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Full-Text Articles in Ethnomusicology

Disruptive Voices In The American Musical Discourse: Comic Song Performance In The American Parlor, 1865-1917, Kevin Steven O'Brien Aug 2013

Disruptive Voices In The American Musical Discourse: Comic Song Performance In The American Parlor, 1865-1917, Kevin Steven O'Brien

Masters Theses

In the latter half of the nineteenth century, the American song sheet industry vastly increased in size. This mass mediated form reached a broad number of consumers, who performed this music in their homes, identified with it, and shaped the new discourse on their identity as they did so. Simultaneously, Americans were re-shaping their cultural conceptions of music, in a process Lawrence Levine chronicled as the emergence of “highbrow” and “lowbrow” distinctions. Performing music in the culturally sacralized space of the parlor was meant to be an edifying experience and a display of genteel, “highbrow” identities. Performing comic songs (comic …


"You're In The Right Place At The Right Time": Double Consciousness, Cultural Memory, And Cultural Representation In College Gospel Choirs, Emmanuel Joshua Stokes Aug 2013

"You're In The Right Place At The Right Time": Double Consciousness, Cultural Memory, And Cultural Representation In College Gospel Choirs, Emmanuel Joshua Stokes

Masters Theses

Gospel music exists within a rich cultural and historical space—at one level, it is part of an important Black musical tradition and at another, it is part of mainstream American history. College gospel choirs, then, mediate the divide of being part of the Black diasporic, religious music aesthetic while co-existing in the academic setting within a largely White-European western art music arena. Moreover, they provide space for students to commune socially, express faith, and gain cultural knowledge. I argue that through the theoretical lenses of double consciousness, cultural memory, and cultural representation, one can clearly understand the position of gospel …