Now this class is required for all GJS majors and for that i am so sorry i feel so bad. but honest to god this might sound harsh, but if you dont absolutely need this class to graduate dont take it. i saw the reviews for keyes before taking the class but honestly i thought "it cant be that bad right" and boy was i wrong. this class has no structure or organization what so ever.
i genuinely do not understand why this class would be offered as a GE. there were non musicians in the class who were struggling and thought this would be a GE class. if you're going to take it you should have a background in jazz and r&b.
the tests were just a memorization list and was not at all informative of our progress in the class. the midterm went horribly and she said she wouldn't curve it due to low attendance which was just a stab in the back to those who did go to lecture (me i went to every lecture leading up the midterm and still failed). she did end up curving it because the results were so poor, but still if your entire class is performing poorly and isn't enjoying your class like maybe take a look in the mirror rather than punishing the students.
Lectures:
two hours twice a week that i will never get back cus this woman just cannot lecture for sh*t. she goes on this stream of consciousness about these random topics each week and does nothing to tie together each lecture. she uses slides that are often just bullets of random facts. we were all so confused as to what we needed to take notes on and the ta's said just make sure to get whats on the slides but sometimes she just starts talking and doesnt have slides or the information on the slides didn't match up with what we were expected to know on the tests.
Discussion:
every ta did something different and it seemed like they were all on different pages. my ta was wan and we had to do weekly responses to the readings (which were absolute hell and so long) but he would never put in the points so nobody knew how they were doing in the class or what they needed to submit. everyone in the class was genuinely so confused as to what the objective of the learning was each week. i bs'ed every disscussion in class because you could always get away just saying the same things about race and gender inequality within the music industry during the era.

overall, going into the class i was really interested in what i could learn and i wish it was taught by someone else because i genuinely believe more people would enjoy this topic. miss cheryl is clearly a very smart and intelligent woman and is an accomplished ethnomusicologist but just should not be teaching. maybe give her a seminar so she can just talk but for a class (that is required for most people in there) it's just way too disorganized and random. dont take this if you dont need to and if you do just prepare to learn nothing, waste your time, and bs your way through it.