{"id":881,"date":"2015-05-01T14:54:48","date_gmt":"2015-05-01T21:54:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.evergreen.edu\/neurya\/?p=68"},"modified":"2015-05-01T14:54:48","modified_gmt":"2015-05-01T21:54:48","slug":"week-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/musicalcities\/week-5\/","title":{"rendered":"Week 5"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As I approach the end of my time in Los Angeles, I reflect on just how much I have witnessed and learned over the course of three weeks. While studying the city prior to arriving was helpful, there was nothing like driving for 16 hours and arriving in an entirely new scenery. One element that has really thrown me off is the weather. It has been so sunny and warm practically every day since I&#8217;ve been here that I have begun to feel like time isn&#8217;t moving at all. After a week it began to feel like every day was the exact same day, and that time wasn&#8217;t really moving at all. Along with this, the nights here never get completely dark, which really stretches time out further for me, making the days feel endless. But as the final days are approaching, the reality of time passing as quickly as it has began to kick in.<\/p>\n<p>On Wednesday, I saw Black Slate at The Echoplex.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"584\" height=\"438\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/2eh0Va3sD5A?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Black Slate is a 1980&#8217;s dub\/reggae band from London that regrouped within the last few years and has been touring the United States. While there sound is very easy listening and relaxed, their messages were piercing and politically charged throughout the set. They spoke of police brutality and the adverse effect that drug laws have on people of color. In between songs, he spoke of how drug laws targeted them as a whole religiously as well; being Rastafarians, they view marijuana as an essential medicine for freeing the body and mind, and spoke of their experiences with police brutality in their own lives. While they approached very heavy topics and focused the night on oppression, they constantly displayed positivity, laughing and thanking the crowd constantly. Repeatedly they talked about how much they loved playing in the United States, and how Los Angeles was one of their favorite stops. The crowd was extremely receptive, and was definitely the most active crowd I have seen in Los Angeles thus far. It was also the most diverse crowd as well; having gone to shows with a majority white crowd, this was a complete mix. Because the show was free before 10 PM, this allowed for a very socio-economically diverse crowd as well. Unlike many of the other shows where I felt like the crowd was more cohesive, the subject matter and accessibility of the show allowed for it to really reflect the diversity of Los Angeles in a way that I have not seen in shows prior.<\/p>\n<p>As I mentioned in my last blog post, an interesting thing that I learned from the book <span style=\"text-decoration: underline\">Musical Metropolis<\/span> was how the city of Los Angeles was built with the idea of satellite cities, in order to give local governments more power and to reduce corruption in the city. This, however, was definitely not the case. In the book that I&#8217;ve been focusing on this week, <span style=\"text-decoration: underline\">Sins of the City: The Real Los Angeles Noir<\/span> by Jim Heimann, depicts the opposite picture from what the city projected to the world. This book displays a city historically known for murder, crime rings and corrupt police. In fact, the first time that Los Angeles made national news headlines was when race-fueled massacre of Chinese immigrants occurred in the Calle de los Negros, located on what is now Los Angeles Street and Union Station. While a forgotten piece of history, it is considered to be the largest incident of mass lynching in American history. This was an area known to be the seediest part of town, which at the time was described by Morrow Mayo in his 1933 book <span style=\"text-decoration: underline\">Los Angeles<\/span>\u00a0as, &#8220;a dreadful thoroughfare, forty feet wide, running one whole block, filled entirely with saloons, gambling houses, dance halls, and cribs&#8230; was a madhouse, filled with a mass of drunken, crazy Indians, of all ages, fighting, dancing, killing each other off with knives and clubs, falling paralyzed drunk in the street. Every weekend three or four were murdered&#8221; (Heimann, 5). The book then goes into the history of corruption within the city. Prohibition played a huge role, as gangs and bootleggers paid off the police to create speakeasy and casinos. This harboring of criminals made the city a hotbed of crime, where east coast mobsters found a safe haven to continue their dealings. Police arrested people for &#8216;appearing&#8217; gay, as well as targeting minorities. In the 50&#8217;s during the Red Scare, the police began to question artists who were &#8216;suspicious&#8217; of communism. Musicians, poets, painters, and hollywood stars all became under fire.<\/p>\n<p>Today, there is still a history of crime and racial oppression that is evident in Los Angeles. I talked to a woman on Ventura Blvd, who discussed with me how corrupt she has seen the LAPD act and treat people of color within the city. She told me that she would never call the police if she was in danger, and that she was raised to think that even in the most dire situations it is best to handle things privately, because the police will escalate the situation. In a city still reeling from the Rodney King riots of 1992, this makes nothing but sense.<\/p>\n<p>After seeing Black Slate, I felt like I got to see a very different perspective of Los Angeles than I had seen at previous shows. Hardship is a universal struggle, and the theme that rang through the set was not just specific to their experiences in London. I found it very powerful to listen to them openly speak against systems of oppression, engaging the crowd and fostering a good time. While this is not an issue that will go away any time soon, music is crucial to uniting communities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As I approach the end of my time in Los Angeles, I reflect on just how much I have witnessed and learned over the course of three weeks. While studying the city prior to arriving was helpful, there was nothing &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.evergreen.edu\/neurya\/week-5\/\">Continue reading <span>&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1266,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[],"tags":[99],"geo":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/musicalcities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/881"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/musicalcities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/musicalcities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/musicalcities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1266"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/musicalcities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=881"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/musicalcities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/881\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/musicalcities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=881"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/musicalcities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=881"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/musicalcities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=881"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}