Abstracts of Papers Presented at the 44th Annual Meeting
Austin, Texas
of the Society for Ethnomusicology
November 18-21, 1999
[Abstracts are shown exactly as printed.--Web editor]
Contents
Thursday, November 18
8:30 - 10:30 am
1A: Roundtable--Copyright and Conceptions of Intellectual Property in
Cross-Cultural Perspective
1B: Music, Time and Place
1C: Issues in West African Music
1D: "The Green Fields of America:" North American Manifestations of Celtic and
English Music
1E: Chinese and Japanese Music in Transnational Contexts
11:00 - 1:00 pm
2A: Copyright and Ownership in Transnational Perspective
2B: Race and Cuban Musical Discourse, Past and Present
2C: Women, Music and Performance in the Middle East
2D: Meaning and Emotion in Korean Music
2E: Narratives of Cultural Continuity: Four Moments in Yiddish Music
2:30 - 4:30 pm
3A: Nonference--Changing Copyright Laws and Their Implications for
Ethnomusicology
3B: Issues in African Music
3C: Gender and Music
3D: Music in Religious Occasions
3E: Connecting Events
Friday, November 19
8:30 - 10:30 am
4A: Ethnomusicology and History I: Ethnography and Historical Method
4B: Music and Ethnicity in the United States
4C: What you Mean, `We'?: Method, Goal, and Identity in Academic `Ethno'
Ensembles
4D: Jazz, Blues and Hybridity
4E: Sound Engineering as Cultural Production: Technology, Performativity,
Phenomenonology
11:00 - 1:00 pm
5A: Ethnomusicology and History II: The Use of Printed Sources in Ethnomusicology
5B: Transnational Processes and the Local Production of Popular Music
5C: Issues in Indonesian Music
5D: Cajun and Tejano Music
5E: Breakin' Out in a Cold Sweat: Authorship, Ownership and Agency in the Digital
Age
5F: Theorizing Asian American Musics: Identity, Negotiations, Multiplicity
2:30 - 4:30 pm
6A: Ethnomusicology and History III: The Construction of History
6B: Dance and Social Meaning
6C: The Musical Indigenization of Christian Ritual
6D: Music, Community, and the Internet
6E: Performance of the Oral Tradition in Jewish Contexts
Saturday, November 20
8:30 - 10:30 am
7A: Music and Emotion I
7B: Contest-ing Tradition: Cross-Cultural Studies of Musical Competition
7C: Music and Nationalism
7D: Issues in Indian Music
7E: Reflections on Ethnographic Method
7F: The Study of Musical Instruments
11:00 - 1:00 pm
8A: Music and Emotion II
8B: Music Theory and Social Meaning
8C: Music in Latin America
8D: Native American Music, Intertribalism, and Technology
8E: Talking About Timbre
Sunday, November 21
8:30 - 10:30 am
9A: Music in Diaspora Communities
9B: Grey-Out, Creativity, and World Music
9C: Music and the Sacred
9D: The Social Significance of Style
9E: Issues of Authenticity: Three Asian Case Studies
Abstracts
Thursday, November 18
Roundtable 1A Copyright and Conceptions of Intellectual Property in Cross-cultural
Perspective
8:30-10:30 Thursday, November 18
Chair: Jennifer Milioto, University of Chicago
Anthony McCann, University of Limerick/Smithsonian Institution; Sherylle Mills,
Smithsonian Institution; Nancy Guy, University of California, San Diego; Vasana de
Mel, University of California, Los Angeles
As Ethnomusicologists we are continually faced with distinct concepts of
intellectual property in the various cultures that we investigate. We must navigate
through each group's understanding of their music, not only out of respect for our
informants, but also to further our understanding of music's position in culture. This
conscientious approach to ethnomusicological study is often further complicated
when dealing with popular musics and the various corporations, copyright systems,
and other institutions involved in the industry. Understanding the individual's
concept of their cultural production, while also considering cultural products in
relation to existing, or non-existing, copyright laws, can at times be an extremely
frustrating task.
This roundtable discussion will present several views of copyright in cross-cultural
perspective. We seek not only to investigate the idea of "copyright" as culturally
based, but also plan to discuss ways of handling the variety of legal systems, or lack
there of, while respecting our informants' rights. Topics such as piracy in Eastern
Europe, the concept of "copy" in Japan and it's resultant effect on popular music
production, and a report on the legal case involving the Ami tribe singers and
Enigma's record label, will serve as a location to begin discussing larger issues and
broader cultural areas. It is hoped that a variety of ethnomusicologists will share
their experiences in order to improve our understanding of the position of copyright
and concepts of intellectual property in a variety of cultures.
Session 1B Music, Time and Place
8:30-10:30 Thursday, November 18
Chair: Thomas Turino, University of Illinois
8:30 1B1
(Dis)playing the tama: Finnish Musicians Learning Senegalese Music
Tina K. Ramnarine, Queen's University of Belfast
A Finnish designer, Lindfors, exhibited sculptures representing insects at a gallery
in the centre of Helsinki (1991). Lindfors asked a Senegalese musician living in
Finland, Badu N'Diay, to play the tama (talking drum) at the preview. N'Diay
interpreted Lindfors's creative vision as a wish to evoke an atmosphere of the exotic.
In their attention to the art of mingling, viewers hardly noticed the exotic touch.
The tama playing expertise.
In the exhibition, the tama was part of the display. In another context, those
sounds have been not just evocative but influential in the creative expressions of
Finnish rock and folk musicians. Finnish rock musicians who had played an important
role in the 1960s folk revival, were exploring `world' music by the late 1980s and
collaborating, for example, with Senegalese musicians like N'Diay. Such collaborations
have been seen as providing opportunities to create new musical expressions and
models for aspiring musicians. This paper will examine case studies of Finnish
musicians learning to play Senegalese music through jamming in Dakar's nightclubs,
establishing Finnish-Senegalese groups in Helsinki, or undertaking formal studies at
the Sibelius Academy where workshops on `world musics' (including Senegalese
traditions) have been organized. The interfaces between perceptions both of
`music' and `race', musical transmission, and creativity will be explored.
9:00 1B2
Movement, Land, and Yolngu Song
Steven Knopoff, University of Adelaide
Songs concerning traveling, or movement, may be found in many cultures, but are
especially prominent in a number of Australian Aboriginal song traditions. Movement
in (and of) the environment is manifested in many ways, and at many levels, in the
ceremonial songs of the Yolngu people of Northeast Arnhem Land. Focusing on the
public song performances that take place each day during long Yolngu funerals, this
paper considers a number of ways in which movement/travel is embodied in song
performance, including: Different types of movement/travel that are incorporated in
song performance; Use of particular song-related metaphors that entail the
transformation (and transportation) of the human spirit into other forms, and to
other places in the environment; Conscious use of movement-related metaphor and
imagery to affect the aesthetic shape of individual song performances; Allusion to
movement from disparate places towards a common point to imply different types of
relations between Yolngu groups; and Musical conventions associated with particular
types of song-related movement.
Drawing upon the work of Warner, Keen, Morphy, and my own field work, the
paper contrasts the role of movement through the environment in quotidian public
song performance with the use of sung traveling in the climactic conclusions of
funerals and in sacred song performance. The resulting picture of Yolngu song
performance reveals a rich, multi-level system in which the interchange of knowledge
and human relationships (expressed in
words, musical sound and dance) are inseparable from the connecting passageways in
the environment through which communication and the acquisition of knowledge
take place.
9:30 1B3
Nuevo Flamanco: Embracing the Future/Reclaiming the Past
Loren Chuse, University of California, Los Angeles
Nuevo flamenco is the term given to recent fusions of flamenco with other popular
musical styles. Beginning in the mid 1970s with the experimentation of guitarist Paco
de Lucía and legendary singer Camarón, these fusions represent styles as diverse as
blues; rock; Latin American genres; African and Near Eastern musics. The creators of
these hybrid mixes, many of them the younger generation of distinguished lineages of
flamenco performers, grew up steeped in tradition yet profoundly influenced by
popular music. They intentionally fuse new genres with flamenco to express a
cosmopolitan sense of identity and affinities, in sophisticated hybrid musics which
have attracted a wide and diverse audience.
This paper will discuss the music of two groups currently popular in Spain: Ketama
and Radio Tarifa. Ketama pioneered the mix of salsa with flamenco in the mid 1980s
as well as collaborations with African music. Radio Tarifa, while also experimenting
with Latin American music, is known for its fusions of flamenco with Near Eastern and
Early musics, which celebrate of a shared cultural heritage within the
Mediterranean. Both Ketama and Radio Tarifa embrace and celebrate the
importance of cultures whose contribution to Spanish culture has been ignored
and/or rejected. I will discuss the work of these pioneering groups, who actively
negotiate sophisticated, nuanced definitions of identity within the Nuevo Flamanco.
In an era of increased immigration and social change, their music mediates complex
processes of transformation and reflects a cross cultural awareness, nourished by
tradition, that is deeply Spanish while at the same time consciously global in its
perspective.
Session 1C Issues in West African Music
8:30-10:30 Thursday, November 18
Chair: David Locke, Tufts University
8:30 1C1
The "Common Stock" of Ewondo Speech Surrogate Drum Phrases in Cameroon
Paul Neeley, University of Ghana at Legon
The Ewondo people of Cameroon have made extensive use of the nkul, the
hollowed-log idiophone referred to as a "talking drum." My research centered on the
repertoire of several men in nearby towns, who had a total of at least 200 drum
phrases ("drum phrase" is defined in the paper).
Some speech surrogate phrases are particular to a certain drummer, some to a
certain location, some to a certain event, while other phrases are drummed in
multiple contexts. A "common stock" of speech surrogate drum phrases exists,
shared to some extent across boundaries of geography and generation, which has
been passed down through aural tradition. In a single extended performance (3
minutes), the old "common stock" patterns may be freely mixed with other drum
phrases that will not be recognized outside the immediate area. Examining historical
research on this topic, I found about 15 phrases, some published as early as 1911,
that correlated closely to phrases that I learned in these communities near Yaounde.
So documentation exists for nearly a century of some of these "common stock" drum
phrases.
Many of the linguistic formulas are applicable in numerous situations, where the
meanings are subject to processes of recontextualization. For example, a command
to "wake up!" carries different connotations whether drummed to the community in
early morning or addressed to the deceased at a funeral. The concept of common
stock phrases is found in certain African song genres as well as speech surrogate
drumming.
9:00 1C2
Translation in Language and Concept: "Master Drummer" in Ewe Music
Matthew Talmage, University of California, Santa Barbara
A viable concern while relating music from one culture to another, is what may be
`lost in translation'. However, as is the case of the title `Master Drummer' in Ewe
music, the process of translation has involved the addition of meanings to the term.
The process whereby connotations become associated with a term is dynamic. Just
as a music and its respective music culture adapts to social changes, so too do the
terms and meanings describing the music and music culture.
The term Master Drummer was first applied to Ewe music under specific
circumstances in A.M. Jones' 1959 book Studies in African Music I argue that the
connotations today of the honorary title, Master Drummer, harken back to Jones'
book rather than the roles apparent in the organization of an Ewe music ensemble.
By comparing the connotations in general use with the developments in Ewe music,
the scholarly community can assess the appropriateness of the title `Master
Drummer' to satisfactorily represent the role of a prominent figure in the organization
and execution of Ewe music. This inquiry necessarily begins with such questions as:
How does one qualify as a Master Drummer? What are the duties, or more
importantly, what is expected of a Master Drummer? Is the role of the Master
Drummer apparent in all Ewe music making or only under certain circumstances?
9:30 1C3
Loss and Survival in a Royal Ghanaian Drumming Tradition
Alexander Gelfand, University of Illinois
The small kingdom of Akuapem in southern Ghana has been subject to a wide
variety of external influences over the past several hundred years. Populated by
successive waves of immigrants representing different ethnic groups and ruled by
various indigenous states, the Akan-speaking people of Akuapem have never been
isolated from the world beyond their homeland. Nonetheless, European contact and
the subsequent introduction of cocoa as a cash crop in the 19th century had a
revolutionary effect on Akuapem society, introducing new sources of power and
greatly accelerating the growth of entrepreneurial capitalism in the region. This, in
turn, contributed to decline in the prestige of the Akuapem chiefs, patrons of the
royal Akan talking drum tradition known as fontomfrom. Neither the decline in the
status of the chiefs nor an influx of foreign commodities, however, has led to the end
of fontomfrom. New performance opportunities have arisen even as attrition has
occurred among drum texts and repertoire, and fontomfrom remains a powerful
marker of status and identity in the region. Indeed, capitalism may pose a lesser
threat to indigenous music in Akuapem than either Christianity or Western
education, both of which are blamed locally for the demise of various musical genres.
The reasons for this are complex, and are located both in indigenous attitudes
toward wealth and power, and in the nature of fontomfrom itself.
10:00 1C4
Schisms, Unity and Musical Representations in the Fanti Society of Ghana
Kenichi Tsukada, Hiroshima City University
Historical sources indicate that two kinds of social forces have operated in the
Fanti society of Ghana during the past few hundred years. There have been social
forces which have driven the society to split into several factions. These forces are
found in the continual disputes over the inheritance of chieftaincy and the
longstanding feuds between military organizations called asafo companies. On the
other hand, there have been opposite social forces that have been working to deter
such schisms and to unite various factions. The annual festival Fetu Afahye,
associated with the celebrations of chieftains, has stressed the importance of peace
and unity among different factions and groups. The matrilineal clan ebusua has
lessened the tensions between patrilineal asafo companies by rendering members of
different companies matrilineally related to each other as clan members.
These two kinds of social forces significantly find cultural expressions in two
important genres of music: the military drum ensemble asafo and $B!! (J the royal
drum ensemble fontomfrom. Analysis of song texts highlights the contrast between
the two genres of music. Asafo song texts generally deal with topics concerning
conflicts between asafo companies and related historical events to raise morale. In
contrast, fontomfrom song texts are mainly designed for entertainment, such as
praise songs for chieftains. These texts seem to have contributed to uniting
different factions by entertaining them together on joyful ceremonial occasions.
The paper thus demonstrates that two genres of musical representation in Fanti
society are effectively geared to two kinds of opposing social forces.
Session 1D "The Green Fields of America:" North American Manifestations of Celtic and
English Music
8:30-10:00 Thursday, November 18
Chair: Jennifer DeLapp, University of Maryland, College Park
Traditional music from Celtic and Anglo-Saxon regions have encountered "New
World" settings since settlers from Northern Europe first sailed west across the
Atlantic. These traditions have thrived in a variety of settings; understanding the
social and musical significance of these changes requires both historical and
ethnographic approaches. Falling under the conference theme of "historical
ethnomusicology," this panel will demonstrate the interface of history and
ethnography through four case studies. Lucy Long examines the intersections of Irish
dance with the post-Riverdance expectations of Midwestern dance students;
Suzanne Camino looks at traditional Irish sessions as adapted to the 1990s Midwestern
pub scene; Jennifer DeLapp's study of nineteenth-century Shaker music examines
Anglo- and Irish-American traditional dance music in a Utopian religious setting; and
Cory Thorne describes the history of Newfoundland musical identity and its recent,
vital incorporation of rock 'n' roll.
8:30 1D1
Worldly Traditions Transformed: Music and Dance in Shaker Worship
Jennifer DeLapp, University of Maryland, College Park
Shakers in Western New York in the nineteenth century were surrounded by a
thriving traditional music scene that included fiddling, singing, and square dancing.
While dancing was part of Shaker worship, instruments were forbidden before the
1860s; in the preceding decades, a substantial tradition of sung dance music
developed. Much of Shaker dance music suggests the reels, marches, and jigs that
came with the immigration waves from England, Scotland, and Ireland. With typical
Shaker invention, a "letteral" notation system was developed for notating these
tunes; with typical Shaker industry, thousands of tunes were gathered into hundreds
of notebooks, like musical samplers.
Sister Ann Maria Love (b. 1835), a Shaker at the Groveland community in Western
New York from age 7 to 24, filled two books with these tunes--about 300 tunes in all.
Some have words; others are wordless and were meant for dancing. Through an
examination of her tune collections, this paper describes the vital role music played
in Shaker religious life, and suggests connections to other traditional music of
nineteenth-century New York State. Documents for, about, and by the Groveland
Shakers provide contemporary accounts of the community's religious and musical
practices. Census records and demographic studies, and local histories have supplied
additional information about the people of the now-defunct Groveland community
and its surrounding region.
9:00 1D2
Celtic Expansion and Contested Meanings: Irish Dance Classes in the Midwest
Lucy M. Long, Bowling Green State University
The recent popularity of Riverdance has swelled the classes in Irish dance schools
in the U.S. The expectations of these newcomers, particularly those who are not of
Irish heritage, are sometimes in conflict with those of dance instructors and other
participants. These conflicts represent the intersection of different ethnicities,
personal histories, worldviews, and aesthetics systems. Through an ethnographic
analysis of a midwestern Irish dance school, this paper examines this intersection and
the resulting negotiations occurring between teachers, students, parents, and the
organizations governing Irish dance competitions and teacher certification.
The dance school teaches Irish dance as a cultural form as well as an art form.
While the sated purpose and focus is the training of children and adults in the
techniques of traditional solo competitive step-dance, the school also instills a sense
of Irish identity and pride in that identity among the students. Though their teaching
methods, patterns of interacting, and expectations of the students, the teachers
transmit perspectives and attitudes that can be identified as Irish. This "Irishness" is
sometimes challenged now that audiences for Irish dance have broadened beyond
the traditional ethnic base. The resulting negotiations highlight issues surrounding
the invention and construction of traditions and cultural identities, the
commodification of traditional forms, and the transmission of aesthetics and ideology
through artistic performance.
9:30 1D3
"We'll Rant and We'll Roar:" Newfoundland Politics, Popular Music, and Identity
Cory W. Thorne, Bowling Green State University
Newfoundland music is well known in the academic community for its unique
identity and continued emphasis on traditional practices. It has not been widely
studied, however, in terms of the incorporation of traditional into contemporary
popular styles or in terms of its use as a political tool. Until recently, the isolation of
Newfoundland outports protected this music and culture from change. Increasing
access to Canadian and American media now concern Newfoundlanders who fear a
loss of unique identity. The study of popular music in Newfoundland will show that
despite changing styles and tastes, Newfoundland music is likely to survive.
Through the bands Great Big Sea and The Punters I will show how Newfoundland
musicians have appropriated non-Newfoundland genres to fill their needs. This is
rock'n'roll music, but it contains significant Newfoundland musical and textural
elements, elements that are necessary in maintaining and promoting Newfoundland
identity. I will discuss the history of Newfoundland as a British colony, independent
nation, and Canadian province. This background, along with recent developments in
the fishery and in Newfoundland and Canadian politics, is necessary to explain the
continued emphasis on unique identity in Newfoundland music. By combining these
areas, the music of contemporary popular bands and the political history of
Newfoundland, I will argue that Newfoundland popular music is central in helping
Newfoundlanders remain strong and proud, despite continued economic and social
oppression.
10:00 1D4
Can We Turn the Regular Music on Now?: Transformation and Accommodation in an
Irish-American Pub Session
Suzanne Camino, University of Michigan
The Irish pub session, a result of the Irish Traditional music revival of the latter
half of the century, has become an important venue for the performance and
transmission of Irish traditional music. Sessions in Ireland operate within the
parameters of an intricate etiquette which has been well-documented by scholarly
observers. This shared understanding among musicians, audience and publicans
regulates both musical and non-musical dynamics and maintains an order which allows
the tradition to flourish within agreed-upon bounds.
The American version of the Irish pub session is often more contentious. Several
factors contribute to a lack of consensus among participants. These include: varied
definitions of sessions; economic concerns of both pub owners and the musicians;
and widely varying experiences and definitions of Irish music.
This paper explores the phenomenon of the Irish traditional session as it is
presently configured in the United States by tracing the evolution over eight years of
one session in a midwestern town into three affinity groups with overlapping, yet
distinct memberships. It presents the problem of negotiating a traditional session from
the perspectives of the musicians as well as the pub owners who variously employ,
encourage or tolerate their presence. The discussion also considers the effect of
continuous renegotiation on musical factors such as repertoire, tempo,
instrumentation and style and non-musical factors such as motivation, concerns with
authenticity, and personal musical satisfaction.
Session 1E Chinese and Japanese Music in Transnational Contexts
8:30-10:00 Thursday, November 18
Chair: Fred Lieberman, University of California at Santa Cruz
8:30 1E1
Towards a Global Music: the "Universal Egg" and Toru Takemitsu's November Steps
Joann Koh, Mount Vernon Nazarene College
What defines Asian Music or American Music? Can it be argued that each of us
combines various nationality, class, ethnic, religious, racial, and sexual dimensions in
our identity? Rather than confined to alternatives of uniqueness and separatism,
artists can acknowledge the continually shifting reality, complexity, and the totality
of their experiences. This paper discusses Toru Takemitsu's view (also echoed by
Chou Wen-Chung and Ton de Leeuw) on the possibilities for musical acculturation
between East and West, including the convergence of all cultures towards eventually
forming the "universal egg." The union of two cultures is a first step toward forming a
universal culture. November Steps, written for biwa, shakuhachi, and western
orchestra (1967), was a vindication of Takemitsu's vision of a global music where sound
in the East and sound in the West could be combined in a single piece of music. In
this paper, I will examine how Takemitsu creates an interface between western and
eastern instruments through their disparity in time, space, color, and tone. The
meaning of art in this context does not rely on compromises, but rather on the
recognition and appreciation of the essence of different cultures and styles.
Takemitsu's essays dealing with the creation of music and issues of contemporary
music are compelling to those mindful of intercultural cross-fertilization in the arts.
9:00 1E2
Researching Traditional Japanese Music Culture in the International Context: Minoru
Miki and the Adelaide Festival
A. Kimi Coaldrake, University of Adelaide
In March 1994, as part of the biennial Festival of Arts, the city of Adelaide in South
Australia reverberated to the sounds of music from Asia, Pacific and Europe. The
"Two Worlds' Music Program" at the Adelaide Town Hall was one of the main
attractions. It featured the Japanese composer Minoru Miki and Pro Musica
Nipponia, the ensemble of traditional Japanese instruments in ten days of concerts
and lectures. At the same event Australian ensembles presenting repertoire by
leading Australian composers such as Peter Sculthorpe and Carl Vine in addition to
Japanese composers including Toru Takemitsu revealed strong cross-cultural
influences in their compositional processes. Musicians and composers from both
countries welcomed the opportunity for intensive collaboration.
This paper explores the cultural, disciplinary and pragmatic considerations involved
in the development of an integrated approach for understanding processes in the
postwar internationalisation of traditional Japanese music. It focuses on Minoru Miki
whose work has received little scholarly attention but who, himself a composer, for
the past thirty years has energetically pursued a personal quest to "internationalise"
traditional Japanese music in order to reach audiences both inside and outside
Japan. Discussion of events at The Adelaide Festival highlights the range of issues in
an inclusive approach for the understanding of processes of creation, presentation
and reception of Miki's music thus bringing into perspective Miki's grand vision for the
full recognition of Japanese music in the international context in the twenty-first
century.
9:30 1E3
Healing Sounds: Chinese Music and the Marketing of New Age Ideology
Thomas Brett, New York University
The past several years have seen a proliferation of world music recordings, among
them a spate of ostensibly traditional Chinese music releases from the Wind Record
Company in Taiwan. These recordings feature both traditional Chinese instruments
and a variety of electronically-produced and sequenced sounds. The recordings are
also characterized by a marketing strategy--made explicit primarily through the
program notes and cover art--which indexes stereotyped notions of "Chineseness". In
this paper, I discuss in more detail the nature of these recordings and, based on my
analysis, argue that through their marketing and music styles, the Wind record
releases cater to what might be called a "New Age" ideology among an international
listening public. This New Age ideology equates Chinese philosophy, cosmology and
world views, natural landscapes, and cultural practices with generalized notions of
spirituality and healing. In short, through the lengthy program notes and suggestive
cover art, the Wind Records releases participate in and help create a New Age
discourse which renders China as an exoticized cultural Other.
The structure of the paper is threefold. First, I present a brief overview of
Chinese art aesthetics, and discuss the tradition of program notes in Chinese music.
Following this, several Wind Records releases are examined in terms of their
programmatic and musical content. Finally, I speculate on the connection between
these recordings and the New Age ideology of healing. My findings suggest that the
intersection of New Age ideology and world music in the global marketplace is a
fruitful area for further ethnomusicological inquiry.
10:00 1E4
Local Mutation and Transnational Reconfiguration: The Case of The Peony Pavilion
Isabel K. F. Wong, University of Illinois
In the summer of 1998, the Shanghai cultural authorities refused to allow actors of
the Shanghai Kunju company to come to New York to perform the Kun musical drama
in 55 scenes "The Peony Pavilion," a production which had been commissioned by the
Lincoln Center; since then, "The Peony Pavilion" has become the locus of a debate
about issues of local ownership and transnational appropriation. The U.S. premier of
Peter Sellars' version of "The Peony Pavilion" at Berkeley in March, 1999 further
fueled the controversy. In China itself, this 16th-century libretto has never been
performed in its entirety, and has gone through numerous mutations throughout the
centuries, the most radical version being a 1982 production by the Shanghai Kunju
Company.
In this paper I will use each of these three 20th-century productions of the
16th-century work as a framework to discuss a set of local/transnational issues: 1)
The 1982 Shanghai production was a revised and condensed version of the original
libretto staged with western staging techniques and musical practice, while retaining
traditional singing and performance practice. My discussion will focus on the impact
of cultural contact and social changes on artistic product. 2) The aborted Lincoln
Center production laid claims to being an authentic cultural performance, and my
discussion will focus on issues of authenticity and ownership of a reconstructed
artistic product intended for a transnational audience. 3) The Peter Sellars
production represented an attempt to reinterpret meaning and value of 16th century
China from a post-modernist, cross-cultural perspective, seeking to affirm a global
consensus on value. Here my discussion will focus on a reconfiguration of meaning
and value under the banner of globalization.
Session 2A Copyright and Ownership in Transnational Perspective
11:00-1:00 Thursday, November 18
Chair: Louise Meintjes, Duke University
11:00 2A1
The End of Music as We Know It?: MP3, Piracy, and the Challenge to the Established
Order
Bradley C. Shank, University of California, Los Angeles
Julian Dibbell of Rolling Stone recently wrote, "Thanks to the MP3, this could
finally be the end of the music business as we know it" (1998:102). The attitude of
this headline, with its tone of forthcoming profound and positive change, is typical of
public opinions toward technological developments in music culture of the late 20th
century. MP3, a new internet audio technology, is another in a long line of new
technologies this century which stands to greatly affect the ways in which music is
conceived, composed, produced, and received. In this paper, I plan to explore the
issues that surround the development of this new technology in order to illuminate
the enormous changes occurring in the musical cultures of the West. I will first
explain MP3, discussing the technology, its history, and the ways people use it, both
legal and illegal. I will then discuss the ways in which these changes are affecting
music in our culture in relation to performers, audience, and the great mediator of
music--the recording industry. Informed by the ideas of Theodor Adorno and Simon
Frith, I will argue that consumers and musicians may finally be poised to realign their
position in our musical culture, once again becoming the dominant agents in
informing processes of musical production and distribution.
11:30 2A2
Music Piracy, Copyright Law and the Musicians in Between
Alex Perullo, Indiana University
In Tanzania, as in other parts of the world, copyright infringement and music
piracy inhibits `musicians' ability to earn a living from their music. Though musicians
may place copyright notices on the cassette tapes and compact discs they sell, there
are few local or governmental institutions that effectively enforce copyright law. As
a result, musicians often find their music being illegally copied and sold both locally
and nationally. This situation forces musicians to either develop their own ways of
dealing with copyright infringement or ignore the matter entirely.
This paper explores the way in which popular Tanzanian musicians deal with music
piracy and, at the same time, addresses their perspectives of copyright law. Too
often African governments utilize copyright policies, such as those developed by the
World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), that are heavily based on `western'
models. Though these policies are effective in certain countries, historically, they
have been ineffective in hindering music piracy and copyright infringement in African
nations. Therefore, I argue that indigenous explanations of intellectual property
rights can provide a broader understanding of copyright law and can help inform
intellectual property right debates in African countries.
12:00 2A3
An Argentine Copyright Adventure: Do You Really Have What it Takes to Study Popular
Music?
Jane L. Florine, Chicago State University
In the summer of 1998, I spent two months in Argentina with a specific mission in
mind: I needed to obtain copyright permissions to publish several different song
lyrics, along with their corresponding translations and musical transcriptions, in a
book I am writing on Argentine cuarteto music. I knew that the process would entail
going to SADAIC, the national songwriters' association, in Buenos Aires. Since I
needed to obtain releases for some long interview transcripts as well, I also planned
to spend considerable time in Córdoba, the site of my research, tracking down
musicians and songwriters at nigh-long dances. Another project was to see if I could
include a compact disc with my book.
In this paper, I describe what I underwent during my copyright quest to get what I
needed. Among other things, I explain how I wrote my own permission
letters/translations, pleaded with publishing/record companies, received little
besides reprimands from SADAIC, found that two songs were registered in Chile, and
dealt with a star singer's lawyer. I then give practical suggestions to future
copyright-seekers in the field of popular music. Topics addressed are how to plan
ahead before traveling, what kind of information/permissions to collect, how to put
together sample forms, what equipment, paperwork, and resources to bring along,
how to contact and deal with state agencies, and local confusion of terminology
regarding copyright.
Session 2B Race and Cuban Musical Discourse, Past and Present
11:00-1:00 Thursday, November 18
Chair: Robin Moore, Temple University
With this panel we propose to focus on issues of race affecting the creation and
conceptualization of Cuban music from a number of distinct and complementary
perspectives. Ben Lapidus considers racial tensions surrounding
government-sponsored folk music festivals in rural eastern Cuba. David Garcia
examines emic categories of "white" and "black" music in commercial dance repertory
of the early 1950s. Robin Moore discusses discourse about race and national culture
among art music composers and intellectuals of the 1930s, while Lisa Knauer
considers the varying racialized meanings of Afrocuban drumming traditions as they
have been contextually and geographically displaced to the eastern United States.
The participants focus on diverse time periods and forms of musical expression but
jointly consider issues of (regional national, subcultural) identity and the role of
music in defining shifting social boundaries.
11:00 2B1
Music, Race, and Cuban Conjuntos in Havana, 1948-1952: A Historical Perspective on
Contemporary Salsa Aesthetics
David Garcia, CUNY Graduate School
This paper situates contemporary salsa music within a broader context, comparing
the racial and social implications of stylistic preferences among performers in New
York and in two bands from Havana. The perspectives of New York musicians on
approaches to instrumental and vocal improvisation as well as to ensemble playing as
discussed by Christopher Washburne are compared to the those of older Cuban
musicians whom I have interviewed regarding the same issues within conjuntos (an
ensemble type) of the late- 1940s and early- 1950s. My comparison shows that while
the same stylistic traits are valued by these New York and older-generation Cuban
musicians, the latter group expresses these values in overtly racialized terms.
Specifically, the conjuntos whose styles they value are said to perform "musica
negra" or "black music" (one example being Arsenio Rodriguez y Su Conjunto), while
conjuntos whose styles are not valued are said to perform "musica blanca" or "white
music" (for instance La Sonora Matancera). The paper goes on to show that these
racial characterizations have little to do with the racial profile of the musicians
themselves--given that both groups were either all-black or mixed--and had more to
do with the venues and audiences with which they were associated as well as their
overall sound.
11:30 2B2
Travelling Diasporic Cultures: Rumba, Community and Identity in New York and Havana
Lisa Knauer, New York University
This paper will analyze the resurgence and persistence of traditional Afrocuban
rumba in the New York area and in Havana to explore how musical and other cultural
practices are used to create and negotiate identities in and between homeland and
diaspora. I will look at the various registers that rumba and other racially-marked
cultural practices occupy--staged folkloric performances, tourist productions, more
spontaneous occurrences--and explore how rumba is engaged and viewed by both
participants and non-participants. It is an important trope in the popular
imagination: historically, rumba is associated with the urban underclass and seen as
exotic, backward, or simply dangerous. On the other hand, it has been enshrined as
a national folkloric dance in Cuba and promoted globally.
My paper will briefly trace the history of rumba in Cuba and its recreation in the
diasporic community in New York, looking at how rumba has been used to construct
cubanidad in both places. I stress that rumba's role as a symbol of national identity
must be seen against the backdrop of the complex and often contradictory attitudes
about race in Cuba and in the diaspora.
In Cuba, rumba is increasingly affected by the growing tourist/dollar economy. In
New York/New Jersey, I examine rumba as a site of contestation and negotiation
between different vintages of Cuban immigrants, and between Cubans and
non-Cubans. I also explore rumba as a medium of exchange between homeland and
diaspora, and as a commodity in the globalization of Caribbean culture.
12:00 2B3
Changüi and the Racial Categorization of Folklore in Guantánamo, Cuba
Ben Lapidus, CUNY Graduate School
During the central event of the annual cultural festival in Guantánamo, Cuba 1998,
festival directors and local government officials chose to crown an internationally
known white performer from Havana as the queen of musica campesina. This
musician performed a version of musica campesina analogous to Garth Brooks' version
of country music in the United States. Local Afrocuban musicians felt that the
decision to honor her was based on racist favoritism and an obsolete paradigm which
treats musica campesina as a singularly white musical practice. Others attributed the
performer's coronation to the centuries-old rivalry that exists between the capital
region and the Eastern provinces.
More discourse on music, race, and culture surrounded the song writing
competition for changui during the festival. Performed exclusively in Guantanamo,
changui is believed to be the older sibling or parent of the son, the dominant
national musical genre. Throughout the competition, songs were presented which
represented fusions of son and changui. The judges for the competition were forced
to confront the issue of evaluating a musical tradition in the face of modernity and
change. Conflict arose due to the fact that judges from the capital saw this musical
mixture as positive innovation. The same pieces were deemed faulty by local judges
because they were a mishmash of styles rather than "pure" changui.
12:30 2B4
Musical Minorismo and Racial Discourse in Havana of the 1930s
Robin Moore, Temple University
This paper briefly examines a widespread nationalist artistic movement in Cuba of
the 1930s known as minorismo or vanguardismo. The composers, painters, and
literary figures of this group represented the elite of Cuban society and often figured
as prominent community representatives. They espoused some of the most liberal
middle-class views of the day, especially in terms of Afrocuban art and its centrality
to national expression. Minoristas often used working-class Afrocuban music as a
form of inspiration, but reworked selected sounds and images associated with it into
compositions influenced by cubism, primitivism, and serialism. They hoped in this way
to reconcile conflicting desires: on the one hand, that of creating "universal" modern
art acceptable to the European and North American avant garde, and on the other to
generate works with populist appeal and social relevance within their own country.
My presentation provides an overview of the musical imagery found in literary and
visual production of prominent minorista artists, and then concentrates on: 1) the
contradictory attitudes of group members towards Afrocuban culture; and 2) the
critiques leveled against them by the middle-class white and black communities. I
suggest that even in their attempts to promote certain representations of Afrocuban
culture as national expression in the face of opposition, figures such as Alejo
Carpentier, Amadeo Roldan, and Alejandro Garcia Catural demonstrated the extent of
racial intolerance in Cuban society. Their ambivalent views of Afrocuban culture
speak to fundamental divisions of class and race that continue to affect attitudes in
the Caribbean.
Session 2C Women, Music and Performance in the Middle East
11:00-12:30 Thursday, November 18
Chair: Margaret Rausch, Free University of Berlin
The purpose of this panel is to focus attention on women musicians in the Middle
East. Even in scholarly literature, Middle Eastern women have often been
represented in a stylistically orientalist fashion, usually as passive and erotic objects.
Criticism of this kind of scholarship has led many scholars working in cultural studies
to reevaluate women's agency and subjectivity in their daily lives and the implications
of this in the study of cultural and social change. The papers in our panel seek to
add to this scholarship by showing how women performers in the Middle East actively
negotiate their performances: Margaret Rausch will explore the subjectivity of
Berber female performers and how a talented singer helped develop the performer
profession; Inis Wienrich will map how well-known Lebanese singer Feiruz creates her
image; Sevhar Besiroglu will explore the historical development of the tradition of
Ottoman women musicians, and I will disucss contemporary women poet-singers in
Turkey.
11:00 2C1
Turkish Women Poet-Singers: Negotiation of Gender & Genre
Jennifer Petzen, University of Washington
Encouraged by official state discourse promising equality for women and
influenced by state-sponsored media coverage of folk artists in the 1950's and 60's,
several Turkish women began performing as ashiks, or professional traveling
poet-singers. However, performing as women posed various and obvious problems,
according to the women I interviewed during field work in 1996 and 1998.
Learning the main genres is traditionally done by a period of apprenticeship, which
requires travelling with a master ashik. None of the women I spoke with had any kind
of apprenticeship, and all spoke about the difficulties of learning the genres that
make an ashik a master in the eyes of his/her peers. One of these genres is the
hikaye, or prose romance, which often features the often tragic life experiences of
the ashik who is performing (Basgoz 1983; Gunay 1995). The women said they never
learned how to perform the hikaye, yet their life stories contained the same ethos of
suffering and tragedy as the hikayes performed professionally by the men.
In this paper, I will explore the life-story of Surmelican Kaya as part of the hikaye
tradition and discuss how genres, far from being rigid categories, are processes of
becoming: continually being negotiated by performer and spectators, including
researchers.
11:30 2C2
Musical Performance & Creative Process: A Berber Poetess & Professional Singer
Margaret Rausch, Free University of Berlin
The role of subjectivity in the choices made by performers, composers, poets and
music production agents together with "the conflicting lines of social influence,
bringing them into multiple, often overlapping identities and collectivities" has more
recently been underscored by Middleton. As he points out further that "neither for
them nor for their music are the simple categories of `mass' or `individual'
appropriate" (1990:45). Gender, as it effects or is effected by musical performance
and production, has also been an area of growing concern in the literature on
musical production and performance (Koskoff, 1989) which is of particular pertinence
with regard to the subject of this paper.
Moroccan Arab shikhat and Berber raisat, professional female Moroccan singers,
like their very early slave-girl and more recent Rai predecessors, despite their
marginal existence and the illicit messages of their lyrics, have enchanted public and
private audiences with their song and dance since the fifties (Kapchan, 1996).
Drawing on the works mentioned above and fieldwork data, this paper will explore
the musical performance and creative process of the Berber poetess and singer Raisa
Ruqiya ad-Dimsiriyya, who despite illiteracy and rural origin, was not only instrumental
in the emergence and development of the Berber female musical performer
profession, but who also composes her own song lyrics with which she has delighted
Moroccan and international audiences in cabarets, clubs and concert halls in major
urban centers in Morocco, Europe and Canada. She has also joined the ranks of men
and women professional musical performers regularly producing cassettes and videos.
12:00 2C3
The Lebanese Singer Fayruz: The Creation of an Image
Inis Wienrich, University of Bamberg
This presentation introduces the example of a well-known professional female
singer. More than a singer with individual musical qualities and a unique voice, Fayruz
gained the status of a national--Lebanese as well as Arab--symbol.
In my presentation I will describe her career and personal style as a singer.
Special attention will be paid to two aspects. The first one approaches the question
of her own participation in the whole complex of musical creativity. As many
other--female as well as male--Arab singers, Fayruz does not write and compose
herself. However, the rendition of a precomposed song is shaped by the musical
behavior and individual style of the singer.
Behavior and style are linked to the process of image creation. Different levels
interact here. These include the different roles of the person concerned--a
professional musician, a superstar, a woman, mother and wife, and a public and
politically engaged person--and the possible creators of images, like the person
herself, her husband, journalists, or the audience. The study aims to demonstrate
how images are constructed and which symbols are used. The careful choice of
performance occasion and music will be examined, as well as the behavior during a
performance and as a public person in general. This includes language, gestures, and
dress in addition to the analysis of selected songtexts and roles of Fayruz in theater
plays and musicals.
12:30 2C4
Ottoman Classical Music & Women
Sehvar Besiroglu, Harvard University
Among the practitioners of Ottoman-Turkish Classical Music, both in composition
and in performance, there were numerous woman musicians who made a great
contribution during the Ottoman Empire and increasingly more after Turkeys
transition to a republican state in the 1920s. Despite the importance of their
contribution, there is a lack of scholarly studies on this issue.
In this paper, I will first present a brief historical survey of woman musicians and,
examine their social backgrounds then will analyze their music in terms of the Turkish
Modal system, called makam. I will also present similar information about the
European women musicians of corresponding periods and provide a comparison
between them and their Ottoman-Turkish counterparts.
Session 2D Meaning and Emotion in Korean Music
11:00-1:00 Thursday, November 18
Chair: Andrew P. Killick, Florida State University
The conference theme "Theories of Music and Emotion" promises to yield much
when illuminated by instances from Korea, where both music and the discourse
surrounding it are often highly emotive. Recognizing that the emotions attached to
music arise in part from the meanings attributed to it, and that theories of emotion in
music must account for those meanings as a source of emotional responses, this
panel focuses on "meaning and emotion" in a variety of contexts representing some
of the ways in which Koreans, past and present, have engaged with their music--and
also struggled to define what music is properly `theirs'. Beginning with two
wide-ranging studies of the emotional meanings attached to Korean music in general,
we proceed with more specific examinations of particular emotional meanings as they
appear on every level from the individual musical tone to the overarching ideology
governing musical activity.
11:00 2D1
"It's in the Air we Breath:" Korean Perceptions of Korean Music
Keith Howard, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London
"I breathe Korean air, I drink Korean water, therefore my music is Korean." So
remarked the South Korean composer, Byungdong Paik (b.1936). Since the late
1970s, there has been much debate within Korea about what constitutes Korean
music. At one level, this by needs defines compositions for Western instruments by
Korean composers as Korean, as well as new works for traditional Korean
instruments. From a nationalistic perspective, and mixing in politics, attempts are
made to define all musics performed in Korea as Korean. My paper considers the
debate, looking at the emergence of new aesthetic understandings that have in the
last two decades allowed scholars and musicians to claim a local identity in the music
they study and perform.
Data I collected in two questionnaire surveys carried out at performance venues
and through an arts magazine suggests a different picture: respondents clearly
separated Korean music from Western music. The former was considered an
emotional experience, felt within the soul by listeners, full of collective national
history, and perfectly suited to the Korean psyche. The latter was understood in
terms of structures, something that needed to be learned and studied to be
enjoyed. What conclusions can we draw?
11:20 2D2
Imagining music: The Construction of Meaning and Emotion in the Music of Korea and
the Korean Diasporas of the Former Soviet Union and China
Hae-Kyung Um, International Institute for Asian Studies, Leiden
This paper examines the ways in which meaning and emotion in Korean music are
variously constructed, mediated and reinterpreted in Korea and the Korean diasporas
of the former Soviet Union and China. This process of `imagining music' will be
described and analysed comparatively using three different forms of Korean music,
namely, the traditional musical drama p'ansori; the group of folksongs known as
`Arirang,' and the contemporary percussion ensemble samul nori. Meaning and
emotion in a particular piece of Korean music are socially mediated and culturally and
historically constructed by different individuals and groups through the process of
imagining music. Meaning and emotion for the Korean diasporas add yet another
dimension. For these displaced peoples Korean music establishes cultural links with
both their homeland and other Korean communities. However, the migrant
experience and cultural and political life in their respective host countries also gives
shape to their perceptions of meaning and emotion in the musics from home.
Additionally and importantly, these Korean migrant communities have also created
their own musical forms, aesthetics and associated personal and public discourse all
of which feed into the process of imagining music that is Soviet Korean or Chinese
Korean. All these complexities combine to create a unique experience of meaning
and emotion in the musical imagination of each individual who, none the less, is
connected to those with whom they share common elements of musical heritage and
experience.
11:50 2D3
Tension and Release as Physical and Auditory Signs of Affect in Korean Music
Byong Won Lee, University of Hawaii at Manoa
A common aesthetic feature of much musical performance is the continuous
alternation of tension and release as building elements of the music. This alternation
may be present not only in the sonic design of the music, but also in the conditions
by which the sound is produced, such as performance postures and some
characteristic organological structures. This paper examines three specific modes of
tension and release aesthetics in Korean traditional music. First, in real-time
performance, certain melodic cells and tones are often made more tense by
expanding the length through the insertion of a break in the middle of the cell or a
momentary pause in the middle of the sustained tone. Second, the simultaneous
performance of changdan (metered rhythm) and mujangdan (non-metered rhythm) in
p'ansori (musical story-telling accompanied by a barrel drum) and sanjo (extended
solo instrumental music accompanied an hourglass-shaped drum) performances always
creates a high degree of tension which requires an equally high degree of release.
Third, the kinaesthetetic aspects of some of the idiosyncratic performance postures
are often understood as visible signs of the tension-release pattern. Performance on
the taegum (transverse flute) and chunggu (hourglass-shaped drum) illustrates this
aspect vividly. An examination of such patterns can shed light on processes that
generate emotion and meaning in music, inasmuch as tension and release are in
themselves emotional states as well as auditory and kinaesthetic ones, and as such
are affected by the manifold elements and circumstances that surround the
production of musical sound.
12:10 2D4
Emotion and Meaning in the Early Chosôn Period: The Debate over Yôak
Jocelyn Clark, Harvard University
The gentlemen of the early Chosôn, interpreting Zhu Xi's observation that, "If one
is mindful one's desires will be few and principles will be clear. If one reduces one's
desires and then reduces them yet further until a condition in which they are totally
absent is approached, then in quiet [one's mind and heart] will be empty [of
self-centered impulses] and in activity [one's conduct] will be correct. . .," resorted
to removing their desires externally by removing women from the public sphere of life
in order to "make illustrious virtue manifest."
The practice of using female entertainers in the court for banquets, the system of
yôak, a potent combination of wee-hours, alcohol, music, dance, and female beauty
(combined later with the beauty of adolescent boys), especially agitated the seven
emotions and created impurities in the gentlemens' psychophysical constitution
which in turn was, or had potential to be, harmful to the state. The debate over the
use of yoak waged for centuries. It is this system, the system which engendered it,
and the emotional debate that surrounded it during the early Choson period that I
will discuss.
12:20 2D5
Meaning and Emotion in North Korean "National Music"
Dae-Cheol Sheen, Kangnung National University
Music based on traditional sources is known in North Korea as `national music'
(minjok umak). Though this term is also used occasionally in South Korea, the
meaning of tradition, music, and `national music' in particular are quite different
between the two Koreas. The works which are recognized as masterpieces of
`national music' in the North are exclusively those which support a socialistic
revolutionary agenda.
Ever since Kim Il-Sung emerged as the all-powerful leader of North Korea in 1945,
`national music' in the North could be created only on the basis of his juche
(`self-reliance') ideology, a version of socialist realism. This doctrine is codified in the
two most authoritative North Korean books on music, Kim Il-Sung's own Juche
Ideology on Culture and Art and his son and successor Kim Jong-Il's Essay on Music. It
is also reproduced in numerous other books published in North Korea, which never
deviate from the prescriptions of the two Kims. From these published sources, it
appears that the authors lay great stress on the importance of emotion in `national
music,' but that there is also an apparent contradiction in the emotional qualities
that are desired. Revolutionary opera, in particular, requires a stirring, heroic
emotional tone, yet the melodies are expected to be gentle and
melancholy--qualities typically associate with traditional Korean music.
It is hoped that a better understanding of these processes in North Korean music
can contribute to a cultural dialogue between the two Koreas in the interest of
their ultimate unification.
Session 2E
Narratives of Cultural Continuity: Four Moments in Yiddish Music
Chair: Mark Slobin, Wesleyan University
For modern Jews, deciding what story to tell about themselves through music has
been and continues to be a complex process, as work by Bohlman, Shelemay,
Seroussi, Summit, and Slobin has shown. The panel presents four moments of
attempted continuity and definition within eastern European Jewish music, spanning
more than a century: 1) a foundational moment-- Abraham Goldfadn's creation of
Yiddish musical theater as part of an attempt at a national narrative, in the
1870s-1880s (Seth Wolitz, University of texas); 2) a transitional period focusing on the
struggle for continuity in diaspora faced by three emigre Polish klezmer musicians in
the 1930s-1950s (Hankus Netsky, New England Conservatory); 3) the attempt by 1990s
musicians to recreate technically the sound of the klezmer past (Mark Slobin,
Wesleyan University); 4) the intertwining of "ethnic" and "women's" narratives in the
case of current female klezmer musicians and bands (Franya Berkman, Wesleyan
University).
11:00 2E1
Music and Nationalism in Three Major Melodramas of A. Goldfadn
Seth L. Wolitz, The University of Texas at Austin
This paper will interpret the role and functions of three melodramas, Dr.
Almosado, Shulamis and Bar Kokhba by Abraham Goldfadn, father of Yiddish musical
theater. He closely constructed each work as reflection of the tensions and
programs before and following the assassination of Alexander II in 1881. Music plays a
central role in determining the experience of the melodrama and a source of its
cathartic nature. The use of individual songs and choral pieces as well as musical
interludes provide the work with lyric shape which reinforces the linear narrative and
plotting. Music furthers the hidden agenda of shaping a modern peoplehood by
giving lyric identity both on the level of musical syntax and through the verbal
language chosen to be sung.
Goldfadn's intention to build a Jewish consciousness through theater explains his
careful attention to the placement of song which serves as crescendo moments of
the task. The songs permit anachronisms to creep in for these allusions direct the
receptor to the hidden intentions. Music therefore functions dynamically by
underscoring on the verbal level the aesopian message and the musical language itself
reinforces the national identity. Thus the musical theater of Goldfadn permitted the
Jews to coalesce as a modern people using for the first time esthetic means to
create and legitimate a national identity both to itself and to the Other.
11:30 2E2
Narratives of Survival: Three Twentieth Century Jewish Musicians from Poland
Hankus Netsky, New England Conservatory
This paper will compare and contrast the careers and accomplishments of three
klezmorim (professional eastern European Jewish folk instrumentalists) born in Poland
around 1920. Violinist Carl Frydman left Chmielnick for Boston in 1935, never quite
adjusting to or finding acceptance in his new home. Krakow-born accordionist Leo
Rosner had a successful career in Melbourne Australia, after surviving World War II as
a member of Oscar Schindler's house band. Percussionist Ben Bazyler was exiled from
Warsaw to Siberia, later moving to Birobidzhan and finally Los Angeles, where the
emotional traumas of his life eventually caught up with him.
All three of these musicians survived World War II, continuing to play their Jewish
repertoire well into the latter part of this century. After the destruction of Poland's
Jewish community, each of them found their own way to forge a career in a new
homeland, bringing their music with them as a kind of living monument to the world
they left behind. Their stories demonstrate the profound role that music can play in
the lives of individuals and communities displaced from their native lands.
While klezmer music (eastern-European Jewish celebratory music) has recently
gained unprecedented popularity in its own right, I believe it takes on deeper layers
of meaning when one considers the story of its demise and eventual resurgence, and
the varied motives, experiences, and survival strategies of those who sustained it (and
been sustained by it) through difficult times.
12:00 2E3
More than Mere Ornament: The Case of the Klezmer Krekhts
Mark Slobin, Wesleyan University
Krekhts is a Yiddish word denoting a groan or sigh. Aesthetically, krekhts is one of
a number of terms that signify types of expressive turns of phrase in a sung or played
passage. The krekhts is felt to be a core component of a "Jewish" sound within the
east European context and its extensions to the "Yiddish diaspora" in the United
States and elsewhere.
The krekhts of early 78 rpm klezmer violin recordings (ca. 1914-32) is easily
recognizable, but its actual manner of production is unknown. We have no
documentation about the technique of the recording artists (or even biographies, in
most cases) and few older violinists survived into the period of revitalization that
began in the mid-1970s. Thus, for the many aspiring klezmer artists of today, the
krekhts is both indispensable and technically indecipherable.
This is a crucial problem, since "ornamentation," the term for turns of phrase like
the krekhts, is crucial to the self-identity and external evaluation of contemporary
klezmers. This particular musical parameter is widely understood as providing
narrative continuity with the klezmer past across the great gap of the 1940s-1970s,
which saw European annihilation and American neglect of the genre. In klezmer
teaching contexts today, "ornamentation" takes up much of the demonstration and
discussion time.
The paper will interrogate the term "ornament," briefly referencing its position in
other "heritage" musics, move to interviews with klezmer violinists, and use as
illustration sonograms detailing the phenomenology of the older and current krekhts.
12:30 2E4
Songs of Our Fathers?: Women and the Klezmer Experience
Franya Berkman, Wesleyan University
Since the klezmer revival of the late 1970s, numerous female klezmer players have
earned international recognition. The acceptability of the female and, more
particularly, the lesbian klezmer musician in the public sphere is a product of current
modes of expression and representation made possible by Yiddish scholars,
folklorists, musicians, queer activists, feminists and promoters. This contemporary
cultural manifestation merges several models of marginality or "otherness": Jewish
identity, female identity and lesbian identity. The result is a viable, and potentially,
lucrative, musical concept finding expression in the women's music scene, women's
cultural and intellectual events as well as the politics of ethnicity and diversity that
characterize America's present cultural landscape. In the following paper, I discuss
women and the klezmer experience from two perspectives. On the one hand, I
discuss what Judith Butler and other Foucauldian theorists have called the
production of the subject -- the way in which "the domains of political and linguistic
representation set out in advance create the criterion by which subjects themselves
are formed." On the other, I discuss the multi-layered and varied personal meanings
that klezmer music has had for women musicians and women audiences. Based on
interviews and my own role as a participant, I examine the ways in which klezmer
music has become intertwined with feminist and lesbian narratives.
Nonference: 2F Bridging Musical Worlds: Assessing Music Workshops Abroad
11:00-1:00 Thursday, November 18
Steven Cornelius, Bowling Green State University
For the past six years, the College of Musical Arts at Bowling Green State
University has sponsored summer music and dance workshops in Ghana and Bali. To
date, approximately 90 students have participated. While a large percentage of those
enrolled have been graduate and undergraduate students in music, the workshops
have been designed to accommodate generalists; any university student is welcome
to enroll.
For our music graduate students, the trip is framed as a quick, intense, easily
controlled, but admittedly artificial introduction to life and work in the field. While a
daily class program is made available, there are ample opportunities for these
students to pursue additional or alternative interests.
For the generalists, the trips function mostly as an experiential class in
music-making and culture. Students learn to play instruments and dance, but for
most, upon their return home such technical knowledge is quickly forgotten. More
importantly, while abroad, students become witnesses to a style of living far different
from their own. Ultimately, we hope these experiences will challenge the students
to be more creative -- to think out of the box, if you will -- in their future lives.
Do our programs actually accomplish the goals outlined above? Generally they
have, but often in ways we would not have predicted in advance. Student
evaluations and follow-up assessments suggest that both initial and later distilled
experiences lie outside the frame we assumed had been initially laid out. The goal of
this nonference is to jointly explore program successes and shortcomings in order to
encourage dialogue that might lead to better approaches.
Nonference: 3A Changing Copyright Laws and Their Implications for Ethnomusicology
2:30-4:30 Thursday, November 18
Chair: Anthony McCann, Irish World Music Centre
Anthony McCann; David Sanjek; Laurel Sercombe; Anthony Seeger
What are the implications of recent changes in copyright laws, and their
applications, for the field of ethnomusicology? This question will be discussed in
terms of the legal and ethical dimensions of fieldwork, archiving, and publication.
This will include discussion of attribution, ownership, responsibility, trust, and
appropriation, exploring questions raised by examples such as the destruction of
Toelken's `Yellowman Tapes'.
The discussion will also explore the implications of new copyright legislation for
theoretical developments in ethnomusicology. The study of intellectual property
rights can provide insights into the dynamics of innovation, creativity and cultural
production. The discussion will also throw light on the relationship between music
and technology in both popular music and traditional forms. A clear understanding
of the theoretical implications of intellectual property, and copyright in particular,
can shed crucial light on the cultural history of the music industry.
Session 3B Issues in African Music
2:30-4:30 Thursday, November 18
Chair: Christopher Waterman, University of California, Los Angeles
2:30 3B1
Tradition and Change in the Song Style of a South African Denomination
Sara Stone Miller, Kent State University
The religious denomination known as The Church of God and Saints of Christ
encompasses churches in North America, the Caribbean, Great Britain and Africa.
Although separated by thousands of miles, the various segments of this relatively small
African-American denomination evidence a remarkable similarity in traditions,
doctrine, and practice. Among the traditions, a capella singing in four-part harmony
of songs created within the denomination and learned by rote is a focal point of
every service, as is marching in complex formations while singing.
The Church of God and Saints of Christ was founded in the United States in 1896
by William Saunders Crowdy. Missionaries were sent to the Caribbean and South
Africa in the early years of the twentieth century. These missionaries transmitted
not only the religious doctrine and practices of the Church, but the importance of
multi-part choral singing and marching as integral aspects of worship services. While
members in the Caribbean evidence a style of singing and marching virtually identical
to that of the denomination in the United States, in South Africa the situation is
much more complex. Two major segments of the denomination exist there, both now
loosely united with each other after many years of separation. While communication
with the church in the United States was re-established for one group in the 1930s,
for the other it only occurred within the last three years. In recent years three
official visits have been made to South Africa by delegations including choir members
from the denomination in the United States.
Many songs sung by both segments of the denomination in South Africa are closer
in style to that of other South African choirs than to that of the denomination in the
United States. The segment which has been in contact longer with the church in
the United States has, however, already adopted a number of songs from them with
their accompanying style. This paper will compare the song and marching styles of
the two South African segments, their relationship with the song and marching style
of the denomination in the United States, and the process of change as both South
African segments increasingly interact with each other and with the denomination in
the United States.
3:00 3B2
Situated Musical Competence: Insights from the Composition of Three Songs in
Northwestern Congo
Brian Schrag, University of California, Los Angeles
Davidson and Torff, in their "Situated Cognition in Music (Worlds of Music, 1992),
propose a model of musical practice which incorporates both broad cultural forces
and individual competences. In this paper, I investigate song composition among the
Mono of northwestern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) through the lens of
situated cognition. First, I tell the story of the composition of three songs that I
commissioned while living in Bili, DRC, in 1993; I illustrate this section with recorded
renditions of the songs. Second, I discuss how Davidson and Torff's model reveals the
nature and scope of the social, musical, and linguistic competences required to
compose Mono music. Third, and to conclude, I suggest ways in which
ethnomusicologists could profitably apply this model to their own forays into the
acquisition of musics foreign to them.
3:30 3B3
"Don't Live Primitive Lives Anymore:" Nationalist Discourse and Modernity Among
Matengo Dancers
Stephen Hill, University of Illinois
More than any other decade in this century, the 1950s brought monumental
change to the Wamatengo in Southwestern Tanzania. In this decade they adopted
coffee farming bringing them into the burgeoning cash economy, they lost sight of an
exclusively clan or ethnic identity while beginning to envision themselves as
independent Tanganyikans, and they abandoned a significant old dance in favor of
two new dances. One element links and invigorates these three shifts a nascent
notion of and education in modernity. While a new identity as independent
Tanganyikans depended on forces outside the Matengo homeland, the potential for
coffee farming existed there since 1927, and the geographically and culturally close
Wanyasa danced the new dances beginning in the early 1930s. Thus, many of the raw
materials for a modernist world view preceded the 1950s. In this paper I will explore
the historical conjunctures which made the 1950s an opportune time for these
significant shifts in Matengo identity and how the Wamatengo learned modernity.
Further, I will argue that the liberationist/modernist discourse cultivated by Julius
Nyerere and his TANU party was the essential factor catalyzing the major changes
described above. Because the Wamatengo do not articulate their understanding of
issues such as economics and broad shifts in personal identity, the important realm
of dance provides a clear window into how the Wamatengo viewed the turmoil of the
1950s and the resultant changes.
4:00 3B4
Tradition, Process, and Emergence: Ethnographically Tracing the History of a Dance
Form in Malawi
Lisa Gilman, Indiana University
Chilimika is a mostly female competitive dance form performed to celebrate the
new year in Nkhata Bay District in Malawi. The development of Chilimika in its
current manifestation is recent and recordable. While conducting fieldwork in
Nkhata Bay in 1998-99, I identified the first Chilimika dance team or "boma" as the
Peacemakers in Durban Village in the Chinteche area. The "boma" formed in 1961
when the Village Headman of Durban sat with people in his village and declared that
because there was too much fighting during their non-formalized New Year's dancing,
he had conceived a new dance form that had many elements of another Nkhata Bay
District dance, Malipenga. As other villages followed suit, Chilimika became the
popular New Years entertainment in the Chinteche area. Much later, the "tradition"
caught on in villages near the town of Nkhata Bay and many new dance teams were
started in 1988. In 1998, groups were formed for the first time in villages in northern
parts of the district. Because the origin of Chilimika in its current form is traceable,
this dance tradition provides an opportunity for examining cultural process: the
emergence and ongoing transformations of a tradition. In this paper, I present the
history of this dance form, with special attention to the complex relationship
between changes in the tradition and various aspects of its social, political, and
economic contexts.
Session 3C Gender and Music
2:30-4:00 November 18
Chair: Margaret Sarkissian, Smith College
2:30 3C1
Authenticating the Female Gidayu: Gender, Westernization, and Governmental Policy
in Japanese Performing Arts
Kiwamu Nakamura, Washington University
In recent musical scholarship on Japan, female gidayű have become a topic of
interest. I contextualize my own work with female gidayű within recent historical
accounts provided by Coaldrake and Mizuno, and address the broader cultural and
ideological framework in which evaluation of these musicians has taken place. My
contention is that westernization in Japan has affected the way female gidayű now
exist.
Women who play the gidayű (a Japanese musical narration) are acknowledged with
the marked category "joryű-gidayű (female gidayu performers) as opposed to the
unmarked (male) "gidayű." Despite their two-hundred-year history, they are still not
allowed to play gidayű in the highly valorized traditional puppet theatre, bunraku.
Apparently accepting the explanation that `the theatre is for men," they neither
protest the privilege of male gidayű nor develop their own style dissociated from the
male counterpart. It would be incorrect to assume, however, that they do not
question gender inequality. My research suggests rather that female gidayű are quite
savvy about their denigrated status and accept this status in exchange for gaining
official authentication.
The concept of authenticity is paramount in the Japanese traditional arts. To be
acknowledged as bona fide performers, female gidayű must be authenticated by both
male authorities and the Japanese government. Curiously enough, the authentication
process embeds both indigenous and western cultural values. While avoiding limitless
westernization imposes traditional gender ideology on female gidayű, a western
notion of high art requires the elevation of female gidayű from popular entertainment
to sophisticated art.
3:00 3C2
Dana Goes International: The Crossing of Musical, National and Sexual Borders
Yossi Maurey, University of Chicago
Nationality and gender are two of the crucial constituents in the construction of
identity. Yet, much contemporary post-modern cultural production is dedicated to
denaturalizing both heteronormative gender and Hegelian, post-Enlightenment
nationalism. Music is one of several media in which cultural artifacts can come to
signify the Nation. The paper focuses on the music of Dana International, an Israeli
transsexual singer who won the 1998 Eurovision Song Contest. The Eurovision, which
offers a unique opportunity for an immediate identification of singer and nation,
serves as my point of departure to a more extensive examination of the varied
political and sexual subversions of Dana's interventions in nationalist discourse.
Through quotation of music and/or lyrics, and the alteration and departure from
the original, Dana transforms and renews several songs in a way unique to her: she
forces the audience to rethink what is natural and what is historically constructed,
and constantly blurs distinctions between the sexes, between past and present,
between the National and the International. Her songs often mock and parody the
masculanist, nationalist myths of mainstream Israeli culture, exposing the ideology of
its artifacts. Dana disputes and resists Israel's national fixation with its borders; in
particular, Dana engages provocatively with the tensions between Israel's
geographical location in the Arab and Muslim Middle-East, and its self-perception as a
European nation.
3:30 3C3
Unique Representations of Femininity in Punk and Pop
Alyssa Lightbourn, University of California, Los Angeles
The purpose of this paper is to explore female alternative-rock musicians'
reappropriation of traditional notions of gender as they are represented by both
American punk- and pop- music. This discussion is based upon a long-standing
association between both rock and pop music and the traditional Caucasian-American
gender binary. Numerous scholars have reported that, through various everyday
activities, performers, audiences, and members of the popular music industry
produce rock as a traditionally masculine domain and pop as a traditionally feminine
domain. According to Susan McClary, people read these musical signs as belonging to
historically- and culturally-produced symbolic precedents which have been shaped by
dominant societal practices and ideologies.
In response to the gendered agendas of the music industry's participants, Sara
Cohen, Keith Negus, Norma Coates, and other scholars have studied the musical
works and activities of musicians who promote non-traditional notions of gender.
Through their projects, they initiate a conceptualization of gender which is divorced
from traditional notions of masculinity and femininity.
In my opinion, these studies play an important part in restraining the perpetuation
of traditional dichotomous notions of gender. However, in studying and reporting
non-traditional "performative" constructions of gender, one should acknowledge the
underlying elements of conventional representations of gender. In this paper, I will
argue that this acknowledgement is important since new constructions of gender
may be based upon "fusions" of selected elements from historical, cultural gender
ideologies. By focusing on the musical content and images of female alternative-rock
musicians, this paper will illustrate how they have reappropriated both punk- and
pop-music's traditional representations of gender. Through "fusing" reappropriated
elements of the traditional gender binary as it is represented through music and
imagery, they have contributed alternate notions of femininity and alternate notions
of punk- and pop-music.
4:00 3C4
"If You Want to Win, You've Got to Play it Like a Man:" Women Fiddlers' Experiences in
Fiddle Contests
Sherry A. Johnson, York University
When April Verch won the 1998 Canadian Open Fiddle Championship in Shelburne,
Ontario, she was only the second woman to have done so. Surprisingly, this
distinction was not mentioned in the award presentation, broadcast live by the
Canadian Broadcast Corporation. For women fiddlers, however, April's win was
significant, evoking a sense of pride and solidarity as they claimed the achievement
for all Canadian women fiddlers. There are obviously fewer women than men fiddling
in contests, but why, and to what effect? How do women fiddlers' experiences differ
from men's experiences? What gender structure is created/reflected in contests,
and is this structure consistent in less formal and non-competitive social contexts for
fiddle performance? Why is the media silent on issues of gender? These questions,
prompted by April's win at Shelburne, have guided my current research.
The main themes that emerged from my interviews with women fiddlers, who have
participated at some time in the Ontario fiddle and step dance contest circuit, are:
a) predominant male/female roles at contests; b) separation of men's and women's
performance spheres; and c) discourses and demonstrations of masculine/feminine
fiddle style. My 17 years of experience in
the circuit, as a step dancer, step dance judge, and later as a fiddler, as well as
information brochures, participant registration statistics, and audio recordings from
several years of various contests, constitute the supporting data sources for this
study. This paper is a preliminary step in the exploration of gender issues in fiddle
contests, by focusing on women fiddlers' experiences.
Session 3D Music in Religious Occasions
2:30-4:30 Thursday, November 18
Chair: , Regula Qureshi, University of Alberta
2:30 3D1
From Tagulaylay to Bahay Kubo to Titanic: Contemporary Philippine Pasyon
M. Arlene Chongson, The University of Texas at Austin
In March 1998, the same month the movie Titanic became the biggest global box
office success and won major Oscar awards, on Philippine television news some
Filipinos were shown adapting the film's theme song in the payson. The Payson, also
known as the Pabasa, is an annual ritual celebrated during the Catholic Church's Holy
Week. With origins emanating from the eighteenth century, the text of the payson is
mainly based on the passions of Jesus Christ, though it is combined as well with other
non-biblical printed sources. Traditional chants used with the text have influences
from epic singing. This paper will explore the factors that validate the instantaneous
adaptation of fold and popular tunes, as well as various song genres, that are fitted
into a religious text. Applying Catherine Bell's theory on ritual practice, it will
examine the characteristics that identify the performance of the payson as ritual. It
will investigate the inner workings of folk Catholicism within the payson. It will be
asserted that the reason for the continued use of the payson is found in the
multi-faceted nature of the payson that makes it simultaneously a sacred and secular
event, as well as both a personal and communal expression. Positioning the payson
within the discourse of Filipino social scientists, notably Raul Pertierra and Arnold
Molina Azurin, it will be argued that the payson manifests a reading of Philippine
cultural history in its text and music, expresses the struggle of its search for national
identity, and voices the Filipino's core sense of being.
3:00 3D2
Indigenous Representations: Araucanian Contributions to Sacred Processions in
Colonial Chile
Beth K. Aracena, University of Chicago
This paper examines the performative spaces of processions to reveal instances of
native enunciations aimed at subverting political and musical authority in colonial
Chile. Heightening important liturgical events such as Holy Week, Corpus Christi,
Marian feasts, and saints days, religious processions provided significant venues for
the fashioning of cultural identifications throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries. Ethnographic writings from the era report that confraternities composed
of Araucanian, African, Spanish, and Creole populations collaborated in these
celebrations, with song, dance, theatrical works, and costume integral to the
festivities. Such descriptions construe music-making in sacred arenas as political
sites for voicing contested values and cultural difference.
I draw upon postcolonial studies to consider processes of hybridization in which
expressions of Araucanian mis-appropriations competed with dominant religious and
musical discourses. Indigenous Chileans participating in the processions did not
merely imitate missionary teachings and conform to Catholicism; rather, they fused
elements from Christian rituals with their own histories of both cultures. By
embracing postcolonial theory to examine knowledges outside dominant repertories,
my paper contributes to an historical traditional canon in order to consider musics
and musical contexts previously neglected by scholarship. This attention to native
utterances and performative presencing in processions opens new areas of
investigation for theatrical repertories and local villancico composition in the New
World, both topics of Latin American music history not yet fully explored.
3:30 3D3
"We Know Your God--He is Our God Also:" Degrees of African Identity in the Church
Music of Ghana
Paul W. Humphreys, Loyola Marymount University
In July 1998, some thirty-five composers and choirmasters from Southern Ghana
convened at the University of Ghana, Legon for a two week institute devoted to the
study and practice of church music. Hosted by the International Center for African
Music and Dance--ICAMD is a research unit within the university--this inaugural event
featured lectures on conducting, transcription, repertoire, and the role of the
composer in creating new works for the church.
In one of several talks presented to participants of the institute, J.H.K Nketia
(Director of ICAMD) called attention to the "Christo-centric" character of music
composed for and performed in the churches of Africa. This characterization most
obviously addresses texts that invoke teaching metaphors which may be inapplicable
in an African setting (e.g. spiritual leader as "shepherd"), of non-African provenance,
or both. Nketia is at least as concerned, however, with the unquestioning
appropriation of European musical norms by composers of church music in Africa.
Citing the pionering example of Ephraim Amu, he has gone on to suggest that a truly
African corpus of music for the African church both can and should emerge.
My conversations with participants both during and after the institute suggest
that Nketia's words have not fallen on deaf ears. His advocacy in this regard is of
long standing, and many composers have already forged individual styles that combine
the texture and harmonic syntax of European music in distinctively African ways.
This paper examines the work of four such composers with reference to specific
anthems (with texts in Ga, Ewe, Twi, and English), performance practice, and the
evolving social contexts of church music in southern Ghana.
Session 3E Connecting Events
2:30-4:30 Thursday, November 18
Chair: Carol Babiracki, Syracuse University
Discussant: Beverley Diamond, York University
Ethnomusicologists have frequently challenged notions of musical performances as
discrete and rigidly bounded events. However, the theoretical implications of looking
at the social practices that connect one musical performance to another have often
been ad hoc. This panel will look at several means of "connecting" events: (1) to the
experiential frameworks of individual listeners and participants, including the multiple
interpretive strategies of a variety of ethnomusicologists; (2) to other events in which
performers may reconfigure their roles or their relationships to place and to each
other; (3) to political and social movements and ideologies within which performances
take place. Our goal is not simply to elaborate the contextual, however, but rather
to explain how these "connecting" practices shape the codes of musical performance
and audience members, as well as scholarly responses to musical performance.
2:30 3E1
Re/Placing Events
Beverley Diamond, York University
Ethnographies of performance often acknowledge, in passim, that musical
performances are made meaningful by perceived or actual relationships to other
musical performances. This paper suggests, however, that a more systematic focus on
discourses that interrelate performances offers a fresh perspective, replacing events
as space/time bounded with a concept of events as networks of performers,
listeners, places, and institutions. In a case study based in the Yukon, performances
both at home and on tour, by a group of musicians who constitute themselves on one
hand as a Cajun-influenced pop band, and on other occasions, as a Native American
ensemble, are explored. The paper draws upon interviews, conducted between 1993
and 1999, as well as performance ethnography in Whitehorse and Toronto. I will
explore how individual musicians contrast performances to instruct gender and
class-inflected discourses of Yukon identity, aboriginality, and French Canadian (but
not Quebecois) identity. I suggest that an exploration of the interlinking of
performances may constitute an important middle ground between localized
ethnography and studies focusing on the global interlocking of modern institutions.
3:00 3E2
Departing from an Event
Pirkko Moisala, Abo Akademi University
The paper aims at decentering the event by exploring the multiple interpretations
of a single occasion. It examines the ways our scholarly interpretations of an event
are grounded in our personal backgrounds and interests. It is proposed that an event
is relational to the present and past of the observer/participant as much as it is
experienced as a concrete event.
The paper is based on "field work" done by ten members of the "Music and
Gender" Study Group of the ICTM in a Finnish dance restaurant, in January 1999. The
observers came from different ethnic, national, cultural backgrounds and from
different gender and age groups. The
observations made on the Finnish gender system performed in the dance restaurant
reflected the past experiences and theoretical viewpoints of the observers while
they also were situational. Looked through such a multicultural lens, "an event" gets
multiple faces and becomes connected to a variety of social and experiential worlds.
3:30 3E4
Dancing Between the Lines
Carol Babiracki, Syracuse University
This paper is an inquiry into the interpretation of explicitly gendered, segregated
group dance/song practices of Nagpuri speakers of southern Bihar, India. Subjective
statements from participants (recorded in 1993 and 1999), suggest that these
practices (events, dance patterns, drum patterns, melody types), called, literally,
"men's" and "women's" jhumar, constitute and interpret each other through a web of
social practices, including embodied performance experiences. Literally dancing
between these two types of jhumar are nacnis, professional female dancer/singers
who are transformed from women's jhumar participants to men's jhumar entertainers
when they enter the profession. The nacnis also link the two danced jhumar events
to a third, the presentation of men's and women's jhumar songs on stage, without
dance, by male soloists and a handful of female nacnis and "modern singers." Stage
performance, and the
participation of nacnis in it, while reinforcing and making visible the connections
between male and female genres also eliminates their separate, essential, embodied
identities. This preliminary inquiry suggests that the gendered interpretations of
these various performances of jhumar are shaped by the different natures of
participants' embodied and disembodied experiences, experiences that move
between the dance lines as much as within them.
7:00-8:30 Video Screening and Discussion:
Musical Instruments of Kacch and its Neighbors
Amy Catlin and Nazir Jairazbhoy, University of California, Los Angeles
This one-hour narrated video by Nazir Jairazbhoy and Amy Catlin posits a cultural
continuum surrounding the semi-island of Kacch in western Gujarat, India by
exploring the construction and use of musical instruments. Beginning with globular
flutes of the Indus Valley Civilization still played in Kacch today, the researchers
present performers of various traditions found in this colorful but little known
district, along with cognate forms in neighboring districts in Pakistan and India.
Physical and cultural characteristics are explained for a variety of instruments:
double fipple and edge-blown flutes (some with vocal drones), Jew's harps (with
simultaneous vocal melody), snakecharmer's double clarinets, and various
quadruple-reed shawms. Percussion instruments include footed drums and coconut
rattles brought by African immigrants, the Sidis, some four centuries ago. String
instruments which have become extinct in Kacch but remain in the neighboring areas
are introduced along with the few remaining string instruments. During the
discussion, recent footage will be screened of Sidi African-Indian musicians playing
the African-derived musical bow, malunga, with tuning noose and resonating gourd,
introducing theories of its origin in East Africa.
Friday, November 19
Session 4A Ethnomusicology and History I: Ethnography and Historical Method
8:30-10:30 Friday, November 19
Chair: William Noll, Kyiv Music Academy
8:30 4A1
Shadows from the Past: Notes on an Epistemological Perspective for Historical
Ethnomusicology
Eriko Kobayashi, The University of Texas at Austin
While ethnography and history used to be conceptualized dichotomously--as
synchronic and diachronic approaches--ethnomusicologists have long intertwined
history in their ethnographic writings. In this paper, among various interfaces of
music ethnography and history, I focus on the commonality of the two as modes of
writing--particularly their epistemological underpinnings. As modes of narrativizing
experience or "what happened," both ethnography and history reduce (or abstract)
"reality" in accordance with certain choices of information and deployments of
narrative strategies, in order to enable understanding.
Inspired by the volume Shadows in the Field edited by Barz and Cooley (1997), I
apply a few issues raised in the volume to the writing of music history. A writing of
history, like ethnography, is always already an interpretation. Similarly, relationships
between history writing and "what happened" are inherently discrepant but
dialectical. Drawing on my case study on the modern historiography of Hindustani
classical music, I ask how processes of abstraction work. What are the choices of
information based on? What are the narrative strategies? What might disjunctive
relationships between "reality" and history mean?
The modern historiography of Hindustani music entails the conception of
Hindustani music which formulated in tension with co-existing conceptions such as
Hindu music, Indian music, North Indian music, or classical music. I aim to illustrate
how the tensions among these co-existing conceptions affect the writing of history.
9:00 4A2
Excursions in the Historical Past, or a Report on Ethnomusicological Fieldwork in
Mozart's Vienna
Jonathan Stock, University of Sheffield
Descriptions of ethnomusicology commonly, if not universally, posit the
researcher's personal undertaking of sustained fieldwork as central to the very
discipline of ethnomusicology. Fieldwork gives us due experience, we hope, and,
rhetorically, it invests us with the authority of "someone who was there." Its
centrality in our theoretical literature notwithstanding, the whole exercise and
notion of fieldwork is nonetheless under challenge in day-to-day practice from a
number of perspectives, both ideological and logistical. For instance, a glance at
recent (and some not-so-recent) publications suggests that we are increasingly
conscious of the ways in which "the field" impinges on the academy. Indeed, the
field can be the academy, just as it can be found at home, or summoned up on our
desktop computers. Or, from another perspective, the field in investigations of
certain popular and urban musical traditions can be so unbounded as to be difficult
to come to grips with through traditional, participatory-cum-observational research
methods.
Through the device of a fictional fieldwork report, this paper offers a
reconsideration of the field of historical ethnomusicology, by which I refer to work in
which historical sources are examined in order to produce reflections on past, and
sometimes also present, musical cultures. The scope for ethnomusicologists to
engage in this kind of writing is investigated, and the contribution it can offer to
those studying present-day music making is assessed.
9:30 4A3
Historical Ethnography: How do We Research and Represent Musical Change in an
Oral Tradition?
Gregory D. Booth, University of Auckland
The arrival, indigenization, and growth of brass bands in India are phenomena
located at the complex intersection of history, music culture, and social structure.
Caste dynamics, colonialization, urbanization, popular culture, and mass media all play
a role in the development of this tradition, which despite its functional importance,
continues to occupy a marginal place in South Asian music culture. Because brass
bands are not only foreign but also colonial in origin, they appear as an especially
dense conglomerate of cultural symbolism. In addition, they are readily perceived as
an explicit instance of musical or music-cultural change. The proposed paper outlines
patterns and phases of socio-musical adaptation and change as exemplified by South
Asian brass bands, presenting the results of extended ethnographic field research in
South Asia. The matter of musical (or music cultural) change is viewed and
questioned as both a subject for Ethnomusicological study and a cultural reality (or
non-reality) in the lives of musicians and patrons. The paper further considers the
challenges and effectiveness of ethnographic methodologies in the construction of
historical narrative when the central characters of that narrative are members of a
marginalized tradition possessed of a consistently devalued and almost exclusively oral
history.
10:00 4A4
Intersecting Histories of Music and Scholars in Polish Mountain Villages
Timothy J. Cooley, University of California, Santa Barbara
This paper is an example of how historical research can lead to radically different
interpretations on one's own ethnographic fieldwork. During my first fieldwork trip
to the Tatra Mountain region of Poland in 1992, it became clear to me that I was
operating in the long shadow of earlier fieldworkers in this region. When describing
their own family music traditions to me, village musicians so often included critiques
of earlier musical ethnographers who studied with their ancestors, that I came to
realize that the history of ethnography in this region intersected with the history the
music-culture itself. In this paper, I review the history of musical ethnography in this
region and show that the interaction between local musicians and researchers from
elsewhere shaped what came to be known as "traditional" music of the Tatra region.
I suggest that the more controversial and progressive trends among local village
musicians today are actually similar to music activities of 150 years ago that were
rejected in the few decades before and after the turn of the century as outside
scholars narrowed their notions of what constituted indigenous music of this region.
Village musicians today actively debate verbally and musically the merits of outside
scholars who write about their music.
Session 4B Music and Ethnicity in the United States
8:30-10:30 Friday, November 19
Chair: Terrence Lui, Public Corporation for the Arts
8:30 4B1
Cold War Cultural Exchange: The United States and Poland
Paula Savaglio, Newman University
Long before President Johnson outlined his vision of building bridges of "trade,
travel, and humanitarian assistance" between the United States and Easter Europe,
Polish Americans had established a history of cultural exchange with Poles. Since the
early 1900s, Polish communities in the United States had created musical institutions
whose primary function was to espouse Polish culture in America.
With the onset of the Cold War, Polish American ensembles, bolstered by the
membership of new immigrants and displaced persons, renewed their efforts to bring
Polish culture into the U.S. and to experience, themselves, Poland under Communist
rule. Polish American dance groups sent choreographers and even entire ensembles
to Warsaw to study the nationalistic art of folk dance. They also invited Polish dance
troupes to perform in the United States. The exchange cannot be described as
free: leaders of the American ensembles proceeded at times individually, often
without official support. Those who were partially sponsored by Party-led
organizations operated frequently under the watchful eyes of government in both
countries, enduring FBI interrogations and accused of "un-American activities."
My aim is to address the nature of cultural exchange between Polish and Polish
American dance organizations, focusing on the years immediately prior to, including,
and following Johnson's administration (1963-1969). To what degree did the State
encourage or hinder musical exchange between the two countries? Research for
this paper has included interviews, and study of foreign relations documents and
archival materials.
9:00 4B2
A Musical Identity in the Process of Westernization: A Study of the Korean Students
at the Peabody Conservatory
Sunghye Joo, University of Maryland, College Park
In the late 1940s, two Korean students came to study piano at the Julliard School
in New York on scholarships awarded by the American military government in Korea.
They were the first Koreans to study music in the U.S. Fifty years later, Korean
students are a major presence in the American music academy though Koreans in
general are a tiny minority in American society. Until now, however, they have been
unnoticed by the major works on American music schools including those by Henry
Kingsbury and Bruno Nettl.
At the Peabody Conservatory of the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore,
Maryland, Korean students number more than 20% of the total student body, the
highest percentage of any foreign student group. Their pursuit of conservatory
education at the highest level is indicative of the emphasis on Western music in
contemporary Korean society, which has modernized under the influence of the
vestiges of colonialism. At the same time, the students' motivation, general behavior
patterns, and, especially, their disciplined approach to the studies sets them apart
from their American peers. Based on the author's personal experience in Korea, and
six months of research among Korean students at Peabody, this paper will examine
the musical and cultural identity of Korean students in the U.S., focusing in
particular on their attitudes toward music as an art and a profession.
9:30 4B3
Flexible Boundaries of Ethnicity and Musical Repertoire: Balkan Politics in the Seattle
Junior Tamburitzans
Jill Ann Johnson, University of Washington
The children line up, dressed much as their Croatian ancestors would have sixty,
or one hundred years ago. Dancing onto the performance area, they sing in the
Croatian language as the audience watches and listens, enjoying the community
created by this event. The Seattle Junior Tamburitzans are a children's group, which
performs folk music and dance of Croatia. It is organized and driven by parents who
are, mostly, first, second, and third generation immigrants of South Slavic origins.
This paper explores the role of music in generating and maintaining an ethnic
identity within the Seattle-area Slavic community, focusing on the Seattle Junior
Tamburitzans. Change in the musical repertoire from pan-Yugoslav to mostly Croatian
is a pivotal aspect of this paper. These changes have occurred due to shifts in the
demographic composition of the community, and the political and social pressures
caused by the war in former Yugoslavia.
Glazer and Moynihan's ideas about how ethnic groups change over time to meet
their social, and political needs, provide a theoretical focus for explaining why
changes have occurred in the Seattle Junior Tamburitzans (Glazer and Moynihan
1978). Michael Fischer's concept of bifocality and the idea of the generation of new
perspectives by creating a dialogue with the past (Fischer 1986), help show how the
music and dance repertoire of the group is flexible.
Changes in the repertoire of the Seattle Junior Tamburitzans reflect both social
and political factors in the Seattle-area South Slavic community, and the ethnic and
political changes in the Balkans.
Session 4C What You Mean, "We"?: Method, Goal, and Identity in Academic `Ethno'
Ensembles
8:30-10:30 Friday, November 19
Chair: Ted Solís, Arizona State University
Respondent: David Locke, Tufts University
The long, sometimes heated discourse as to the merits of performing ensembles in
ethnomusicology programs appears generally resolved. However, ethnomusicologists'
attempts at achieving "bi" and "multi-musicality" for themselves and their students
have led many to re-examine the validity, methods, and goals of such activities. Ideas
we raise in this panel include
"artistic and educational angst;" "insider/outsider" status; connection to and helping
create various "communities;" playing "ethnic dressup;" appropriateness of
pedagogical abstractions from performance; the nature of the "total cultural
experience" for students; role of the "native/insider"
teacher; appropriateness of creativity and improvisation; appropriateness of
self-expression more than "traditional" transmission; and inventing pedagogical roles.
8:30 4C1
"Where's `One'?": Musical Encounters of the Ensemble Kind
Gage Averill, New York University
Two influential and contrasting approaches to the use of musical ensembles
in ethnomusicology programs were spun from the threads of Mantle Hood's
UCLA program by two of Hood's students: the Robert "Brown model" at
Wesleyan and the Robert "Garfias model" at Washington. I begin by
comparing their ethical, pragmatic, and epistemological components.
My own approach draws upon my experience at these two institutions (student at
Washington, and faculty at Wesleyan) but departs significantly from the two
models. I offer examples from my own experience with ensembles devoted to
musical encounters meant to pry open students' cross-cultural learning
skills: expose them to a variety of pedagogical methods; create productive
confusion and dislocations; encourage students to begin asking the right
questions through musical apprenticeship; provoke fascinating cultural
interactions; and create conditions in which students master terminology,
theory, technique, and ethos of a musical culture. The question that I
hope to raise for panel and audience discussion is, put simply, are we
practicing something akin to exotic musical transvestism (ethnodrag?) with
our ensembles or are we creating musical engagements that prepare our
students for a lifetime of musical ethnography, dialogue, and cultural
exchange?
8:40 4C2
The Metallic Exotic: Balinese Gamelan in the Midwest
David Harnish, Bowling Green State University
For many of its students, BGSU is the first step into the larger world, and the BGSU
Balinese gamelan comes to represent the exotic non-Western world. Some enter
gamelan classes expecting parts to be provided in staff notation. However, I use a
modified Javanese cipher notation for Balinese gamelan and write out the parts only
for the slower moving metallophones and gongs. Faster parts are learned through
repetition and reminders of the relationship of melodic phrases to the structure.
The goal is for the music to "enter" students in a quasi-Balinese manner. Some
students are frustrated by this learning process, of having to engage their ears to
such extent; others take to it more quickly and absorb the material rapidly. This
paper is an exploration of my experiences teaching Balinese gamelan in assorted
academic contexts.
8:50 4C3
"When Can We Improvise?" The Place of Creativity in `ethno' Performance
David, Hughes, SOAS, University of London
Among numerous Asian and African traditions taught at SOAS, a matter
exercising both teachers and students is creativity - whether variation-making,
improvisation, composition or "merely" interpretation. Some traditions require
significant creativity almost from the start (tabla, Persian classical singing, at least as
taught by our native masters); others allow it only after considerable basic training
(e.g. Javanese gamelan, Shona mbira, Thai classical music); others give very little
space for it (e.g. shakuhachi, Balinese gamelan angklung). I will consider various
views, approaches and factors pertaining to creativity.
9:00 4C4
Teaching BAka Performance: What's the `It' that Gets Taught?
Michelle Kisliuk and Kelly Gross, University of Virginia
What social and musical negotiations have taken place in an ensemble consisting of
students at the University of Virginia who learn to perform BaAka music and dance
("pygmy music")? What is the "sound" of this community versus a "sound" that is "right"
for a BaAka-style aesthetic? Can the two be fused given their radically different
social contexts? Or (when it "works") are the social contexts so radically different
after all? During field research (1986-1998 -- intermittent), Kisliuk had to invent her
role as an apprentice, based on her experience of a model imported to the United
States from Ghana (where it had been imported yet again from Europe?). Once
Kisliuk took a teaching role, however, the "it" of the "tradition" again had to be
invented, "polished up," in a sense, in order to make it "teachable" in a classroom
context. At what point, then, does the community of performers begin to take off
with the style and make "it" fully its own? What, then, is the "it" anyway? Kisliuk and
Gross will reflect on this process and the issues it raises.
9:10 4C5
Creating a Community, Negotiating Among Communities: Performing Middle Eastern
Music for a Diverse Middle Eastern and American Public
Scott Marcus, University of California, Santa Barbara
1) Our UCSB Middle East Ensemble has a Board and a "Friends" support group. We
call the support group "The Friends of Middle Eastern Music Association" (FOMEMA).
The Board consists of 3 Arabs, 2 Armenians, 1 Greek, 3 Persians, and 1 Turk in
addition to some European-Americans like myself. The Board members are supposed
to keep us in active contact with the same Middle Eastern-American communities in
the area.
2) Negotiating repertoire, structure of concerts, and guest artists often requires
that we take into account socio-political-religious conflicts such as those between
Armenians and Turks, Iraqis and Persians, and Jews and Muslims.
3) When performing for various Arab community groups (Syrian Americans, Egyptian
Americans, Iraqi-Americans), we have to be clear about which repertoire speaks to
which community. Some pieces have wide Arab appeal; others, for example, speak
only to Egyptians.
4) Working with community groups and especially with community leaders, we end
up playing public roles at life rituals: eulogizing people at funerals, attending
engagement ceremonies, etc. It is not only about music!
9:20 4C6
Bi-lateral Negotiations in Bimusicality: The William and Mary Middle Eastern Music
Ensemble
Anne K. Rasmussen, The College of William and Mary
The William and Mary Middle Eastern Ensemble plays in a variety of contexts from
student festivals to academic conferences to Arab American community events. Our
performance season culminates with a grand concert featuring a guest artist: a "real"
Middle Easterner, whose style and repertoire we feature in our program. Here, I
offer a number of specific examples that illustrate the negotiations in bi-musicality
that occur in the process of planning and rehearsing a program. In offering my own
version of the perceptions and expectations of myself, my student musicians, our
multifaceted audience, and our guest artists, I want to explain how various versions
of "the tradition" can co-exist and the ways in which such musical and social
negotiations can extend our experiences as performing ethnomusicologists.
9:30 4C7
Who IS it About, Anyhow?: Do we Impose our own World Views in Teaching "Ethno"
Ensembles?
Ted Solís, Arizona State University
Over the years, I've directed a number of performing ensembles in various
ethnomusicology programs. I often find myself struck by the fact that the sum of
what I'm presenting, creating, and teaching is in many ways as much filtered by my
interests and attractions to other cultures as it is a "faithful" transmission of any
traditional body of music and performance practice. My question: can we convey
"cultural experiences" and interpretations of them and bracket out our own filtering
selves? To what extent is this possible, if at all, or even important? Do our students'
responses reveal how much is bracketed and how much corresponds to an
"authentic" practice?
9:40 4C8
Should I Feel Distressed about teaching Gamelan Music in the Cornfields of Iowa?
Roger Vetter, Grinnell College
In this paper I reflect over my artistic and educational angst in regard to the
teaching of a music from a culture of which I am not a member and the presentation
of programs of this music to audiences in the Midwestern United States. Issues of
artistic authenticity, cultural exploitation and misrepresentation, and audience
misinterpretation have for years revisited me. My personal reflection over these
matters results not in explaining them away, but balancing them with other
observations that help me rationalize positive consequences of teaching a college
performance ensemble of another culture's music.
Session 4D Jazz, Blues, and Hybridity
8:30-10:30 Friday, November 19
Chair: Ingrid Monson, Washington University
8:30 4D1
A Deconstruction of a Constructed Genre: A Critical View of the "Oakland Blues"
Jeffrey Callen, University of California, Santa Barbara
Histories of American popular music have tended to create a clear bifurcation of
"White" and "Black" musical genres. Country music has been portrayed as a genre
primarily drawn from Anglo-Scottish roots. The significant influences of
African-Americans on the genre have been diminished or placed in a carefully
constructed pre-history. African American musical genres have also been defined
within strict boundaries--stripped of gray areas of inter-cultural contact, influence
and collaboration. My thesis is that the creation of racially-defined marketing
categories by the commercial recording industry was a primary factor in creating this
history. This paper critically examines the dynamics of this process in the creation
of a sub-genre of African American music, the "Oakland Blues."
The "Oakland Blues" is typically described as a transplanted offshoot of "Texas
Country Blues" that developed in the blues clubs of West Oakland and North
Richmond in the San Francisco Bay Area during World War II. My 1998 fieldwork in
North Richmond revealed that the music African Americans performed in local blues
clubs defies a simplified "black and white" classification. In fact, this music drew
upon a diverse range of styles and influences, including blues, jazz, swing and
country music. The "Oakland Blues" genre was primarily the creation of a single
record producer, Bob Geddins, through both his recordings and his widely reported
recollections. This paper draws heavily upon the recollections of blues musicians
Jimmy McCracklin and Clarence "Little Red" Tenpenny and gospel musician Fred
Jackson.
9:00 4D2
Midnight Sunrise in Jahjouka: Echoes of an Intercultural Collaboration
A. Scott Currie, New York University
The free funk/jazz fusion jam on Prime Time's album Dancing in Your Head builds to
a final climax, then yields incongruously to North African rhaitas and drums
accompanying a solo saxophonist. What does this surreal juxtaposition of avant-garde
disco and traditional world music signify and what does it reveal about processes of
intercultural collaboration?
In 1973, African-American saxophonist, and Prime Time leader Ornette Coleman
traveled to Jahjouka, Morocco for the Boujeloudiya rites accompanying the Muslim
feast of 'Aid el-Kebir. Although originally invited as a spectator, he brought along his
saxophone and portable Nagra recorder to tape himself performing with the Master
Musicians of Jahjouka, internationally renowned through the efforts of poet Brion
Gysin and Rolling Stones guitarist Brian Jones. Overcoming record-company
objections, Coleman eventually managed to release "Midnight Sunrise"--a short
excerpt from hours of recorded collaborations--on Prime Time's debut album.
This paper offers a close reading of this recorded encounter, informed by archival
research and artist interviews, as a case study in the poetics and politics of
intercultural collaboration. Key moments of disjuncture and convergence emerging
from the analysis of transcribed passages provide insight into the collaborative
process as it unfolded in performance, and suggest correspondences between social
and musical processes. Further contextualized by the mythologizing discourses that
engendered and shpaed this collaboration, "Midnight Sunrise" not only represents a
critical juncture in the artists' respective careers, but also reveals the structuring
role of racial and colonial ideologies in the incipient world-music political economy.
9:30 4D3
"World Jazz:" Expanding the Borders of Jazz History
E. Taylor Atkins, Northern Illinois University
The master narrative of jazz history assumes the basic unity and universality of the
music: it is the story of a "natural" stylistic evolution and the "geniuses" who shaped
the music's development. Scott DeVeaux and a handful of other scholars have
questioned the logic and coherence of this narrative and the motivations for its
construction. I do the same but from a different perspective, rooted in my own
research for a manuscript on the history of jazz in Japan, and in my reading of the
literature on jazz in Europe, Africa, and Asia. I propose that broadening the setting
of the historical narrative of jazz beyond the borders of the United States could
fundamentally reshape our thinking about the music.
Studying jazz in non-American cultural contexts potentially broadens or
reconfigures the pantheon of "jazz innovators" who have determined the stylistic
direction of musics collectively known as "jazz." Such research also potentially
undermines our assumptions about jazz's universality, by highlighting the conflicts it
sparked throughout the world. Finally, the study of jazz outside of US borders
problematizes the notion that jazz expresses quintessentially American values by
focusing on the "local" meanings and values the music expresses wherever it is
performed. Omitting non-American developments and jazz artists from the narrative
is akin to calling the Super Bowl victors "World Champions," when no foreign
competitor has even been engaged.
10:00 4D4
>From Cuban Rhythms to Latin Jazz
Raul Fernandez, University of California, Irvine
In this paper, I argue that "Latin Jazz" as a genre emerged over the past six
decades, not, as some would say, "overnight," after the historic meeting between jazz
trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie and Afro-Cuban drummer Chano Pozo in the late 1940s. The
fusion of jazz with the Cuban son began in the early 1940s in both the United States
and Cuba. After the initial enthusiasm for Cubop in the U.S., the new form received
repeated reinforcements, mainly from Cuban percussionists, which solidified its
position in American and Cuban popular music in the 1950s. The activity of an entire
generation of Afro-Cuban musicians in the decades of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s was
responsible for the expansion of Latin Jazz into a separate genre, and for the
increasing popularity of Cuban rhythms in general. Using evidence from the oral
histories of Armando Peraza, Mongo Santamaria, Patato Valdés, Francisco Aguabella,
Cachao López, Chocolate Armenteros, and Celia Cruz, collected under the auspices
of the Smithsonian Jazz and Latino Music Oral History Programs, I show how these
innovators broadened the rhythmic palate of the listening public. By incorporating
patterns from the entire spectrum of Cuban music -- from the secret rhythms of
Santeria to the public "drum corps" of carnaval -- these musicians created a genre
that was both "listenable" and "danceable." Analysis of these and other musicians'
contributions explains the continued creative vitality and distinct identity of Latin
Jazz.
Session 4E Sound Engineering as Cultural Production: Technology, Performativity,
Phenomenonology
8:30-10:30 Friday, November 19
Chair: Paul D. Green, Pennsylvania State University
Discussant: Thomas Porcello, Vassar College
A tremendous and growing portion of the world's music is engineered through
sophisticated sound technologies. These panelists are all sound engineers and
published scholars who are committed to developing ethnomusicological approaches
to the world's high-tech musical cultures. If approved, our panel will bring research
on subjects such as stereo imaging, ambient effects, psycho-acoustical presence,
computer-enhanced performativity, and multitrack syncretism more deeply into our
Society's discourse. In addition, the panel develops Theme #5, "The Effects of
Capitalism on Indigenous Music Making, Is Grey-Out No Longer an Issue?" Studio
technology is perhaps the music industry's most crucial kind of capital, and studio
hardware and software are rapid-turnover products that are themselves marketed by
a centralized technology industry. Yet as we examine the meanings of engineered
sounds, we find that simple models of global cultural grey-out do not engage the
many complex ways that technologies serve diverse expressive and creative agendas.
8:30 4E1
Short Circuiting Perceptual Systems: Timbre in Ambient & Techno Music
Cornelia Fales, University of California, Santa Barbara
It's been said that the 90s is the decade of sound. In the realm of popular music,
it might be more precise to say that the 90s is the decade of timbre. The availability
of increasingly sophisticated technology has allowed musicians to explore the
dimension of musical timbre free from the constraints of natural sources. The result
is music that demonstrates with high clarity the effect of musical timbre on the
listener--an effect that is often muted and difficult to examine when timbral variation
is limited by the potential of acoustic instruments. This paper explores the use of
timbre in techno and ambient music as it reflects characteristics of the culture that
produces it. The paper begins with a demonstration of the canonical knowledge of
sound that guides the ordinary listener in ordinary listening. By means of spectral
analysis, the paper will then show a deliberate subverting of that knowledge in the
surreal timbres of techno and ambient music. Finally, the paper will discuss the
effects of these sounds in light of statements from devotees of the music concerning
the world the music creates for them.
8:55 4E2
Engineering Spaces in Nepal's Digital Stereo Remix Culture
Paul D. Greene, Pennsylvania State University
This paper examines the Nepalese pop genre of "remixes:" musical bricolages of
filmsongs, folk music, classical musics, western pop, and sound effects, which are
engineered in studios and played back by urban, cosmopolitan youths. In remixes, a
sense of space is simulated in several ways. Through studio effects including reverb,
delay, equalization, stereo imaging, and presence miking, sound engineers retain and
transform traditional Nepalese notions of local spaces. For example, Nepalese
classical music continues to be miked at a respectful distance, but the emphasis on
altitude, whereby distance up a hill or mountain indexes wealth and importance in a
community, is unarticulated. Spaces are also simulated in the featured vocalist's
accompaniment, a montage of instrumental backdrops which bring to mind Nepalese
folk culture, high culture, America, India, and other generalized social "spaces" in
turn. In addition, through creative playback practices (the when and where of
playing purchased cassettes), youths map and remap their immediate social spaces,
using played back sound as a kind of expandable and retractable architecture.
Rather than argue that remixes challenge or prescribe cultural identities from above,
or that they are purely "authentic" self-expressions of youth culture, I analyze the
recordings as tools to create and recreate spaces in which youths can contemplate
and shape their own identities. These spaces variously limit and open up the
listener's imagination, in some ways inspiring pleasurable but escapist fantasies, and in
other ways inspiring constructive reflection on the modern, cosmopolitan Nepal.
9:20 4E3
Women Mix Engineers and the Power of Sound
Boden Sandstrom, University of Maryland, College Park
This paper discusses the pragmatic, political, and social issues surrounding being a
female sound engineer in a Western culture. How does gender affect access to the
field? What are the gender differences in terms of cognition, strategies and mixing
style? How do gender differences affect ones interaction with the musicians and the
environment in which one is mixing?
Issues of power and control are inherent in the process of mixing for both live
sound reinforcement and for recordings. This paper explores whether the use of
this power is gendered and if one mixes differently as a result of the social
construction of gender. Do these differences contribute to the mixing process and
the actual product?
I draw from my experiences as a sound engineer and owner of a small but
successful sound company in the Washington, DC area, City Sound Productions
formerly, Woman Sound, Inc. as well as interviews of other female engineers and
producers and musicians I worked with. I focus on the training of female sound
engineers during the feminist movement of the 1970's. The aesthetic of this period
was one of shared learning and creativity which contributed to possible listening and
mixing differences.
Another gendered phenomena is that many female engineers have experienced
being perceived as gender neutral while mixing among different cultures as well as
within their own. This opens up the possibility of communication among genders in
situations in which there is normally separation. Use of technology has the ironic
ability to both make whatever gender differences that exist