15. SEMINAL FIELDNOTES

15. SEMINAL FIELDNOTES The function is winding down and the camera finds the displaced people. The same crew that filmed the icon's comeback in track fourteen is still here with their equipment and their clipboards and their release forms. Track fifteen is about what you had to give up to access the money that paid for everything. Your culture as a deliverable. Your knowledge packaged as content for someone else's application. Your story told in their language so the check could clear. Track fifteen is jazz because jazz is the genre that America took from Black people, studied in universities, put in museums, and called a national treasure while the people who built it were still figuring out how to pay rent. This track is that cost itemized out loud. https://sites.google.com/view/ballroom-is-dead/ballroom-is-dead From the album BALLROOM IS DEAD. Written and produced by VJ PUMPDABEAT. PUMPDABEAT, 2026.