Digital Commons Network^™

Hispanismo En Seis Cuerdas, Roberto Hermosillo

Global Tides

This article is a survey on the role that the guitar plays in the Spanish-speaking countries of the world. The guitar, introduced by Spaniards in Spanish America, reflects the culture of every country that has adopted the instrument as part of their culture. Such reflection can be observed by finding traces of cultures of some countries such as Spain, Mexico, Argentina, and Cuba in the guitar music of each of those nations. The guitar, as a cultural icon, can also be observed in other forms of art from such places such as literature and painting. Finally, the article gives a …

Influences Of Armenian Folk Music On Clarinet Chamber Works By Aram Khachaturian And Alexander Arutiunian, Emma Peterson

Honors Program Theses

Armenia has a rich cultural and musical history. The Armenian folk music tradition, developed over many centuries, is of great national significance to the Armenian people. Among other instruments, the clarinet has enjoyed a prominent place in the folk music tradition of Armenia. This project discusses the Armenian folk music elements in the clarinet chamber works Trio for Clarinet, Violin and Piano by Aram Khachaturian and Suite for Clarinet, Violin and Piano by Alexander Arutiunian. There are three sections of research: the study of Armenian folk music, the study of folk elements in the pieces by Khachaturian and Arutiunian, and …

Playing With Motives - Aural Skills Exercises For Tonal Structure, David Castro

Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy

David Castro presents in his "Playing With Motives: Aural Skills Exercises for Tonal Structure" "a type of musical comprehension that is the goal of dictation exercises, [one that] depends entirely on the cognitive systems that are available to students in order for them to make sense of what they are hearing... It is just this sort of meaning that the discipline of music theory engages and it is this sort of meaning that we want our students to learn... The primary purpose of this article is to present a few aural skills exercises that focus directly on students' schematic familiarity …

Transcription And Analysis Of Ravi Shankar's Morning Love For Western Flute, Sitar, Tabla And Tanpura, Bethany Padgett

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to provide a transcription and musical analysis of Ravi Shankar’s Morning Love for Western flute, sitar, tabla and tanpura. This document provides a discussion of Ravi Shankar’s biography, a theoretical context for the piece including an introduction to Hindustani musical characteristics, and prescriptive transcriptions of Morning Love in Western and Indian notation. A detailed analysis of the piece applies the Hindustani classical musical characteristics discussed. Morning Love is one of only two pieces for Western flute composed by Ravi Shankar as a result of his collaboration with French flutist Jean-Pierre Rampal. Prior to this …

Zoltán Kodály's Sonata For Unaccompanied Cello, Op. 8 : One Cellist's Path To Performance, Celeste Power

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

My purpose in writing this document is to simply present my experience in learning and performing Zoltán Kodály’s Sonata for Unaccompanied Cello, Op. 8. My intent is not to instruct cellists on the interpretation of this piece. Each musician must decide how to play it in a way that suits his or her own conception of the piece. Rather I intend to go through each movement and discuss the problems I faced and how I endeavored to solved them, why some solutions worked and others did not, how I prepared for a recital performance of the piece, and what I …

Investigating "Experimentalism" : A Case Study Of The Tuba And Its Repertoire, Andrew Brian Larson

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The extant repertoire for the tuba serves as a landmark for how the tuba was perceived at that moment in time by that composer. This document contains a brief analysis of the tuba “experiment” that has been ongoing since its invention. In addition, it contains a brief parallel case study of the saxophone and how this instrument, invented at about the same time as the tuba, has embraced experimentalism and modern performance. This document contains five major sections. The first provides a brief history of the tuba and its predecessors. The second introduces numerical data representing the performance frequency of …

Sicong Ma's Amei Suite & Gaoshan Suite : Historical Background And Performer's Guide, Ming-Ying Chiu

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Before the Spanish, the Dutch, the Japanese, and the Chinese Mainlanders occupied Taiwan, Austronesians are believed to have been the island’s first immigrants. They are acknowledged as the Aboriginal Taiwanese. Since these people do not have a written language, music, especially singing, became an important means of communication and education for the Aborigines, whose culture is today considered one of the most historically valuable cultures in Taiwan. Sicong Ma (1912-1987) is a major composer who also played an important political role in China. After escaping from China during the Culture Revolution in 1967, Ma was protected by the United States …

Performing Folk Punk : Agonistic Performances Of Intersectionality, Benjamin D. Haas

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The overarching goal of this project is to argue that folk punk performances offer spaces where a listening audience is exposed to a radical and intersectional politics, and enable that audience to identify with those views. By considering the performances of Inky Skulls, Pussy Riot!, and Against Me!, this study looks to the ways in which these folk punk exemplars highlight elements of the radical politics of the American left and in the history of folk and punk music. In particular, this project considers the intersections of race and class, women and nonhuman animals, and queerness and anarchism, as intersecting …

The Performance And Perception Of Social Identities In Country-Rap Music, Rachel Grandstrand

Honors Papers

Within the United States, few genres incite as vehement of a reaction as Country and Hip-Hop music, and both of these genres have faced a history of marginalization by the mainstream media corporations and by the broader population of the US. The reason for this marginalization often stems from the racial and class associations of the communities that produce this music, and the relationship between these genres and the broader population is well documented. What remains under-discussed is the relationship between these two communities. This study explores this relationship through an analysis of Country-Rap music, a sub-genre of Country music …

Dubbin' The Literary Canon: Writin' And Soundin' A Transnational Caribbean Experience, Warren Harding

Honors Papers

In the mid-1970s, a collective of Jamaican poets from Kingston to London began to use reggae as a foundational aesthetic to their poetry. Inspired by the rise of reggae music and the work of the Caribbean Artists Movement based London from 1966 to 1972, these artists took it upon themselves to continue the dialogue on Caribbean cultural production. This research will explore the ways in which dub poetry created an expressive space for Jamaican artists to complicate discussions of migration and colonialism in the transnational Caribbean experience.

In order to do so, this research engages historical, ethnomusicological, and literary theories …

Czech Bluegrass Fiddlers And Their Negotiations Of Past And Present, Lee Bidgood

ETSU Faculty Works

Excerpt: Proc ty housle? ("Why the fiddle?") - "Fiddlers are all bad here - Why not write about the banjo or something else that Czechs are good at?"These questions about my ethnographic fieldwork came from musician colleagues with whom I working in researching bluegrass music in the Czech Republic, during a jam circle around a table. While these colleagues were mainly banjo and guitar players, these critiques of Czech fiddling are common even among Czech fiddlers, who are in many cases not as accomplished (in technical skill or musicality) as are their banjo-playing and mandolin-picking compatriots.

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. …

Breath Of Life: Revitalizing California's Native Languages Through Archives, Susan Gehr

Master's Theses

This thesis presents an oral history of the Advocates for Indigenous California Language Survival (AICLS) and its Breath of Life Workshop. Held every other year since 1996, the workshop is designed to meet the language revitalization needs of California Indian people whose languages have no living fluent speakers. Breath of Life Workshop organizers arrange visits to four archives on the University of California, Berkeley, campus and connect participants with linguistic mentors to read and interpret archival documents in their language for the purpose of bringing their language back into use.

Through interviews with AICLS founders, Breath of Life Workshop participants, …

“We Sang Alleluia, Praise The Lord!”: African-American Identity And The Use And Reception Of Music Within A Seventh-Day Adventist Church In New York City, 1970 – 2010, Jeryl Lee Cunningham-Fleming

Theses and Dissertations--Music

The Ephesus Seventh-day Church, one of the first Black SDA churches that were formed in the New York City area during the late 1920s and early 1930s, is one church that has been faced with the challenge of maintaining traditional repertoire and musical practices, while including more popular genres and styles that lay outside the SDA guidelines. Located in Central Harlem, Ephesus is surrounded by the cultural and historical influences within the Harlem community. The Ephesus Church, based on extant hymnals and the recollections of church members, continued in the Euro-centric musical traditions of early SDA churches until the 1960s, …

Little Eichmanns: A Composition For Chamber Octet, Benjamin D. Norton

Theses and Dissertations--Music

An original composition in one movement for a chamber octet comprised of a string quartet and a jazz piano quartet with tenor saxophone. The work develops an idée fixe, introduced in the opening bars, through a wide variety of transformations, textures, and styles. The two quartets begin in antiphonal alteration, united in thematic material, yet separated by style. A modern art music style contrasts with an improvisational jazz style. Gradually, the two quartets, and their concomitant musics, bleed into one another, breaking down stylistic boundaries. In the conclusion of the work, the idée fixe, the supplementary themes, and …

China’S Musical Revolution: From Beijing Opera To Yangbanxi, Yawen Ludden

Theses and Dissertations--Music

This study seeks to investigate the modern derivative of Beijing opera, known as yangbanxi, through macro and micro approaches. The first part of the thesis surveys the development of Beijing opera under the historical context and in its social, political, and cultural perspectives. The second part, taking a microscopic perspective, undertakes an in-depth analysis of the compositions that were solely created by composer Yu Huiyong. First, it assays the application of Yu’s theory to his compositions of various Beijing opera arias. Second, it analyzes Yu’s instrumental music in compositional dimensions such as material, structure, and techniques, considering the larger implications …

Three Facets Of Pau Casals' Musical Legacy, Silvia Maria Lazo

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Pau Casals (1876-1973, better known to American audiences as Pablo Casals) was a notable Catalan cellist, conductor and composer, also widely known as a humanitarian. He was raised in El Vendrell, a small village in Catalonia (Spain). He went into exile in Prades, France in 1939, towards the end of the Spanish Civil War, subsequently relocating to Puerto Rico in 1957. In October 1945, following the end of World War II, the lack of Allied intervention in Spain ignited Casals' international artistic boycott, wherein Casals vowed not to perform in any country recognizing General Francisco Franco's regime. To date, a …

Music Cultures Of Mechanical Reproduction, Peter L. Manuel

Publications and Research

Popular musics arc best understood as comprising those genres whose styles have evolved in an inextricable relation with their dissemination via the mass media and their marketing and sale on a mass-commodity basis. While much popular-music activity takes place independently of the mass media, other essential aspects of popular-music production and marketing arc inevitably inseparable from technologies of mechanical reproduction, which perforce condition aspects of music culture in general. Hence, just as one could speak of military cultures based around the stirrup, or later the firearm, or agrarian cultures based on the hoe, the ox, or the tractor, so do …

Popular Music Studies And The Problems Of Sound, Society And Method, Eliot Bates

Publications and Research

Building on Philip Tagg’s timely intervention (2011), I investigate four things in relation to three dominant Anglophone popular music studies journals (Popular Music and Society, Popular Music, and the Journal of Popular Music Studies): 1) what interdisciplinarity or multidisciplinarity means within popular music studies, with a particular focus on the sites of research and the place of ethnographic and/or anthropological approaches; 2) the extent to which popular music studies has developed canonic scholarship, and the citation tendencies present within scholarship on both Western and non-Western popular musics; 3) the motivations for two scholarly groups, Dancecult and ASARP, to breakaway from …

Misa Mo Unama Coñoca, Gustavo Leone

Department of Fine & Performing Arts: Faculty Publications and Other Works

Music of the Jesuit Missions of the Chiquitos

The Jesuits were expelled from the Spanish colonies in South America in 1767, leaving behind a remarkable musical legacy that was buried for over two hundred years. But the music did not disappear completely. Thanks to the Chiquitos people of Bolivia, the music was played and preserved throughout the 18th and 19th centuries.

In 1985, Swiss architect Hans Roth discovered 9,000 of these musical manuscripts and in 1990 UNESCO declared the churches of the Chiquitos a “patrimony of humanity”. Dr. Gustavo Leone of Loyola University Chicago's Department of Fine and Performing Arts …

Mennonite Music Education In Southern Manitoba: A Descriptive Study Of Mennonite Collegiate Institute And Steinbach Christian High School, Troy Landon Toavs

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to describe and compare the music programs at Mennonite Collegiate Institute (MCI) founded in 1889 and Steinbach Christian High School (SCHS) which has its origins in Steinbach Bible College founded in 1936. The Kanadier, Mennonites who came to Manitoba in 1874 (e.g., Kleine Gemeinde and Bergthaler), had previously rejected part-singing in Russia. However, they became more open to part-singing after they came to Manitoba. The Bergthaler in Gretna helped establish MCI. The Mennonite Brethren (MB) and Evangelical Mennonite Brethren (EMB) were influential in promoting choral music among the Kleine Gemeinde in Steinbach. Steinbach Bible …

Pacific Studies Vol. 35, No. 3 - December 2012 Full Issue

Pacific Studies

No abstract provided.

Just Sing What You Want To Say: The Importance Of Linguistic Tone In Bai Songs, Lisa Andrews

Masters Theses

The Bai people, a minority group in the People's Republic of China numbering at least 1.6 million, live mostly in the Dali Autonomous Prefecture in northwest Yunnan. Historically, Bai from the central region would gather annually at the base of Shibaoshan Mountain to sing partner style love songs in search for a suitable marriage partner; today, this time is marked by a three-day festival officially titled "Shibaoshan." The annual song competition invites skilled singers to spontaneously compose melodies in response to their counterpart, crafting lyrics to flatter or tease their singing partner. The study quantifies the close relationship between Bai …

Creating Light Music At The Festival Of Song: Politics, Personhood, And Cultural Production In Tirana, Albania (1944-Present), Nicholas Tochka

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

Though different orders organize subjects in audibly distinguishable ways, only rarely have ethnomusicologists theorized how musical practice articulates to practices of government. Through a diachronic case study of Tirana, Albania, this dissertation interrogates how the production of popular music has supported the production of popular consent to illiberal regimes both socialist (1944-1992) and capitalist (1992-present). While previous ethnomusicological and musicological studies of eastern bloc musical practice have focused (respectively) on professionalized folk music and concert music, my research examines the composition, performance, and reception of the popular genre "light music" (Alb. muzik?_ e leht?_) at an annual song competition the …

Pacific Studies Vol 35, No. 3 - December 2012

Pacific Studies

No abstract provided.

Zumba® Fitness As A Cultural Mediator, Cole E. Durain

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

This ethnography describes local experience as it pertains to aspects of music, dance, and fitness which are compiled into Zumba® Fitness classes of the Rio Grande Valley. While Zumba is not unique to this region, it is locally interpreted based on geo-cultural factors of the Texas-Mexico border region. A large part of Zumba’s success in the Valley can be attributed to the way music is used to identify with regional popular culture and becomes a catalyst for changing the way locals think about health. Research gathered through participant-observation shows that Zumba has become a cultural expression where participants perform both …

An Undergraduate Seminar On Irish Musical Culture In Ireland And The Irish Diaspora In America, Including The Influence Of Irish Music On Appalachian Folk Music Culture, Frieda Eakins

Masters Theses

The following project establishes a concise, yet multifaceted design for a seminar on Irish musical culture. While it was initially developed as a course for its author to teach in the undergraduate, on-ground classroom, this project provides a framework adaptable enough for use by other instructors and/or for additional music seminars. This project is unique in its two-fold purpose in that the design and resources are directed to assist the instructor with streamlining course curriculum preparation, while the course content specific to the project when utilized offers students in the undergraduate college classroom a better understanding of Irish musical culture …

Werner Jaegerhuber's “Messe Folklorique Haitïenne”: A Conductor's Guide, Lauren Michelle Brandon Lindsey

Dissertations

Werner Jaegerhuber (1900-1953), a composer and leading ethnographer from Haiti, lived a life and career committed to bringing the folk music of Haiti to international recognition. His most significant work, Messe Folklorique Haïtienne, the background leading to its composition, performance of the work and a conductor’s analysis is the focus of this study. The folk music of Haiti consists primarily of Vodou melodies which are performed in Vodou ceremonies. Haiti’s long history of colonization, slavery, chronic economic struggle, African roots, and Catholic influence all play unique, but significant roles in the life of Werner Jaegerhuber and his passionate study. …

December 2012 Commencement Program, Bowling Green State University

Commencement Programs

No abstract provided.

The Development Of Mennonite Music In The Congo: A Study In Musical Thought, Jill Michelle Schroeder-Dorn

Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to examine musical thought among members of the Congolese Mennonite Church. Established and governed by missionaries, the music practices of the Church were initially modeled after Western services, which consisted of church choirs and four-part hymn singing. Congolese who chose to convert to Christianity had to adapt to a new musical system, which included not only properties of musical sound, but also concepts surrounding the music making experience, including what music is and what it has the power to accomplish. The church has now been in existence for over one hundred years, and musical …