that music will be learned in a more efficient and tactical way. Learning music without sound forces students to really understand the relationship between the notes and the mathematical side of music theory. As a result, music has become a more intensive discipline.
The Newport Conservatory of Music’s Department of Gullibology requires four years of rigorous study that forbids students from playing instruments or hearing them. Students must learn from music theory textbooks and watch videos of performances that have been silenced to gain a comprehensive understanding and deep critical view of music. It has been predicted that those who graduate from this program will be able to simply pick up any instrument and be able to play it with no prior training. Not only that, but they will be able to write beautiful compositions for any size ensemble.
“Students are writing whole symphonies without having heard a note of them. It’s fantastic,” Onymous said.
While this new schooling method has produced exceptional strides in music, it has also sparked massive outrage in certain circles. Political personalities, parents of music students and some classical music experts all have expressed their dislike. Their concern stems from the inability to understand how one can learn to play and write music without actually hearing it.
The Newport Conservatory of Music’s very own clarinet student Veruca Salt has
Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
Students cannot play in orchestras when studying gullibology.
shared her distaste for the college’s radical choice.
“I came to Newport Conservatory of Music to become a world-renowned clarinet player — and now I’m not even allowed to play my clarinet under gullibology,” Salt said.
Onymous’ esteemed colleague and cocreator of gullibology Sery Verious said that this has been a common complaint about those who are not well-versed in music.
“What people do not seem to understand is that music is an art after it is a discipline," Verious said. "One cannot learn art without first being disciplined."
It seems clear that gullibology will be a hot-button topic in the music field over the next several years at the very least. But it also seems that this may be the point. Pushing the boundaries of any field that has been well-established is going to be risky and controversial, but so is any decision that is impactful and meaningful. Gullibology is just the beginning of a tremendous effort to reinvigorate music and its teachings.
Contact Josie Scratchard at scraja20@wfu.edu
Sharing unique holiday traditions
Each family has its own process for celebrating holidays
ABBY KOMISKE Staff Writer
My family usually has a lot of drama on holidays because there are so many of us. Easter is no different.
Over the years, we have added more people to our numbers on these special occasions. My usual holiday includes me, my parents, my sister, my twin brothers, my younger brother and my mom’s parents. If we are at my house, then two dogs and cats are roaming around as well — along with the occasional stray farm animal.
My sister has basically been with her current husband for as long as I can remember because of the twelve-year age difference, so we can usually expect him to. My brothers — who are seven years older than me — have also wanted to bring someone to one holiday or another, which provides entertainment in and of itself. My younger brother is pretty chill about these family events, so we team up on holidays — so long as he isn’t sleeping through the family ordeal.
My family also leaves our doors open for anyone else who may want to come, so my siblings and I have had a running rotation of close friends who stop by sometimes, too. Suffice it to say, it’s a lot considering my parents are always hosting.
I’ll be honest, I’m a sucker for tradition when it comes to holidays. We love to all go out — especially my mom. You can expect multiple boxes of decorations for any and every holiday — she doesn’t leave any out.
Being with my family matters most to me of course, but our odd traditions get me extra excited for when we gather. For example, on Halloween we always have tacos and cake, we open two Christmas gifts on Christmas Eve and then have a sleepover in my older brothers’ room, we make sushi and chocolate-covered strawberries on Valentine’s Day, we have a lobster boil on the Fourth of July and so on.
For some reason Easter doesn’t really have a set tradition for us — maybe because with so many older siblings sometimes we travel to a college town or somewhere closer to them that is fun for a short weekend. We usually get up to some interesting activities, though. Last year we played an adult version of an Easter egg hunt with go-karts and high-stakes prizes hidden around our yard because we didn’t have any kids in the family at the time. A few years before that, we drove to Edisto Beach, SC and had a week full of badminton tournaments and bike rides to this hole-in-the-wall pizza place.
The best memory I have was when we went to visit my sister studying abroad in Florence. We stayed on the Amalfi Coast for a few days before traveling to her on Easter, and we took her best friend with us. We have family pictures with him in the center of the shots and her nowhere to be found — which is still a point of contention for her whenever she walks in our dining room — though we think it’s the funniest thing ever.
The only true staples of Easter — no matter where we are for the holiday — are the great food, the terrible chore of doing the dishes that my siblings and I fought over for far too long and the Easter baskets. Whoever comes to our Easter celebration gets one of these famous baskets, which I think is a pretty great thing. My mom and dad pull out all the stops, giving out this great Baltimore candy called Rheb’s, Fisher’s Popcorn (a Delaware/Maryland specialty), Old Bay hot sauce (that’s usually for whoever is out of state at the time, we aren’t giving out Old Bay like dollar bills) and then very particular gifts for each person.
Contact Abby Komiske at komiak21@wfu.edu
THE HOT LIST
TOP 10 THINGS TO SPEND YOUR REMAINING FOOD DOLLARS ON
1 . 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.
An Old Gold
A parking spot
Nyquil from the POD
Cookie Dough
Girl Scout cookies
A B-School degree
A Cameo from Natty O.
Yakarma
Condoms from the POD that you can get for free from Student Health
