Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Percy Grainger And The Early Collecting Of Polynesian Music, Graham Barwell

Graham Barwell

My interest in the Australian musician and composer, Percy Grainger, and his connections with the early collecting of Polynesian music, began when I visited the Australian National Portrait Gallery in Canberra. I saw there a portrait of Grainger painted in oils in 1941 by Ella Ström, Grainger’s wife. The three-quarter length portrait shows Grainger dressed in a short bolero-style jacket of towel-like material with elbow-length sleeves over a blue shirt, and what appears to be a skirt of khaki fabric at the waist and towel material below in a pattern of brown and white reminiscent of Maori design. Grainger faces …

Repercussions Of Uniqueness For The 21st Century Vocalist, Leigh Carriage

Dr Leigh Carriage

In 2004 Californian singer and harpist Joanna Newsom, released her first album The Milk Eyed Mender with a vocal approach that features many child-like qualities with glottal fries and vocal squeaks, which are at times rather unwieldy. This great start to her career later resulted in her getting nodules, which required surgery. As part of her recovery she worked with a speech therapist and vocal teacher to regain her voice and be able to sing safely again. The result, heard on her latest CD Have One On Me (2010), is a dramatically different vocal sound, with qualities that are richer …

Listening For Geographies: Music As Sonic Compass Pointing Towards African And Christian Diasporic Horizons In The Caribbean, Elizabeth Mcalister

Elizabeth McAlister

Can musical sounds reveal history, or collective identity, or new notions of geography, in different ways than texts or migrating people themselves? This essay offers the idea that the sounds of music, with their capacity to index memories and associations, become sonic points on a cognitive compass that orients diasporic people in time and space. Whereas researchers often focus on the national diasporas produced through the recent shifts and flows of globalization, I illustrate some of the limits of the concept of national and ethnic diaspora to understand how Caribbean groups form networks and imagine themselves to be situated. This …

When Predator Becomes Prey: The Gendered Jargon Of Popular Culture, Melissa R. Ames

Melissa A. Ames

Throughout the first decade of the twenty-first century the vernacular of popular culture has been bombarded by sexualized terminology. Although these terms are often formed with humorous intent, their staying power and use as cultural descriptive categories is both intriguing and disturbing. Also troubling is the fact that the majority of these new terms, such as puma (a thirty-something female “dating” a younger male), cougar (a forty-plus female “dating” a younger male), and MILF (“mother I’d like to fuck”), are restricted to the female gender alone. This article analyzes the etymology of these terms, their use in popular culture (ranging …

On Precision Or The Importance Of Riyaz, Ashok Agrwaal

Ashok Agrwaal

In an attempt to understand harmony

Three Hesse Songs For Chorus And Band, Randall Snyder

Randall Snyder

No abstract provided.

Creativity, Improvisation, And Risk: Copyright And Musical Innovation, Olufunmilayo B. Arewa

Olufunmilayo B. Arewa

The goals and beneficiaries of copyright frameworks have long been contested in varied contexts. Copyright is often treated as a policy tool that gives creators incentives to create new works. Incentive theories of copyright often emphasize appropriability, which enables copyright owners to ensure that they profit from their copyrighted works by exercising control over uses of, and access to, such works. Although copyright clearly imposes costs in the form of restrictions on access to copyright-protected works and inefficiencies in the form of deadweight loss, the benefits of copyright are thought by many to outweigh the costs. Copyright discussions may at …

Music And Space: An Experience In Design Process, Farhad Shariatrad

Farhad Shariatrad