Musicology Commons^™

Relocating Community To The Virtual: Sound Knowledge, Affective Listening, And The (Dis)Embodying Of Sound And Space, Zachery D. Coffey

Masters Theses

Music within Protestant church communities frequently reduces the distinction between performers and audience, emphasizing the collective, participatory role of all congregation members, in manners of music making similar to those discussed by Thomas Turino. This dynamic helps establish individual and communal identities. With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, church communities saw changes in their services, music, and ways of life. Meeting in a physical building proved impossible due to the dangers of COVID-19 and many churches mitigated these dangers by streaming, recording, and posting services online. Between 2020 and 2022, I observed and participated in changes to technological production …

Listening For The Suling In The Balinese Gamelan, Natalie Ann Gregg

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

“Get Your Geek On”: Online And Offline Representations Of Audiotopia Within The Geekycon Community, Sarah Frances Holder

Masters Theses

This thesis examines the musical community of GeekyCon, a convention centered around popular media, such as Harry Potter, Broadway, and Disney. The GeekyCon community results from the connection between the unofficial convention Facebook group and the yearly physical event. This interconnectivity allows both the live and mediated space of GeekyCon to function as a heterotopia, a concept first conceived by Foucault (1967) as a separate space outside of the dominant society in which ideas and identities can be freely explored. Through ethnographic research, including participant observation as well as interviews, I present the music of GeekyCon as an audiotopia, a …

Rethinking L'Exception Culturelle In French Music Then And Now: Language, Memory, And Political Order, Melanie Ann Lafoy

Masters Theses

Through this thesis, entitled “Rethinking l'exception culturelle in French Music then and now: Language, Memory, and Political Order,” I explore the concept of exception culturelle as it relates to music in France. I break down this concept by situating current French music trends within a historical landscape, highlighting certain moments of tension between music, politics, and language that appear in the decades after the Dreyfus Affair (1894), which I consider to be a turning point in the way French music is and was perceived inside and outside French national borders. I also examine the years after the second World …

Jewish Liturgy In Music, Rachel A. Brown

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Sounding Identity: Soundscapes, Music, And Technoculture In The Chinese Diaspora Of Panama, Corey Michael Blake

Masters Theses

Present in Panama since the 19^th century, the Chinese diaspora in Panama City, Panama represents an empowered community of individuals who identify as both Chinese and Panamanian. These Chinese Panamanian hybrid identities emerge within sonic environments through an engagement with transnational media and digital technologies, notably within retail stores. Specifically, music surfaces as an especially important sonic marker of the Chinese Panamanian hybridity. Within the mall of the Panamanian Chinatown of El Dorado, an interesting mixture of both Chinese and Latin American popular music genres sounds throughout the various stores. This mixture of music genres demonstrates Chinese Panamanian agency …

Disruptive Voices In The American Musical Discourse: Comic Song Performance In The American Parlor, 1865-1917, Kevin Steven O'Brien

Masters Theses

In the latter half of the nineteenth century, the American song sheet industry vastly increased in size. This mass mediated form reached a broad number of consumers, who performed this music in their homes, identified with it, and shaped the new discourse on their identity as they did so. Simultaneously, Americans were re-shaping their cultural conceptions of music, in a process Lawrence Levine chronicled as the emergence of “highbrow” and “lowbrow” distinctions. Performing music in the culturally sacralized space of the parlor was meant to be an edifying experience and a display of genteel, “highbrow” identities. Performing comic songs (comic …

Proactive Punk: Music's Agency In The Knoxville Punk Community, Paula Danielle Propst

Masters Theses

This ethnography investigates the collective identity of the Knoxville punk community. I argue that punk rock culture in Knoxville exists as a proactive open community, and frame the discussion with the psychoanalytical work of collective identity by Jacques Lacan, notions of discourse described by James Gee, as well as definitions of community explored by Will Straw and David Hesmondhalgh. Knoxville punk musicians promote the sense of community with music through the value of cultural knowledge, providing physical areas for social space creation, and instructing young women musicians. Each factor provides a distinct element for the proactive movement in Knoxville punk. …

"You're Pretty Good For A Girl": Roles Of Women In Bluegrass Music, Jenna Michele Lawson

Masters Theses

This thesis explores the past and current roles that female bluegrass musicians achieve within the music industry in the United States. Using sociological concepts by Judith Butler, Simon Frith, Mavis Bayton, and, importantly, Thomas Turino’s ideas of participatory and communal versus performative and individual, I demonstrate women’s complex musical, social, and cultural positions in bluegrass culture.

While women continue to make strides in achieving recognition in the bluegrass genre, society still hinders them from finding complete acceptance alongside male musicians. As bluegrass music is based on patriarchal foundations set by its creator, Bill Monroe of the Blue Grass Boys, female …

Bluegrass Nation: A Historical And Cultural Analysis Of America's Truest Music, Leslie Blake Price

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.