Walter Hughes pretty much shows how disco was used as a way for those of the LGBTQ community to show pride in who they are and fight against the stereotypes. However, they made were attempts to get disco pretty much mainstream to where they will show how anyone can participate in disco, but in this attempt, they were still trying to put down those of the LGBTQ and minorities. They couldn’t stop those parts of the community from living their true selves and loving who they want without the opinion of outside factors. Disco is not, in fact, dead I personally feel it just goes under a new name, club music. Both are just a bunch of songs mixed together in matching the beat, and there’s no telling when it’s going to end.
Similar to the backlash disco faced, it made me think of Hip hop and R&B. I’m not sure where these stereotypes came from, but anyone associated with it was labeled as being a “thug”; however, the music genre was based mainly on expressing hardship individuals faced specifically minorities in their community and home life. Now Hip hop and R&B are more normalized, and many admit to getting inspiration from the genre of music and those who represented it.

With the advancement of technology making our lives more convenient, music also is changed with it. It gives us a way to get even closes to music. When you think of ways people used to listen to music back then, the first thought might be a jukebox where people share the music and listen to the same thing; however, my first experience with music was a big stereo in my living room and a TV. The Tv was pretty much used in the mornings when music videos will play on the channels, and the stereo was mainly on for parties and whenever there was no other way to access music. The point I realized that music was advancing along with technology wasn’t until I learned to use a computer and was able to go on youtube and listen to anything I wanted to and started to get portable when the iPhone 4 came out.
Now in the modern-day, our iPhone allows us to do way more than just listen to music. Now people don’t really need fancy equipment to edit or alter songs they can do it off a simple app called GarageBand from the iPhone in addition now recently there settings to alter the way music sound through your headphones or speakers where you can turn a feature on in order to get more of a better hearing quality out of the music you listen to so you can notice more details in the songs.

After reading Living with Music by Ralph Ellison and A Bolt from the Blue by Oliver Sack, I determined that music can actually have a life-changing effect on you. Starting with Living in Music started with music being spoken about negatively and referred to as simply being nothing more than just noise that distracted him from his work. In the essay, later, he discusses his own experience with music about learning to play the horn and the embarrassment associated with it and swearing off using the horn. Showing Ellison’s experience with music was associated with fear/trauma, causing him to stay away from music. The real turning point is when he begins to have this battle with his upstairs neighbor to cancel out her bad singing by bringing out an old radio of his. Eventually, it becomes frequent, and he starts developing a love for music again after hearing Kathleen Ferrier causing him to buy a whole new stereo just for music. He praises the singer for her courage, that she still kept up with her music even though her singing was terrible. He even states that he begins to use music less as a weapon to cancel her out and show more appreciation as a form of art. Looking at A Bolt from the Blue, music could be used as a symbol of being reborn where Tony found himself in a near-death experience and pretty started devoting his whole life to music. You can say he discusses how he would play before work and then play right after work, and even then, with the divorce from his wife continued to play and eventually attempting to make a career out of it. In a way, I feel like Tony’s obsession with music was also a way to show appreciation for having a second chance at life, causing him to spend so much time on it.