Musicology Commons^™

The Case For The Exclusion Of Exclusion: Intellectual Property, Masculine Legal Reason, And The Ethics Of Care, Ragya Shoukry

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis argues that current legal ideals of objectivity and neutrality are historically gendered and inseparable from the development of capitalist property relations and imperial expansion. It traces origins that begin with early modern witch hunts and Francis Bacon’s empiricism, where a new “scientific rationality” emerges alongside intensified patriarchal violence. The thesis then examines John Locke’s labour-based justification of property and the figure of the rational individual, showing how this framework legitimizes enclosure, dispossession and colonial appropriation under the guise of improvement and development. Building on this foundation, the analysis turns to moral psychology and how its allegedly universal stage …

Conga Santiaguera: A Century Of Innovation And Competition, Nick Herman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Santiago de Cuba is home to the island’s biggest, oldest, and most famous carnival.  Any local resident will confirm that “sin conga no hay carnaval (without conga there is no carnival).” In Santiago, conga refers to a vibrant street procession, the music that drives it, and the ensemble that makes the music.  Conga Santiaguera: A Century of Innovation and Competition presents a musical history of the conga from roughly 1910 to 2010.  This project, https://cuny.manifoldapp.org/projects/conga employs an eBook, musical analysis, oral histories, and audiovisual media to show how the conga has been constantly reinvigorated by innovation, competition, and Afro-Diasporic …

From The Heaviest, Dirtiest Depths To The Washy Ambient Clouds: Guitar Timbre In/As Schismogenesis In North American Christianity, Joshua K. Busman, Nathan Myrick

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

This essay argues that within the socio-cultural context of North American Christianity, the timbral qualities of electric guitar, with its long lineage as a site of cultural values conflict and identity negotiation, serves a theological function in the emerging and cohering sonority of digital worship. Using as comparative case studies the timbral qualities of delay and ambience as promoted and sold by Worship Tutorials as representing normative sonic values for these Christians, on the one hand, and the dialectic and schismatic deployment of distortion by the band My Epic on the other, we suggest that these timbral qualities become important …

Transformation Of Buddhist Musical Practices From The 7th-13th Centuries As A Response To Political And Social Disorder In Medieval India, Stephan I. Duran

Monsoon: South Asian Studies Association Journal

This article gives an account of the development of Buddhist musical practices on the Indian subcontinent from their earliest, datable instances, to the disappearance of Buddhist institutions from India proper, demonstrating the persistence of descendant traditions of Sanskrit Buddhist chant and song in contemporary Japanese, Tibetan, and Newar esoteric Buddhist communities. It is argued that the Buddhist musical theory and praxis of these three cultural spheres both preserve features of ancient and medieval Indian Buddhist music and sonically illustrate the transition from political and social order to de-centralized social organization, a shift that took place between the 7^th and …

"If The Gyil Has Died, Dagara Itself Has Died": On The Relationship Of Dagara Music, Food, And Costume, Gordon Cortney

Honors College Undergraduate Theses

The Dagara people, located primarily in the Upper West region of Ghana, take pride in their careful preservation of traditional customs, amidst years of brutal colonization and ethnocide. Previous ethnomusicological research has recognized the gyil, a Ghanaian xylophone, as the focal point of Dagara society, noting how it interacts with and is inherent in all aspects of their culture. Recent developments to the gyil’s design, practice, and performance have created concern for a lost or dying culture among the Dagara. If the gyil is experiencing change, then so too is the rest of Dagara culture. In June and July 2022, …

“Sounds Like” Redemption? On The Musicality Of Species And The Species Of Musicality, Tyler Yamin, Alice Rudge

Faculty Journal Articles

Popular and academic studies of music frequently claim that human musicality arose from the so-called ‘natural world’ of non-human species. And amid the anxieties produced by the Anthropocene, it is thought that the possibility of reconnecting with the natural world through a renewed appreciation of music’s links with nature may usher in a new era of posthuman environmental consciousness, offering repair and redemption. To critique these claims, we trace how notions of ‘musicality’ have been applied to or denied from non-human entities across diverse disciplines since the late nineteenth century. We conclude that such debates reinforce the separation that they …

Mediating Authenticity: An Ethnographic Portrait Of Experience At U.S. Popular Music Festivals, Elizabeth Navarra Varnado

Theses and Dissertations--Music

This ethnographic study of U.S. popular music festivals subverts the impression of festivals as strictly ‘presentational’ live music events by utilizing a nuanced approach that is grounded in ethnographic fieldwork, historical analysis, and participant interviews.

Interlocutors, drawn from the author’s personal network of festival attendees, musicians, and promoters, reflect on “particularly positive festival moments,” the social and emotional benefits of festivals, and the corporeality of festival aesthetics. Discourse and published media play a vital role in festival participants’ perception of the festival field and their place within it; therefore, this study draws inspiration from the tripartite focus of iconic festival …

“800 Years We Have Been Down”: Rebel Songs And The Retrospective Reach Of The Irish Republican Narrative, Seán Ó Cadhla

Articles

From the glamorous, cross-dressing “Rebel, Rebel” of David Bowie, to the righteous Trenchtown “Soul Rebel” of Bob Marley and The Wailers, both varied and various musical articulations of cultural and socio-political rebellion have long enjoyed a ubiquitous presence across multiple soundscapes. As a musicological delineator in Ireland, however, ‘rebel’ conveys a specifically political dynamic due to its consistent deployment as an all-encompassing descriptor for songs detailing events and personalities from the Irish national struggle. This paper sets out to examine the specific musical delineator of “rebel song” from both musicological and politico-ideological perspectives with a view to interrogating its appropriateness …

“Beer & Hymns” And Community: Religious Identity And Participatory Sing-Alongs, Andrew Mall

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

As a series of loosely-organized events, “Beer & Hymns” started at the Greenbelt Festival in England in 2006 and migrated to the Wild Goose Festival in North Carolina in 2012. Local Beer & Hymns gatherings meet at bars, breweries, clubs, and pubs across the U.K., the U.S., and around the world. Most are not affiliated with a church or Christian denomination, instead relying on the energy of independent local organizers. Some attendees are regular churchgoers, other are not, but all find community in these sing-alongs—congregational singing, that is, outside of traditional congregational contexts. Beer & Hymns is exactly what it …

Sacred Music In Colonial Era Hispaniola: The Evangelization Of The Taino People, Tito J. Gutierrez

Student Theses

During the 15th-18th centuries, the major European religious orders; the Franciscans, Dominicans, Jesuits, and Jeronymites, journeyed to the newly colonized American territories in an attempt to convert the multitudes of natives peoples living there. Along with prayer books, crucifixes, and religious images, these missionaries brought sacred European music to American shores in an attempt to attract the native people to the Catholic faith.The use of music as a tool for conversion of native people in places such as Mexico, South America, California, and the South West United States, have been well researched and documented. However, the research of the spiritual …

Palestinian Evangelical Christian Music In Bethlehem, Israel/Palestine, Abby Smith

Senior Honors Theses

Often the story of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is portrayed as Jewish vs. Muslim, Hebrew vs. Arab. There is little room in the international dialogue for minorities such as Arab Christians. Though Palestinians have a rich culture of Arabic musical and poetic heritage, they are unable to produce their own new songs. In this study I interviewed three members of Immanuel Evangelical Church on their experiences and opinions on local Christian worship. The findings show that Palestinian Christians may feel unable to write worship music because of a prevalent feeling of inadequacy and a lack of musical training. I propose several …

Marine Melodies: Traditional Scottish And Irish Mermaid And Selkie Songs As Performed By Top Female Vocalists In Contemporary Celtic Music, Olivia H. Phillips

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Mermaids and human-seal hybrids, called selkies, are a vibrant part of Celtic folklore, including ballad and song traditions. Though some of these songs have been studied in-depth, there is a lack of research comparing them to each other or to their contemporary renditions. This research compares traditional melodies and texts of the songs “The Mermaid,” “The Grey Selchie of Sule Skerry,” and “Hó i Hó i” to contemporary recordings by top female vocalists in Scottish and Irish music.

The texts and melodies I have identified as “source” material are those most thoroughly examined by early ballad and folklore scholars. The …

Warfare And Welcome: Practicality And Qur’Ānic Hierarchy In Ibāḍī Muslims’ Jurisprudential Rulings On Music, Bradford J. Garvey

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

While much ink has been spilled by musicologists on the legal standing of music in Islamic jurisprudential scholarship, few scholars have offered as comprehensive a view as Lois Ibsen Al-Faruqi. Thirty-five years after her major works on this issue, this article seeks to reassess her model of musical legitimacy within Muslim scholarship. Al-Faruqi places Qur’ānic recitation at the apex of a unidirectional continuum of sound art, with genres less similar to the recitation of the Qur’ān located progressively further away from it. Based on fieldwork in the Sultanate of Oman in 2015-17 and engaging with recent reinvigorations on the anthropological …

Reimagining The Flute Masterclass: Case Studies Exploring Artistry, Authority, And Embodiment, Sarah Carrier

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This work explores the flute masterclass as an aesthetic, ritualized, and historically reimagined cultural practice. Based on fieldwork that took place between 2017 and 2019 in the United States, in Italy, and on the social media platforms Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube, I argue that the masterclass—an extension of the master/apprentice system that dominates learning in the classical music tradition—is characterized by embodied qualities of artistry and authority. These qualities are not inherent, but are perceived through subjective, social, familied, and affective bodies.

Chapter One outlines the main themes and the research design. Chapter Two is a case study that analyzes …

Gender, Politics, Market Segmentation, And Taste: Adult Contemporary Radio At The End Of The Twentieth Century, Saesha Senger

Theses and Dissertations--Music

This dissertation explores issues of gender politics, market segmentation, and taste through an examination of the contributions of several artists who have achieved Adult Contemporary (AC) chart success. The scope of the project is limited to a period when many artists who figured prominently in both the broader mainstream of American popular music and the more specific Adult Contemporary category were most commercially viable: from the mid-1980s through the 1990s. My contention is that, as gender politics and gendered social norms continued to change in the United States at this time, Adult Contemporary – the chart, the format, and the …

Unmasking Hybridity In Popular Performance, Hannah M. Harder

Student Publications

This paper explores cultural hybridization in popular music and the eroticization of the exotic eastern aesthetic. Using musicology and anthropology as tools, the paper examines varying perspectives of the artists, audience and marginalized groups. Although cultural appropriation has been used recently as a blanket buzzword in mainstream dialogue, it does provide a platform to discuss complex issues on gender, race and sexuality that has been muddled by colonial mentalities.

Music In The Northern Woods: An Archaeological Exploration Of Musical Instrument Remains, Matthew Durocher

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Archaeological and historical literature neglects music and sound. The quantity and distribution of musical remains found during archaeological excavations at Coalwood, a Cleveland-Cliffs Iron Company (CCI) logging camp active from 1901-1912 in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, addresses the importance of music to the people that lived there. Musical reed plates from harmonicas, concertinas, and accordions were recovered and examined. These musical remains have traditionally been ignored as a diagnostic artifact, but here, I use them as primary evidence to access the daily lives of people in the northern woods. To do this, I will present how CCI developed Coalwood …

The Acoustics Of Justice: Music And Myth In Afro-Brazilian Congado, Genevieve E. Dempsey

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

For the Afro-Brazilian musicians of popular Catholicism, or Congadeiros, who live precariously on the urban and rural margins of Brazil, ritual undergirds their struggles for subsistence, spiritual fulfillment, and racial equality. When Congadeiros create ritual, they enter into a tradition begun in the seventeenth century in Brazil by their enslaved African and Afro-descendant ancestors who intoned songs of redemption. In keeping with their ancestors’ evocations of dignity during slavery, worshipers in the present day embed multiple kinds of vested interests within ritual festivity to achieve racial equality. This article explores Congado, the ceremonies of these disenfranchised musicians, to …

Inculturation Of Liturgical Music In The Roman Catholic Church Of Igbo Land: A Compositional Study, Benedict Nwabugwu Agbo

Journal of Global Catholicism

A study of inculturation, composition and music among Catholics in Igboland, Nigeria. The article insects with contemporary discussions of inculturation/enculturation after Vatican II and the recommendation of St. John Paul II in his Ecclesia in Africa.

War Of The Worlds: Music And Cosmological Battles In The Balinese Cremation Procession, Michael B. Bakan

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

Abstract

This article explores processional action as a form of cosmological intervention in Hindu-Balinese cremation processions, focusing on the multiple and intersecting functions of a particular type of Balinese instrumental music ensemble: the gamelan beleganjur. It explores the alternately “enlivening and protective aspects” (DeVale 1990, 62) that underlie the use of beleganjur music in the ngaben, or cremation ritual, showing how beleganjur’s sonic power and rhythmic drive serve to combat malevolent spirit beings, strengthen and inspire processional participants in their efforts to meet challenging ritual obligations, and grant courage to the souls of deceased individuals embarking on their …

The Future Of Arabic Music: No Sound Without Silence, Nesma Magdy Khodier Vcuq

Theses and Dissertations

For centuries, Arabic music has been intrinsically linked to Arab culture and by extension bonded to the environmental landscape of the region, reflecting their emotions, moods, and behaviors. Numerous technological advancements in the latter half of the twentieth century, have greatly affected the rich legacy of Arabic music, significantly impacting the natural progression of traditional Arabic musical genres, scales, and instrumentation.

This thesis serves as an introduction to generative methods of music production, specifically music generated through gestures. Through generative music, and its unique ability to map gestures to different musical parameters, music can be produced using computer algorithms.

The …

Making The Scene: An Investigation Of The Rock And Roll Scenes Of Nashville, Tennessee, And Athens, Georgia, Kevin Jones Murphy

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Making the Scene: An Investigation of the Rock and Roll Scenes of Nashville, Tennessee, and Athens, Georgia, takes a look at the ways in which both the identities of a music scene and the individuals taking part in that scene are created and maintained. Issues of identity are addressed by examining the roles performed by various members of the scene (musicians, soundmen, club owners, etc . . .), by focusing on the influence of landscape, and looking at the ways a scene’s members identify with the cultural region that surrounds their particular scene (in this case both scenes are located …

Melanesian Music On Compact Disc: Some Significant Issues, Peter Russell Crowe

Pacific Studies

No abstract provided.

Country Music In The Northeast: Two Careers, Joseph Ruff

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Although country music and its antecedents have received attention primarily as cultural phenomena of the South, the past twenty years have witnessed a growing scholarly interest in the interplay between commercial country music, vernacular components. and performers within a regional context. The commercial product which has now attained worldwide appeal undoubtedly sustains a significant relationship to the folkways and regional identity of the South; nonetheless, performers and vernacular styles from other areas of the country have contributed to the development of country music. Most important. many areas outside of the South maintain local traditions of country music entertainment. In this …

Representing African Music, Kofi Agawu

Publications and Research

Of all the currents of change that have swept the humanities during the last half-century, the most far-reaching revolve around language. Philosophy, history, and literary criticism, among other language-based disciplines, have developed what is often presented as a largely unprecedented self-consciousness about representation. The message to scholars in nonlanguage-based disciplines is clear: to be taken seriously, one can no longer view language as a transparent window to an objective reality but must confront the foundational political and ideological baggage of the medium itself, as well as its constant slippage in the hands of the producer.

Music In The Funeral Traditions Of The Akpafu, V. Kofi Agawu

Publications and Research

"Nna lo senu kuwe, fie oresire somoloo?" ("Who laid a mat for him, so that he slept so deeply?") With this rhetorical question, the Akpafu of Southeastern Ghana initiate a period of public mourning occasioned by the death of one of their number.1 The philosophic significance of death in Akpafu culture is twofold. First, it marks the completion of the earthly cycle of existence, birth-circumcision-puberty-marriage-death. Second, it opens the door to a higher, spiritual realm in which the deceased, as an ancestor, takes his place alongside the lesser gods and the Supreme Being in the higher reaches of the hierarchy …

Rubellite Kawena Johnson's Review Of Elizabeth Tatar's Nineteenth Century Hawaiian Chant, Rubellite Kawena Johnson

Pacific Studies

No abstract provided.

Vol. 6 No. 2 (1983): Pacific Studies Full Issue, The Jonathan Nāpela Center For Hawaiian And Pacific Islands Studies

Pacific Studies

Pacific Studies is published two times a year by The Jonathan Nāpela Center for Hawaiian and Pacific Studies, Brigham Young University Hawai‘i #1979, 55–220 Kulanui Street, Lāʻie, Hawai‘i 96762, but responsibility for opinions expressed in the articles rests with the authors alone. Subscription rate is US$40.00 yearly, payable to The Jonathan Nāpela Center for Hawaiian and Pacific Studies. The Jonathan Nāpela Center for Hawaiian and Pacific Studies (formerly The Pacific Institute) is an organization funded by Brigham Young University Hawai‘i. The Center assists the University in meeting its cultural and educational goals by undertaking a program of teaching, research, and …

Books Received And Books Notices, The Jonathan Nāpela Center For Hawaiian And Pacific Islands Studies

Pacific Studies

Book Listing for the Vol 6, No 2 Spring Edition of the Pacific Studies Journal

Vol. 6 No. 2 (1983): Pacific Studies Front Matter, The Jonathan Nāpela Center For Hawaiian And Pacific Islands Studies

Pacific Studies

acific Studies is published two times a year by The Jonathan Nāpela Center for Hawaiian and Pacific Studies, Brigham Young University Hawai‘i #1979, 55–220 Kulanui Street, Lāʻie, Hawai‘i 96762, but responsibility for opinions expressed in the articles rests with the authors alone. Subscription rate is US$40.00 yearly, payable to The Jonathan Nāpela Center for Hawaiian and Pacific Studies. The Jonathan Nāpela Center for Hawaiian and Pacific Studies (formerly The Pacific Institute) is an organization funded by Brigham Young University Hawai‘i. The Center assists the University in meeting its cultural and educational goals by undertaking a program of teaching, research, and …