Ethnomusicology Commons^™

Sonic Liminalities Of Faith In Sundanese Vocal Music, Sean Williams

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

As the Sundanese have come to lean on increasingly outward expressions of their Islamic faith – through the use of the Islamic headscarf and other fashion choices, as well as through musical means – it has been the women who have consistently provided the most obvious, outward expressions of West Java’s increasingly public Islamic cultural practices. The aristocratic sung poetry of tembang Sunda has its roots in the imagery and grandeur of the 14^th-century Sundanese Hindu kingdom, Pajajaran. Songs that celebrate Pajajaran – the Golden Age of local culture – feature characters not only from the Ramayana, but …

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Sounding The Congregational Voice, Marissa Glynias Moore

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

Congregational singing is a participatory vocal practice undertaken by Christians across a wide range of denominations, yet the specific qualities and active capacities of the congregational voice have yet to be investigated. Drawing on recent musicological and philosophical perspectives on voice, I theorize the congregational voice as an active practice, illuminating its abilities to do something in worship through sound.

Taking Brian Kane’s model of the voice as a circulation of content (logos), sound (echos), and source (topos), I explore how these categories are redefined through an active-based theorization of congregational singing. I argue that …

Paralinguistic Ramification Of Language Performance In Islamic Ritual, Michael Frishkopf

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

Across time and space, Islamic ritual practices maintain certain fixed features while adapting to local environments, thereby developing a branching or ramified structure—though political, economic, ideological, or technological factors may cause certain local forms to globalize as well. Such ramification offers a means of interpreting the past as well as a window into religious meaning and the ritual process itself. How does such adaptation take place, what drives it, what is its social-spiritual meaning and impact, what can such a ramified variety across history and place tell us, and where does the essence of such ritual lie? In this paper …

Cervelli, Luanne Beth (Fa 376), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Folklife Archives Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Folklife Archives Project 376. Interview with John Buell Edmonds conducted by LuAnne Beth Cervelli on 18 September 1988. Edmonds, a notable gospel singer from Bowling Green, Kentucky discusses his experiences performing gospel music, his involvement in recording and promoting gospel groups, his relationship with the local choir, and the current state of gospel music.

The Musicality Of Salsa Dancers: An Ethnographic Study, Janice Mahinka

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This work analyzes the musical knowledge and aesthetics acquired by improvisatory social salsa dancers who hone close listening skills through corporeal means. The connections that these dancers construct between music, self, and partner make evident an engagement with musicality that can be seen through their demonstration of kinesthetic entrainment, structural feeling of hypermetric conventions, and enactment of expressive microtiming within beat and metric structures. I introduce the concept of timespace to explain how dancers manipulate this physiological experience to create different feelings in a dance, addressing issues that dancers raised in our feedback interviews such as feel, flow, and play. …

From Maroons To Mardi Gras: The Role Of African Cultural Retention In The Development Of The Black Indian Culture Of New Orleans, Robin Ligon Williams

Masters Theses

After a three hundred year journey from the continent, African cultural retention remains at the core of the Black Indian masking tradition of New Orleans. Prior research from progenitors in anthropology and ethnomusicology, focusing on African cultural retention, include the ground-breaking ethnographies of Robert Farris Thompson, Gwendolyn Midlo Hall, Kalamu Ya Salaam, Michael P. Smith, Margaret Thompson Drewel, Stephen Wehmeyer, Jason Berry and others, have established a solid foundation for research on African influences and retentions in expressive folk cultures, laying a firm foundation for this project. The author’s insider experiences within the Black Indian tradition are underscored by several …

The Somali Cultural Integration Through Music In Minneapolis, Cleo Knickerbocker

All Zyzzogeton Presentations

As a jazz pianist and music major, I had the unique opportunity to perform with and study Somali music. Through this experience, I not only learned about Somali music but also its significance to Somali culture and how music can act as a bridge, bringing together Somali and non-Somali communities in Minneapolis. As a result of my research, I’ve developed "The Somali Music Minnesota" website which displays information about the history of Somali music, events, and resources available for Somali music. Most importantly, the website includes a variety of Somali music excerpts. The site is accessible to English-speaking as well …

"Where Were You While We Were Getting High?": How Manchester Became The Republik Of Mancunia, Colin Damms

Merge

No abstract provided.

Mbalax: Traces Of Tradition In Senegalese Hip-Hop, Mikayla Simeral

Masters Theses

What is mbalax and how is it adaptively transforming the modern-day culture of Dakar, Senegal? Throughout This this study, willI plan to provide a glimpse into the current hip-hop culture of Dakar, ultimately revealing how up-and-coming artists are implementing mbalax. The research for this study took place I was in Dakar, Senegal from January 26th - February 16th, and was completed my field research in both Washington D.C. and New York City from February 22nd-26th. During this time m, I was able to connect with multiple hip-hop artists, political activists/rappers, drummers, and sabar dancers were consulted. More knowledge was obtained …

Women In Music: Letting A Long Story Be Long Contemplating Women’S Sonic, Musical, And Spiritual Experiences In Prehistory, Deborah J. Saidel

Theses and Dissertations

Situated within deep history, this study explores the auditory and spiritual lives of Paleolithic women. It considers their personal agency in mediating the spiritual power of sound and how doing so contributes to a multifaceted musicality. The theoretical framework involves a wide spectrum of topics, from ways of rethinking the writing of history and reckoning with time, to sound studies and the study of acoustics in ancient sites, to a critical examination through a feminist lens of normative disciplinary scholarship in anthropology and archaeology, religious studies, and musicology. I explore potential audio-visual-lithic relationships for their implications for deepening an understanding …

Music In The Northern Woods: An Archaeological Exploration Of Musical Instrument Remains, Matthew Durocher

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Archaeological and historical literature neglects music and sound. The quantity and distribution of musical remains found during archaeological excavations at Coalwood, a Cleveland-Cliffs Iron Company (CCI) logging camp active from 1901-1912 in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, addresses the importance of music to the people that lived there. Musical reed plates from harmonicas, concertinas, and accordions were recovered and examined. These musical remains have traditionally been ignored as a diagnostic artifact, but here, I use them as primary evidence to access the daily lives of people in the northern woods. To do this, I will present how CCI developed Coalwood …

Guitar Arrangements Of Selected Danzas Of Juan F. Acosta, With New Considerations Of His Music And Musical Life, Hermelindo Ruiz Mestre

Theses and Dissertations--Music

Juan Francisco Acosta (1890-1968) was a prolific composer, band conductor, and educator from Puerto Rico who created 1,256 original compositions. Even though his activities and influence were integral to the musical life of Puerto Rico in the twentieth century, many details of his life and works remain unknown.

This project centers on Acosta’s contribution to the Puerto Rican tradition of the danza—a dance-based genre originating in the nineteenth century—through the study and arrangement of five of Acosta's danzas. Although Acosta composed most danzas for piano, he adapted them for performances by the municipal bands that he led …

A Critical And Performance Edition Of Agustin Barrios’S Cueca: Comparative Analysis Of Form, Notation, And Performance Practice Of Barrios’S Work To Traditional Chilean Cuecas From The Beginning Of The Twentieth-Century, Enrique Sandoval-Cisternas

Theses and Dissertations--Music

Agustin Barrios's guitar music has become increasingly popular over the last forty years. After his death, a revival of interest in his compositions began in the 1970s, motivated by a series of publications and recordings of his music by important guitar performers at that time. The most important of these recordings came from the Australian guitar performer John Williams, who was interviewed in 1976 by ABC Television Australia for a film about the Paraguayan composer. The next year, Williams recorded a collection of fifteen works in his album John Williams-Barrios: John Williams Plays the Music of Agustín Barrios Mangoré. …

Max Neuhaus, R. Murray Schafer, And The Challenges Of Noise, Megan Elizabeth Murph

Theses and Dissertations--Music

In this dissertation, I analyzed Max Neuhaus’s (1939-2009) and R. Murray Schafer’s (b. 1932) commentary and work regarding noise, its control, and its relationship with the environment from the 1960 to the 1980s. Both Neuhaus and Schafer as well as those more directly involved with noise abatement research and policy were responding to the challenges and possibilities that noise posed in the latter twentieth century. In this project, I delved into these substantial links and argued that responding to and engaging with noise abatement policies was a key impetus to much of their work, which scholarship has yet to critically …

The Same Old Blues Crap: Selling The Blues At Fat Possum Records, Jacqueline Sahagian

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis interrogates the marketing strategies of the Oxford, Mississippi-based record label Fat Possum, which was founded in the early 1990s by Matthew Johnson with the goal of recording obscure hill country blues artists. Fat Possum gained recognition for its raw-sounding recordings of bluesmen, including R.L. Burnside, Junior Kimbrough, Cedell Davis, and T-Model Ford, as well as its irreverent marketing techniques. Adopting the tagline “not the same old blues crap,” Fat Possum asserted that its blues were both different from and superior to all other blues music. This thesis argues that while Fat Possum claimed to be a disruptive force …

“Tiny Little Screw Cap” (“Xiao Xiao Luosimao”): Children’S Songs From The Chinese Cultural Revolution, Lei X. Ouyang

Music Faculty Works

In 1942 Mao Zedong presented an influential policy for revolutionary culture in his “Talks at the Yan’an Conference on Literature and Art.” Mao detailed how the arts could act as a “powerful weapon” in uniting and educating the masses, “attacking and annihilating the enemy,” and simultaneously foster solidarity in the struggle (Translated by Bonnie McDougall. Ann Arbor: Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan, 1980). Accordingly, revolutionary music should focus on the three pillars of socialist society: workers, peasants, and soldiers. Many children’s songs were composed and disseminated in attempts to educate the next generation of Chinese socialist society. Songs …

Review Of "Chinatown Opera Theater In North America" By N. Y. Rao, Lei X. Ouyang

Music Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

Immigration Et Clips Musicaux : Vers La Construction D’Espaces Sans Frontières, Souleymane Ganou

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

Immigration is a reality which touches primarily the young in most country. This phenomenon must be undressed of its blaming considerations, in view of its incommensurable contribution in the development of many countries. If the United States of America arrived at the legalization of immigration, by instituting a lottery called “lottery visa”, it is that they are conscious of the benefit that this phenomenon can bring to their nation. Moreover, the United States is a nation built on the bases of the immigration to which they owe their power today. They are numerous these young people who set off to …

A Glance At Astor Piazzolla's Histoire Du Tango: Lecture Recital, Elizabeth Ritter

Honors Projects

This project is a lecture recital including the performance of four musical works from different countries as well as a lecture Astor Piazzolla's Histoire Du Tango. The four pieces performed in this recital were Eldin Burton's Sonatina for flute and piano, the first movement of Astor Piazzolla's Histoire Du Tango, Hirota's Shikararete, and Bela Bartok's Romanian Folk Dances for piccolo and piano. Before performing the Piazzolla, there was a lecture which included the teaching of the musical aspects of the tango within this piece, a short biography of Piazzolla, and a historical look at the four movements of this piece. …

U.S. Metropolitan Bridges To Puerto Rican Music Identity; Cuban And Puerto Rican Music Connections From The 1920'S-1970'S, William George Johnson

Masters Theses

“Cuba and Puerto Rico are As two wings of the same bird, They receive flowers and bullets Into the same heart ...” (Lola Rodriguez de Tio, 1868) Puerto Rican poet and political activist Lola Rodriguez de Tio penned these words after being inspired by the call for the independence of Puerto Rico. Her words were further canonized in Puerto Rican cultural identity after being published in the song La Borinquena by composer Rafael Hernandez. Hernandez’s song would later become a musical symbol of national identity for the island of Puerto Rico and the Puerto Rican Diaspora. The connection between the …