Roshanak Kheshti
- Published in print:
- 2000
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781479867011
- eISBN:
- 9781479861125
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9781479867011.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Cultural Studies
Fearing the rapid disappearance of indigenous cultures, twentieth-century American ethnographers turned to the phonograph to salvage native languages and musical practices. Prominent among these ...
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Fearing the rapid disappearance of indigenous cultures, twentieth-century American ethnographers turned to the phonograph to salvage native languages and musical practices. Prominent among these early “songcatchers” were white women of comfortable class standing, similar to the female consumers targeted by the music industry as the gramophone became increasingly present in bourgeois homes. Through these simultaneous movements, listening became constructed as a feminized practice, one that craved exotic sounds and mythologized the ‘other’ that made the. In Modernity’s Ear, Roshanak Kheshti examines the ways in which racialized and gendered sounds became fetishized and, in turn, capitalized on by an emergent American world music industry through the promotion of an economy of desire. Taking a mixed-methods approach that draws on anthropology and sound studies, Kheshti locates sound as both representative and constitutive of culture and power. Through analyses of film, photography, recordings, and radio, as well as ethnographic fieldwork at a San Francisco-based world music record company, Kheshti politicizes the feminine in the contemporary world music industry. Deploying critical theory to read the fantasy of the feminized listener and feminized organ of the ear, Modernity’s Ear ultimately explores the importance of pleasure in constituting the listening self. The chapters in Modernity’s Ear are organized around the particular ways in which sound’s form is instrumentalized and utilized by the world music culture industry writ large to produce racialized and gendered encounters in the listening event. The familiar tropes deployed in the critical examination of world music—hybridity, appropriation, identity, authenticity, orality, and field recording—are upended in six chapters that reread these formations instead as miscegenation, incorporation, signifiance (loss of self), aurality, and refusal. This reorientation toward the embodied encounters and subjective outcomes staged by the WMCI enables a critical engagement with the utopian claims about music that motivate this very study.Less
Fearing the rapid disappearance of indigenous cultures, twentieth-century American ethnographers turned to the phonograph to salvage native languages and musical practices. Prominent among these early “songcatchers” were white women of comfortable class standing, similar to the female consumers targeted by the music industry as the gramophone became increasingly present in bourgeois homes. Through these simultaneous movements, listening became constructed as a feminized practice, one that craved exotic sounds and mythologized the ‘other’ that made the. In Modernity’s Ear, Roshanak Kheshti examines the ways in which racialized and gendered sounds became fetishized and, in turn, capitalized on by an emergent American world music industry through the promotion of an economy of desire. Taking a mixed-methods approach that draws on anthropology and sound studies, Kheshti locates sound as both representative and constitutive of culture and power. Through analyses of film, photography, recordings, and radio, as well as ethnographic fieldwork at a San Francisco-based world music record company, Kheshti politicizes the feminine in the contemporary world music industry. Deploying critical theory to read the fantasy of the feminized listener and feminized organ of the ear, Modernity’s Ear ultimately explores the importance of pleasure in constituting the listening self. The chapters in Modernity’s Ear are organized around the particular ways in which sound’s form is instrumentalized and utilized by the world music culture industry writ large to produce racialized and gendered encounters in the listening event. The familiar tropes deployed in the critical examination of world music—hybridity, appropriation, identity, authenticity, orality, and field recording—are upended in six chapters that reread these formations instead as miscegenation, incorporation, signifiance (loss of self), aurality, and refusal. This reorientation toward the embodied encounters and subjective outcomes staged by the WMCI enables a critical engagement with the utopian claims about music that motivate this very study.
Robert H. Woody
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- November 2021
- ISBN:
- 9780197546598
- eISBN:
- 9780197546635
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780197546598.003.0005
- Subject:
- Music, Psychology of Music
Learning pre-existing pieces of music is a very common learning goal, both among vernacular musicians, who learn from recordings, and among those who are formally educated and work from published ...
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Learning pre-existing pieces of music is a very common learning goal, both among vernacular musicians, who learn from recordings, and among those who are formally educated and work from published sheet music provided by a teacher. Whether learning a piece by ear or from notation, the processes of memory involved are very similar. Because the learning of musical works is often a precursor to additional kinds of music making and performance skills, it is important for musicians to understand how human memory works. This chapter explains the processes involved in learning and remembering pieces of music. It describes the various stages and components of memory from the information processing perspective that is common in cognitive psychology. More specifically, the chapter explains how ear musicianship is foundational to other performance skills, including those that use notation. It also shows that the ability to learn and remember musical works can be improved through experience and deliberate practice.Less
Learning pre-existing pieces of music is a very common learning goal, both among vernacular musicians, who learn from recordings, and among those who are formally educated and work from published sheet music provided by a teacher. Whether learning a piece by ear or from notation, the processes of memory involved are very similar. Because the learning of musical works is often a precursor to additional kinds of music making and performance skills, it is important for musicians to understand how human memory works. This chapter explains the processes involved in learning and remembering pieces of music. It describes the various stages and components of memory from the information processing perspective that is common in cognitive psychology. More specifically, the chapter explains how ear musicianship is foundational to other performance skills, including those that use notation. It also shows that the ability to learn and remember musical works can be improved through experience and deliberate practice.
Adam Ockelford
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- November 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780198744443
- eISBN:
- 9780191805776
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198744443.003.0007
- Subject:
- Psychology, Music Psychology, Developmental Psychology
This chapter explores the relationship between autism and musical development. It is suggested that autism creates an “exceptional early cognitive environment,” which presents challenges for ...
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This chapter explores the relationship between autism and musical development. It is suggested that autism creates an “exceptional early cognitive environment,” which presents challenges for children’s language acquisition and use, and affects their ability to grasp the functional significance of everyday sounds, which may be processed primarily in terms of their perceptual qualities. At the same time, music is ubiquitous in the lives of many children, and (unlike language) it is self-referencing in nature; the meaning of music lies in the relationships between sounds rather than in their capacity to convey symbolic information. These factors create a tendency among some autistic children for all sounds to be processed as music. This cognitive style has a number of consequences, including a high incidence of absolute pitch (“AP”) among those on the spectrum, and the tendency of such children to teach themselves to play by ear, given access to an appropriate instrument.Less
This chapter explores the relationship between autism and musical development. It is suggested that autism creates an “exceptional early cognitive environment,” which presents challenges for children’s language acquisition and use, and affects their ability to grasp the functional significance of everyday sounds, which may be processed primarily in terms of their perceptual qualities. At the same time, music is ubiquitous in the lives of many children, and (unlike language) it is self-referencing in nature; the meaning of music lies in the relationships between sounds rather than in their capacity to convey symbolic information. These factors create a tendency among some autistic children for all sounds to be processed as music. This cognitive style has a number of consequences, including a high incidence of absolute pitch (“AP”) among those on the spectrum, and the tendency of such children to teach themselves to play by ear, given access to an appropriate instrument.
Walter S. Reiter
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- June 2021
- ISBN:
- 9780190922696
- eISBN:
- 9780197528662
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190922696.003.0021
- Subject:
- Music, Performing Practice/Studies
The lesson begins with a brief overview of the importance of improvisation and ornamentation in Baroque music, acknowledging that past writers maintained that so practical a skill cannot be learned ...
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The lesson begins with a brief overview of the importance of improvisation and ornamentation in Baroque music, acknowledging that past writers maintained that so practical a skill cannot be learned merely by reading about it. If an ornament can be defined as anything that is not essential, then the composers themselves can be said to have written ornaments into their music: an exercise strips a melody by Handel down to its essentials, and the implication of playing such ‘written ornaments’ is discussed. The lesson asks why many musicians today find it difficult to play what is not written down or to play even simple melodies by ear, and students are encouraged to spend more practice time doing this. The difference between French and Italian ornamentation is outlined. Simple ways of ornamenting Corelli’s Sarabanda are shown, and a contemporary version by Dubourg illustrates how complex such ornamentations can be.Less
The lesson begins with a brief overview of the importance of improvisation and ornamentation in Baroque music, acknowledging that past writers maintained that so practical a skill cannot be learned merely by reading about it. If an ornament can be defined as anything that is not essential, then the composers themselves can be said to have written ornaments into their music: an exercise strips a melody by Handel down to its essentials, and the implication of playing such ‘written ornaments’ is discussed. The lesson asks why many musicians today find it difficult to play what is not written down or to play even simple melodies by ear, and students are encouraged to spend more practice time doing this. The difference between French and Italian ornamentation is outlined. Simple ways of ornamenting Corelli’s Sarabanda are shown, and a contemporary version by Dubourg illustrates how complex such ornamentations can be.
