Digital Commons Network^™

Christian Worship In Nagaland, Jane Elizabeth Laremore

Masters Theses

Christianity has historically suppressed Naga traditional music and culture, and yet Christian music plays an important role in the construction of Naga identity. A brief history and overview of Christian music in Nagaland including, hymn singing, contemporary Christian music, and revival songs demonstrates how the unique social, cultural and political context of Nagaland has created a generational divide in worship style preferences and the birth of the revival song genre. Snapshots of the life and work of Naga composers further illustrate these themes and provide insight into the incorporation of Naga folk music in Christian worship. While advocates make strong …

Giving God Glory: How Christian Tharus Negotiate Belonging Through Ritual Music In Nepal, Victoria M. Dalzell

HIMALAYA, the Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies

In Nepal, ethnicity is often constituted through ritual practice. If ritual participation is a key way of exercising membership in an ethnic group, how might Christians--who no longer participate in many community rituals--demonstrate their belonging in ethnic communities? In this article, I argue that modifying traditional songs and dances for a church context is one way that Christian Tharus continue to identify with their ethnic communities within a multicultural Christian community. I examine two Christian Tharu performances: performing the huri nāc (a Kathariya Tharu song and dance genre performed during Holi) at interchurch events and arranging an original, Nepali-language hymn …

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.

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, …

Exploring Moroccan Music Through Experiential Learning, Tai Knoll

Honors Projects

As a music educator, I value a comprehensive and well-rounded music education that is inclusive and dynamic – an education that introduces students to the global world they live in and fosters compassion and understanding of cultures different from their own. However, I did not fully understand how I could provide that for my students and how to do so in a respectful and appropriate way that did not other or appropriate the culture I was attempting to honor. That desire to learn more about teaching world musics and representation in the classroom drove me to pursue answers through the …

Devil In The Strawstack, Devil In The Details: A Comparative Study Of Old-Time Fiddle Tune Transcriptions, Kalia Yeagle

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis asks what transcriptions of old-time fiddle tunes might tell us about their underlying purposes and the nature of transcription. How could differing approaches to transcription reflect the intentions of the author, and what are those intentions? What does this suggest about how aural information is prioritized? Through a comparative analysis of three transcriptions of the same recording—Tommy Jarrell’s “Devil in the Strawstack”—this thesis examines how musical information is prioritized and how transcribers have adapted their methods to better reflect the nuances of old-time music. The three transcriptions come from Clare Milliner and Walt Koken (The Milliner-Koken Collection …

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 …

Cross-Cultural Work In Music Cognition: Challenges, Insights, And Recommendations, Nori Jacoby, Elizabeth Hellmuth Margulis, Martin Clayton, Erin Hannon, Henkjan Honing, John Iversen, Tobias Robert Klein, Samuel A. Mehr, Lara Pearson, Isabelle Peretz, Marc Pearlman, Rainer Polak, Andrea Ravignani, Patrick E. Savage, Gavin Steingo, Catherine J. Stevens, Laurel Trainor, Sandra Trehub, Michael Veal, Melanie Wald-Fuhrmann

Psychology Faculty Research

Many foundational questions in the psychology of music require cross-cultural approaches, yet the vast majority of work in the field to date has been conducted with Western participants and Western music. For cross-cultural research to thrive, it will require collaboration between people from different disciplinary backgrounds, as well as strategies for overcoming differences in assumptions, methods, and terminology. This position paper surveys the current state of the field and offers a number of concrete recommendations focused on issues involving ethics, empirical methods, and definitions of “music” and “culture.”

Guide To The Kenneth M. Bilby Oral History Collection On Foundations Of Jamaican Popular Music, Columbia College Chicago

CBMR Collection Guides / Finding Aids

Sound recordings and accompanying logs of oral history interviews conducted by Dr. Kenneth M. Bilby with studio musicians and arrangers active in the creation of Jamaican popular music during the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. The collection is open for on-site research use only and cannot be copied or distributed without the permission of Kenneth M. Bilby.

Singing Out: Gala Choruses And Social Change, Heather Maclachlan

Books and Book Chapters by University of Dayton Faculty

Can you change the world through song? This appealing idea has long been the professed aim of singers who are part of choruses affiliated with the Gay and Lesbian Association of Choruses (GALA). Theses choruses first emerged in the 1970s, and grew out of a very American tradition of (often gender-segregated) choral singing that explicitly presents itself as a community-based activity. By taking a close look at these choruses and their mission, Heather MacLachlan unpacks the fascinating historical and cultural dynamics behind groups that seek to change society for the better by encouraging acceptance of LGBT-identified people and promoting diversity …

Guide To The Caleb Dube Collection, Columbia College Chicago

CBMR Collection Guides / Finding Aids

Caleb Dube was an ethnomusicology scholar and teacher who studied blues music through an anthropological framework. The Caleb Dube Collection primarily contain general research in the fields of cultural anthropology and ethnomusicology, along with more narrow research linking these two fields of study to Chicago, and the blues.

“You Crossed My Mind … Before?”: An Intertextual Analysis Of Songs From 'To Pimp A Butterfly', Colin Outhwaite

Theses : Honours

Popular music often refers to, evokes and includes elements of other music from the past. This kind of intertextuality in popular music provides artists and audiences with short-cuts to making and interpreting meaning. It draws on nostalgia, past listening experiences and idealised perceptions of the past. Artists engaging in this practice risk criticism for being too derivative. Conversely, artists who are too innovative and forward-looking run the risk of not connecting to listeners. Kendrick Lamar’s hip-hop album of 2015 To Pimp A Butterfly is lauded as being simultaneously innovative and steeped in the recent history of African American music. Lamar …

Listen To Liston: Examining The Systemic Erasure Of Black Women In The Historiography Of Jazz, Victoria E. Smith

Theses and Dissertations

"First you are a jazz musician, then you are black, then you are a female. I mean it goes down the line like that. We're like the bottom of the heap." - Melba Liston (pg 2) The historiography of jazz has consciously and unconsciously excluded women. This exclusion is exacerbated when one examines the intersection of race and jazz for black women. This essay argues that due to overwhelming societal expectations, gendered language, and physical threats of sexual assault and violence, black women had to create alternatives spheres of affirmation and musical expression because jazz culture stymied their access to …

Music And Jewish Practice In Contemporary Istanbul: Preserving Heritage, Bending Tradition, Joseph M. Alpar

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation is a study of ongoing transformations in the sacred musical repertoires practiced by ḥazzanim (synagogue cantors) and their synagogue congregations in Istanbul’s contemporary Jewish community. I argue that clergy and laypeople alike negotiate their religious identities as Turkish Jews in the musical choices they make. While many try to maintain the community’s local music tradition, rooted in makam—the Ottoman Turkish melodic system—others attempt to broaden their repertoire with musics from Israel, the United States, and Ḥabad Hasidic Judaism. I examine adjustments made to the musical components of ritual as responses to decades of Jewish religious life as …

Full Issue - Maya America V1, I1

Maya America: Journal of Essays, Commentary, and Analysis

Full issue of Maya America, the inaugural issue - volume 1, issue 1.

Laja’B’Kanal Yet’ Ko’ Q’In, The Lasting Dances Of Our Fiestas: Music Embodiment As A Collective Memory Of The Maya Diaspora, Juan G. Francisco Cristobal

Maya America: Journal of Essays, Commentary, and Analysis

The purpose of this article is to shed light on the music embodiment and collective memory of the Maya Diaspora, focusing on the Maya Q’anjob’al communities in the United States

Music, Dance, And Tourism In Los Cabos, Mexico, Melanie E. Davis

Theses and Dissertations

For a thriving music and dance scene to flourish in tourist destinations, certain factors for performers must be present including economic stability, a baseline level of patronage, resilience to seasonal tourist fluctuations, and adaptation to demographic changes over time. In the Los Cabos arts community, local aesthetics are transformed and embodied by work of performers whose activities are multicultural and multilingual. Over the past fifty years, Los Cabos was transformed from a sleepy fishing village into a major international destination. The island-inspired arts scene includes live performances featuring cultural representations from other lands besides Mexico. Grounded in the humanities, I …

Traditional Vs. Tagaq: Exploring The First Nations Relations In Canada Through Punk Inuk Throat Singer, Tanya Tagaq, Bridget S. Haines

Student Publications

This research essay will be situated within the throat singing traditions of the Inuit First Nations people of Canada. As both Paula Conlon’s entry in the Grove Music Refernce and Elaine Keillor’s book describe, Inuit throat singing began as a tradition for women and children to play as a game for when the men are away hunting. This tradition has evolved into quite a complex art form as Claude Charron describes in “Toward Transcription and Analysis of Inuit Throat-Games: Microstructure”. In 2005, Inuk throat singer Tanya Tagaq released her first album which began her career of a solo throat singer …

Community Music Therapy And Participatory Performance: Case Study Of A Coffee House, Elizabeth Mitchell

Music Faculty Publications

This case study research explores the impact of a musical performance event—the Coffee House—held bi-annually at an adolescent mental health treatment facility in Southwestern Ontario, Canada. Any client or staff member is welcomed to perform at this event, which is organized by the facility’s music therapist and framed here as an example of community music therapy. Drawing upon Turino’s (2008) ethnomusicological perspective on performance, I will argue that the Coffee House’s success within this context is due to its participatory ethos, wherein success is primarily defined by the act of participation. Here, performance takes place within an inclusive and supportive …

The Role Of Music In Worship Among Deaf Culture Christianity, Mallory Ruth Dunn

Masters Theses

Throughout the Word of God, we are called to worship our Creator through music. "Shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth, burst into jubilant song with music; make music to the Lord with the harp and the sound of singing, with trumpets and the blast of the ram's horn--shout for joy before the Lord, the King" (Psalm 98: 4-6 [NIV]). It has been said that music is a universal language: but all cultures use it differently and therefore it is not a universal language but a universal phenomenon. What about the individual who cannot hear the music or …

Making A Living As A Musician In Nepal: Multiple Regimes Of Value In A Changing Popular Folk Music Industry, Anna M. Stirr

HIMALAYA, the Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies

This article examines the moral and material economy of “being a musician” (Neuman 1980) in Nepal’s popular folk music industry, which includes the broad genre of lok gīt (folk song) and the more specific subgenre of lok dohori (folk duet song). Through ethnographic attention to a debate about what it means to be an artist, and how musicians can both make a living and earn prestige and honor, I argue that rather than one system of value and exchange dominating social and economic interactions in this music industry today, instead, multiple regimes of value shape artists’ choices. I give examples …

Music And Conflict Resolution: Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Teresa L. Enyart

Masters Theses

Music in relation to peace and conflict, whether constructive or destructive, has had deep and profound effects that unite people based on commonality and shared interest. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is no different when it comes to these two dichotomies. There are those who use music for protest to either escalate conflict or use it as a social and political platform. Then, there are those who use music for resolving their differences, to promote peacemaking and peacebuilding, further unifying and embracing the diversity that’s between them. The ethnographic approach that I took in this research gives insight and a perspective to …

Bali’S “Forgotten Stepchild”: The Cultural And Sonic Vitality Of The Balinese Rebab, Mikaela Marget

Lawrence University Honors Projects

The rebab is one of the only traditional stringed instruments found on the island of Bali, Indonesia. Though it is ever-present in musical ensembles in Bali, the rebab has been consistently overlooked in scholarship of Balinese music by Western ethnomusicologists. Through participant observation, personal interviews, and library research, I explore the idea that the rebab deserves a place in the scholarship of Balinese music. In addition, I argue that the Balinese rebab not only persists in Balinese music culture as a vital object, but that it is also an active participant in shaping Balinese music culture. In this paper, I …

Music Is The "Noise Of Remembering" Tracing The Origins, Influences, And Connectivities Of West African Music, Adam Friedman

Lawrence University Honors Projects

The popularity and universal reach of music genres such as Jazz and Hip Hop attest to the idea that these forms have been long established as a vital part of global musical culture. For people who are familiar with Afrocentric music, it is clear that styles such as Jazz and Hip Hop are rooted in, and inextricably linked with, African culture and history. What is more difficult to make sense of, however, is how and why transplanted African culture came to have such wide reaching impact in the new contexts in which it was taken up – because the stories …

Santería In A Globalized World: A Study In Afro-Cuban Folkloric Music, Nathan Montgomery

Lawrence University Honors Projects

The Yoruban people of modern-day Nigeria worship many deities called orichas by means of singing, drumming, and dancing. Their aurally preserved artistic traditions are intrinsically connected to both religious ceremony and everyday life. These forms of worship traveled to the Americas during the colonial era through the brutal transatlantic slave trade and continued to evolve beneath racist societal hierarchies implemented by western European nations. Despite severe oppression, Yoruban slaves in Cuba were able to disguise orichas behind Catholic saints so that they could still actively worship in public. This initial guise led to a synthesis of religious practice, language, and …

Hip-Hop In Africa : Prophets Of The City And Dustyfoot Philosophers, Msia Kibona Clark

Ohio University Press Open Access Books

Throughout Africa, artists use hip-hop both to describe their lives and to create shared spaces for uncensored social commentary, feminist challenges to patriarchy, and resistance against state institutions, while at the same time engaging with the global hip-hop community. In Hip-Hop in Africa, Msia Kibona Clark examines some of Africa’s biggest hip-hop scenes and shows how hip-hop helps us understand specifically African narratives of social, political, and economic realities.

Clark looks at the use of hip-hop in protest, both as a means of articulating social problems and as a tool for mobilizing listeners around those problems. She also details the …

Sound Recordings And Dignity Takings: Reflections On The Racialization Of Migrants In Contemporary Italy, Gianpaolo Chiriacò

Chicago-Kent Law Review

In the field of ethnomusicology, it is possible to consider musical collaborations—such as traditional fieldwork or joint musical projects between artists of different background—as spaces where different individuals and subjectivities share their own artistic practices and products, as well as the musical cultures of which they are representative or bearers. Such collaborations raise an array of methodological questions with implications to social justice and power relations. The aim of this contribution is to use the notion of dignity takings and dignity restoration to tackle some of these questions. While relying strongly on my own fieldwork in Rome and Chicago, I …

Our Culture Is Who We Are! “Rescuing” Grenadian Identity Through Musicking And Music Education, Danielle Sirek

Education Publications

In this article I explore the relationships between identities and musicking in Grenada, West Indies, taking into account the understandings of community and nationhood that foreground and inform identity discourse in the Grenadian context. Through the dual lenses of music education and ethnomusicology, I analyze musicking and music education initiatives intended to “rescue” Grenadian identity and Grenadian values as articulated by an older generation of Grenadians and by governmental agencies. I argue that musicking in Grenada is intertwined with identity in complex ways, and that there is a perceived lack of transmission of folk musicking practices whose consequences extend well …

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 …