ethnography

My taste in music is completely different from most of my friends simply because I’m more interested in R&B styled music.  One of my favorite albums right now is “4” by Beyoncé.  I decided to invite a friend from high school over to listen to the Cd with me.  Her name is Candice Mallet-Torry.   She is really into rap which is totally different from R&B.  I explained to her that I would record her reaction to the music and what are her emotions towards the album.  She understood what I said and we began. 

·         She was initially was lying down in my bed on twitter through her cell phone.

·         1+1 was the first song to play and she began to sing along.  Towards the second verse she gets really into the song and throws her hands up and waves them. 

·         During the special of the song, she gets up and gets on the computer to get on twitter.

·         She then checks weather for spring break.

·         The next song title “I Care” comes on. 

·         She question what song it is and I tell her the song title.

·         She switches topics and begins talking about the weather during spring break.

·         She discusses how the weather is going to be great.

·         She begins talking to my roommate and ask why she isn’t following her on twitter. 

·         They both follow each other on twitter and she begins singing along to the chorus of the song.

·         She then goes to the bed to check her phone.

·         The next song titled “I Miss You” comes on.

·         She again questions the title of the song and shows a look of disgust on her face.

·         She yells at me how she doesn’t like the song, it makes her feel sad.

·         She sits down at the desk again to get back on the computer.

·         She then signs into Skype and looks through her friends that are online.

·         She explains how there’s no one important on Skype so she gets on twitter and begins looking at various followers pictures.  (twitpics)

·         The next song titled “The Best Thing I Never Had” comes on.

·         She continues silently listening to the music and looking at pictures. 

·         The next song titled “I Rather Die Young” comes on.

·         She complains about the lyrics to the song saying “this song is a joke! The only person I’m dying for is my mama.”

·         She goes on explaining how the song is silly and no one is worth taking her life for.

·         She turns to the next song skipping over “I Rather Die Young.”

·         The next song titled “Start Over” comes on.

·         I can tell she is beginning to get agitated by the music and the messages behind the music.  

·         After realizing she actually like the song she begins to hum to the beat of the song.  I was able to see a whole attitude shift from her.  She began to enjoy listening to the song.

·         She then navigates her attention to Facebook and looks down her newsfeed. 

·         The Last song we listened to was “Love on Top.”

·         She immediately begins singing and rocking to the song.

·         She gets up and dances a little more to the song before retiring to sit on the bed. 

·         She then demands that she doesn’t listen to anymore songs.  She says “I can’t take no more.”

·         After “Love On Top” goes off she immediately switches the music to a rap song called “Riot”

My room is a sanctuary of pink, black and white.  Both me and my roommate’s bed sets are those colors and we have various pink accessories like laundry baskets, garbage cans and pillows.  We both are fans of the color pinks so our room reflects that.  The television was on and an episode of “Family Guy”; However, you really couldn’t hear the TV because we keep the volume low.  The room smelt like French fries simply because before we began listening to music we were all eating French fries.  Candice had on pajama shorts and a big white T-shirt.  She had on a red and white hair bonnet to hold her hair down.   Candice is really into social networks and is almost always one.   While listening to music you were able to see this.  My roommate was indirectly including within my experiment because Candice interacted with her.  For the majority of the time my roommate was on her phone on a social network but I observed her randomly nodding her head in enjoyment to the music.  I also was including in the experiment for I changed into more comfortable clothing before the experiment started.  I had on orange capris and a blue T-shirt.  I positioned myself in the far corner of the room so that I can see everything going on in the room.  I ended up getting enjoyment from the music and I sang along to a lot of the songs even the ones that Candice didn’t react well to.  I think my room was the best place to do the experiment since my room is a very welcoming and comfortable place.  I predicted that I would have random company like I do on most nights but this time no one came to visit me.  I would’ve like if some other friends would’ve walked in to see Candice’s reaction to how they felt about the music.  Overall I realized that even though the music was enjoyable for me, it wasn’t so enjoyable for Candice.