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Constructions Of New England Identity And Place In American Music, 1885-1935, Jacob A. Cohen

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines constructions of New England identity and changing perceptions of urban and rural by investigating the history and reception of four American composers between 1885 and 1935: George Chadwick, Charles Ives, Carl Ruggles, and Edward MacDowell. Using the concept of place as a critical lens, I examine how each composer engages, consciously or not, with regional identity myths and narratives, often present in other New England literature, poetry, art, and music.

In the Chadwick, Ives, and Ruggles chapters, I examine how one representative work both reflects and constructs the composer’s sense of place drawn from their experience of …

Music In Haredi Jewish Life: Liquid Modernity And The Negotiation Of Boundaries In Greater New York, Gordon A. Dale

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In this dissertation I seek to understand tensions regarding boundary maintenance, music, and cultural continuity among the contemporary Haredi (“Ultra-Orthodox”) Jewish community of Greater New York in the context of sociologist Zygmunt Bauman’s theory of liquid modernity. While Bauman suggests that modernity has melted familiar institutions and created an unstable and rapidly shifting world, I argue that for Haredim, the non-liberal religious community and its cultural productions solidify social bonds. While many Haredi Jews strive to continue the musical practices of pre-WWII Europe, some Haredi musicians push or disregard the boundaries of accepted practice by experimenting with Western popular music …

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 …

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 …

Searching For Sounds: Instrumental Agency And Modularity In Electroacoustic Improvisation, Stephen (Red) Wierenga

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In their radical departure from conventional instrumental technique and standardized instruments themselves, the practices of electroacoustic improvisation present a particular challenge to prevalent Western concepts of musical instruments. These concepts—which generally treat instruments as fixed objects—are ill-equipped to account for the ways in which electroacoustic improvisers foreground the agency of their instruments and abandon the quest for “mastery” typical especially of classical attitudes. Additionally, electroacoustic improvisers often approach instruments not as singular, self-contained, and static in their materiality, but rather as modular instrumentaria capable of myriad states and ever in flux, similarly problematizing conventional conceptions that view the physical constitutions …

Singing Motherhood: First Time Mothers' Experiences Singing To Their Infants, Margaret Mia Pixley

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Mothers have sung to their children for centuries. Because singing provides an opportunity for self-expression and connection with others, understanding how first time mothers experience this age old practice might help us understand how singing facilitates a woman's developing relationship with herself as a mother and with her new infant. To date, little research exists on this particular function and experience of first time maternal singing. In this qualitative phenomenological study, 16 first time mothers with infants one year and under were interviewed about their experiences singing to their babies and were also asked to write a one-time diary entry …

Music In Poetry And Poetry In Music: Tumanian's Anush, Beata Asmik Navratil

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The poem Anush by the Armenian poet Hovhannes Tumanian (1869-1923) is rooted in traditional Armenian music. Tumanian's poem reflects a number of manifestations thereof: (1) It borrows in its style from Armenian lyrical songs (such as lalik and khagh), from the parerg style (the traditional dance-song), and from the voghb style (laments such as funeral laments, bayati, and tragic odes). (2) Ashug style of storytelling/singing as a main form of conveying the storyline and emotions of protagonists are present. (3) Dancing and music making during Armenian traditional rituals -- in particular, the Hambarsum celebration (Feast of Christ's Ascension), …

Ecomusicology: Back To The Roots Of Sound/Music And Environmental Sustainability, Tiffany Challe

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

We are currently living in the midst of a global warming crisis, and running against the clock to counter the rapid depletion of natural resources in an increasingly technology-run world. The first step toward sustainability is to care for our world that is full of vibrant ecosystems and that we must work together to preserve. While the visual arts have served as a cogent platform for the environmental movement, this paper will argue that sound and music have been vastly overlooked in sustainability topics. Place-making music can capture a place's unique spirit and connect listeners with their local ecologies. Therein …

Mental Discipline And Musical Meaning, Alice Harriet Jones

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Musical meaning, or what a musical experience communicates to a listener, is predicated on a shared habitus of listening between the musical creator (i.e., composer, performer, or improviser) and the listener. The meaning a listener takes away from a musical experience is partly dependent on the vessel transmitting it (i.e., who is performing, the quality of performance, or the visual aspects of performance), and a musical creator's actions are the result of his or her training, past experiences, enculturation, attentional focus, and bodily control in the heightened mental state in which creativity occurs. Even in traditions that consider the musician …

The Contributions Of Earl "Bud" Powell To The Modern Jazz Style, David Joseph Demotta

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This is an analytical study of pianist and composer Bud Powell's contributions to modern jazz (a.k.a. bebop or "bop"), focusing especially on the rhythmic and harmonic implications of Powell's improvisations. The analysis is informed by a series of interviews with professional jazz musicians and is supported by original notated transcriptions of Powell recordings. The aim of this project is to present a cogent technical and theoretical account of Powell's musical style that is grounded in the values of the contemporary jazz community and reflects that community's continued passion for and engagement with Powell.

Chapter One, "Contemporary Pianists and Bud Powell's …

Performing Blackness In A Mulatto Society: Negotiating Racial Identity Through Music In The Dominican Republic, Angelina Maria Tallaj-García

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

My dissertation analyzes Dominican racial and ethnic identity through an examination of music and music cultures. Previous studies of Dominican identity have focused primarily on the racialized invention of the Dominican nation as white, or non-black, often centering on the building of Dominican identity in (sometimes violent) opposition to the Haitian nation and to Haitian racial identity. I argue that although Dominicans have not developed an explicit verbal discourse of black affirmation, blackness (albeit a contextually contingent articulation) is embedded in popular conceptions of dominicanidad ("Dominicanness") and is enacted through music. My dissertation explores ways in which popular notions of …

Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann (The Irish Musicians' Association) And The Politics Of Musical Community In Irish Traditional Music, Lauren Weintraub Stoebel

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann (The Irish Musicians' Association) and its role in the politics of Irish traditional music communities. A revivalist organization founded in 1951, Comhaltas today is an educational and activist organization whose mission includes the preservation and promotion of Irish traditional music. Its numerous programs--from local music classes to a national festival drawing thousands of participants--intersect at some point with the musical lives of nearly every Irish traditional musician. Because of this widespread activity, Comhaltas interacts, often contentiously, with many of the different musical communities through which Irish traditional musicians define themselves both publically and privately. …

The Mad Science Of Hip-Hop: History, Technology, And Poetics Of Hip-Hop's Music, 1975-1991, Patrick Rivers

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In 1979, the first commercial recordings of hip-hop music were released. The music's transition from the parks and clubs of the Bronx to recorded media resulted in hip-hop music being crafted and mediated in a recording studio before reaching the ears of listeners. In this dissertation I present a comprehensive investigation into the history of the instrumental component of hip-hop music heard on recordings, commonly referred to as beats. My historical narrative is formed by: the practices involved in the creation of hip-hop beats; the technologies that facilitated and defined those practices; and the debates around these two aspects that …

Gendered Practices And Conceptions In Korean Drumming: On The Negotiation Of "Femininity" And "Masculinity" By Korean Female Drummers, Yoonjah Choi

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Korean drumming, one of the most popular musical practices in South Korea, currently exists in a state of contradiction as drumming, historically performed by men, is increasingly practiced by women. Women drummers who enter this male-dominated realm confront the "masculinization" of the practice, which is naturalized and normalized through the field's discourse and performance. At the same time, they seek a "femininity" that may help them to survive in the field. To examine these gendered conceptions and practices, I draw on the ways in which contemporary Korean traditional drum performers, predominantly professional female drummers, conceptualize, experience, perform, reinforce, and/or resist …

Redefining Diaspora Consciousness: Musical Practices Of Moroccan Jews In Brooklyn, Samuel Reuben Thomas

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines the role of musical practices in the synagogue life of Maroka'im (Moroccan Jews) in Brooklyn, New York. Living in an urban setting known for its diverse and robust Jewish life, community members utilize several different types of musical expression to emblematize three distinct diasporic ethnic identities: Jewish (of ancient Israel), Sephardi (Spanish), and Maroka'i (Moroccan). Based upon ethnographic fieldwork carried out between 2008 and 2013, this study demonstrates how Maroka'im in Brooklyn use musical expressions to evoke more than one sense of diaspora consciousness--Jewish, Sephardi, and Maroka'i--to foster what I term a layered diaspora consciousness.

To illustrate …

The Music And Multiple Identities Of Kurdish Alevis From Turkey In Germany, Ozan Aksoy

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation investigates the experiences of Kurdish Alevis, currently living in Germany, who trace their background to locations within the boundaries of the Republic of Turkey. I argue that music has been a particularly important mode through which Kurdish Alevis in Germany have articulated collective histories and have fashioned narratives of belonging and multiple and sometimes contradictory identities. The subjects of my research are immigrants and refugees who are ethnically Kurdish and whose religion is Alevi, an Anatolian religion whose relations to both Sunni and Shi'a Islam are historically controversial. They speak Turkish along with Kurdish, in most cases are …

Melodic Function And Modal Process In Gregorian Chant, Richard Porterfield

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study proposes a theory and method of analysis for voice leading in the melody of Gregorian chant. It draws on historical theories and practices, particularly those of the cantus tradition which 1) pre-dates the imposition on Western ecclesiastical chant of scale theories based in the Ancient Greek science of harmonics, 2) observes and predicts actual melodic behavior, and 3) remains basic to pedagogy through the centuries. Central to cantus-tradition doctrine is the investment of melodic tones with structural functions which articulate modes as melodic archetypes; idiomelic antiphons are analyzed according to five melodic functions derived from formulaic psalmody …

Two Sides To A Drum: Duality In Trinidad Orisha Music And Culture, Ryan J. Bazinet

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation presents an ethnographic and historical study of music and culture in the Yoruba-derived Trinidad Orisha religion in Trinidad and New York City. Its objectives are: (1) to provide description and documentation of Trinidad Orisha music, an understudied music genre in the African diaspora; (2) to shed light on the historical, cultural, and demographic factors contributing to the development of Trinidad Orisha music by its practitioners; and (3) to provide substance for meaningful comparisons between Trinidad Orisha music and other Yoruba-derived musics.

Based on four years of fieldwork (2008-2012) in Trinidad and in Brooklyn, NY, the study explores Trinidad …

Free From Jazz: The Jazz And Improvised Music Scene In Vienna After Ossiach (1971-2011), Thomas Albert Zlabinger

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Focusing on a diverse and eclectic scene that is under-documented, this dissertation investigates the historical, social, and cultural aspects of jazz and improvised music in Vienna over the last four decades. Through fieldwork, I have observed various characteristics and trends regarding the jazz and improvised music scene in Vienna and have subsequently organized the musicians and their recordings into seven fluid "fields": Traditional-U.S. Performance, Post-Tradition, DJ/Hip-Hop, Volk/Ethnic, Cabaret, Unclassified, and Abroad. One of the most striking aspects of the entire scene is the near-absence of a racialized discourse among musicians and critics and of stereotypical markers of "blackness" in performance. …

The Metaphysics Of Improvisation, Tobyn C. Demarco

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In "The Metaphysics of Improvisation," I criticize wrongheaded metaphysical views of, and theories about, improvisation, and put forward a cogent metaphysical theory of improvisation, which includes action theory, an analysis of the relevant genetic and aesthetic properties, and ontology (work-hood).

The dissertation has two Parts. Part I is a survey of the history of many improvisational practices, and of the concept of improvisation. Here I delineate, sketch, and sort out the often vague boundaries between improvising and non-improvising within many art forms and genres, including music, dance, theatre, motion pictures, painting, and literature. In addition, I discuss the concept of …

Aspects Of Adaptation In The Egyptian Singing Film, Margaret Jean Farrell

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation explores aspects of adaptation in the Egyptian singing film in the period from 1932 to 1962. The primary types of adaptation examined are those that are evident in the stories the films told, the ways in which the songs functioned within the stories, and the music for which these films formed the setting. Research was conducted through the viewing of over sixty Egyptian films as well as time spent in Cairo to study Arabic language and music, and to collect primary sources in the form of films, press books, books, and periodicals.

The goal of this study is …

Music And National Identity: A Study Of Cello Works By Taiwanese Composers, Yu-Ting Wu

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The purpose of this study is to explore the impact of folkloric elements in music by Taiwanese composers and to uncover the methods they treat regional materials under the influences of Western compositional techniques, hereby creating a new fusion within classical music. This study centers in the ethnic impact on modern Taiwanese music, and also provides an opportunity to probe the significance of the subject "nation" in the field of musical creativity.

In this dissertation, the discussion includes the development of traditional and Western music in Taiwan including the historical and cultural background, how music serves as an emblem of …

An Ethnoarchaeomusicological Investigation Of Highland Guatemalan Maya Dance-Plays, Mark Harold Howell

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Instrumental music played on two valveless trumpets and a wooden slit-drum currently accompanies the highland Guatemalan Maya dance-play Rab'inal Achi. These two instrument types are known from the Prehispanic record and have been associated with the play since its first mention in the mid-nineteenth century.

The script of the Rab'inal Achi is considered by many scholars to have Prehispanic roots. The possibility that its accompanying music also originated in Precolumbian times is the impetus behind my study. To explore this possibility I apply ethnoarchaeomusicological research methods, incorporating data supplied by iconology-iconography, ethnographic analogy, history, archaeology, and music analysis. Ethnoarchaeomusicological …