Blog #9

1. This article was originally published in 2014 on the World Post , which was an online blogging site. As far as I can tell, the site’s main purpose was to host ideas about things from important people. It was written by Yo-Yo Ma, who is an extremely accomplished cellist. The author’s bio talks a lot about his musical achievements, like awards he’s won and music he’s made. I think this is supposed to lend credibility to his argument, because he’s worked as an artist for so long.
2. The imposed context of this article is that I have to read it for an English class, and might have to use it as a source in our second essay. In addition, I’m not sure if this is part of ‘imposed context’, but I am someone who has art as a hobby and is going into a STEM field, so it may affect my reading of the text.
3. The intentional context is the competition that people seem to think art and the sciences has. It’s also involved with the debate around art vs. science classes in schools; not just colleges, but public schools as well. The article attempts to enter the conversation around that, and argue something about it.

The two references I was unfamiliar with before reading this are:

• The edge effect:
  • When more biodiversity occurs at the edges of an ecosystem
  • Ma uses this as an allegory for how the arts and sciences would benefit from crossing over more. If they interact more with each other, there will be more diversity and creativity on both sides.
• A sarabande dance in the Cello Suites by Bach
  • A dance that, while now in the Cello Suites, was once a dance of the North African Berbers, then in Spain, then in the Americas, and finally in France.
  • Ma uses this dance to talk about how cultures can benefit from learning from one another, and that seldom are things ever in only one culture.