Ethnomusicology Commons^™

New Music And New Instruments: The Development Of The Electric Bass Guitar, Braxton Algood

Student Scholar Symposium

The sound of the modern electric bass has become ubiquitous in music across multiple genres. With the emergence of jazz music in the 1930s, upright bassists like Jimmy Blanton sought to create a sonic space that exploited the resonance in the low register of the traditional double bass, but was more rhythmic and percussive than the instrument’s traditional role. This desire for a percussive string instrument that had the sound of the upright bass—and might also be more portable—led to the creation of Leo Fender’s first electric bass guitar in 1951. By the end of the 1950s, the electric bass …

Post-Tonal Pedagogy In The Music Of György Ligeti, Easton Ball

Student Scholar Symposium

Post-tonal piano literature remains unpopular with many modern performers due to a perceived lack of technical approachability. As a result, a wealth of post-tonal keyboard music passes into obscurity, never reaching modern audiences. Despite the preconception that post-tonal music lacks formal and harmonic structure, one can assign order to elements within these compositions both for purposes of improving pedagogy and engendering familiarity with the literature. My research aims to demonstrate one process of elucidating the relative accessibility of post-tonal literature for keyboard by means of an analysis of a selection of György Ligeti’s Études pour piano. Because this material often …

“When White Men And Indians United Shall Praise:” Indigenous Inclusion In The Hartford Music Company, Savannah N. Skaggs

ATU Scholars Symposium

The Hartford Music Company and Institute of Hartford, Arkansas has attracted increasing academic interest, particularly within the last twenty years. This southern gospel music publishing company and singing school based in southern Sebastian County published a collection of shape note hymnals which boasted some of the genre’s most prolific literature. Though a growing number of Arkansans are learning that these gospel staples came from their own hill country, many do not realize that several of these songs were premiered by or recorded by Indigenous people. While this may not initially seem particularly impactful, this genre developed its own distinct identity …

María Grever: Influence Through Mexican Folk And Classical Romantic Techniques And Ideals In ‘A Una Ola.’, Alexandria C. Ellis

ATU Scholars Symposium

In the last 25 years, there has been a resurgence in Latin American ethnomusicology. This means that, while interest continues to grow, there are several gaps, especially when it comes to the contributions of women. Interestingly, some of these gaps surround the popular Mexican composer María Grever. This includes the lack of information on the variety of sources she gathered inspiration from for composition. Through analyzing Grever's compositional style, especially in the bolero ‘A Una Ola,’or ‘To a Wave,’ I will examine the relationship that Grever employs between the classical Romantic approach and Latin American techniques, especially Mexican folk. While …

Five Thousand Years Of Egyptian Double-Pipes And Musical Cultural Influences, Samuel T. Holtkamp

ATU Scholars Symposium

Ancient Egypt was one of the earliest of human societies to pursue the development of music, and many of the musical concepts they pioneered over five-thousand years ago are still in use. Along with the preservation of musical ideas, certain ancient Egyptian instruments have also stood the test of time, through both preservation and evolution. However, the development of these instruments from their ancient to modern forms is sparsely discussed. Along with this, virtually no research explores the evolution of these instrument forms from a chronological context. This paper seeks to investigate and chronologize forms of the ancient Egyptian double-pipe, …

Moving Beyond World Music: An Exploration Of Non-Western Music Cataloging Practices In Higher Education And Where To Go From Here, Alastair L. Canavan

New Librarianship Symposia Series: Fall 2021

The term “world music” has been used for decades as a catchall genre to describe any form of music outside of Western classical. As a byproduct of the eurocentrism pervasive throughout academia, its use furthers a bubble that others or ignores Non-Western cultures and their music. By examining the public-facing catalogs of 13 university libraries across 10 different countries to determine to what extent Non-Western music is included in their collections, how it is cataloged, and if the term “world music” is used to do so, the specific cataloging practices and norms that perpetuate a bias toward Western classical music …

Ja Rusyn Byl (I Am Rusyn): Household Folk Music As Resistance To Oppression, Spencer Mcneill

Undergraduate Research and Scholarship Symposium

The Rusyns are a people indigenous to the Carpathian Mountains and its surrounding areas. Despite attempts by the Ukrainian government and surrounding nations to silently erase Rusyn culture from history, the Rusyn people have a distinct identity independent from that of any bordering nation. This unique identity is best outlined through Rusyn folk songs which depict pastoral images of the Carpathian homeland and patriotic tales of Rusyn ancestry. Much work to date has already been done documenting post Velvet Revolution revival of Rusyn culture. Because of this, I will instead focus on the lesser-known time prior and leading up to …

Contemporary Monacan Nation Identity Expression: A Music And Cultural Arts Study, Gretchen Cline, Katherine Morehouse

Liberty University Research Week

Graduate

Applied

Songs Of The Sea And The Sailor: Demystifying The Mythology Of British Sailing Culture, Henry Strobel

Undergraduate Research and Scholarship Symposium

Sea shanties have generally been accepted as the main relic of the culture of British sailors: a mythology that permeates the 19th and 20th century describing the harsh, unforgiving and yet in many ways romanticized life at sea. The repertoire of this time was eventually written down and catalogued by folk music collectors such as Cecil J. Sharp, who were hoping to record and preserve the British identity for generations to come. However, in researching the etymology of these songs as well as the first-hand accounts of sailors, there is a significantly greater layer of complexity to this history than …

The Strategies And Risks Of Performing Citizenship And Rights Through Music, Carolin Mueller

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

My work explores the capacity of cultural producers to perform “insurgent citizenship,” a term theorized by James Holsten (2008) to describe how the peripheries of social organization can propel alternative modes of civic participation, through music. I utilize Engin Isin’s performative dimension of citizenship (2017) to investigate such forms of insurgent citizenship as they evolve in social and cultural peripheries of the contemporary arts and culture industry in the city of Dresden, Germany to identify the pathways they open to socio-political participation and autonomy for refugees.

While Germany understands itself as a nation of culture, cultural policy unevenly addresses the …

Hate Music On Youtube: The Dark Side Of Advancing Digital Freedom In Myanmar, Heather Maclachlan

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

The International Fact-Finding Mission of the United Nations has condemned Myanmar’s treatment of Rohingya people as one of the world’s worst instances of ethnic cleansing, calling it “genocidal in intent.” The Rohingya are only one of many Muslim communities in Myanmar, a number of which have been subject to violent attacks by Buddhists in recent years (Wade 2017). This presentation explains the role that music plays in fostering anti-Muslim prejudice in the country’s majority Buddhist population. I present an analysis of the lyrics and accompanying videos of a corpus of recently recorded songs, all available on Youtube, and argue that …

"Sounding The Nile" In Nubian Musical Expression, Regan L. Homeyer

Shared Knowledge Conference

Nubians are indigenous peoples of the Nile River Valley whose ancient civilization parallels that of ancient Egypt. In 1964, 50,000 Egyptian Nubians were removed from their homeland along the Nile because of President Gamal Abdel Nasser’s initiative, the Aswan High Dam Project. With fertile lands and sacred temples doomed to inundation by the waters of what is now Lake Nassar, Nubians were resettled in government built villages that promised both preservation of culture and modern conveniences. What these riverine people received, in fact, were poorly constructed, unfinished dwellings located in the desert, more than five miles from the Nile. A …

Is It All In The Family?: What Does It Mean To Be “Fam” In The Jam Band Scene? A Case Study Of Northwest Ohio, Katelen Brown

Ray Browne Conference on Cultural and Critical Studies (2015-2021)

The concept of family or “fam” has been associated with the jam band scene and hippie movements since the 1960s, specifically in relation to the Grateful Dead, the Rainbow Family, and the Brotherhood of Eternal Love. This concept’s significance has been widely debated by music journalists, biographers, and scholars. But what does family actually means to the musical experience of the individual? This paper is especially focused on the significance of musical and subcultural participation, as well as some of the complex intersectional issues of belonging to a family in the jam band scene. In this project, I will be …

“The Real Spice Girl, Hot Girl Power”: M.I.A. Singing The Subaltern Voice In The Euro-American Soundscape, Emma Niehaus

Ray Browne Conference on Cultural and Critical Studies (2015-2021)

Gayatry Chakravorty Spivak’s seminal work of Subaltern Studies, “Can the Subaltern Speak?” analyzed the predisposition of the “Western” academy to ultimately silence the voices, experiences, and cultures of colonized, “third world” and non- European “others”. Following Spivak’s work, other scholars examined subaltern speech as it manifested in various other cultural products for instance, music. Notably, subaltern scholars such as Rebecca Romanow and Amanda Weidman in “Can the Subaltern Sing” argued that aural space for the subaltern musician was shrinking in the face of a rapidly globalizing Euro-American music industry. My presentation argues that it is not a question of if …

From Swing King To Swing Kids: The Jazz Era Of ‘Big Band Orchestras’ In World War Ii, Katie Victoria Burnopp

Student Scholar Showcase

Known as the ‘King of Swing’, clarinetist and band leader Benny Goodman (1909-1986) threatened the Nazi cause during WWII. With intent of improving music pedagogy, the purpose of this research was to investigate swing music during World War II. The particular problems of this study were to: (1) identify how the swing music of Benny Goodman (1909-1986) influenced adolescents in the United States of America, United Kingdom, and Germany; (2) explore the Nazi party view on ‘swing’ music of the era; (3) examine how the music of Charlie and his Orchestra became used as a tool for Nazi propaganda; and …

A Model For Patron-Driven Acquisition Of Print Music Scores: From Conception To Reality, Alan Asher, Trey Shelton, Jason Heckathorn, Aimee Barrett

Charleston Library Conference

This paper and presentation will explore the process of developing a unique patron-driven acquisition program for print music scores and monographs from concept to reality at an American Association of Research Libraries institution. Areas to be discussed include collection development considerations, information technology infrastructure needs, acquisitions workflows, and plan evaluation. The paper and the presentation will examine how partnering with a vendor to implement an innovative collection development plan can support the needs of the library users and the goals of library collection development officers and increase access to music scores and monographs in a fiscally responsible way. Readers can …

Electronic Dance Music Culture’S Communication Transition Through Social Media In North America, Eden Shurman

DHI Digital Projects Showcase

The project aims to link the past modes of communication utilized by participants in electronic dance music (EDM) club cultures and subcultures, to the current practice of using various social media platforms as a means of information conveyance about musicians, producers, DJs, events, and industry-related news. It will attempt to determine to what degree social media platforms influence electronic dance music culture, the positive and negative effects social media has on the culture, and whether the transition to digital communication modes is absolute. Finally, it will pose the question as to whether any further research on social media usage among …

Vibrato Rate In Female Opera Singers And Female Sertanejo Singers, Melissa Mccann

Showcase of Graduate Student Scholarship and Creative Activities

The aim of this study was to compare female vibrato rates in two styles of singing, western classical and sertanejo. This study was conducted in order to determine if different technical approaches yield a different mean vibrato rate in female singers. Examples were taken from well-known, operatic sopranos and popular female sertanejo singers. The program Vocevista was used to gain quantitative data on the singers’ vibrato rates and vibrato extent. A purpose of this study is to determine if the findings of similar mean vibrato rate for tenors singing in operatic and sertanejo genres, also hold true for female vocalists …

Albanian Traditional Music: A General Overview, Spiro J. Shetuni

Provost’s Spotlight on Scholarship Series

Shetuni, a native of Albania, says that the music, still an obscure subject, reflects a musical environment of both the Balkans and the Mediterranean world and is “not simply a heritage of the past, but above all, a vibrant contemporary art.” His presentation will examine the distinct musical culture of Albania, both monophonic and polyphonic, by delineating its four main musical dialects—Gheg, Tosk, Lab and Urban—along with its origins, styles and features.

Global Music Perspectives: Music Outside The Western Canon In Local Schools, Jane A. Best, John F. Grimsley, Alan C. Heise, Lauren M. Mascioli, Samantha F. Moroney, Lauren A. Satterfield, Emily I. Zeller

Celebration

As a class, we are designing a research project for investigating how music teachers from counties in South-Central Pennsylvania use music from outside the Western canon (i.e. "world music"). We are performing a qualitative study by interviewing k-12 music teachers from school districts in South-Central Pennsylvania. Teachers may choose to participate in a focus group interview with other teachers or in one-on-one interviews. The focus group interview will not exceed two hours and the one-on-one interviews will not exceed an hour. The interviews will be guided using a questionnaire (see attached), but the conversation may deviate from these questions at …

The Introduction Of The Black Conductor, Akeila Thomas

Undergraduate Research Conference

The conductor has become a position of great influence and necessity to the performing ensemble due to innovations in performance between the Baroque and mid to late Romantic periods. With such prominence given to the title, one such conductor has gained very little mention throughout the course of music's history. African-American musicians have played such a catalytic role in the shape and progression of Western music.

Que Bonita Es Esta Vida, Samara Martinez

Undergraduate Research Conference

No abstract provided.

When Tejano Ruled The Airwaves: The Rise And Fall Of Kqqk In Houston, Texas, Guadalupe San Miguel Jr.

NACCS Annual Conference Proceedings

No abstract provided.

Tejano Music As An Expression Of Cultural Nationalism, Jose R. Reyna

NACCS Annual Conference Proceedings

No abstract provided.