Ethnomusicology Commons^™

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 …

Misticismo Y Arcadismo En El Villancico Novohispano. Manuel De Sumaya Y Sus Contemporáneos, Luciana Kube Tamayo

Vernacular: New Connections in Language, Literature, & Culture

El siglo XVIII trajo consigo una evolución estilística vertiginosa en todas las artes. La plástica, la literatura y la música confluyen y sirven de soporte a un arte nuevo, el Rococó. La floración churrigueresca está intensamente presente, además de en lienzos y biombos, en el vocabulario de la lírica de la Nueva España; a la vez que se afianzan los modelos religiosos, por un lado, se asientan los modelos pastoriles por otro. En cuanto a la espiritualidad, los modelos se encuentran encajados en la miniatura poética y el ingenio dieciochesco, desbordante de naturaleza y fantasía. En el presente trabajo me …

Everyday Creativity: Singing Goddesses In The Himalayan Foothills, Nadia Chana

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

A book review is presented for Kirin Narayan, Everyday Creativity: Singing Goddesses in the Himalayan Foothills (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016).

Bodies Of Silence, Floods Of Nectar: Ritual Music In Contemporary Brahmanical Tantric Temples Of Kerala, Paolo Pacciolla

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

The Tantric concept of sound (nāda) as universal life-force has seen worldwide diffusion over the last few decades but such a fame does not reflect academic interest in the impact of Tantra on music. Indeed, while a number of essays have been written to demonstrate the contribution of Tantrism to the evolution of Indian religions and culture, its contribution to music has been left largely unexplored.

The word Tantra refers to a pan-Asian religious phenomenon spread over numerous centuries and including a wide number of sects having different and even opposite philosophical and theological approaches which may be …

The Global Encounter As Communitas: Inter-Pilgrim Musicking Along The Contemporary Camino De Santiago, Hannah Snavely

International Journal of Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage

In an effort to provide new ways of theorising pilgrimages as global encounters (White, 2012) and sites of cosmopolitan interactions, I offer a sound-centred investigation into inter-pilgrim musical events that occurred along the Camino de Santiago (Camino), a historically Catholic pilgrimage in northern Spain. This ethnomusicological perspective on the Camino highlights contemporary pilgrim rituals and artistic practices that are frequently overlooked in other Camino scholarship, which tends to focus on historical musics or the tangible arts. On the Camino, music primarily facilitates cross-cultural encounters for pilgrims, though at varied levels of mis/understandings. This paper explores the ways that participatory musicking …