Ethnomusicology Commons^™

From Protest Song To Social Song: Music And Politics In Colombia, 1966-2016, Joshua Katz-Rosene

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Based on archival and ethnographic fieldwork in the cities of Bogotá and Medellín, this dissertation documents the development of canción protesta (protest song) in Colombia in the 1960s, and tracks its evolution in subsequent decades. At the turn of the 1970s, songwriters affiliated with a grassroots canción protesta movement in Bogotá used music as a vehicle for disseminating leftist political ideology and extolling the revolutionary guerrilla groups that had formed in the Colombian countryside in the preceding years. However, canción protesta was an urban phenomenon that emerged in tandem with other countercultural currents, and their confluence in the late 1960s …

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 …

Jazz And Recording In The Digital Age: Technology, New Media, And Performance In New York And Online, Dean S. Reynolds

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation is a study of the uses of recording technologies and new media by jazz musicians in New York. It privileges the perspectives of professional musicians, gleaned through interviews and observation of their discourses and practices in live and recorded performances and in online new media spaces. Contrary to scholarly and critical approaches to jazz that privilege live performance, this dissertation argues that mediatization, through use of recording technologies, digital formats and platforms, and social media, is a vital mode of jazz performance in the digital age. Chapter 1 shows how formative encounters with jazz by musicians coming of …

Spectacular Politics And Everyday Performance: Tracing Music From Ceauşescu’S Romania To Multicultural America, Benjamin Dumbauld

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Drawing from fieldwork conducted throughout the United States and Canada, this dissertation examines the continued performance of socialist-era music within the Romanian-American community. It addresses why a community largely made up of people who sought to leave the country during the authoritarian regime of Nicolae Ceauşescu continue to perform music tied to that period by tracing the historical performance and reception of multiple genres, ranging from traditional peasant music to folk rock. The dissertation begins by examining the nationalization of Romania’s music industry under the early socialist regime (1944-1965), and locates the difficulties Communist Party members confronted in delineating a …

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 …

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 …