Digital Commons Network^™

Integrating World Percussion Into Graduate Jazz Training: A Practitioner Reflection, Eugene Seow

Publications and Research

This reflection explores the pedagogical and artistic impact of a non-traditional instructional choice made during the author’s final semester of graduate study at Queens College (CUNY). Initially enrolled in the Jazz Studies: Performance Track (Drum Set), the author elected to substitute formal principal study lessons with a personalised programme of world percussion study under Professor Michael Lipsey. This decision, initially motivated by artistic restlessness, led to foundational experiences in frame drumming, South Indian rhythmic structures, gamelan ensemble, and classical snare etude work. The outcomes of this shift have since permeated the author’s teaching, performance, and curriculum development practice, including the …

Review Of The Williamsburg Avant-Garde: Experimental Music And Sound On The Brooklyn Waterfront, By Cisco Bradley, Theodore B. Gordon

Publications and Research

Book Review of The Williamsburg Avant-Garde: Experimental Music and Sound on the Brooklyn Waterfront, by Cisco Bradley

Grid Culture, Eliot Bates, Arseni Troitski

Publications and Research

In this essay, we provide our initial ethnographic research about lines, which at a superficial level can be considered a platform, but which is also synonymous with a community of 8800 users, and with 606k unique posts authored by these users that in aggregate constitute a discourse network (Aufschreibesysteme, see Kittler 1990). lines—as platform, community, and discourse network—is primarily designed to support the development, documentation and user-generated code efforts specific to a set of hardware synthesis-related objects (the two we will focus on are called Norns and Grid; we’ll discuss what they are and what they do through the subsequent …

Local-Classical Singers Speak: Interviews With Trinidadian, Guyanese, And Surinamese Singers, Peter L. Manuel

Publications and Research

This is a compilation of transcriptions of several dozen interviews with Trinidadian, Guyanese, and Surinamese performers of Indo-Caribbean local-classical music (tan-singing, baithak gana) conducted in the 1990s by Peter Manuel. The informants include most of the leading singers of that era, such as Hanif Mohammed, Jameer Hosein, and Sam Boodram, as well as elder artists whose recollections date back to the 1920s-30s. The transcriptions are informal, messy, and unedited. Several of the interviews were conducted when Manuel was just beginning his research, and thus his questions were not always well informed.

The Scholarship Of Rock Music: Knowledge Mapping Through Bibliography, Monica Berger

Publications and Research

Scholarship on rock and popular music has grown dramatically in volume and methodological variety and complexity including extensive use of interdisciplinary approaches. There currently is no comprehensive resource for scholars and educators to explore monographic scholarly literature on rock. I will showcase a new annotated bibliography, with a focus on disciplinarity and methodology, which provides a lens into how this scholarly discourse has evolved. This bibliography also makes visible broader trends regarding research topics in rock and popular music. This project will be a resource to academics and other authors, faculty designing and updating curricula, and librarians interested in building …

"Coros Y Danzas" I Les Contradiccions Del Nacionalisme Espanyol, Antoni Pizà

Publications and Research

L’estudi de Daniel Jordan ressegueix l’ús que va fer el primer franquisme d’aquestes agrupacions amb una base folklòrica. Sota l’estela de la Secció Femenina, fou entorn de trobada i lleure majoritàriament per a les dones, i va arribar a convertir- se en carta de presentació de cara al món.

Listening To The World: A Brief Survey Of World Music, Antoni Pizà

Publications and Research

A short and engaging introduction to music around the world.

Listen to the world. Explore music from around the globe. Acquaint yourself with a variety of international music styles and traditions. Investigate issues in popular music from both a social perspective (such as race, religion, language, economics, gender, diaspora, and politics), as well as an intrinsically musical position (beat, pitch, meter, rhythm, form, timbre, texture). Learn about how music reinforces values and negotiates tradition with innovation; how rural and urban contexts inform musical experiences; how soundscapes shape identity. Learn how to collect sounds and ask questions: what is this instrument’s …

Bruja Theory: Latinidad Without Latinos In Popular Narratives Of Brujería, William Orchard

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Feeling Analogue: Using Modular Synthesizers, Designing Synthesis Communities, Eliot Bates

Publications and Research

When Harald Bode nominally invented the modular synthesiser in 1960, it was not yet clear whether it was a musical instrument or a less-defined form of studio-sited audio technology (Subotnik 1970). Much of the technology, from the interface design to the specific parts, was shared with nonmusical test and measurement equipment. Sixty years later, hardware modular synthesis is used not just for musical creation but for noise, sound art and data sonification/visualization. Through an ethnographic study of the design and use of the Eurorack modular synthesis format, and of modular synthesis maker and user communities spread through North America, Europe …

The Double Silence: Reflections On Music And Musicians, Antoni Pizà

Publications and Research

A translation of EL DOBLE SILENCI, published in Catalan in 2003. The book is a compilation of essays originally published in Diario de Mallorca (2000-2003).

Etcètera Ii: Notes Sobre Música, Art I Literatura (2020-2022), Antoni Pizà

Publications and Research

A compilation of essays on music, the arts, and literature previously published in Bellver, the arts section of Diario de Mallorca (2020-2022). This is the second part of ETCETERA.

The Global Jukebox: A Public Database Of Performing Arts And Culture, Anna L. C. Wood, Kathryn R. Kirby, Carol R. Ember, Stella Silbert, Sam Passmore, Hideo Daikoku, John Mcbride, Forrestine Paulay, Michael J. Flory, John Szinger, Gideon D'Arcangelo, Karen Kohn Bradley, Marco Guarino, Maisa Atayeva, Jesse Rifkin, Violet Baron, Miriam El Haljli, Martin Szinger, Patrick E. Savage

Publications and Research

Standardized cross-cultural databases of the arts are critical to a balanced scientific under- standing of the performing arts, and their role in other domains of human society. This paper introduces the Global Jukebox as a resource for comparative and cross-cultural study of the performing arts and culture. The Global Jukebox adds an extensive and detailed global database of the performing arts that enlarges our understanding of human cultural diversity. Initially prototyped by Alan Lomax in the 1980s, its core is the Cantometric s dataset, encompassing standardized codings on 37 aspects of musical style for 5,776 traditional songs from 1,026 societies. …

Qui Té Por Dels ‘Rosalía Studies’? Guia De Perplexos, Antoni Pizà

Publications and Research

Molt a principis dels anys noranta del segle XX, quan jo començava a veure la possibilitat de doctorar-me, la musicologia era, si se’m permet una caricatura, una disciplina de capellans i arxivers. A l’Estat Espanyol, per exemple, la carrera oficial encara no existia, si bé hi havia estudis i tesis a algunes escoles de doctorat de filologia o història de l’art. El mot «musicologia», de fet, ni tan sols era acceptat o pràcticament acabava d’entrar en alguns diccionaris prescriptius. Sense estudis reglats, els aspirants a musicòlegs emulaven la feina, la metodologia i les temàtiques dels seus mestres.

Rupturismes: Art Sonor A Mallorca, Un Poc De Context, Antoni Pizà

Publications and Research

Antoni Caimari (1943-2021), com sap tothom, no era un músic com els altres; i tampoc no ho volia ser. Encapçalava els títols de les seves obres musicals amb les inicials EB o «esbós» (com altres compositors les inicien amb Op.) per donar una idea que no tenien res a veure amb les composicions tancades i immanents dels mestres del passat. Aquests EBs no tenien partitura perquè, com va dir Llorenç Barber, un altre compositor donat als aforismes, estaven alliberats de la tirania de la «partiturocràcia».

Lliçons Magistrals, Antoni Pizà

Publications and Research

No seria pianista. Jo no arribaria mai a ser pianista. L’epifania va començar a cristal·litzar poc després d’haver arribat a Salzburg el 1982 amb intencions d’estudiar-hi piano. Com el narrador de la novel·la de Thomas Bernhard Der Untergeher (si es vol, el fracassat o el mediocre), jo havia quedat psicològicament gelat per la presència d’alguns dels millors pianistes del món. En poc temps, i sense capacitat de digerir-ho —tenia vint anys escassos—, havia vist i sentit en viu Alfred Brendel, Maurizio Pollini, Claudio Arrau i Bruno Leonardo Gelber, entre altres.

La Ricarda, Mestres Quadreny I L'Experimentalisme Musical Català Dels Anys Seixanta: De Com L’Arquitectura Va Esdevenir Música I La Música, Arquitectura, Antoni Pizà

Publications and Research

Eren uns temps magnífics per a la creació: els concerts semblaven obres de teatre i les obres de teatre, concerts. Els músics feien d’actors i aquests havien de fer de músics. I la distinció entre el públic i els intèrprets també es diluïa, si és que no s’eliminava del tot. Els semiòlegs —o són semiòtics?— havien explicat que en tot acte comunicatiu hi havia un emissor, un missatge i un receptor; i precisament d’això es tractava, d’eliminar aquestes distincions. Ah, i en molts casos, tampoc no hi havia escenari, ni sala de concerts.

The Urban Maroons Of Afro-Dominican Music, Paul Austerlitz

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

La Musique Dans Les Cultures Tech. La Synthèse Modulaire En Temps De Covid-19, Eliot Bates

Publications and Research

Depuis 1996, la synthèse modulaire matérielle est passée d’une pratique artisanale de fabrication d’instruments de niche soutenue par un petit nombre de musiciens, à un phénomène transnational, une véritable culture tech. Malgré cet engouement, elle n’a pas donné naissance à de nouveaux genres musicaux populaires, et il n’est pas certain que la « musique », quelle que soit sa définition, soit ce qui rassemble les amateurs de synthèse modulaire. Ce texte a deux objectifs : tout d’abord, il présente les résultats d’une recherche en cours menée en ligne et dans plusieurs pays concernant le rôle des objets technologiques dans la …

O Tonalismo Como Força Colonizadora Na África, Kofi Agawu, José H. Padovani

Publications and Research

Resumo do tradutor: No ensaio, Kofi Agawu aborda a relação entre o tonalismo – entendido como “sistema hierarquicamente organizado de relações entre alturas” – e a música africana. A partir de diferentes exemplos e em diálogo com contribuições dos estudos decoloniais e da etnomusicologia, Agawu desenvolve uma interpretação crítica que busca compreender como aspectos da imaginação musical africana responderam à violência colonial imposta a partir de uma linguagem harmônica estrangeira. Após três momentos, em que busca respectivamente expor (1) aspectos do tonalismo na música africana da atualidade, (2) aspectos do pensamento tonal africano pré-colonial e (3) elaborações composicionais de criadores …

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 …

Musical Borrowings, Copyright, And The Canard Of “Cultural Appropriation", Peter L. Manuel

Publications and Research

This essay reviews the basic contours of the cultural appropriation controversies as they have been waged in reference to music in both academic and vernacular circles. It discusses some of the debates that have involved white performers’ musical borrowings from African-American culture, and also musical flows outside the Euro-American mainstream. It explores relations of these ethical polemics to notions of copyright and argues that these can provide a moral guide to the propriety of many cultural interactions. It further critiques the terminological and conceptual distortions and obfuscations that have tended to plague discussions, both on scholarly and popular levels. These …

The Rosalía Polemic: Defining Genre Boundaries And Legitimacy In Flamenco, Peter L. Manuel

Publications and Research

In 2018, Spanish singer Rosalía attained international popularity with her innovative flamenco-fusion album El mal querer. Within the flamenco world, the Rosalía vogue provoked vehement and ongoing polemics, involving whether or not her music should be regarded as “flamenco,” whether she had the social credentials to be accepted as an innovator, and whether it was proper for her to adopt the persona of a ghetto-girl Gypsy in her hit music video, “Malamente.” These controversies reveal much about flamenco culture, and especially about the tensions inhering to its status as both a concert art form and a traditional idiom embedded …

Lives In Musicology: My Life In Writings, Kofi Agawu

Publications and Research

Responding to an invitation from the editors of Acta Musicologica to tell the story of his life in musicology, Kofi Agawu describes his upbringing and early education in Ghana and his university studies in the UK and the US. In a career focused on teaching, research, and writing, he outlines a number of intellectual projects involving the analysis of African and European music. He ends by acknowledging renewed discussions of race and identity in the musical academy today, and hints at his own growing interest in African art music.

The Interface And Instrumentality Of Eurorack Modular Synthesis, Eliot Bates

Publications and Research

In this essay, I will examine a couple of aspects of hardware modular synthesizers which, despite not being a “new” morphological form (most commercially sold synthesizers from the 1960s through the early 1970s were modular), experienced an extremely unlikely expansion of interest and activity in the mid-1990s. With a contemporary modular synth, users buy a powered rack that holds modules specific to one of several competing formats. For the two most widely adopted formats, Eurorack (sometimes called 3U in reference to the height of modules, or Doepfer A-100 after the first branded system to adopt this panel height) and MOTM/MU …

Indígenas, Africanos, Roma Y Europeos: Ritmos Transatlánticos En Música, Canto Y Baile, K. Meira Goldberg, Antoni Pizà

Publications and Research

Resumen:

Hace algo más de un año, la Foundation for Iberian Music (The City University of New York), The Center for Iberian and Latin American Music (University of California, Riverside), el Centro de Estudios para la Cultura y la Comunicación (Universidad Veracruzana) y la Universidad Cristóbal Colón convocaron el congreso Indígenas, africanos, roma y europeos: Ritmos transatlánticos en música, canto y baile, el cual tuvo lugar en Centro Veracruzano de las Artes Hugo Argüelles (CEVART) en el Puerto de Veracruz, México del 11 al 13 de abril de 2019. Los artículos que siguen a esta introducción son una selección …

Introducción, Raquel Paraíso, K. Meira Goldberg, Jessica Gottfried Hesketh, Antoni Pizà

Publications and Research

Ahora que escribimos esta introducción para las actas del congreso Indígenas, africanos, roma y europeos: Ritmos transatlánticos en música, canto y baile, (Puerto de Veracruz, México, del 11 al 13 de abril de 2019), es un buen momento para reflexionar acerca del viaje y el proceso que vivimos durante los días del congreso y el resultado escrito que nos deja mientras tejemos los hilos que aúnan los trabajos que ahora se publican. Estos veinte artículos son una muestra del pulso central del congreso, las coincidencias, tendencias e inquietudes intelectuales que reuniones académicas de ese tipo convocan. Si algo la …

University Music Students’ Choice Of Music Listening Sources: Use Of Library Resources As Compared With Non-Academic Streaming Services, Marianna J. Czeisel, Veronica D. Smith

Publications and Research

The rise of streaming services and decline of analog media have affected academic music libraries in their traditional role as a resource of listening materials. This study examines the listening-source preferences of college-level music students across multiple institutions through a survey in which students compared electronic non-academic streaming services and both electronic and analog library multimedia collections to determine the factors that lead to the use of one source over the other. Findings indicate a strong preference for non-academic streaming services over library materials, emphasizing the importance of convenience. However, the perceived quality of library materials remains high among participants.

Agency And Contemporary Recording Production, Eliot Bates

Publications and Research

Recording production is a complex, multistep, typically collaborative process that entails a shifting set of individuals inhabiting changing roles within spaces that house consider­ able amounts of specialized technology. As these roles and technologies feature promi­ nently in the aesthetics of Anglophone and Francophone popular music, they have been studied within such milieus for the longest period. This scholarship tends to understand the creative act as either the result of a prominent individual or something determined by the technologies used within studios. However, recent ethnomusicological scholarship has shown it is much more difficult to clearly situate agency within recording production, …

Proceedings Of The Cuny Games Conference 6.0, Robert O. Duncan, Joseph Bisz, Christina Boyle, Kathleen Offenholley, Maura A. Smale, Carolyn Stallard, Deborah Sturm

Publications and Research

The CUNY Games Network is an organization dedicated to encouraging research, scholarship and teaching in the developing field of games-based learning. We connect educators from every campus and discipline at CUNY and beyond who are interested in digital and non-digital games, simulations, and other forms of interactive teaching and inquiry-based learning. These proceedings summarize the CUNY Games Conference 6.0, where scholars shared research findings at a three-day event to promote and discuss game-based pedagogy in higher education. Presenters could share findings in oral presentations, posters, demos, or play testing sessions. The conference also included workshops on how to modify existing …

Recording Studios Since 1970, Eliot Bates

Publications and Research

Like many other specialty, purpose-built spaces, we tend to think of recording studios in instrumental terms, meaning that the space is defined in relation to the nominal type of work that the space is instrumental towards. While audio recordings have been made in spaces since 1877, not all of these spaces tend to be regarded as recording studios, partly since so many recordings were made in environments designed for other types of work; indeed, much of the first seventy years of US and UK recorded music history transpired at radio stations, concert halls and lightly treated mixed-use commercial spaces (e.g. …