Ethnomusicology Commons^™

Musikah V’Ḥalil, “Music And The Flute”: The Use Of Jewish Prayer In Flute And Piano Music, Kathryn L. Rudnik

Dissertations, 2020-current

Music has been a part of Jewish life since Biblical times and remains an integral part of the culture. Within Jewish music, instruments have also played an important role historically. The flute has been traced through Judaism back to Biblical times; however, it has lost prominence in modern synagogue and religious services. As Western music has developed into the twenty-first century, composers, both Jewish and Gentile, have been exposed to the music of the Jewish communities, some of whom have utilized it in their own compositions. Compositions based on Jewish prayer melodies have brought up the question of whether the …

Estás En La Sintonía De La Gozadera: En Vivo Desde Cumbiayork, El Movimiento Sonidero Del Futuro, Vita Dadoo

Capstones

For 30 years, New York's sonideros have been making noise on the central avenues of the city's Mexican and Latino ecosystems. The movement, made up of the sonidero (translated literally as "soundman"), his assistants, promoters, fans and dancers, has created a subculture that for a long time defined the relationship between the migrant and his native home in Mexico. Thirty years later, I explore how the movement has evolved, the traits that have distinguished it from the Mexican sonidero movement, and how it continues to flourish under a new generation of deejays.

The Double Silence: Reflections On Music And Musicians, Antoni Pizà

Publications and Research

A translation of EL DOBLE SILENCI, published in Catalan in 2003. The book is a compilation of essays originally published in Diario de Mallorca (2000-2003).

Etcètera Ii: Notes Sobre Música, Art I Literatura (2020-2022), Antoni Pizà

Publications and Research

A compilation of essays on music, the arts, and literature previously published in Bellver, the arts section of Diario de Mallorca (2020-2022). This is the second part of ETCETERA.

An Acute Sense Of Place: The Songs Of Norman Blake, Thomas Jutz

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

American flat-picking guitarist, singer and songwriter Norman Blake holds legendary status among guitar players, bluegrass, and folk musicians.

The aim of this research is to analyze the interaction of sense of place in Norman Blake’s songwriting. This research will explore the techniques Blake uses to create that acute sense of place. Elements of literary criticism, cultural geography, ethnomusicology, and sense of place studies, as well as historical background information on Northern Alabama and North Georgia will be employed to show how this particular region of Southeastern Appalachia has informed Blake’s songwriting.

The research questions that I aim to answer are …

Joyful, Joyful! The Musical Significance Of Beethoven's Ninth, Allison N. Zieg

Musical Offerings

Almost everyone is familiar with Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony and the famous four note motif that represents fate knocking at the door. His Third Symphony, or “The Heroic Symphony” that was originally written for Napoleon Bonaparte, enjoyed great success and helped shape the future of classical music. However, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony which contains the well-known tune “Ode to Joy” most drastically impacted classical music’s future. Beethoven was a master at taking simple ideas and combining them with past musical traditions to create something extravagant and new. This is most evident in his Ninth Symphony. In this work, Beethoven did something that …

Chanting The Medicine Buddha Sutra: A Musical Transcription And English Translation Of The Medicine Buddha Service Of The Liberation Rite Of Water And Land At Fo Guang Shan Monastery, Jeffrey W. Cupchik

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

A book review is presented for Reed Criddle, ed., Chanting the Medicine Buddha Sutra: A Musical Transcription and English Translation of the Medicine Buddha Service of the Liberation Rite of Water and Land at Fo Guang Shan Monastery. Recent Researches in the Oral Traditions of Music 13. Philip V. Bohlman, general editor. Middleton, WI: A-R Editions, 2020. 77 pages.

Shifting Paradigms, Pandemic Realities: The Reception Of Ishay Ribo’S Music In The American Hasidic Community, Tzipora Weinberg, Gordon Dale

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

The COVID-19 pandemic has irrevocably changed the landscape of social, communal, and religious life. Within the Jewish community, reactions to the virus have taken many forms. One of the most visible and criticized populations, the Hasidic community of Brooklyn, has been the focus of attention from the media and press, and has responded in unprecedented ways, both in political and social arenas. Our close study of the evolution of a particular instance of atypical musical permissiveness in the period preceding COVID-19, and its subsequent development during the pandemic period itself, follows this metamorphosis, limning the shift in communal norms as …

From The Islands To The Motherland: Motivic Traveling In Contemporary Gospel Music, Lauren Eldridge Stewart

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

Contemporary gospel musicians frequently use ad libs that describe diasporic desires, imagined identities, and the music itself. “To the islands” and “to the motherland” are directives that call audiences to join musicians in a motivic journey that spans the Black Atlantic, and flows between North America, the Caribbean, and Africa. Though deployed throughout the genre’s history, I focus here on the motivic traveling featured in gospel music released within the past two decades. I posit that musicians engage in this symbolism for three possible reasons: to enliven gospel music, to appeal to increasingly diverse congregations both within the U.S. and …

Congregational Music As Phatic Communication: Affect, Atmosphere, And Relational Ways Of Listening And Being, Anna E. Nekola

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

Much of the scholarship of congregational music focuses on participatory music in organized corporate worship. This article draws on theories of communication and affect to examine the secondary, background music that happens alongside other events in a worship service or in places other than the space of the sanctuary. Instead of understanding affects as an individual emotion, this article argues that music is made meaningful through a socio-cultural and relational affective process. This in turn enables one to understand how musics, particularly secondary non-participatory musics, work beyond language and representation in phatic ways that can engender powerful feelings of human …

Perils Of Heavy Rainfall: Displacement And Resettlement Driven By Floods, Shumaila Hemani Dr.

The Goose

Monsoon is typically a season to rejoice in South Asia because it cools off July's hot summer weather. In the poetry of Sufi mystic Shah Abdul Latif Bhitai, the monsoon represents a time of abundance, and his verses are prayers of abundance for Sindh and the entire world as rainfall is indeed a much-awaited season to cast off dry spells of the desert. However, in the past few years, climate change has led to heavy floods and massive displacement of poor people in Sindh. This year, floods even reached Karachi's urban city, the biggest metropolis of Pakistan, causing the displacement …

Music And Incitement To Violence: Anti-Muslim Hate Music In Burma/Myanmar, Heather Maclachlan

Music Faculty Publications

his article examines a corpus of Burmese-language anti-Muslim hate songs archived on YouTube. Burma/Myanmar is the site of recent genocidal violence perpetrated against Muslims, and these songs are part of the hate speech campaign that undergirds this violence. Using the definition of incitement articulated by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, the article shows that the lyrics of these songs constitute incitement to violence. Further, the comments written by YouTube listeners provide evidence that the songs provoke additional dehumanizing speech. The songs and their creators are therefore complicit in the recent violent persecution of Muslims in Myanmar.

အနှစ်ခ ျုပ်။ ။ …

Contemporary Legacies Of Morocco’S Gnawa Music Communities, Luke Sheppard

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Despite existing literature about Gnawa music and culture, there remains many discrepancies and holes a part of current understandings about the subject. This paper examines the existing literature in comparison with two site visits to different Gnawa music houses in Tangier and Khamlia Morocco. These visits including three interviews with musicians inform an understanding of the history, tourism, spirituality, performance aspects, and changing culture among the two distinct communities. The paper will draw upon these findings to evaluate what it currently means to be Gnawa, perform Gnawa, and spectate Gnawa performance in Morocco. Additionally, Gnawa music within the black Moroccan …

Changes In Identity: How Mongolian Musicians And Performers Have Responded To Geopolitical Transition, Heather Cook

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

During Mongolia’s socialist period, traditional forms of Mongolian music were deliberately altered as the government, heavily influenced by the Soviet Union, attempted to modernize Mongolian culture. Throughout this period, traditional instruments were modified, the types of music that could be performed were strictly censored, and the structure of performances was set to strictly mimic those of Western orchestras. After Mongolia’s Democratic Revolution of 1990, the artistic freedom of Mongolian musicians has greatly increased, but even now, socialist cultural policies are deeply intertwined with Mongolian musical culture. Why is this the case? What is the common perception among performers about the …

Qui Té Por Dels ‘Rosalía Studies’? Guia De Perplexos, Antoni Pizà

Publications and Research

Molt a principis dels anys noranta del segle XX, quan jo començava a veure la possibilitat de doctorar-me, la musicologia era, si se’m permet una caricatura, una disciplina de capellans i arxivers. A l’Estat Espanyol, per exemple, la carrera oficial encara no existia, si bé hi havia estudis i tesis a algunes escoles de doctorat de filologia o història de l’art. El mot «musicologia», de fet, ni tan sols era acceptat o pràcticament acabava d’entrar en alguns diccionaris prescriptius. Sense estudis reglats, els aspirants a musicòlegs emulaven la feina, la metodologia i les temàtiques dels seus mestres.

Voice, Arabness, And The Vocal Talent Competition Arab Idol, Insia Malik

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

One of the most popular entertainment programs on Arabic television in the 2010s through to its most recent season in 2017, Arab Idol (Mahbub al-‘Arab) was an offshoot of the Idols television franchise that launched globally in the early 2000s. This dissertation is a study of how Arabness was voiced quite literally on Arab Idol, through rhetoric and production—but primarily through the music. A show in which an Arabness is implicit in the nomenclature, Arab Idol catered to an Arab audience and thereby featured music that might speak to this audience. What distinguished the offshoot from its …

Rupturismes: Art Sonor A Mallorca, Un Poc De Context, Antoni Pizà

Publications and Research

Antoni Caimari (1943-2021), com sap tothom, no era un músic com els altres; i tampoc no ho volia ser. Encapçalava els títols de les seves obres musicals amb les inicials EB o «esbós» (com altres compositors les inicien amb Op.) per donar una idea que no tenien res a veure amb les composicions tancades i immanents dels mestres del passat. Aquests EBs no tenien partitura perquè, com va dir Llorenç Barber, un altre compositor donat als aforismes, estaven alliberats de la tirania de la «partiturocràcia».

Freedom And Control: Musicians’ Autonomy And Record Labels’ Influence In Producing The Sound Of Contemporary Jazz, Jiwon Kwon

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

It is easy to find news articles and jazz albums titles that describe jazz musicians as geniuses. The notion that jazz musicians are geniuses gives the misleading impression that a jazz record is the pure outcome of a musician’s artistry, without any aesthetic intervention by record labels in the process of making albums. However, my interviews with jazz musicians and record label executives reveal that many jazz records released by labels are the result of collaborative effort between musicians and labels. Labels involve themselves in the album-making process and give artistic input by deciding the concept of an album, the …

Non:Wa: Navigating Indigenous Modernity Through Female Artists' Perspectives, Nicole Bussey

Undergraduate Student Research Internships Conference

This article examines the relationship between tradition and modern elements of Indigenous music through a cyclical perspective, and challenges colonial concepts of Indigenous modernity. Indigenous culture is often portrayed in mainstream culture as a relic of the past, which renders it incompatible with modernity. With a special focus on Indigenous female artists’ perspectives, I examine the ways in which women placed in this unique intersection challenge the binaries of past/present and tradition/modern.

Relocating Community To The Virtual: Sound Knowledge, Affective Listening, And The (Dis)Embodying Of Sound And Space, Zachery D. Coffey

Masters Theses

Music within Protestant church communities frequently reduces the distinction between performers and audience, emphasizing the collective, participatory role of all congregation members, in manners of music making similar to those discussed by Thomas Turino. This dynamic helps establish individual and communal identities. With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, church communities saw changes in their services, music, and ways of life. Meeting in a physical building proved impossible due to the dangers of COVID-19 and many churches mitigated these dangers by streaming, recording, and posting services online. Between 2020 and 2022, I observed and participated in changes to technological production …

“800 Years We Have Been Down”: Rebel Songs And The Retrospective Reach Of The Irish Republican Narrative, Seán Ó Cadhla

Articles

From the glamorous, cross-dressing “Rebel, Rebel” of David Bowie, to the righteous Trenchtown “Soul Rebel” of Bob Marley and The Wailers, both varied and various musical articulations of cultural and socio-political rebellion have long enjoyed a ubiquitous presence across multiple soundscapes. As a musicological delineator in Ireland, however, ‘rebel’ conveys a specifically political dynamic due to its consistent deployment as an all-encompassing descriptor for songs detailing events and personalities from the Irish national struggle. This paper sets out to examine the specific musical delineator of “rebel song” from both musicological and politico-ideological perspectives with a view to interrogating its appropriateness …

Lliçons Magistrals, Antoni Pizà

Publications and Research

No seria pianista. Jo no arribaria mai a ser pianista. L’epifania va començar a cristal·litzar poc després d’haver arribat a Salzburg el 1982 amb intencions d’estudiar-hi piano. Com el narrador de la novel·la de Thomas Bernhard Der Untergeher (si es vol, el fracassat o el mediocre), jo havia quedat psicològicament gelat per la presència d’alguns dels millors pianistes del món. En poc temps, i sense capacitat de digerir-ho —tenia vint anys escassos—, havia vist i sentit en viu Alfred Brendel, Maurizio Pollini, Claudio Arrau i Bruno Leonardo Gelber, entre altres.

Archetype, Story, And Myth Within Bulgarian Folklore And Black American Music, Wes C. Georgiev

University Honors Theses

The confluence of several disciplines is explored through the investigation of archetypes, stories, folklore, and myths within the realm of music composition. This research aims to draw fresh conclusions which contend with some of the meanings of being a human. All research is done in conjunction with the creation of a new body of compositions written and arranged for piano, upright bass, and drum set. The academic objective of these pieces is to combine many of the salient characteristics of Bulgarian Folk music with those of Black American music. The supporting research in this essay examines centuries of migration, conflict, …

Decolonizing And Enriching Opera: A Nigerian Folktale One Act Opera, Miracle O. Amah

Dissertations, 2020-current

Aligned with the decolonial aims of this project, this English and Yoruba language opera promotes an international understanding of African operatic styles which reflect literary, musical, instrumental and dance cultural traditions. This paper addresses some of the issues faced by people of color in the opera world, ways that people of color have been resilient in this genre and ways to enrich the opera world with the aim of decolonizing and deframing the white racial structure. This opera was first performed on March 29th, 2022 and was created as a workshop for performances in high schools, colleges, music institutions, and …

'Ahora Estamos Más Unidos': Claiming Resilience In The Musical And Visual Aftermath Of The El Paso Mass Shooting, Eduardo Garcia

Music ETDs

The El Paso Wal-Mart Mass Shooting on August 3, 2019, prompted swift response from the local community to create artistic spaces of remembrance. This study examines the musical (mariachi and corrido) and visual (altares, murals, and memorials) manifestations present at makeshift and formal memorials for the victims. I analyze how members of the El Paso-Ciudad Juárez borderland situated their artistic work in the aftermath of the shooting. I argue that these artists responded to the attack with symbolic acts of resilience rooted in cultural and collective memory, embodiment of trauma, and the lived experience of corporeal …

“Started From The Bottom”: The Ascension Of Hip-Hop As A Sonic Art Form, Benjamin Nile Stewart

Theses and Dissertations

For over four decades, hip-hop has been a part of the American soundscape, drawing from influences of jazz, rhythm and blues, disco, etc. Hip-hop is one of the cultural bridges between African Americans and the world. This paper will focus on the artists, culture and its ascent to high art.

Qigang Chen’S Synthesis Of Multicultural Compositional Features In Er Huang, Isaac Reel

Music Theses

The purpose of this thesis is to identify prominent multicultural features of Qigang Chen's piano concerto, "Er Huang." It looks at theoretical aspects borrowed from Chinese practice as well as the practices of Chen's mentor Olivier Messiaen. This thesis then shows how Chen synthesizes those traditions. Chinese concepts discussed are banqiang, gong shift, bian sheng (changed notes) and the specific luogu dianzi (percussion topoi from beijing opera) ji-ji-feng. Messiaenic concepts discussed are motivic recycling and transformation, added values, irregular augmentation and diminution, modalism and rhythmic contrast.

Creolization In New Orleans: Jazz And Cultural Hybridity 1900-1940, Franklin Dennis Dow

Masters Theses

ABSTRACT

My project builds on existing histories of jazz, theories of creolization, and studies on cultural hybridity. Creolization and hybridity were equal partners in the creation of a societal and musical revolution. As a student and a performer of jazz, I have found that this aspect of jazz history has been neglected and under researched. This thesis attempts to fill in this gap and is guided by four major questions: (1) How did creolization and cultural hybridity influence the development and reception of jazz in the early half of the twentieth century? (2) How did the Creole and Black communities …

Echoes Of Home, Hanna Traynham

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The artist discusses her Master of Fine Arts exhibition, Echoes of Home, held at the Tipton Gallery in Johnson City, Tennessee on display March 15 through April 8, 2022. The author provides insight into concepts and influences relating to the creation of the exhibition with perspective on her intimate connection with place and memory.

The exhibit features five installations addressing home, elusive memory, and the change and continuity of cultural traditions over time. The works consist of a series of large-scale wild clay vessels, gestural clay bookends, a wall installation of cups with a line drawing, suspended porcelain slabs, …

Andy Stewart, Andy M. Stewart, And Exonostalgia: The Draw Of Tartanry And Kailyard School, Sarah Tackitt

Honors Theses

Andy Stewart and Andy M. Stewart are popular Scottish folk and traditional musicians operating at different periods during the development of mass media. Andy Stewart’s career was marked by the introduction of the television into Scotland, and he made his career being compére of the Scottish television show The White Heather Club. After gaining international recognition, viewers and listeners associated his tartanry and stereotypically Scottish humor as representative of his culture and country.

Andy M. Stewart gained international recognition during the folk revival, in which he wrote songs both for his solo career and for the band Silly Wizard …