Hannah Durkin
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780252042621
- eISBN:
- 9780252051463
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5622/illinois/9780252042621.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, Dance
This book investigates African American dancers Josephine Baker and Katherine Dunham’s self-inventions on screen and in writing to map the intellectual underpinnings and visual impact of their art. ...
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This book investigates African American dancers Josephine Baker and Katherine Dunham’s self-inventions on screen and in writing to map the intellectual underpinnings and visual impact of their art. Baker was the first Black woman to enjoy a starring role in mainstream cinema and Dunham was the first Black choreographer to be credited for her screen work. Equally, they were the first well-known African American women to produce multivolume accounts of their lives, and their writings serve as valuable firsthand documents of Black women’s interwar experiences. Why did Baker and Dunham enjoy such groundbreaking literary and cinematic careers? What do such careers tell us about the challenges and opportunities that they encountered as African American women seeking to navigate midcentury geographical and cultural boundaries? Why did they turn to life writing and the screen and on what terms were they able to engage with these mediums as Black women? How did contemporary Black screen audiences receive their work? Where do Baker and Dunham’s films and writings fit into African American literary and cinematic histories and why are they largely absent from these histories? This book investigates these questions. In so doing, it uncovers the cultural significance of Baker and Dunham’s films and writings and interrogates their performances within them to recover their authorship.Less
This book investigates African American dancers Josephine Baker and Katherine Dunham’s self-inventions on screen and in writing to map the intellectual underpinnings and visual impact of their art. Baker was the first Black woman to enjoy a starring role in mainstream cinema and Dunham was the first Black choreographer to be credited for her screen work. Equally, they were the first well-known African American women to produce multivolume accounts of their lives, and their writings serve as valuable firsthand documents of Black women’s interwar experiences. Why did Baker and Dunham enjoy such groundbreaking literary and cinematic careers? What do such careers tell us about the challenges and opportunities that they encountered as African American women seeking to navigate midcentury geographical and cultural boundaries? Why did they turn to life writing and the screen and on what terms were they able to engage with these mediums as Black women? How did contemporary Black screen audiences receive their work? Where do Baker and Dunham’s films and writings fit into African American literary and cinematic histories and why are they largely absent from these histories? This book investigates these questions. In so doing, it uncovers the cultural significance of Baker and Dunham’s films and writings and interrogates their performances within them to recover their authorship.
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.
Hope Munro
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781496807533
- eISBN:
- 9781496807571
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781496807533.003.0005
- Subject:
- Music, Ethnomusicology, World Music
This chapter examines the agency of women in soca and related genres, including various controversies they confront in this performance context. As women have created a space for themselves in ...
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This chapter examines the agency of women in soca and related genres, including various controversies they confront in this performance context. As women have created a space for themselves in Carnival mas and at the Carnival fetes, a number of “soca divas” have emerged to give voice to female revelers. This and other historical trends in soca underscore the rapidly changing nature of the popular music scene in Trinidad. The chapter considers the shifting attitudes and norms regarding gender roles, giving rise to gender diversity in various performance contexts, how these changes have played out in soca music, and how musical change and innovation continue to expand the possibilities within expressive culture in Trinidad and Tobago. It discusses the ways in which soca and its offshoots have created platforms for expression by women performers, including the two top female soca artists in Trinidad: Destra Garcia and Fay-Ann Lyons.Less
This chapter examines the agency of women in soca and related genres, including various controversies they confront in this performance context. As women have created a space for themselves in Carnival mas and at the Carnival fetes, a number of “soca divas” have emerged to give voice to female revelers. This and other historical trends in soca underscore the rapidly changing nature of the popular music scene in Trinidad. The chapter considers the shifting attitudes and norms regarding gender roles, giving rise to gender diversity in various performance contexts, how these changes have played out in soca music, and how musical change and innovation continue to expand the possibilities within expressive culture in Trinidad and Tobago. It discusses the ways in which soca and its offshoots have created platforms for expression by women performers, including the two top female soca artists in Trinidad: Destra Garcia and Fay-Ann Lyons.
Samantha Pinto
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- March 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780814759486
- eISBN:
- 9780814789360
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9780814759486.003.0008
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Cultural Studies
This introductory chapter highlights the feminist lyrics of the song, Freight Train Blues, which sings “When a woman gets the blues, she goes to her room and hides. … But when a man gets the blues, ...
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This introductory chapter highlights the feminist lyrics of the song, Freight Train Blues, which sings “When a woman gets the blues, she goes to her room and hides. … But when a man gets the blues, he catch a freight train and rides.” These lyrics inhabit the blues—the black genre that has become par excellence for the twentieth century. This genre as a commodified skill set gave black women performers the ability to literally travel, to break the very dichotomy that the song's lyrics suggests. On that note, the book brings into light the potential of black women's writing in designing, defining, as well as disordering diaspora.Less
This introductory chapter highlights the feminist lyrics of the song, Freight Train Blues, which sings “When a woman gets the blues, she goes to her room and hides. … But when a man gets the blues, he catch a freight train and rides.” These lyrics inhabit the blues—the black genre that has become par excellence for the twentieth century. This genre as a commodified skill set gave black women performers the ability to literally travel, to break the very dichotomy that the song's lyrics suggests. On that note, the book brings into light the potential of black women's writing in designing, defining, as well as disordering diaspora.
Katherine Kolb
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- March 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780199391950
- eISBN:
- 9780199391981
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199391950.003.0009
- Subject:
- Music, Opera, History, Western
This piece begins with performance reviews that remind us of the way women performers in Berlioz’s day were often treated: audiences—and critics—had trouble getting past their looks. Competence ...
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This piece begins with performance reviews that remind us of the way women performers in Berlioz’s day were often treated: audiences—and critics—had trouble getting past their looks. Competence silences laughter with Mme. Filipowicz, a violinist; a trivial repertoire and style, on the contrary, provoke it further with Mlle Mayer, a flutist. Praise of the violinist Hauman’s expressive playing leads into Berlioz’s first extended analysis of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, whose first movement is strikingly presented as a musical translation of Shakespeare’s Othello. Berlioz’s entire critique of the work bears a strong literary cast, as if ordinary words could not convey the depth of his admiration. At the end of the piece, he pays glowing tribute to the singer Ponchard, who in a work by Cherubini did the impossible: he performed after Beethoven without breaking the spell.Less
This piece begins with performance reviews that remind us of the way women performers in Berlioz’s day were often treated: audiences—and critics—had trouble getting past their looks. Competence silences laughter with Mme. Filipowicz, a violinist; a trivial repertoire and style, on the contrary, provoke it further with Mlle Mayer, a flutist. Praise of the violinist Hauman’s expressive playing leads into Berlioz’s first extended analysis of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, whose first movement is strikingly presented as a musical translation of Shakespeare’s Othello. Berlioz’s entire critique of the work bears a strong literary cast, as if ordinary words could not convey the depth of his admiration. At the end of the piece, he pays glowing tribute to the singer Ponchard, who in a work by Cherubini did the impossible: he performed after Beethoven without breaking the spell.
Hanne M. de Bruin
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- June 2021
- ISBN:
- 9780197552506
- eISBN:
- 9780197552544
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780197552506.003.0009
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
This chapter provides a detailed exposition of the dramaturgical and performative decisions that went into the staging of a 90-minute new play on Ramayana titled RāmaRāvaṇā, adapted by veteran ...
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This chapter provides a detailed exposition of the dramaturgical and performative decisions that went into the staging of a 90-minute new play on Ramayana titled RāmaRāvaṇā, adapted by veteran performer and director P. Rajagopal on the basis of his traditional knowledge of Kattaikkuttu. Working against the grain of the Kattaikkuttu repertoire, which focuses primarily on the valorization of heroism and war through episodes from the Mahabharata, RāmaRāvaṇā’s innovation can be attributed to Rajagopal’s strong decision to call attention to the politics of gender with young women playing all the leading roles in the production, thereby countering the dominance of male actors in the tradition. Refusing to play into the “othering” of Ravana as a demon or the condemnation of Rama within the larger context of Dravidian anti-brahmanism, Rajagopal attempts to see the two characters as mirror images of each other, with Sita and Shurpanakha questioning the legitimacy of both in the larger context of power and patriarchy.Less
This chapter provides a detailed exposition of the dramaturgical and performative decisions that went into the staging of a 90-minute new play on Ramayana titled RāmaRāvaṇā, adapted by veteran performer and director P. Rajagopal on the basis of his traditional knowledge of Kattaikkuttu. Working against the grain of the Kattaikkuttu repertoire, which focuses primarily on the valorization of heroism and war through episodes from the Mahabharata, RāmaRāvaṇā’s innovation can be attributed to Rajagopal’s strong decision to call attention to the politics of gender with young women playing all the leading roles in the production, thereby countering the dominance of male actors in the tradition. Refusing to play into the “othering” of Ravana as a demon or the condemnation of Rama within the larger context of Dravidian anti-brahmanism, Rajagopal attempts to see the two characters as mirror images of each other, with Sita and Shurpanakha questioning the legitimacy of both in the larger context of power and patriarchy.
