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Sonic Rupture And Embodied Politics:
Reconfiguring The Aesthetic Regime In The Syrian Uprising, Lynn Shabani

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis argues that the Syrian uprising of 2011 emerged as a sonic and embodied rupture within an authoritarian aesthetic regime that had long governed public sensibility. Through chants, song, and coordinated movement, political agency took form as collective, affective practice, transforming vernacular repertoires into infrastructures of mobilization, audibility, and resistance.

Good Vibrations: Folk Circles As Communication Environments, Missy Alexander

Proceedings of the New York State Communication Association

For over 25 years, I have participated in the creation of music and community through what are commonly called folk circles. Typically run as monthly gatherings, participants who range from complete beginners to seasoned pros, join together and share their favorite songs. These environments have clearly defined rules for participation (although rarely stated overtly), a strong ethos of mutual support, and frequently function as a path to friendships for people new to a community. This essay examines the folk circle as a communication environment and posits an explanation of why it is impervious to digital invasions.

A Showman And A Scholar: Bascom Lamar Lunsford And The Preservation Of Traditional Appalachian Music, Benjamin Grist

Masters Theses

Appalachian musical culture is well-known in the modern day. Between old time, bluegrass, country, and clogging, people around the world know and enjoy the musical traditions of the mountains. However, in the 1920s, Appalachian culture was in serious danger of going extinct. A mix of industrialization destroying local economies, an influx of rich outsiders moving to the region, and the people of Appalachia trying to distance themselves from their impoverished lifestyles, traditional Appalachian music and culture was being crushed on one hand and abandoned on the other. Realizing that the region's musical traditions were disappearing, several scholars tried to record …

Compositional Practices In The Accompaniment Of Celtic Trad Music, Mason Taylor

Composition/Recording Projects

n this research paper, I look at how traditional Irish folk musicians—“Trad” as it is commonly referred to by musicians in the style––approach, think of, and perform accompaniment, specifically the contrapuntal style that is common amongst mandolin and bouzouki players. Trad has evolved greatly over the years. Originally, Trad was performed without any form of accompaniment—no guitar, no piano, no cello. Many solo instruments, such as the flute and the fiddle, would play the same melody with the only harmony occurring at moments where performers would momentarily diverge from the melody with an improvised ornament. Somewhere along its varied history, …

Song Analysis - Final Project For The American Musical Experience, Agustina Checa

Open Educational Resources

Assignment designed as a final project for the undergraduate course MSH245: The American Musical Experience at Lehman College. This course surveys different musical expressions that emerged in the United States as well as the historical, social and technological contexts framing their popularization.This assignment asks students to analyze a song of their choosing performed by an American artist and to follow specific requirements in their study of this piece which include: historical and social contextualization, analysis of style, influences and lyrics, as well as the elaboration of a "listening guide" to fully appreciate the composition. Students are given the …

Crossing The Pond: The Influence Of Southern Appalachian Old-Time On Contemporary Irish Music, Amanda Morgan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Numerous studies examine Irish traditional music influencing old-time music, but few examine the influence of old-time on contemporary Irish. As our societies become more global, folk music travels faster and becomes more open to influence. Thes influences can be heard in the music of “Alfi” and “Lankum,” two ensembles steeped in Irish traditional music.

This study defines common musical elements of old-time and examines the use of those elements in two recordings: Alfi’s, “Jubilee” and Lankum’s, “The Old Man from Over the Sea.” Much of my data comes from interviews with Irish and American musicians and my own professional knowledge, …

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.

Making Connections To The Filipino American Community Using Culturally Responsive Music Pedagogy, Jared Thomas Coyle

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

Positive connections between school and home have been shown to increase student achievement. Currently there are few resources available in the United States that allow teachers to incorporate aspects of Filipino American culture into their instruction practices. Through the use of traditional children’s songs and singing games, the K-6 classroom music curriculum can serve as an effective vehicle to establish these connections.

In interviews with members of the California Filipino American community, we discussed the musical culture of the Philippines. Informants shared how musical traditions are transmitted and shared in the Philippines and United States. Participants also discussed possible ways …

Stewart, Karen (Fa 1273), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Folklife Archives Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Folklife Archives Project 1273. Student paper titled “Negro Gospel Music at Barnes Chapel Methodist Church” in which Karen Stewart describes a singular all-day “singing” held at the church in Beaver Dam, Kentucky, in February 1971. Stewart offers a brief description of her fieldwork methods including research and recording and provides an abbreviated background on each of her musical informants. Stewart also recounts the songs that were sung and notes recurrent themes throughout the music. The paper also includes the words to each hymn, a black and white photograph of the performers, and two reel-to-reel audiotapes.

Thompson, Elois (Fa 1258), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Folklife Archives Finding Aids

Finding aid and scan (Click on "Additional Files" below) for Folklife Archives Project 1258. Student paper titled “Uncle Henry and the Kentucky Mountaineers” in which Elois Thompson details the life and career of “farmer, soldier, boxer, dairy-farm employee, comedian, aircraft factory employee, and hillbilly musician” Henry Green Warren. Thompson describes Warren’s childhood in Green County, his beginnings as a host on a popular radio program, and his time as a musician in several country music bands. Collection contains a draft of the original paper with the editor’s notes and the final copy of Thompson’s paper.

Bastin, Glen (Fa 1241), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Folklife Archives Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Folklife Archives Project 1241. Collection of 38 cassette tapes featuring Glen Bastin's regional public affairs syndicated radio program, "Pondering Kentucky: The Magazine." A contents list was prepared and appears at the end of this finding aid.

Enduring Music: Migrant Appalachian Communities And The Shenandoah National Park, Madeline Marsh

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

This paper is an archival study of the displaced children of families formerly living in the Shenandoah National Park which spans from Strasburg to Waynesboro, Virginia. The study looks at interviews, from the JMU Special Collections archives, of these children in the 1970-80s, nearly fifty years after their forced migration from the 197,438 acres that comprised the park. Change and pressure during the 1930s-40s combined with national policy began the nostalgic preservation and veneration of the culture of these people of the Blue Ridge Mountains; through the archives, a clear and diverse picture of the perspectives and lifestyles of people …

Folk Music In A Digital Age: The Importance Of Face-To-Face Community Values In Filk Music, Sally Childs-Helton

Scholarship and Professional Work

Filk is broadly defined as the traditional folk-based music and related community created by and for a sub-community of science fiction and fantasy fans. Born in the 1950s, filk today includes international participants of various experience levels and musical styles. Social context and music are equally important in this tradition; prominent values include self-expression, play and building a face-to-face co-creative, collaborative group experience. This article, founded on Textual Poachers (1992), assumes that filk remains a folk music in many ways, and that filkers still prefer face-to-face musical and personal interaction in spite of a lively, diverse online filk community. I …

Segmentation Of Folk Songs With A Probabilistic Model, Ciril Bohak, Matija Marolt

Papers

Structure is an important aspect of music. Musical structure can be recognized in different musical modalities such as rhythm, melody, harmony or lyrics and plays a crucial role in our appreciation of music. In recent years many researchers have addressed the problem of music segmentation, mainly for popular and classical music. Some of the more recent approaches are Mauch et al. (2009), Foote (2000), Serr`a et al. (2012) and McFee & Ellis (2014). Last three are included in the music structure analysis framework MSAF Nieto & Bello (2015). None of the mentioned approaches however, addresses the specifics of folk music. …

Analysis Of Tahreer In Traditional Iranian Singing, Parham Bahadoran

Papers

Iranian tradition singing is based on a rich musical heritage and contains styles and techniques distinct to the region, which differentiate it from other styles of Middle Eastern singing. In this paper I aim to highlight the specific characteristics of a traditional Iranian vocal technique called Tahreer by analysing its features using computational tools and methods.

Community Scholars Program - Caldwell County, Kentucky (Fa 739), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Folklife Archives Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Folklife Archives Project 739. This collection contains information and documentation about the Community Scholars Program’s workshops held in Caldwell County, Kentucky in 2008. The collection exclusively features a project about Amerindian culture completed by participant Melissa Earnest.

Bildung Culture: Elite Popular Music And The American University, 1960-2010, David Blake

Stony Brook Theses and Dissertations Collection, 2006-2020 (closed to submissions)

Milton Babbitt's 1958 article " The Composer as Specialist" (in)famously aligned the scientific aspirations of avant-garde art music with the university's mission of disinterested research. More recently, musicologists have criticized the alleged resultant hermitage of modernist styles within academia by asserting universities' separation from " public" musical culture. However, the growth of the American university in terms of population and social power since the mid-twentieth century has enlarged rather than mitigated the institution's societal influence. While universities have traditionally been associated with art music rather than popular music scenes, changes in demography, curricula, and student life over the past half-century …

The Intermediate Sphere In North Indian Music Culture: Between And Beyond ‘Folk’ And ‘Classical’, Peter L. Manuel

Publications and Research

If in discourse about traditional music in North India, the notions of “folk” and “classical” continue to be widely used, in this essay I posit the existence of an “intermediate sphere,” comprising a heterogeneous set of traditional music genres that, in different ways, shares features with both folk and classical realms. I suggest five categories in this socio-musical stratum and provide brief glimpses of some of their constituents and distinguishing features, including the distinctive sorts of theory they embody and elite patronage that sustains them. I conclude with observations about historical changes in the status of this sphere in general.

Tunetracker: Tensions In The Surveillance Of Traditional Music, Bryan Duggan, Norman M. Su

Conference papers

We describe the design and deployment of the first system ever to dynamically track and publish records of folk music playing. TuneTracker is a software system that has been, at time of writing, deployed at a pub in Dublin, Ireland for five months. It captures, stores, and posts the names of tunes played in Irish traditional music sessions on a public website. This paper makes two contributions: (1) drawing from a two year ethnographic study of trad musicians, it details the design and development of a system to track and publish traditional musicians’ practices while respecting the ethos of tradition, …

Folk/Traditional Music Of West Virginia Arranged For Classical Guitar Ensemble, Júlio Ribeiro Alves

Music Faculty Research

My motivation for writing this book grew from my desire to better understand the people and the music heritage of West Virginia and to share the findings of my experience, with the guitar community, in the form of guitar ensemble arrangements.

Flutes, Festivities, And Fragmented Tradition: A Study Of The Meaning Of Music In Otavalo, Brenna C. Halpin

Masters Theses

This thesis consists of an intimate study of the value and meaning of flute music of indigenous musicians in the contemporary world. This is accomplished by interviewing and observing indigenous panpipe and flute musicians in and near the Plaza de Ponchos Market in Otavalo, Ecuador. Collected personal stories, historical accounts, and recordings and analysis of the music all provide insight into the purpose and traditions the music holds. While the musicians attempt to maintain a sense of cultural authenticity, modernization has altered the importance of customs and music as Otavalo moves toward a more commoditized and urbanized community, reflecting ethnic …

The Social Life Of Musical Instruments, Eliot Bates

Publications and Research

Accordion Crimes, a novel by E. Annie Proulx, traces the life of and routes travelled by a green diatonic button accordion: its birth in Sicily in the workshop of “The Accordion Maker,” its numerous changes of ownership in the Americas during encounters between various immigrant communities, and its death when it finally falls into disrepair in the town of Old Glory, Minnesota. There are other accordions in the book, and many temporary human owners, but it is one particular green accordion that is the book’s protagonist. We meet and experience other characters largely through their interactions with the green accordion, …

Transforming The Past : Luciano Berio's Appropriation Of Folk Materials And Idioms In "Folk Songs" (1964)., Jamison Tyler Fritts

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In this preliminary search for a coherent and continuous cohesion of western art and folk music-cultures, Berio utilizes folk songs from seven distinct as the basis for composition. The technique for combining western classical and folk music is one that Berio modified throughout his career, although it is with Folk Songs that the appropriation of vernacular musical idioms is most transparent. In the arrangement of the songs for this cycle, Berio circumvents his earlier handling of the vocal line as evident in Circles (1960) and Epifianie (1961/65). The unencumbered lyricism demonstrates a desire, on some level, to preserve the identifying …

Mixing For Parlak And Bowing For A Büyük Ses: The Aesthetics Of Arranged Traditional Music In Turkey, Eliot Bates

Publications and Research

In this paper I explore the production aesthetics that define the sound of most arranged traditional music albums produced in the early 2000s in Istanbul, Turkey. I will focus on two primary aesthetic characteristics, the achievement of which consume much of the labor put into tracking and mixing: parlak (“shine”) and büyük ses (“big sound”). Parlak, at its most basic, consists of a pronounced high frequency boost and a pattern of harmonic distortion characteristics, and is often described by studio musicians and engineers in Turkey as an exaggeration of the perceived brightness of the majority of Anatolian folk instruments. Büyük …

Research Note: Musical Traditions In India, Salil Sachdev

Bridgewater Review

No abstract provided.

Fall/Winter 2000, Wmpg 90.9 Fm

WMPG Program Guides

WMPG program guide for Fall/Winter 2000

Includes notes from Program Director, information on shows and events, and schedule.

Spring 1998, Wmpg 90.9 Fm

WMPG Program Guides

WMPG program guide for Spring 1998

Includes notes from Program Director, information on shows and events, and schedule.

Fall 1997, Wmpg 90.9

WMPG Program Guides

WMPG program guide for Fall 1997

Includes notes from Program Director, information on shows and events, and schedule.

Interview With Joe Hickerson Regarding Sarah Gertrude Knott (Fa 459), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Folklife Archives Oral Histories

Transcription of an interview with Joe Hickerson at the Library of Congress regarding Sarah Gertrude Knott and the National Folk Festival. Also includes discussions about folk music, folk musicians, and the National Council for the Traditional Arts.

Interview With Andy Wallace Regarding Sarah Gertrude Knott (Fa 459), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Folklife Archives Oral Histories

Transcription of interview with Andy Wallace conducted by Michael Ann Williams in 1995 about Sarah Gertrude Knott. Williams was a Folk Studies professor at Western Kentucky University. She used these interviews when writing her book: Staging Tradition: John Lair and Sarah Gertrude Knott (Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 2006).