Easy. Relaxing. A good time. My TA was great and an easy grader. Ruskin is nice and knows his stuff. I recommend the class, but some parts were slow and boring. I didn't attend a couple of lectures because there isn't a final, but I learned a lot and now have a more widespread taste in music.

Ruskin is super nice but he's just kinda boring and as a result only like forty people ever came to lecture. My friend and I would go sometimes and some classes were really fun like when our guest lecturer was a Bollywood/modern dance instructor/choreographer Achinta and we had a blast learning from her. A good amount of classes were just Ruskin rambling through slides with a LOTTTT of background. The class depends mostly on your TA and mine (chris rorke) was very generous in giving my a 90, 95, 100, 95 on the first paper, second paper, playlist, and final paper respectively. I however fully wrote them under the wire and did not even proofread before I submitted them (in fact I finished my final paper within ten minutes of it being due and then did the extra credit in five minutes). Ruskin did offer 3% extra credit at the end for a super quick summary/opinion on any reading from the class. There was one listening quiz; I failed but still got an A in the class. Would recommend if you never want to go to class and are willing to write like 3000 words total for the whole course.

TAKE THIS CLASS FOR A GE! This class was generally pretty easy. No midterms or final, just 3 papers and a final paper. Ruskin was pretty boring during lecture, so I didn't feel the need to come to class since our papers were opinion-based and basically had nothing to do with lecture. The only lecture that was interesting was when Ruskin brought in a guest Bollywood lecture. He also cancelled class for all of Week 1 and a couple more times throughout the quarter, so I wasn't used to waking up at 9am to go to class. He does require you to go to discussion, and there is one listening quiz on the songs we talked about in class, but it is a VERY small percentage of your grade. I believe the quiz was about 1% of your grade and I skipped discussion 2-3 times and still got an A. My TA (Maya Blair) was a pretty forgiving grader. I am very STEM-oriented and did not give very strong opinions on the topics given, but as long as you have correct formatting and grammar you should get a good grade.

This class will be the easiest class you will take at ucla i literally cant be any more blunt than that like if you want to just stack 4+ in one quarter, add this class it wont make a difference to ur workload. asides from that, the professor is really nice but he kind of goes off in tangents and it can make the lecture material dry fast, attendance isn't required. discussion is required but my ta policy allowed 2 missed absences and the discs are super chill. Dont bother buying textbook

Doesn't require attendance, the class is not interesting, for lecture and section. An easy A, but very boring

His lectures are insanely long and boring... good news is they're not required. Discussion is required but very chill as the TA usually just goes over what was discussed in lecture and any upcoming assignments. Readings are not mandatory. There are 2 quizzes that are take home and open note, 2 papers that are graded very generously, and a final project. I seriously do not know how anyone wouldn't get an A in this course, definitely recommend taking as a GE or a fourth/fifth class.