Benjamin D. Koen
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- January 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780195367744
- eISBN:
- 9780199867295
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195367744.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, Ethnomusicology, World Music
Western medicine has conventionally separated music, science, and religion into distinct entities, yet traditional cultures throughout the world have always viewed music as a bridge that connects and ...
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Western medicine has conventionally separated music, science, and religion into distinct entities, yet traditional cultures throughout the world have always viewed music as a bridge that connects and balances the physical with the spiritual to promote health and healing. As people in even the most technologically advanced nations across the globe struggle with obtaining affordable and reliable healthcare, more and more people are now turning to these ancient cultural practices of holistic and ICAM healing (integrative, complementary, and alternative medicine). This book convincingly demonstrates the relevance of medical ethnomusicology in light of the globally spreading ICAM approaches to health and healing. Revealing the Western separation of healing from spiritual and musical practices as a culturally determined phenomenon, the book confirms their underlying unity. In a place poetically known as the Roof of the World, the culture found within the towering Pamir Mountains of Badakhshan Tajikistan serves as the paradigm of ICAM healing practices. The book’s research and immersion into the Badakhshani culture provides a well-balanced “insider” perspective while maintaining an “observer’s” view, as it effectively bridges the widespread gaps between ethnomusicology, health science, and music therapy.Less
Western medicine has conventionally separated music, science, and religion into distinct entities, yet traditional cultures throughout the world have always viewed music as a bridge that connects and balances the physical with the spiritual to promote health and healing. As people in even the most technologically advanced nations across the globe struggle with obtaining affordable and reliable healthcare, more and more people are now turning to these ancient cultural practices of holistic and ICAM healing (integrative, complementary, and alternative medicine). This book convincingly demonstrates the relevance of medical ethnomusicology in light of the globally spreading ICAM approaches to health and healing. Revealing the Western separation of healing from spiritual and musical practices as a culturally determined phenomenon, the book confirms their underlying unity. In a place poetically known as the Roof of the World, the culture found within the towering Pamir Mountains of Badakhshan Tajikistan serves as the paradigm of ICAM healing practices. The book’s research and immersion into the Badakhshani culture provides a well-balanced “insider” perspective while maintaining an “observer’s” view, as it effectively bridges the widespread gaps between ethnomusicology, health science, and music therapy.
CROSS IAN
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780197264195
- eISBN:
- 9780191734540
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197264195.003.0007
- Subject:
- Psychology, Cognitive Psychology
Music is conceptualized as a product and a process of imagination. It is often assumed that engagement in music initiates the developmental and evolutionary emergence of imagination. This conception ...
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Music is conceptualized as a product and a process of imagination. It is often assumed that engagement in music initiates the developmental and evolutionary emergence of imagination. This conception of music and its relationship to human powers of imagining is treated differently in science and musicology. For science, music is simply a complex pattern of sound or the experience of structured sound. For musicology and ethnomusicology, music cannot be separated from the cultural contexts in which they are embedded. This chapter proposes a broad operational definition of music which can be acceptable and applicable cross-naturally. This radical redefinition of music may provide ways of understanding music as both a culturally embedded practice and biologically grounded structure. Apart from providing a redefinition of music, the chapter also investigates some of the potential implications and consequences of this radical redefinition of music such as the possibility that the human capacity for culture may have been supported and consolidated by the emergence and presence of musicality.Less
Music is conceptualized as a product and a process of imagination. It is often assumed that engagement in music initiates the developmental and evolutionary emergence of imagination. This conception of music and its relationship to human powers of imagining is treated differently in science and musicology. For science, music is simply a complex pattern of sound or the experience of structured sound. For musicology and ethnomusicology, music cannot be separated from the cultural contexts in which they are embedded. This chapter proposes a broad operational definition of music which can be acceptable and applicable cross-naturally. This radical redefinition of music may provide ways of understanding music as both a culturally embedded practice and biologically grounded structure. Apart from providing a redefinition of music, the chapter also investigates some of the potential implications and consequences of this radical redefinition of music such as the possibility that the human capacity for culture may have been supported and consolidated by the emergence and presence of musicality.
Kofi Agawu
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195370249
- eISBN:
- 9780199852161
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195370249.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, Theory, Analysis, Composition
The question of whether music has meaning has been the subject of sustained debate ever since music became a subject of academic inquiry. Is music a language? Does it communicate specific ideas and ...
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The question of whether music has meaning has been the subject of sustained debate ever since music became a subject of academic inquiry. Is music a language? Does it communicate specific ideas and emotions? What does music mean, and how does this meaning manifest itself? Working at the nexus of musicology, ethnomusicology, and music philosophy and aesthetics, the book presents a synthetic and innovative approach to musical meaning which argues deftly for the thinking of music as a discourse in itself—composed not only of sequences of gestures, phrases, or progressions, but rather also of the very philosophical and linguistic props that enable the analytical formulations made about music as an object of study. The book provides demonstrations of the pertinence of a semiological approach to understanding the fully-freighted language of Romantic music, stresses the importance of a generative approach to tonal understanding, and provides further insight into the analogy between music and language.Less
The question of whether music has meaning has been the subject of sustained debate ever since music became a subject of academic inquiry. Is music a language? Does it communicate specific ideas and emotions? What does music mean, and how does this meaning manifest itself? Working at the nexus of musicology, ethnomusicology, and music philosophy and aesthetics, the book presents a synthetic and innovative approach to musical meaning which argues deftly for the thinking of music as a discourse in itself—composed not only of sequences of gestures, phrases, or progressions, but rather also of the very philosophical and linguistic props that enable the analytical formulations made about music as an object of study. The book provides demonstrations of the pertinence of a semiological approach to understanding the fully-freighted language of Romantic music, stresses the importance of a generative approach to tonal understanding, and provides further insight into the analogy between music and language.
Jonathan P. J. Stock
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780197262733
- eISBN:
- 9780191734502
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197262733.003.0001
- Subject:
- Music, Ethnomusicology, World Music
This introductory chapter first sets out the purpose of the book, which is to present the history and music of Shanghai opera to students and scholars of ethnomusicology. Chinese music, despite being ...
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This introductory chapter first sets out the purpose of the book, which is to present the history and music of Shanghai opera to students and scholars of ethnomusicology. Chinese music, despite being much researched by a large body of scholars, sometimes seems to remain in a peripheral position within the discipline as a whole. This study also aims to re-evaluate certain aspects of current ethnomusicological theory and practice. The chapter considers the use of the term ‘opera’ in the Chinese context followed by a discussion of Shanghai opera. An overview of the subsequent chapters is also presented.Less
This introductory chapter first sets out the purpose of the book, which is to present the history and music of Shanghai opera to students and scholars of ethnomusicology. Chinese music, despite being much researched by a large body of scholars, sometimes seems to remain in a peripheral position within the discipline as a whole. This study also aims to re-evaluate certain aspects of current ethnomusicological theory and practice. The chapter considers the use of the term ‘opera’ in the Chinese context followed by a discussion of Shanghai opera. An overview of the subsequent chapters is also presented.
Jonathan P. J. Stock
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780197262733
- eISBN:
- 9780191734502
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197262733.003.0006
- Subject:
- Music, Ethnomusicology, World Music
This chapter argues that ethnomusicology is unevenly theorized. Despite the amount of research now carried out on large-scale, mass-mediated, transnational, and professional traditions, ...
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This chapter argues that ethnomusicology is unevenly theorized. Despite the amount of research now carried out on large-scale, mass-mediated, transnational, and professional traditions, theoretical-methodological literature has tended to emphasize models more appropriate to the research of small-scale traditions and those in which the researcher can gain direct experience as one of the performance group. Reyes Schramm noted twenty years ago that the urban environment offers a challenge to existing conceptions of research. It is shown that this challenge still applies and, through a consideration of researching huju in Shanghai, to spell out some aspects of it more explicitly.Less
This chapter argues that ethnomusicology is unevenly theorized. Despite the amount of research now carried out on large-scale, mass-mediated, transnational, and professional traditions, theoretical-methodological literature has tended to emphasize models more appropriate to the research of small-scale traditions and those in which the researcher can gain direct experience as one of the performance group. Reyes Schramm noted twenty years ago that the urban environment offers a challenge to existing conceptions of research. It is shown that this challenge still applies and, through a consideration of researching huju in Shanghai, to spell out some aspects of it more explicitly.
Eric Clarke and Nicholas Cook (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- May 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780195167498
- eISBN:
- 9780199867707
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195167498.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, Ethnomusicology, World Music
The study of music is always to some extent “empirical”, in that it involves testing ideas and interpretations against some kind of external reality. But in musicology, the kind of empirical ...
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The study of music is always to some extent “empirical”, in that it involves testing ideas and interpretations against some kind of external reality. But in musicology, the kind of empirical approaches familiar in the social sciences have played a relatively marginal role, being generally restricted to interdisciplinary areas, such as the psychology and sociology of music. Rather than advocating a new kind of musicology, this book provides a guide to empirical approaches that are ready for incorporation into the contemporary musicologist's toolkit. Its nine chapters cover perspectives form music theory, computational musicology, ethnomusicology, and the psychology and sociology of music, as well as an introduction to musical data analysis and statistics. The book shows that such approaches could play an important role in the further development of the discipline as a whole, not only through the application of statistical and modelling methods to musical scores but also, and perhaps more importantly, in terms of understanding music as a complex social practice.Less
The study of music is always to some extent “empirical”, in that it involves testing ideas and interpretations against some kind of external reality. But in musicology, the kind of empirical approaches familiar in the social sciences have played a relatively marginal role, being generally restricted to interdisciplinary areas, such as the psychology and sociology of music. Rather than advocating a new kind of musicology, this book provides a guide to empirical approaches that are ready for incorporation into the contemporary musicologist's toolkit. Its nine chapters cover perspectives form music theory, computational musicology, ethnomusicology, and the psychology and sociology of music, as well as an introduction to musical data analysis and statistics. The book shows that such approaches could play an important role in the further development of the discipline as a whole, not only through the application of statistical and modelling methods to musical scores but also, and perhaps more importantly, in terms of understanding music as a complex social practice.
Inna Naroditskaya
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780195340587
- eISBN:
- 9780199918218
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195340587.003.0008
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western
The book situates its inquiry at the intersection of three inter methods—interdisciplinary, intertextual, and intergeneric. Throughout history, Russian literati have engaged in intertextual and ...
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The book situates its inquiry at the intersection of three inter methods—interdisciplinary, intertextual, and intergeneric. Throughout history, Russian literati have engaged in intertextual and intergeneric exchange as an intellectual and political game, transmitting their ideas via references to each other, commenting on events, critiquing politics, creating a densely coherent body of works extending across artistic and disciplinary divides. Historical ethnomusicology provides a vehicle for questions that challenge established historical perspectives, in this case dealing with opera, gender, and empire. At the core of the study is the issue of gender, which, not originally conceived as the main agenda, took centre stage in the course of the research.Less
The book situates its inquiry at the intersection of three inter methods—interdisciplinary, intertextual, and intergeneric. Throughout history, Russian literati have engaged in intertextual and intergeneric exchange as an intellectual and political game, transmitting their ideas via references to each other, commenting on events, critiquing politics, creating a densely coherent body of works extending across artistic and disciplinary divides. Historical ethnomusicology provides a vehicle for questions that challenge established historical perspectives, in this case dealing with opera, gender, and empire. At the core of the study is the issue of gender, which, not originally conceived as the main agenda, took centre stage in the course of the research.
Kevin Korsyn
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- May 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780195104547
- eISBN:
- 9780199868988
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195104547.003.0010
- Subject:
- Music, Theory, Analysis, Composition
This chapter examines how social antagonisms produce cultural double binds, moments when individuals are caught between different communities and languages that both refuse — and yet somehow demand — ...
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This chapter examines how social antagonisms produce cultural double binds, moments when individuals are caught between different communities and languages that both refuse — and yet somehow demand — integration. In ethnomusicology, for example, such cases may arise when the history of colonialism contaminates the very methodology through which one studies oppressed cultures, leaving one without a language in which to engage the other while feeling a disciplinary imperative that one must engage the other. The essay “Music Theory, Phenomenology, and Modes of Perception” by music theorist David Lewin is analyzed.Less
This chapter examines how social antagonisms produce cultural double binds, moments when individuals are caught between different communities and languages that both refuse — and yet somehow demand — integration. In ethnomusicology, for example, such cases may arise when the history of colonialism contaminates the very methodology through which one studies oppressed cultures, leaving one without a language in which to engage the other while feeling a disciplinary imperative that one must engage the other. The essay “Music Theory, Phenomenology, and Modes of Perception” by music theorist David Lewin is analyzed.
Jonathan P. J. Stock
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- May 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780195167498
- eISBN:
- 9780199867707
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195167498.003.0002
- Subject:
- Music, Ethnomusicology, World Music
This chapter reviews approaches to the empirical documentation of music as found in comparative musicology, folklore studies, and through the fifty-year history of ethnomusicology. Means of gathering ...
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This chapter reviews approaches to the empirical documentation of music as found in comparative musicology, folklore studies, and through the fifty-year history of ethnomusicology. Means of gathering and measuring research data are shown to be linked to available technology as well as to prevailing intellectual paradigms. The central part of the chapter focuses on empirical aspects of participant-observation, including the keeping of field notes, interviewing, photography, and audio- and video-recording. Good practice conventions for data preservation are explained and illustrated. The chapter's coda emphasizes the importance of ethics in research that documents the voices of live people.Less
This chapter reviews approaches to the empirical documentation of music as found in comparative musicology, folklore studies, and through the fifty-year history of ethnomusicology. Means of gathering and measuring research data are shown to be linked to available technology as well as to prevailing intellectual paradigms. The central part of the chapter focuses on empirical aspects of participant-observation, including the keeping of field notes, interviewing, photography, and audio- and video-recording. Good practice conventions for data preservation are explained and illustrated. The chapter's coda emphasizes the importance of ethics in research that documents the voices of live people.
Michael B. Silvers
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780252042089
- eISBN:
- 9780252050831
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5622/illinois/9780252042089.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, Ethnomusicology, World Music
Voices of Drought is an ethnomusicological study of relationships between popular music, the environmental and social costs of drought, and the politics of culture and climate vulnerability in the ...
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Voices of Drought is an ethnomusicological study of relationships between popular music, the environmental and social costs of drought, and the politics of culture and climate vulnerability in the northeast region of Brazil, primarily the state of Ceará. The book traces the articulations of music and sound with drought as a discourse, a matter of politics, and a material reality. It encompasses multiple entwined issues, including ecological exile, poverty, and unequal access to vital resources such as water, along with corruption, prejudice, unbridled capitalism, and rapidly expanding neoliberalism. Each chapter is a case study: the use of carnauba wax, formed by palm trees as a protective climate adaptation, in the production of wax cylinder sound recordings in the late nineteenth century; the political significance of regionalist popular music, especially baião and forró, in the mid-twentieth century; forró music and practices of weather forecasting that involve listening to bird calls; the production and meaning of the soundscape of a small city as it involves musician Raimundo Fagner; social and musical change at the turn of the twenty-first century; and the cancellation of state-sponsored Carnival celebrations due to a costly multi-year drought in the 2010s. Demonstrating how ecological crisis affects musical culture by way of and proportionate to social difference and stratification, the book advocates a focus on environmental justice in ecomusicological scholarship.Less
Voices of Drought is an ethnomusicological study of relationships between popular music, the environmental and social costs of drought, and the politics of culture and climate vulnerability in the northeast region of Brazil, primarily the state of Ceará. The book traces the articulations of music and sound with drought as a discourse, a matter of politics, and a material reality. It encompasses multiple entwined issues, including ecological exile, poverty, and unequal access to vital resources such as water, along with corruption, prejudice, unbridled capitalism, and rapidly expanding neoliberalism. Each chapter is a case study: the use of carnauba wax, formed by palm trees as a protective climate adaptation, in the production of wax cylinder sound recordings in the late nineteenth century; the political significance of regionalist popular music, especially baião and forró, in the mid-twentieth century; forró music and practices of weather forecasting that involve listening to bird calls; the production and meaning of the soundscape of a small city as it involves musician Raimundo Fagner; social and musical change at the turn of the twenty-first century; and the cancellation of state-sponsored Carnival celebrations due to a costly multi-year drought in the 2010s. Demonstrating how ecological crisis affects musical culture by way of and proportionate to social difference and stratification, the book advocates a focus on environmental justice in ecomusicological scholarship.
Vanessa Agnew
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- May 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780195336665
- eISBN:
- 9780199868544
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195336665.003.0003
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western
In examining the status of music in the cross-cultural encounter, this chapter focuses on Captain Cook's second voyage (1772-5) and the role played by Burney's son James and the German naturalist ...
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In examining the status of music in the cross-cultural encounter, this chapter focuses on Captain Cook's second voyage (1772-5) and the role played by Burney's son James and the German naturalist Georg Forster in transcribing and commenting on Polynesian music. It shows that the discovery of part singing in New Zealand and Tonga conflicted with Rousseauvian assertions about polyphony as an exclusively European invention. Music scholars like Charles Burney, Johann Nicolaus Forkel, Eduard Hanslick, and August Wilhelm Ambros subsequently played down the polyphonic and affective character of Polynesian music so as to uphold theories about music's universal progress and its hierarchical ordering. The chapter argues that this move, and others like it, had lasting implications for the development of western musicology and ethnomusicology, which would come to be predicated on a series of radical distinctions between the European and non-European. Where Orpheus had once signified the harmonizing powers of music, he would now be transformed into a cautionary tale about musical difference and the dangers of music's instrumentality.Less
In examining the status of music in the cross-cultural encounter, this chapter focuses on Captain Cook's second voyage (1772-5) and the role played by Burney's son James and the German naturalist Georg Forster in transcribing and commenting on Polynesian music. It shows that the discovery of part singing in New Zealand and Tonga conflicted with Rousseauvian assertions about polyphony as an exclusively European invention. Music scholars like Charles Burney, Johann Nicolaus Forkel, Eduard Hanslick, and August Wilhelm Ambros subsequently played down the polyphonic and affective character of Polynesian music so as to uphold theories about music's universal progress and its hierarchical ordering. The chapter argues that this move, and others like it, had lasting implications for the development of western musicology and ethnomusicology, which would come to be predicated on a series of radical distinctions between the European and non-European. Where Orpheus had once signified the harmonizing powers of music, he would now be transformed into a cautionary tale about musical difference and the dangers of music's instrumentality.
Carl Stumpf
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199695737
- eISBN:
- 9780191742286
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199695737.001.0001
- Subject:
- Psychology, Music Psychology, Developmental Psychology
This book was first published in German in 1911. The text sets out a path-breaking hypothesis on the earliest musical sounds in human culture. Alongside research in such diverse fields as classical ...
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This book was first published in German in 1911. The text sets out a path-breaking hypothesis on the earliest musical sounds in human culture. Alongside research in such diverse fields as classical philosophy, acoustics, and mathematics, Stumpf became one of the most influential psychologists of the late 19th century. He was the founding father of Gestalt psychology, and collaborated with William James, Edmund Husserl, and Wolfgang Köhler. This book was the culmination of more than twenty-five years of empirical and theoretical research in the field of music. The first part of the book discusses the origin and forms of musical activities as well as various existing theories on the origin of music, including those of Darwin, Rousseau, Herder, and Spencer. The second part summarizes his works on the historical development of instruments and music, and studies a putatively global range of music from non-European cultures to demonstrate the psychological principles of tonal organization, as well as providing a range of cross-cultural musical transcriptions and analyses. This became a foundation document for comparative musicology, the elder sibling to modern Ethnomusicology, and the book provides access to the original recordings Stumpf used in this process. This book is available for the first time in the English language.Less
This book was first published in German in 1911. The text sets out a path-breaking hypothesis on the earliest musical sounds in human culture. Alongside research in such diverse fields as classical philosophy, acoustics, and mathematics, Stumpf became one of the most influential psychologists of the late 19th century. He was the founding father of Gestalt psychology, and collaborated with William James, Edmund Husserl, and Wolfgang Köhler. This book was the culmination of more than twenty-five years of empirical and theoretical research in the field of music. The first part of the book discusses the origin and forms of musical activities as well as various existing theories on the origin of music, including those of Darwin, Rousseau, Herder, and Spencer. The second part summarizes his works on the historical development of instruments and music, and studies a putatively global range of music from non-European cultures to demonstrate the psychological principles of tonal organization, as well as providing a range of cross-cultural musical transcriptions and analyses. This became a foundation document for comparative musicology, the elder sibling to modern Ethnomusicology, and the book provides access to the original recordings Stumpf used in this process. This book is available for the first time in the English language.
David Trippett
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199695737
- eISBN:
- 9780191742286
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199695737.003.0002
- Subject:
- Psychology, Music Psychology, Developmental Psychology
If historical events are to mark the boundaries of a life lived, one could be forgiven for suspecting that Carl Stumpf (1848–1936) might have been a political revolutionary: born during the months of ...
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If historical events are to mark the boundaries of a life lived, one could be forgiven for suspecting that Carl Stumpf (1848–1936) might have been a political revolutionary: born during the months of revolutionary uprisings across Europe, he died a few months after Hitler's troops occupied the Rhineland in violation of the Treaty of Versailles. Yet, as a scientist, his convictions carried no muscular force; still less any political conviction. His sphere was intellectual. Though, as this chapter shows, this would prove no less influential in charting the course of the disciplines of psychology and (ethno)musicology, than the events that framed his life would serve to alter the course of European history.Less
If historical events are to mark the boundaries of a life lived, one could be forgiven for suspecting that Carl Stumpf (1848–1936) might have been a political revolutionary: born during the months of revolutionary uprisings across Europe, he died a few months after Hitler's troops occupied the Rhineland in violation of the Treaty of Versailles. Yet, as a scientist, his convictions carried no muscular force; still less any political conviction. His sphere was intellectual. Though, as this chapter shows, this would prove no less influential in charting the course of the disciplines of psychology and (ethno)musicology, than the events that framed his life would serve to alter the course of European history.
Trish Winter and Simon Keegan-Phipps
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780719097300
- eISBN:
- 9781781708699
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719097300.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Cultural Studies
Performing Englishness looks in detail at the growth in popularity and profile of the English folk arts in the first decade of the twenty-first century. Based on original research within English folk ...
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Performing Englishness looks in detail at the growth in popularity and profile of the English folk arts in the first decade of the twenty-first century. Based on original research within English folk culture, it is the only ethnographic study of its kind. By closely scrutinising various facets of this folk resurgence – discursive, musical and visual – the authors explore how it speaks to a broader explosion of interest in the subject of English national and cultural identity. How does contemporary English folk music and dance relate to ideas about England and Englishness? What kinds of English identities are expressed through the works of musicians like Seth Lakeman or Bellowhead? How does morris dancing contribute to ongoing political debates around multiculturalism, globalisation, and the devolution of the British nations? And how does the English folk scene reconcile a new-found commercial success with anti-capitalist roots? In their quest for answers to these and other questions, the authors combine the approaches of British cultural studies and ethnomusicology, drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, interviews with central figures of the resurgence and close analysis of key musical and dance texts. Their presentation of the English case contributes to debates about English identity and calls for a rethinking of concepts such as revival, indigeneity and tradition.Less
Performing Englishness looks in detail at the growth in popularity and profile of the English folk arts in the first decade of the twenty-first century. Based on original research within English folk culture, it is the only ethnographic study of its kind. By closely scrutinising various facets of this folk resurgence – discursive, musical and visual – the authors explore how it speaks to a broader explosion of interest in the subject of English national and cultural identity. How does contemporary English folk music and dance relate to ideas about England and Englishness? What kinds of English identities are expressed through the works of musicians like Seth Lakeman or Bellowhead? How does morris dancing contribute to ongoing political debates around multiculturalism, globalisation, and the devolution of the British nations? And how does the English folk scene reconcile a new-found commercial success with anti-capitalist roots? In their quest for answers to these and other questions, the authors combine the approaches of British cultural studies and ethnomusicology, drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, interviews with central figures of the resurgence and close analysis of key musical and dance texts. Their presentation of the English case contributes to debates about English identity and calls for a rethinking of concepts such as revival, indigeneity and tradition.
Sarah Weiss
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780252042294
- eISBN:
- 9780252051135
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5622/illinois/9780252042294.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, Ethnomusicology, World Music
This book documents ways in which women’s performance practices engage with and localize world religions while creating opportunities for women’s agency. This study draws on the rich resources of ...
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This book documents ways in which women’s performance practices engage with and localize world religions while creating opportunities for women’s agency. This study draws on the rich resources of three disciplines: ethnomusicology, gendered studies of religion, and religious music studies. It is a meta-ethnography formed by comparisons among different ethnographic case studies. The book analyses women’s performances at religious events in cultural settings spread across the world to demonstrate the pivotal roles women can play in localizing the practice of world religions, exploring moments in which performance allows women the agency to move, however momentarily, beyond culturally determined boundaries while revealing patterns that suggest unsuspected similarities in widely divergent religious contexts. With the rise of religious fundamentalism and with world politics embroiled in debate about women’s bodies and their comportment in public, ethnomusicologists and other scholars must address questions of religion, gender, and their intersection. By reading deeply into, but also across, the ethnographic detail of multiple studies, this book reveals patterns of similarity between unrelated cultures. It invites ethnomusicologists back into comparative work, offering them encouragement to think across disciplinary boundaries and suggesting that they can actively work to counter the divisive rhetoric of religious exceptionalism by revealing the many ways in which religions and cultures are similar to one another.Less
This book documents ways in which women’s performance practices engage with and localize world religions while creating opportunities for women’s agency. This study draws on the rich resources of three disciplines: ethnomusicology, gendered studies of religion, and religious music studies. It is a meta-ethnography formed by comparisons among different ethnographic case studies. The book analyses women’s performances at religious events in cultural settings spread across the world to demonstrate the pivotal roles women can play in localizing the practice of world religions, exploring moments in which performance allows women the agency to move, however momentarily, beyond culturally determined boundaries while revealing patterns that suggest unsuspected similarities in widely divergent religious contexts. With the rise of religious fundamentalism and with world politics embroiled in debate about women’s bodies and their comportment in public, ethnomusicologists and other scholars must address questions of religion, gender, and their intersection. By reading deeply into, but also across, the ethnographic detail of multiple studies, this book reveals patterns of similarity between unrelated cultures. It invites ethnomusicologists back into comparative work, offering them encouragement to think across disciplinary boundaries and suggesting that they can actively work to counter the divisive rhetoric of religious exceptionalism by revealing the many ways in which religions and cultures are similar to one another.
Johann Gottfried Herder and Philip V. Bohlman
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780520234949
- eISBN:
- 9780520966444
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520234949.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, Ethnomusicology, World Music
Had Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803) written a book on music, it would have been Song Loves the Masses. One of the great polymaths of modern intellectual history, Herder wrote influential ...
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Had Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803) written a book on music, it would have been Song Loves the Masses. One of the great polymaths of modern intellectual history, Herder wrote influential contributions to philosophy, theology, anthropology, aesthetics, history—and music. His writings on musical subjects are among his most comprehensive, ranging from studies of music in the origins of human speech to the song practices underlying a universal humanity. Herder’s collections of these practices, to which he referred collectively as “folk songs” sounded world music in its complex diversity and provided the modern foundations for the fields of anthropology, folklore, and ethnomusicology. Many of the folk songs themselves entered the classical music of Europe, significantly transforming its aesthetics and history. The first-ever translations of Herder’s nine most sweeping works on music unfold across the chapters of this book. From the first attempts to forge theories of folk song and publish anthologies in the 1770s through the translations of the Spanish epic, El Cid, and the biblical Song of Songs to the aesthetics of transcendence that imbued his final essays, the chapters in Song Loves the Masses together transform our modern understanding of music and history.Less
Had Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803) written a book on music, it would have been Song Loves the Masses. One of the great polymaths of modern intellectual history, Herder wrote influential contributions to philosophy, theology, anthropology, aesthetics, history—and music. His writings on musical subjects are among his most comprehensive, ranging from studies of music in the origins of human speech to the song practices underlying a universal humanity. Herder’s collections of these practices, to which he referred collectively as “folk songs” sounded world music in its complex diversity and provided the modern foundations for the fields of anthropology, folklore, and ethnomusicology. Many of the folk songs themselves entered the classical music of Europe, significantly transforming its aesthetics and history. The first-ever translations of Herder’s nine most sweeping works on music unfold across the chapters of this book. From the first attempts to forge theories of folk song and publish anthologies in the 1770s through the translations of the Spanish epic, El Cid, and the biblical Song of Songs to the aesthetics of transcendence that imbued his final essays, the chapters in Song Loves the Masses together transform our modern understanding of music and history.
Lee Bidgood
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780252041457
- eISBN:
- 9780252050053
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5622/illinois/9780252041457.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, Ethnomusicology, World Music
Bluegrass music has taken root all over the world but thrives in unique ways in the Czech Republic. Ethnomusicologist and bluegrass musician Lee Bidgood writes about what it is like to live and work ...
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Bluegrass music has taken root all over the world but thrives in unique ways in the Czech Republic. Ethnomusicologist and bluegrass musician Lee Bidgood writes about what it is like to live and work playing bluegrass in the heart of Europe. The chapters trace Bidgood's engagement with Czech bluegrassers, their processes of learning, barriers to understanding, and the joys and successes that they find in making bluegrass their own. After providing a general cultural and historical background, a set of case studies convey ethnographic detail from Bidgood's participatory observational research: with a Czech band as they work abroad in Europe; with banjo makers seeking an international market; with fiddlers wrestling with technical, social, and aesthetic hurdles; with a non-Christian seeking to truthfully sing gospel songs. Bidgood's analysis of songs, sounds, places, and speech provide insights into how Czech bluegrassers negotiate the Americanness and Czechness of their musical projects. This study poses bluegrass not as a restrictive set of repertoire or techniques, but as a form of sociality, a discourse with local and global resonances—and in its Czech form it is clearly a practice of in-betweenness that defies categorization, challenging narratives that limit music to a certain time, place, or people. Includes orientation notes on language, and a glossary of Czech terms.Less
Bluegrass music has taken root all over the world but thrives in unique ways in the Czech Republic. Ethnomusicologist and bluegrass musician Lee Bidgood writes about what it is like to live and work playing bluegrass in the heart of Europe. The chapters trace Bidgood's engagement with Czech bluegrassers, their processes of learning, barriers to understanding, and the joys and successes that they find in making bluegrass their own. After providing a general cultural and historical background, a set of case studies convey ethnographic detail from Bidgood's participatory observational research: with a Czech band as they work abroad in Europe; with banjo makers seeking an international market; with fiddlers wrestling with technical, social, and aesthetic hurdles; with a non-Christian seeking to truthfully sing gospel songs. Bidgood's analysis of songs, sounds, places, and speech provide insights into how Czech bluegrassers negotiate the Americanness and Czechness of their musical projects. This study poses bluegrass not as a restrictive set of repertoire or techniques, but as a form of sociality, a discourse with local and global resonances—and in its Czech form it is clearly a practice of in-betweenness that defies categorization, challenging narratives that limit music to a certain time, place, or people. Includes orientation notes on language, and a glossary of Czech terms.
Christopher J. Smith
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780252042393
- eISBN:
- 9780252051234
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5622/illinois/9780252042393.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, Dance
This book is a social history, theorizing participatory dance in New World public spaces as a tool that has enabled subaltern communities’ political resistance to hegemonic control. Drawing upon ...
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This book is a social history, theorizing participatory dance in New World public spaces as a tool that has enabled subaltern communities’ political resistance to hegemonic control. Drawing upon musicology, ethnomusicology, iconography, anthropology, dance studies, and folklore, and spanning examples from the eighteenth through the twenty-first century, it identifies recurrent strategic patterns in the music, movement, and “noise” that political minorities--including persons of color, economic underclasses, women, gays, and other resistance movements--have employed to oppose, contest, and transgress dominant cultures’ social control. The book applies multidisciplinary analytical practices to movement and sound in historical idioms, little documented by period scholarship, whose data are indirect, inferential, and reconstructive. Case studies include frontier Pentecostalism; Native American resistance; Shakerism; African American communities; the English- and French-speaking Caribbean; film and theatrical dance; the Stonewall Uprising and Chicago 1968 protests; twentieth-century noise ordinances; and punk-rock, hip hop, and twenty-first-century global protest movements. Examples in diverse media, from prose description to watercolor to film, are selected in order to showcase the consistency of these political understandings across diverse situations and to demonstrate the synthesis of analytical approaches, which this topic mandates. The book argues for understanding participatory music and motion--bodies and sound interacting in contested public spaces--as a central, intentional, effective, and recurrent resistance strategy in American social history.Less
This book is a social history, theorizing participatory dance in New World public spaces as a tool that has enabled subaltern communities’ political resistance to hegemonic control. Drawing upon musicology, ethnomusicology, iconography, anthropology, dance studies, and folklore, and spanning examples from the eighteenth through the twenty-first century, it identifies recurrent strategic patterns in the music, movement, and “noise” that political minorities--including persons of color, economic underclasses, women, gays, and other resistance movements--have employed to oppose, contest, and transgress dominant cultures’ social control. The book applies multidisciplinary analytical practices to movement and sound in historical idioms, little documented by period scholarship, whose data are indirect, inferential, and reconstructive. Case studies include frontier Pentecostalism; Native American resistance; Shakerism; African American communities; the English- and French-speaking Caribbean; film and theatrical dance; the Stonewall Uprising and Chicago 1968 protests; twentieth-century noise ordinances; and punk-rock, hip hop, and twenty-first-century global protest movements. Examples in diverse media, from prose description to watercolor to film, are selected in order to showcase the consistency of these political understandings across diverse situations and to demonstrate the synthesis of analytical approaches, which this topic mandates. The book argues for understanding participatory music and motion--bodies and sound interacting in contested public spaces--as a central, intentional, effective, and recurrent resistance strategy in American social history.
Michael Tenzer (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780195177893
- eISBN:
- 9780199864843
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195177893.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, Theory, Analysis, Composition
Combining the approaches of ethnomusicology and music theory, this book offers perspectives for thinking about how musical sounds are shaped, arranged, and composed by their diverse makers worldwide. ...
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Combining the approaches of ethnomusicology and music theory, this book offers perspectives for thinking about how musical sounds are shaped, arranged, and composed by their diverse makers worldwide. Eleven in-depth explanations of Iranian sung poetry, Javanese and Balinese gamelan music, Afro-Cuban drumming, Shanghai opera, flamenco, modern American chamber music, Central African group singing, Bulgarian dance tunes, South Indian song, and a Mozart piano concerto create a diverse compendium of music analyses. Through description of contexts of performance and creation, and especially compositional and formal construction, each chapter proposes stimulating ways to hear, conceive, and imagine these repertoires. Selections on the companion recordings are carefully matched with extensive transcriptions and illuminating diagrams in every chapter. Opening rich cross-cultural and comparative perspectives on music, this volume addresses the practical needs of students and scholars in the contemporary world of fusions, contact, borrowing, and curiosity about music everywhere.Less
Combining the approaches of ethnomusicology and music theory, this book offers perspectives for thinking about how musical sounds are shaped, arranged, and composed by their diverse makers worldwide. Eleven in-depth explanations of Iranian sung poetry, Javanese and Balinese gamelan music, Afro-Cuban drumming, Shanghai opera, flamenco, modern American chamber music, Central African group singing, Bulgarian dance tunes, South Indian song, and a Mozart piano concerto create a diverse compendium of music analyses. Through description of contexts of performance and creation, and especially compositional and formal construction, each chapter proposes stimulating ways to hear, conceive, and imagine these repertoires. Selections on the companion recordings are carefully matched with extensive transcriptions and illuminating diagrams in every chapter. Opening rich cross-cultural and comparative perspectives on music, this volume addresses the practical needs of students and scholars in the contemporary world of fusions, contact, borrowing, and curiosity about music everywhere.
Lee Higgins
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199777839
- eISBN:
- 9780199950218
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199777839.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, Ethnomusicology, World Music, Psychology of Music
This book draws upon his extensive experience to investigate an interventional approach to music making outside of formal teaching and learning situations. Working with historical, ethnographic, and ...
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This book draws upon his extensive experience to investigate an interventional approach to music making outside of formal teaching and learning situations. Working with historical, ethnographic, and theoretical research, the book provides a rich resource for those whom practice, advocate, teach, or study community music, music education, music therapy, ethnomusicology, and community cultural development.Less
This book draws upon his extensive experience to investigate an interventional approach to music making outside of formal teaching and learning situations. Working with historical, ethnographic, and theoretical research, the book provides a rich resource for those whom practice, advocate, teach, or study community music, music education, music therapy, ethnomusicology, and community cultural development.
