Digital Commons Network^™

World Music And Activism Since The End Of History (Sic), Peter L. Manuel

Publications and Research

While the decline of protest music in the USA has often been noted, a global perspective reveals that progressive, activist protest musics occupied lively niches in many music cultures worldwide (e.g., of Jamaica, India, Spain, Latin America) during similar periods, roughly the 1950s-80s. While on one level these music movements were embedded in particular socio-political movements, on a broader level they reflected an ardent commitment to the secular universalist ideals of the Enlightenment. The subsequent dramatic decline of all these protest musics—roughly since Fukuyama’s much-debated “end of history”—reflects a broader transformation of the global political climate. This transformation has both …

Red Note New Music Festival Program, 2017, School Of Music

Red Note New Music Festival

The RED NOTE New Music Festival at Illinois State University is a week-long event which features outstanding performances of contemporary concert music.

Accounting For Taste In Irish Traditional Music, Eryn T. Wagnon

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

Although it is self-evident that people care about music, we don’t know how they make sense of their taste in it. In this study, I will explore how individuals explain their taste in music. I will specifically be focusing on the genre of Irish traditional music (ITM). One way to explore how people account for their taste in this genre is through a qualitative content analysis of online comments. I hope to demonstrate the vocabulary of motives for music preference, by focusing on how individuals account for their taste in Irish traditional music online. Also, this study will help show …

Walking In The City: Koji Nakano’S Reimagining And Re-Sounding Of The Tale Of Genji, Isabella Ramos

Scripps Senior Theses

Imagined Sceneries is a work written by composer Dr. Koji Nakano of Burapha University, Thailand for two sopranos, koto, light percussion, narrations, soundscapes recorded in Kyoto, Japan in December 2015, and digital projections of Ebina Masao’s 1953 print series Tale of Genji. Imagined Sceneries’ reimagining and “re-sounding” of Heian Kyoto relies on a balance between what is imagined and what is experienced in performance. Its many elements collectively explore multiple layers of Japanese histories, soundscapes, environments, and sensibilities. Using Michel de Certeau’s concepts of the city, this thesis journeys through Nakano’s imagined spaces.

Taiko: Its Past And Present In Japanese Society, Nathan Mueller, Eric Desormeaux, Dallas Ferrell, Alexander Kallweit, Tyler Henderson, Brandon Lau

Ursidae: The Undergraduate Research Journal at the University of Northern Colorado

The significance of Taiko in Japanese culture is far beyond being a percussion instrument. “Taiko” also refers to the art of drumming and is claimed to represent the spirit of Japanese people. Since ancient times, Taiko was used in the battlefield, Shinto and Buddhist religious ceremonies, festivals, royal courts, and theatrical arts performance. However, the origin of the Taiko remains unclear as well as its connection with Korean drum. The sacred power of Taiko for Japanese people is difficult to clarify in modern context. Japan is moving toward modernization, while promoting the importance of cultural preservation. It is important to …

Individual Thought Patterns: Women In New York's Extreme Metal Music Scene, Joan M. Jocson-Singh

Theses and Dissertations

Extreme metal music (EMM) is both an umbrella term and a sub-category of heavy metal. Although women have a small but steady presence in heavy metal, this number shrinks when applied to the EMM scene. Using ethnographic research, participant-observation and interviews, this study surveys women in New York's EMM scene to address participation, gender performativity and feminist musicology.

Afro-Caribbean Stylistic Elements As Topics In The Music Of Silvestre Revueltas: Conveying A Political Discourse In Caminando, No Sé Por Qué Piensas Tú, And Sensemayá, Elsy M. Gallardo-Diaz

Dissertations, 2014-2019

Although the music of Silvestre Revueltas has often been categorized as merely Mexicanist, this paper aims to demonstrate that not all of his music falls squarely within that classification. Among his brief but significant artistic output, three pieces for voice and small instrumental ensemble incorporate Afro-Caribbean stylistic elements drawn from popular and religious Afro-Cuban music. Composed in early 1937, Caminando, No sé que piensas tú soldado, and Sensemayá were based on poems by the Cuban Nicolás Guillén, the foremost representative of Afrocubanismo and, like Revueltas, an ardent believer in art as a tool for political protest and for …

Soundboard Scholar No. 2 (Complete)

Soundboard Scholar

No abstract provided.

Creolisation In Music Traditions: South Connemara, The Scottish Western Isles And Francophone Louisiana, Brian Ó Huiginn

Doctoral

Why do people mix musics? What causes them to break down the boundaries between music genres and produce new genres that are a mix of others, and what does a melody migrating between cultures have to do to conform to a new music culture? Researchers such as Bruno Nettl, John Blacking, George List and Mark Slobin have over the past eighty years or more, attempted to look at the issue of music mixing under the headings of diffusion, acculturation and globalisation. This thesis seeks to further the understanding of this phenomenon, by examining three cases of cultures that are known …

Interfaith-Cross-Cultural Improvisation: Music And Meaning Across Boundaries Of Faith And Culture, Gerard J. Yun

Consensus

This article explores the social value and meaning of interfaith-cross-cultural improvisation (musical improvisation between people from differing cultural and faith traditions) and its unique quality of engaging widely different cultural and faith-based groups. It draws concepts from evolutionary biology, ethnomusicology, religious experience, the emerging field of community music, and the insight of first-hand participants. Interfaith-cross-cultural improvisation can be seen as a form of “deep play” with the ability to signal and evoke empathy across participants who identify with divergent beliefs, cultures, and practices. The article attempts to illuminate the process of interfaith-cross-cultural improvisation as a meaningful undertaking of interfaith and …

Electronic Dance Music Culture’S Communication Transition Through Social Media In North America, Eden Shurman

DHI Digital Projects Showcase

The project aims to link the past modes of communication utilized by participants in electronic dance music (EDM) club cultures and subcultures, to the current practice of using various social media platforms as a means of information conveyance about musicians, producers, DJs, events, and industry-related news. It will attempt to determine to what degree social media platforms influence electronic dance music culture, the positive and negative effects social media has on the culture, and whether the transition to digital communication modes is absolute. Finally, it will pose the question as to whether any further research on social media usage among …

Mcguire, Wilma (Wise) (Fa 981), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Folklife Archives Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Folklife Archives Project 981. Project titled: “Ten Broeck and Mollie and the Miller’s Will.” Includes descriptions of the lyrics of the two ballads “Ten Broeck and Mollie” and “The Miller’s Will” collected in Taylor County, Kentucky.

Elmore, Harold W. (Fa 975), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Folklife Archives Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Folklife Archives Project 975. Project titled: “Transcriptions of stories, song lyrics and calls.” Project includes survey sheets with brief descriptions of stories, song lyrics, doodle bug charms, and calls from Edmonson County and Warren County, Kentucky. Sheets include a brief description, informant’s name, and some with motif index number.

Suddarth, James Damon (Fa 968), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Folklife Archives Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Folklife Archives Project 968. Project titled: “Folk Songs.” Includes survey sheets with brief descriptions of folk songs collected in Warren County, Kentucky and Tennessee. Sheets include a title, lyrics, and informant’s name.

Flash Study Analysis And The Music Learning Profiles Project, Radio Cremata, Bryan Powell, Joseph Michael Pignato, Gareth Dylan Smith

John J. Cali School of Music Scholarship and Creative Works

This paper introduces the Music Learning Profiles Project, and its methodological approach, flash study analysis. Flash study analysis is a method that draws heavily on extant qualitative approaches to education research, to develop broad understandings of music learning in diverse contexts. The Music Learning Profiles Project (MLPP) is an international collaboration to collect and curate a large number of flash studies exploring musicking and music learning in a variety of contexts that fall outside traditional school music education. In this paper the authors present context, rationale, and methods for the project, along with indicative preliminary findings. The project aims to …

The Rhythm And Blues (R&B) Protest Songs Of The Civil Rights Movement: Outlining The Natural Alignment Between The Foundational R&B Recordings Artists And The African-American Church During The Movement, Michelee Jones

Masters Theses

This study examines the R&B protest songs performed during the Civil Rights Movement and outlines their stories and musical characteristics for the purposes of highlighting a natural alignment that existed between several of the R&B recording artists that laid the foundations of R&B music and the agendas of the African-American church during the Civil Rights Movement. This study includes lyric and music analyses of some of the more popular R&B songs released during the Civil Rights Movement between 1960-1968 in which these analyses are compared with one another to form some general themes as to how these songs outlined the …

Performing El Rap El ʿArabi 2005-2015: Feeling Politics Amid Neoliberal Incursions In Ramallah, Amman, And Beirut, Rayya S. El Zein

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study is about politics in Arabic rap. Specifically, it is about affective dynamics and material negotiations during rap concerts in three cities in the Levant. I analyze Arab hip hop culture in the context of three different but related histories of cosmopolitan, middle class growth, and gentrification. Using an ethnomusicological framework rooted in participant observation and performance theory, I compare concert conditions, audience behavior, and accessibility of music production in Ramallah, Amman, and Beirut.

In Chapter One, I elaborate the discursive and theoretical frameworks that have pinned the political valences of Arab youth, Arab artists, and Arab rappers in …

Sacred Freedom: Sustaining Afrocentric Spiritual Jazz In 21st Century Chicago, Adam Zanolini

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation explores the historical and ideological headwaters of a certain form of Great Black Music that I call Afrocentric spiritual jazz in Chicago. However, that label is quickly expended as the work begins by examining the resistance of these Black musicians to any label. I theorize that this resistance is due to the experiences of Black history, throughout which labels have been used to enslave, exploit, and control people. I begin by discussing early musical labels, several important n-words, and then the innovation of African diasporic subjecthood and its labels. Then Black is examined, along with several corollary social …

Crossing Paths: Musical And Ritual Interactivity Between The Ḥamadsha And Gnawa In Sidi Ali, Morocco, Christopher J. Witulski

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

The processions occurring in Moroccan pilgrimages--such as those in Sidi Ali, a small town situated in the mountains outside of Meknes and Fez--are important sites that instigate an aesthetic negotiation within nearby possession ceremonies. The many musical groups that punctuate the cacophonous atmosphere during the annual pilgrimage are affiliated with a many of the country’s diverse mystical brotherhoods, including the gnawa, ḥamadsha, and ʿīsāwa. Through a detailed ethnographic description of processions and rituals from two of these groups, this article outlines ways in which musical tastes flow between the different events, informing the aesthetics of both outdoor …

War Of The Worlds: Music And Cosmological Battles In The Balinese Cremation Procession, Michael B. Bakan

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

Abstract

This article explores processional action as a form of cosmological intervention in Hindu-Balinese cremation processions, focusing on the multiple and intersecting functions of a particular type of Balinese instrumental music ensemble: the gamelan beleganjur. It explores the alternately “enlivening and protective aspects” (DeVale 1990, 62) that underlie the use of beleganjur music in the ngaben, or cremation ritual, showing how beleganjur’s sonic power and rhythmic drive serve to combat malevolent spirit beings, strengthen and inspire processional participants in their efforts to meet challenging ritual obligations, and grant courage to the souls of deceased individuals embarking on their …

Pilgrimage And Audience On The Maharashtrian Vārī, Jaime Jones

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

Abstract.

Each year during the monsoon season, devotees of the Hindu Vārkarī sect take to the streets of the cities and towns of Maharashtra, to go on the vārī, a massive annual pilgrimage lasting twenty-one days. The procession of hundreds of thousands of pilgrims is not only seen but heard, as the songs written by the singer-saints of the tradition occupy nearly every moment of the journey. In this article, I examine the relationship between music and pilgrimage procession by focusing on the idea of audience - defined as both the listening public and the act of hearing itself. Rather …

Transforming The Everyday Into The Extraordinary: Religious Processions In Portugal, Katherine M. Brucher

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

Throughout Portugal, Roman Catholic parishes stage elaborate processions to celebrate patron saints on their feast days. The statue of the patron saint is carried through the streets of the community on a prescribed route accompanied by music, usually performed by a wind band, in an act of devotion that sacralizes the community. This essay draws on religious historian Robert Orsi’s “theology of the streets” to propose a musical theology of the streets as a framework for understanding how music not only physically mobilizes people, but also engages people spiritually into a feeling of communitas within in the context of the …

Navigating Musical Identities, Knowledge Production And "Authenticity" In The Diaspora, Anita Fábos

Faculty Works

In this chapter, through dialogue between co-authors Alsarah and Anita Fabos, we attempt to capture and explore the musical and personal identity of singer/songwriter/bandleader Alsarah—at a particular point in time. The partial transcript and analysis presented here demonstrates the opportunities but also real dilemmas inherent in navigating identity and producing knowledge as a person from, but not in, or in some ways, of Sudan.

(Mis)Representation Of Burmese Metal Music In The Western Media, Heather Maclachlan

Department of Music Faculty Publications

Heavy metal music is performed in Burma (also known as Myanmar) by two distinct groups of musicians: generalists, who are part of the mainstream music industry, and underground bands, who differentiate themselves from the mainstream industry in a number of ways. Importantly, the underground performers insist on presenting nothing but their own original songs. Western-educated journalists have recently published a number of articles about these underground bands, equating their original creations with resistance against the military junta that controlled Burma for the past half-century. The author argues that the metanarrative revealed in such media reports does not accord with the …

Chant And Transformation: The Benedictine Monks Of Christ In The Desert Monastery, Amy Suzanne Gillespie

Music ETDs

Music scholars have devoted significant attention to the vast repertoire of chant, the cults from which it is said to have sprung, semiology, or its place in Western Christian worship, but a limited number of studies address the chanter and how chant renders affective and cognitive processes. The monks of Christ in the Desert Monastery are engaged four hours a day, every day, in the antiphonal rhythm of psalmody, constructing its expressivity and sculpting, from forty members, one voice. Here, the Divine Office, as prescribed by St. Benedict, is strictly followed. The monks repetitive and synchronized practice, suffused with chanting, …

Choros N. 10 By Heitor Villa-Lobos: Analyzing The Themes And Compositional Techniques Of Brazilian Modernism, Andre Oliveira Campos-Neto

Master's Theses

Heitor Villa-Lobos (b. March 5, 1887 - d. November 17, 1959) can be considered the most important composer in Brazilian music history. Although the composer is listed as one of the most influential composers in the history of the guitar, he reached his peak in his works for piano and symphonic groups. Works such as A Prole do Bebê (1 and 2), and the series of Chôros, came out during an extremely convoluted time, where Brazilian artists engaged in seeking an artistic representation of a unique Brazilian identity. Those works not only satisfied the hunger, but pushed the movement …

El Son De "El Cuervo": The Transformation Of Armonía Practice In The Mariachi Tradition, Adolfo Estrada Jr.

Theses and Dissertations

In mariachi scholarship to date, armonía practices are often overlooked. The armonía instruments provide essential rhythmic and harmonic support, yet their specific practices are assumed to be invariable. Close analysis suggests a more complex story. This work provides an analysis of the armonía within the son jalisciense song form in particular, by comparing several performances of the popular son jalisciense song “El Cuervo ” (The Crow). Analysis reveals that the armonía underwent a homogenization process before arriving at present-day practices, and I argue that the 1965 Mariachi Vargas de Tecalitlán recording is the point of homogenization on which future …

The Creation Of Meaning And Identity In The Dublin Jazz Scene, Past And Present., Damian Evans

Doctoral

The narrative of jazz performance in Ireland is unique due to the political changes that coincided with the arrival of jazz and the influence these changes had on the nation. Over the last one hundred years, jazz performance in Dublin has represented contrasting values for different people. What has remained consistent is the notion of participation within a network of musicians, audience members, promotors and institutions that make up a scene. To participate in a scene is to be actively involved in contestation and negotiation as individuals and groups seek to create meaning and identity through jazz performance. In this …

Exploring Three Colombian-Andean Folk Style (Danza, Pasillo, And Bambuco): An Analysis And Arrangement Of Three Colombian Pieces For Flute And Piano, Jesus Castro Turriago

Dissertations

This dissertation contains an analysis, comparison, and transcription of three Colombian pieces for flute and piano, written by composers of three different styles of folk music: pasillo, bambuco, and danza. An understanding of the historical context of these Colombian musical genres, and comparison of these instrumental pieces for flute and piano to those of other Colombian composers, informed my subsequent transcription and edition. The selected musical material comprises Bandolita, a pasillo composed by Luis Uribe Bueno, Bambuquísimo, a bambuco by Leon Cardona, and Adiós a Bogotá, a danza by Luis Antonio Calvo.

Review Of Bug Music: How Insects Gave Us Rhythm And Noise, Jonathan L. Friedmann

Between the Species

Review of Bug Music: How Insects Gave Us Rhythm and Noise, by David Rothenberg. This book proposes that the human sense of rhythm derived in part from insect sounds.