Digital Commons Network^™

Intangible Cultural Heritage: A Benefit To Climate-Displaced And Host Communities, Gül Aktürk, Martha B. Lerski

Publications and Research

Climate change is borderless, and its impacts are not shared equally by all communities. It causes an imbalance between people by creating a more desirable living environment for some societies while erasing settlements and shelters of some others. Due to floods, sea level rise, destructive storms, drought, and slow-onset factors such as salinization of water and soil, people lose their lands, homes, and natural resources. Catastrophic events force people to move voluntarily or involuntarily. The relocation of communities is a debatable climate adaptation measure which requires utmost care with human rights, ethics, and psychological well-being of individuals upon the issues …

Marine Melodies: Traditional Scottish And Irish Mermaid And Selkie Songs As Performed By Top Female Vocalists In Contemporary Celtic Music, Olivia H. Phillips

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Mermaids and human-seal hybrids, called selkies, are a vibrant part of Celtic folklore, including ballad and song traditions. Though some of these songs have been studied in-depth, there is a lack of research comparing them to each other or to their contemporary renditions. This research compares traditional melodies and texts of the songs “The Mermaid,” “The Grey Selchie of Sule Skerry,” and “Hó i Hó i” to contemporary recordings by top female vocalists in Scottish and Irish music.

The texts and melodies I have identified as “source” material are those most thoroughly examined by early ballad and folklore scholars. The …

01 Traditional Songs Introduction, William Donner

Sikaiana Traditional Songs

This is an introduction to Sikaiana songs. It includes a discussion of the social cultural context of song composition and singing. There is a discussion of the different features of song production and a list of different song genres. Most of the discussion is concerned with traditional song expression that are part of derived form changes associated with colonialism and modernization.

Vol. 43 No. 2 (2020): Pacific Studies Front Matter, The Jonathan Nāpela Center For Hawaiian And Pacific Islands Studies

Pacific Studies

Front Matter for the Vol. 43, No 2-Dec 2020 edition of the Pacific Studies Journal.

Vol. 43 No. 2 (2020): Pacific Studies Full Issue, The Jonathan Nāpela Center For Hawaiian And Pacific Islands Studies

Pacific Studies

Pacific Studies is published two times a year by The Jonathan Nāpela Center for Hawaiian and Pacific Studies, Brigham Young University Hawai‘i #1979, 55–220 Kulanui Street, Lāʻie, Hawai‘i 96762, but responsibility for opinions expressed in the articles rests with the authors alone. Subscription rate is US$40.00 yearly, payable to The Jonathan Nāpela Center for Hawaiian and Pacific Studies. The Jonathan Nāpela Center for Hawaiian and Pacific Studies (formerly The Pacific Institute) is an organization funded by Brigham Young University Hawai‘i. The Center assists the University in meeting its cultural and educational goals by undertaking a program of teaching, research, and …

Warfare And Welcome: Practicality And Qur’Ānic Hierarchy In Ibāḍī Muslims’ Jurisprudential Rulings On Music, Bradford J. Garvey

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

While much ink has been spilled by musicologists on the legal standing of music in Islamic jurisprudential scholarship, few scholars have offered as comprehensive a view as Lois Ibsen Al-Faruqi. Thirty-five years after her major works on this issue, this article seeks to reassess her model of musical legitimacy within Muslim scholarship. Al-Faruqi places Qur’ānic recitation at the apex of a unidirectional continuum of sound art, with genres less similar to the recitation of the Qur’ān located progressively further away from it. Based on fieldwork in the Sultanate of Oman in 2015-17 and engaging with recent reinvigorations on the anthropological …

Metta, Mudita, And Metal: Dhamma Instruments In Burmese Buddhism, Gavin D. Douglas

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

Bells, gongs, and other dhamma instruments offer valuable insights into the role of sound in Buddhist practice. Participation in musical events in the Theravada Buddhist world is deemed inappropriate for devote laity and for those who have taken monastic vows. The seventh Buddhist precept implores monks “to abstain from dancing, singing, and music,” yet Buddhist monasteries and pagodas are sonically vibrant places that contain a wide variety of layered bells, gongs, chants, and prayers sculpting the sonic environment. This study examines the soundscape of Burmese Buddhist social space and argues that these sounds are essential to understanding the lived practice …

Passing The Baton From Detroit To Berlin: Techno’S Introduction To The Global Scene, Rebekah M. Thomas

Backstage Pass

Podcast describing the history and cultural impact of the techno music trend in the 1980s and 1990s.

Current Efforts In Sustaining Peranakan Chinese Music In Melaka, Zin Guan Goh

Student Works (2020-2029)

Peranakan Chinese (Straits-born Chinese) music such as dondang sayang may not be a familiar folk music to the modernized Malaysian community, however, there are associations and organisations that thrived on to sustain the musical culture in Melaka. In the advanced influence of popular culture and modernity, efforts of sustaining local culture and Peranakan Chinese music becomes more challenging. Thus, this study aims to investigate the various efforts put on in sustaining the musical culture and its consequences in terms of authenticity in present Melaka. The past literatures reveal scholarship on Peranakan Chinese music in Malaysia came to a halt in …

Place-Making Through Performance: Spoken Word Poetry And The Reclamation Of “Chocolate City”, Tiffany Marquise Jones

Theses and Dissertations

Predominantly situated in an area formerly known as Black Broadway, my research is based on long-term immersion in the District’s network of Spoken Word poetry and poets. Specifically, I focus on two key sites that offer contrasting depictions of open mic culture: Busboys and Poets, a D.C.-based chain located in several well-known neighborhoods undergoing gentrification, and SpitDat D.C., a grassroots (and often displaced) movement known as the area’s longest running open mic series. At these venues, many artists – especially native and long-term residents of the area – illustrate the Black experience along with a fascinating correlation between place, performer, …

Williams, Michael Ann (Fa 459), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Folklife Archives Finding Aids

Finding aid and interview transcriptions for Folklife Archives Project 459. Interviews related to Sarah Gertrude Knott and the National Folk Festival conducted by Michael Ann Williams and Hillary Glatt as part of a joint project for the Kentucky Oral History Commission and Western Kentucky University. The audio interviews did not come with this collection. Interview transcriptions may be accessed by clicking on the "Download" button to the right and then clicking on the hyperlinks in the finding aid.

Empire’S Informal Ties: Pioneer Anthropologists In Davao, 1904–1916, Patricia Irene; Dacudao

Philippine Studies: Historical and Ethnographic Viewpoints

The five Americans who studied the indigenous Bagobo people in Davao from 1904 to 1916 did not adhere to the evolutionary anthropology championed by colonial administrator Dean Worcester. Their fieldwork, being either mostly self-supported or through the privately funded Field Museum of Natural History, was also financially independent of the government. Thisarticle studies their personal, academic, and professional quests in the context of museum collections, party politics, and changes in the discipline of anthropology. The circumstances of their visits and subsequent publications on Davao show that these pioneers pursued anthropology with a different direction, away from state stereotypes and imperial …

Vol. 43 No. 1 (2020): Pacific Studies Full Issue, The Jonathan Nāpela Center For Hawaiian And Pacific Islands Studies

Pacific Studies

Pacific Studies is published two times a year by The Jonathan Nāpela Center for Hawaiian and Pacific Studies, Brigham Young University Hawai‘i #1979, 55–220 Kulanui Street, Lāʻie, Hawai‘i 96762, but responsibility for opinions expressed in the articles rests with the authors alone. Subscription rate is US$40.00 yearly, payable to The Jonathan Nāpela Center for Hawaiian and Pacific Studies. The Jonathan Nāpela Center for Hawaiian and Pacific Studies (formerly The Pacific Institute) is an organization funded by Brigham Young University Hawai‘i. The Center assists the University in meeting its cultural and educational goals by undertaking a program of teaching, research, and …

Vol. 43 No. 1 (2020): Pacific Studies Front Matter, The Jonathan Nāpela Center For Hawaiian And Pacific Islands Studies

Pacific Studies

Front Matter for the Vol. 43, No 1-Jun 2020 edition of the Pacific Studies Journal.

How Choreometrics Reflects Self-Identity And Self-Concept Through Cultural Dance: A Developing Method, Naowarat Buddee

Expressive Therapies Capstone Theses

Abstract

This arts-based autoethnography research aims to analyze the researcher’s personal reflections of cultural embodied experiences through the connection of Thai cultural dance movements, cultural patterns, and expressive behaviors in Thai cultural contexts. These also reflected the researcher’s personal-identity and self-concept. As cultural dance has impacts on social structures and human behaviors both physically and psychologically in social interactions throughout the developmental lifespan, the researcher was inspired by the concept of Choreometrics to look closely at personal dance experiences in relation to Thai culture. This autoethnography is a case study of the researcher who identifies as Thai and reflects her …

2020 Iggad Conference Program, Charles Joyner Institute For Gullah And African Diaspora Studies

IGGAD Conference Programs

Program of the 2020 IGGAD Conference: Without Borders: Tracing the Cultural, Archival, and Political African Diaspora.

The Mulberry Tree, The Birds And The Divine In The Music Of The Dotār In Khorāssān (Iran), Farrokh Vahabzadeh

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

The relationship between music and environment plays an important role both in musical compositions and in research on music. The paper is about an anthropological study on the relationship between music of the long-necked lute dotār and the environment, in the region of Khorāssān in Iran. By examining the close relationship between the mulberry tree, birds, metaphor and music of dotār, we will try to show how the environmental factors, data or aspects can be directly or indirectly related to the music, particularly through the symbolism of Sufi beliefs in the region. These relationships to the nature are strongly linked …

Ecojustice, Religious Folklife And A Sound Ecology, Jeff Todd Titon

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

Folk, traditional, and indigenous ecological knowledges have a significant role to play in ecojustice. A case study in the traditional ecological knowledge among one of the religious communities with whom I have spent several decades illustrates how they embody the main principle and three fields of an ecological rationality: the community of inter-related beings; the ways the beings participate in that community or place; and the relations of nature and the nonhuman world to humans and human nature. Ecological rationality stands in contrast to economic rationality, a branch of instrumental reason exemplified by what economists call rational choice theory. An …

Conch Calls Into The Anthropocene: Pututus As Instruments Of Human-Environmental Relations At Monumental ChavíN, Miriam A. Kolar

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

Pututus, conch shell musical horns, are known in the Andes as annunciatory devices enabling their players to call across long distances. Beyond their iconic call, the sonic and gestural versatility possible in pututu performance constitutes dynamical evidence for prehistorical uses and site-specific cultural valuations of these multifaceted ritual instruments. Pututus appear in drawings created during the Spanish conquest and colonization of the Andes, and intact shell horns have been excavated from monumental architecture in Perú preceding the Inca by more than two millennia. At the late Andean Formative center at Chavín de Huántar, Perú, a well-preserved ceremonial complex active …

Intangible Cultural Heritage In Asia: Traditions In Transition, Ziying You, Patricia Anne Hardwick

All Faculty Articles

No abstract provided.

Resource Ecologies, Political Economies And The Ethics Of Audio Technologies In The Anthropocene, Eliot Bates

Publications and Research

Understanding how recorded and amplified stage musics contribute towards producing the Anthropocene necessitates attending to complex transnational flows of material, capital and labor, and how they coalesce into technological objects. This is complicated by the wide array of sites, practices and knowledges involved during various stages of the production process, from initial resource extraction, to smelting, component manufacturing, technology assembly, and distribution. To develop a suitable technological ethics, and to understand what happens to environments and to human, animal and plant lifeworlds, requires one to resist abstraction and undertake a global accounting of resource ecologies with recourse to planetary-scale political …

Handing Down The Heritage: Preserving Irish Diasporic Identities In The Festival City Of Montana, Margaret Mary Walsh

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Butte, Montana is a tough, historic industrial town in western Montana known for its mining, its Irish, and strangely, its festivals. The city boasts countless parades and community events each year for a variety of holidays as well as for showcases of traditions and ethnic pride. Three celebrations in particular, St. Patrick’s Day, Fourth of July, and An Rí Rá, attract visitors from all over the country – and world – who seek to experience the enthusiasm and splendor of these celebrations. So, what can these popular celebrations in Montana’s Festival City, Butte, reveal about the Irish community living there? …

Stage Dives And Shared Mics: Ethnographic Perspectives On Community And Networking In The Central Florida Punk Rock Scene, Lauren Friedman

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

Music remains an important aspect of culture and society, proven by copious academic studies exploring how humans create, experience, and utilize it. The emergence of punk rock as a music genre and scene of interconnected individuals in the mid-to-late 1970s provides significant insight into social and political attitudes of the time. Punk rock's continued existence in the present day reflects similar themes to its first incarnation besides forging new directions for the genre and the scene. In this study I examine social factors within the current Central Florida punk rock scene that contribute to its evolution and longevity. I used …

Vol. 42 No. 3 (2019): Pacific Studies Full Issue, The Jonathan Nāpela Center For Hawaiian And Pacific Islands Studies

Pacific Studies

Pacific Studies is published two times a year by The Jonathan Nāpela Center for Hawaiian and Pacific Studies, Brigham Young University Hawai‘i #1979, 55–220 Kulanui Street, Lāʻie, Hawai‘i 96762, but responsibility for opinions expressed in the articles rests with the authors alone. Subscription rate is US$40.00 yearly, payable to The Jonathan Nāpela Center for Hawaiian and Pacific Studies. The Jonathan Nāpela Center for Hawaiian and Pacific Studies (formerly The Pacific Institute) is an organization funded by Brigham Young University Hawai‘i. The Center assists the University in meeting its cultural and educational goals by undertaking a program of teaching, research, and …

Vol. 42 No. 3 (2019): Pacific Studies Front Matter, The Jonathan Nāpela Center For Hawaiian And Pacific Islands Studies

Pacific Studies

Front Matter for the Vol. 42, No 3-Dec 2019 edition of the Pacific Studies Journal.

The Strategies And Risks Of Performing Citizenship And Rights Through Music, Carolin Mueller

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

My work explores the capacity of cultural producers to perform “insurgent citizenship,” a term theorized by James Holsten (2008) to describe how the peripheries of social organization can propel alternative modes of civic participation, through music. I utilize Engin Isin’s performative dimension of citizenship (2017) to investigate such forms of insurgent citizenship as they evolve in social and cultural peripheries of the contemporary arts and culture industry in the city of Dresden, Germany to identify the pathways they open to socio-political participation and autonomy for refugees.

While Germany understands itself as a nation of culture, cultural policy unevenly addresses the …

Reimagining The Flute Masterclass: Case Studies Exploring Artistry, Authority, And Embodiment, Sarah Carrier

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This work explores the flute masterclass as an aesthetic, ritualized, and historically reimagined cultural practice. Based on fieldwork that took place between 2017 and 2019 in the United States, in Italy, and on the social media platforms Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube, I argue that the masterclass—an extension of the master/apprentice system that dominates learning in the classical music tradition—is characterized by embodied qualities of artistry and authority. These qualities are not inherent, but are perceived through subjective, social, familied, and affective bodies.

Chapter One outlines the main themes and the research design. Chapter Two is a case study that analyzes …

Poems To Open Palms: Praise Performance And The State In The Sultanate Of Oman, Bradford J. Garvey

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation traces the musical constitution of moral, economic, material, and social relations between rural communities and the state in the Sultanate of Oman. I argue that communities embedded within the authoritarian state hegemony of the Sultanate form and affirm social relations with the state through its embodied proxy, Sultan Qābūs bin Ṣa‘īd Āl Bū Ṣa‘īd, via the reciprocal exchange of state-directed giving and praise poetry responses. The circuit of exchange catalyzes the social production of political legitimacy and ensures continued generous distribution by mythopoetically presenting such cyclicity as resulting from elite and non-elite mutuality. This praise poetry is rendered …

Afro-Cuba Transnational: Recordings And The Mediation Of Afro-Cuban Traditional Music, Johnny Frias

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation analyzes the way audio and video recordings and the internet have impacted, shaped, and helped create a transnational Afro-Cuban music scene. My focus will be on the most popular and widely-recorded genres of Afro-Cuban music—rumba and the religious repertoire of Santería, particularly batá drumming—both of which I also perform regularly with other Cuban musicians in Miami. Incorporating interviews, online ethnographic research, and participant-observation as a musician, my research has three main arguments.

First, recordings of Afro-Cuban music helped create a transnational Afro-Cuban music scene by increasing the popularity of these traditions outside of Cuba, including their amateur performance …

Death Ends A Life Not A Relationship: The Embodied Mourning And Memorializing Of Pets Through Material Culture, Gemma N. Koontz

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Many individuals develop strong bonds with their pets, viewing them as close “furry” friends or family. When these beloved companions die, both their relational and physical absences are deeply felt. Lacking socially recognized rituals to mourn and memorialize their pets, owners turn to and adapt traditional “human practices,” primarily that of keeping meaningful or significant items of the deceased.

Using both personal experiences and perspectives from multiple fields, this thesis discusses the life-cycle of the human-animal bond, examines the types of items owners keep or create, and how these are used to facilitate both mourning (the outward expression of grief) …