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 greater as well as to
neutralize these differences.
9:45 4E4
Engineering Techno-Hybrid Grooves in Indonesian Sound Studios
Jeremy Wallach, University of Pennsylvania
Contemporary Indonesian popular music is a hybrid formation in which sounds of
traditional acoustic instruments are combined with electronic and electrified timbres
in sophisticated multitrack studios. While the powerful sounds of traditional
Indonesian instruments, particularly gongs, have been described as invoking the
forces of nature, electronic timbres are more often said to index the manmade
cacophony of modern urban life. Ethnographic research in the cities of in Jakarta
and Bandung, the two most important centers of popular music production in
Indonesia, suggests that Indonesians have adopted the natural/synthetic and
"dirty"/"clean" sonic distinctions often employed by popular music producers and
consumers in the west, but also seem more willing to replace the acoustic sounds of
traditional Indonesian instruments with electronic simulations. This paper will argue
that the hybrid musical soundscapes created by Indonesian sound engineers are
constitutive of an emergent, distinctively Indonesian, modernity in which the
technological is intimately enmeshed in the poetics and pleasures of everyday life.
Session 5A Ethnomusicology and History II--The Use of Printed Sources in
Ethnomusicology
11:00-1:00 Friday, November 19
Chair: Judith McCulloh, University of Illinois Press
11:00 5A1
It's What They Say, Not How They Say It: Source Materials in (Ethno)Historical
Ethnomusicology
Erik D. Gooding, Indiana University
In a recent general history of Native American/First Nations research in
ethnomusicology, Richard Keeling (1997) noted the increased emphasis on historical,
or ethnohistorical research. This trend is influenced by the use of two types of
sources materials, sound recordings and written materials, either separate or in
combination. While the emphasis in this type of research has been on the inclusion
of historic sound materials to our research, this paper addresses the inclusion of
written source materials through the method of ethnohistory. This method employs
the analytical methods of history while simultaneously drawing upon the theoretical
perspectives of anthropology. Drawing upon examples from my own research among
the Dakotan peoples of the Plains of the United States and Canada, this paper will
demonstrate the use, the problems and concerns, and hopefully the importance of
using historic written source materials in our ethnomusicological writings.
11:30 5A2
Locating Lost Performances: An Ethnomusicological Approach to Historical Research.
Gillian M. Rodger, Garland Publishing
The anthropologist, Mary Des Chene, has likened the process of historical
anthropological research to that of conducting research by eavesdropping on
confidential conversations. The same is true for ethnomusicological research on
historical topics. The information one gains is incomplete and one is not always aware
of what is missing. As a result, one of the challenges facing an archival-based
researcher is that of continually contextualizing the many fragmentary pieces of
information found in those sources. On the other hand, archives allow a researcher
to cover considerably greater spans of time than does fieldwork, and in some cases
once thriving cultures are now accessible primarily through archival sources. Philip
Bohlman's work on Eastern and Central European Jewish music amply illustrates this
last point.
In this paper, I will draw on my own research strategies, used while undertaking
dissertation research on mid-nineteenth century American popular performance, to
suggest one methodological approach to archive-based ethnomusicological research.
I will argue that approaches more often used in fieldwork can be productive when
applied to archival material and
to an archival setting. I will also argue that such an approach is crucial in order to
move beyond artifacts, which in my case include printed sheet music, to the
performance conventions that brought life to past music traditions.
12:00 5A3 Musical References in the Jornal do Brasil, 1891-1998
Andrew L. Kaye, Albright College (Reading, Pennsylvania)
Serial publications such as magazines and newspapers are often fruitful sources of
data for historians of music. Titles with relatively long histories of continuous
publication offer us the opportunity to explore questions of a diachronic nature,
such as changes in the use of musical terminology or musical categories, and the rise
or fall in interest in named musical genres. By extension, such research can offer
potential insights on musical preferences of the reading public, and perhaps, to some
degree, the greater society.
The author has studied musical references in the Jornal do Brasio of Rio de
Janeiro, a daily newspaper with a continuous history of publication since its
inception on April 9, 1891. In order to construct a random series (but one which
promised to have a meaningful musical content), I chose to study one issue per every
ten years -- the first Sunday in April for each year ending in 8, covering the period
1891 to 1998 (one issue from 1891 was also included). In this paper, I will present
several findings that emerged in this limited study. I will discuss the relative value of
different musical genres and instruments, from operetta and música clássica to bossa
nova and ię- ię-ię (one term for rock music) as they rise and fall in the series. A point
of special interest is the relatively infrequent appearance of the term samba in the
sample. Methodological problems and potentials associated with this type of
research will also be discussed.
12:30 5A4
Embodied Experience: American Sheet Music Binders and Music in Daily Live,
1840-1860
Daniel Cavicchi, Rhode Island School of Design
Musicologically-based histories of American music traditionally bracket off
references to music in daily life and instead adhere to a formula of successive
composers and styles. While ethnomusicologly provides a framework for moving
beyond this formula toward an understanding of the totality of American musicking in
the past, the main challenge remains a scarcity of primary sources about the musical
experiences of those left out--amateur performers, dancers, and listeners. In this
paper, I show how research methods from the history of the book, developed to
locate the experiences of readers in the past, can be used also to unearth the
musical experiences of ordinary people. In particular, I explain how sheet music
binders put together by young, middle-class women and men in the mid-19th century
serve to embody those individuals' musical worlds. Variations in the content,
organization, printing, embossing, price, and marginalia of the binders not only
provide a record of actual persons' musical tastes, perceptions, and experiences, but
together the binders point to the ways in which people used sheet music in Victorian
America as a means for negotiating friendships and gender relations and for managing
emotions. In the end, I argue that the case of sheet music binders uniquely enables
a people-based inquiry into the musical past that is somewhat analogous to
ethnomusicological fieldwork. By carefully putting together encounters with
individuals as represented in the binders, one can build a detailed understanding of a
musical culture.
Session 5B Transnational Processes and the Local Production of Popular Music
11:00-1:00 Friday, November 19
Chair: Philip Schuyler, University of Washington
11:00 5B1
"We Just Copy...:" Rap and the Creolization of Culture in Northern Malawi
John Fenn, Indiana University
In the northern districts of Malawi (Central Africa), vibrant hip-hop scenes
comprised of fans, performers, promoters and supporters have emerged within the
last five years. While this musical culture is not restricted to north Malawi, I will
focus on the social and cultural settings of rap music in two areas of this region,
investigating the ways in which hip-hop supporters" I met in 1998-99 incorporate and
use the music, along with its associated styles and attitudes, in their everyday lives.
Preliminary fieldwork in the towns of Nkhata Bay and Mzuzu provides intriguing
observations and insights on the development of rap's popularity in Malawi. Fans
frequently told me that they are "just copying" what they see and hear in hip-hop
materials from America, but do not copy "all the way." Stars like Tupac Shakur figure
highly in daily Malawian youth life, and the imagery of "gangstas" influences the style,
language and attitude of many people I encountered. Using these observations as a
base, I intend to explore the processes of culture that are embedded in the
appreciation and/or performance of a musical style. Is the "copying" of rap music
edging out traditional Malawian musical culture, or, rather, is a new "creolized"
musical culture emerging? The ways in which the Malawian youth I met perceive and
interpret the cultural material of rap music, and their relationship to it as a
"western" music, illuminate issues of authenticity, originality and ownership that
surround rap at global and local levels.
11:30 5B2
Capitalism and competition: changes in taarab music performance in Zanzibar
Janet Topp Fargion, British Library National Sound Archive
This paper provides a glimpse of changes in musical behavior in a single community,
what I call the taarab community in Zanzibar, East Africa. From this we may be able
to extrapolate for a global analysis. >From the time of independence in 1963 Zanzibar
witnessed the advent of Julius Nyerere's Afrrican socialism, an experiment -- strongly
upheld by Zanzibar's first president, Abeid Karume -- that closed the country's
borders to foreign investors, imposed severely restricted import regulations, and
promoted nationalization, largely at the expense of Arab and Islamic influences. This,
coupled with the expense of the invasion of Uganda in 1979, brought Zanzibar to its
knees. By 1985, when Ali Hassan Mwinyi replaced Nyerere, Zanzibaris were
experiencing food rations and milk queues. Mwinyi moved the country rapidly
towards economic liberalisation and democracy; today Zanzibar is one of the world's
hottest tourist resorts, pre-independence Arab money is flooding back making a full
range of basic and luxury items available, and the islands are locked in a political
stand-off between its tow main political parties. The paper will examine how these
economic and political developments have effected taarab music performance. It will
highlight a move, between 1965 and 1985, towards the incorporation of local musical
practices and aesthetics, the nationalization of music making, the breakdown of the
segregation of the sexes; and from the mid-1980s, towards a rise in competition with
the appreciation of music as commodity, demise of inter-group cooperation, and
increased expression of traditional materialism.
12:00 5B3
Globalization and Fragmentation in the Local Production of Popular Musics
Jocelyne Guilbault, University of California, Berkeley
In ethnomusicology, as in many other disciplines, globalization has often been used
as a synonym for universalization. At the nucleus of this internal logic has been the
fear of homogenization of cultures and, by extension, of musical practices.
Paradoxically, there has been at the same time an unprecedented proliferation of
new popular musics around the globe. Explanations for this latter phenomenon run
the gamut between seeing the proliferation of "difference" in popular musics as
simply an extension and a systemic outcome of the new political economy and seeing
this, conversely, as the sign of the gradual erosion of the hegemonic political and
economic power of nation-states and of the traditional centers of power over the
rest of the world.
This paper does not aim to determine what is the ultimate "cause" for the
simultaneous occurrence of the homogenization and the proliferation of new musics
around the globe. Rather it seeks to examine how at the local level public
discourses articulate the twin phenomena of globalization and fragmentation in the
local production of popular musics. In the same vein, rather than making a priori
identity the central issue in dealing with the phenomena of globalization and
fragmentation, this study aims to examine the issues that have emerged at the local
level as being at stake in such a process. The goal is to show how discourses on
globalization and fragmentation in popular music serve to elaborate local cultural
politics and governmental policies to deal with both the local and the global.
To do this, this study focuses on public interviews with local influential
personalities and published articles on the musical scene of Trinidad, West Indies, in
the 1990s.
Session 5C Issues in Indonesian Music
11:00-1:00 Friday, November 19
Chair: R. Anderson Sutton, University of Wisconsin, Madison
11:00 5C1
Music and Islam in Post New Order Indonesia
Charles Capwell, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
During the latter part of Suharto's New Order regime, Indonesian Islam
experienced increasingly greater freedom while sometimes confronting government
cooption. In this paper, I wish to examine some of the trends in contemporary music
making by Indonesian musicians who profess a specifically Islamic intent in their work
and to see how this work contributes to a liberalizing view of the role of music in
Islam and to a reshaping of Muslim identity that seeks to replace its "backward"
associations with those of progressiveness and modernity. With music ranging from
dangdut--Indonesia's most popular and Islamically inspired music--to the more elitist
creations of the group Kyai Kanjeng--with its combination of gamelan and jazz
elements--Indonesian Islamic musicians are striving to give artistic expression to an
increasingly confident Islam.
As Kenneth George has shown in a recent article discussing the creation of an
Indonesian mushaf* in connection with celebration of the 50th anniversary of
independence, "Artists play an instrumental role in promoting ideas about cultures
and modernity and establishing institutional locations for the display of works that
will undergo a continuous socialization by a culture-consuming public or publics"
(1998:695-96). Even more in the realm of music than in that of the visual arts, I believe
we can experience how Indonesian Muslims are contending with the opportunity and
need to create an expressive art that serves as a means for working out responses to
new social and cultural conditions and how these undergo "socialization by a
culture-consuming public."
*a beautifully calligraphed and canonical exemplar of the Koran
Kenneth M. George; 1998, "Designs on Indonesia's Muslim Communities," Journal of
Asian Studies, 57/3:693-713.
11:30 5C2
Creating Tari Tayub: Stories of Sundanese Dance History in West Java, Indonesia
Henry Spiller, University of California, Berkeley
Historical accounts of Sundanese dance typically present the same basic
narrative: from agricultural ceremonies and recreational dances arose a context and
repertory for stage performance. A juncture in this orthodoxy is the reification of
"tari kursus" (staged choreographed solo dances) from precedents in "tari tayub"
(improvised movements danced by aristocratic men at social occasions). My paper
analyzes Sundanese dance historians' interpretations of this critical juncture and
suggests what differences in their accounts tell us not only about the past, but
about the present and future of Sundanese performing arts as well.
The only certainty about "tari tayub" is that it no longer exists. In the first section
of the paper, I cite historical sources to argue that the notion of "tari tayub" as a
genre is recent, as is the application of the term "tayub" to aristocratic men's dance
in West Java, and that the retroactive creation of "tari tayub" applies notions of
"dance" and "genre" that are inherently inconsistent with men's improvised dance. In
the paper's second section, I examine how Sundanese writers deploy "facts" of the
past to create their own visions of what Sundanese dance should be in the present.
Each of these accounts, while not "false" or even "misleading," constructs a unique
history in service of the author's vision.
History is not facts, but interpretations (and I have constructed yet another
history in the process of deconstructing others). My paper reminds us that
historical ethnomusicology's project is not simply fact-finding but story-telling as well.
12:00 5C3
The Changes in The Musical Style of Payangan Village Gamelans and their Repertoires
Loren Nerell, University of California, Los Angeles
Lelambatan (pl.) is part of the repertoire of the Balinese ensemble known as
gamelan gong. This lelambatan repertoire is one of the most commonly used forms of
music on the island of Bali, for it is the main musical expression used in conjunction
with temple and religious ceremonies. Over the last sixty years most gamelan
repertoires have gone through a transformation. In this time period a new dominating
form of music, has emerged known as gamelan gong kebyar. This newer form of
music, has changed gamelan music in two ways: 1) a stylistic change of the various
repertoires. 2). a change in the instrumentation.
Colin McPhee's work in Bali is today still regarded as some of the most important
work done in the field. Yet, no restudy has been done on the material that McPhee
collected in Bali. One of McPhee's informants was I Lunyuh from the village of
Payangan, a court musician who was also the main teacher of gamelan in the areas
around Payangan.
The central task of my paper will be to demonstrate how the various musical forms
in and around Payangan have changed over the last sixty years by comparing the
material which McPhee collected in this area in the 1930s to material I gathered
while doing fieldwork in the same area in the summers of 1994 and 1997.
Session 5D Cajun and Tejano Music
11:00-1:00 Friday, November 19
Chair: Robert Bowman, York University
11:00 5D1
Out of the Rhythm Section: The Role of the Bajo Sexto in Tejano Conjunto
S. Louis Winant, University of Washington
Tex-mex conjunto evolved as a syncretic musical form in the early twentieth
century in the Rio Grande border region. In the 1950's, as shown by Manuel Peńa
(1985), conjunto became symbolic of ethnic and class identity for Mexican-Americans
in south Texas; conjunto became Tejano conjunto. Much of the music's symbolism
came to be embodied in the accordion, yet the accordion is not the only instrument
with symbolic importance within the Tejano conjunto. The bajo sexto, a 12-string
bass guitar, has formed a vital part of conjunto's sound since the style began. While
the musical role of the bajo sexto has been acknowledged, its role in Tejano musical
and ethnic identity has yet to be addressed.
In this paper I will show how the bajo sexto has changed in terms of organology,
musical role, as well as symbolic role as conjunto became first an ethnic marker for
Tejanos and later one of several genres within the broad tejano music industry. This
paper will draw upon my experience studying bajo sexto with Eva Ybarra at the
University of Washington and research I conducted in San Antonio, Texas, in 1998 and
1999 among both makers and players of the bajo sexto.
11:30 5D2
Tejano vs. Norteńo: Dueling Accordions in the Texas-Mexican Border Region
Catherine Ragland, CUNY Graduate School
The majority of research on the evolution and cultural impact of accordion-based
ensembles in the Texas-Mexican border region has been restricted to stylistic
developments, players and audiences on the Texas side of the border. Today
contemporary musica tejana or Tejano has developed a strong regional industry with
several artists on Latin divisions of major labels and has gained worldwide recognition
alongside other Latin music styles such as "salsa" and "cumbia." However, over the
past 35 years, the parallel existence of musica norteńa (also known as Norteńo) on
the Mexican side has become more popular among Mexican migrant and immigrant
audiences throughout Texas and the U.S. In recent years, Norteńo's popularity has
also stretched further south into Mexico. Tejano may be more recognized in this
country (especially among the American-born Chicano population) due, in part, to
the media focus on slain singing star Selena, three-time Grammy award winner Flaco
Jimenez, the annual Tejano Music Awards and its status as regional Mexican-American
popular music. However, it is Norteńo artists who travel more extensively
throughout the US and Mexico as part of a wide-reaching and intricate network of
Mexican-operated radio stations, dancehalls, clubs and recording studios and
reaching much larger, and younger, audiences.
This paper explores the parallel development and stylistic evolution of modern
Norteńo and Tejano music in the Texas-Mexico border region amid racial conflict,
high-stakes competition and social change. My research also touches on the impact
of a newly formed "Tejano" identity in the mid-1960s which inspired the development
of a Tejano music industry and star system while also alienating a newer and larger
influx of Mexican migrants now traveling from other parts of Mexico (as opposed to
the northeastern states). This is an important factor that encouraged the stylistic
development of Norteno and the cultivation of a "new" Mexican-American community.
The presentation will also include comparative examples of early accordionists from
both sides of the border (i.e. Antonio Tanguma, Santiago Jimenez Sr.) as well as
contemporary pioneers of the two popular genres (Los Alegres de Teran, Los
Relampagos del Norte, Ramon Ayala, Little Joe y la Familia, La Tropa F).
12:00 5D3
In the Cajun Idiom: Technique and Musical Style in Diatonic Accordion Playing
Mark F. DeWitt, Ohio State University
Although originally restricted to fiddles, Cajun music has adopted the diatonic
accordion in this century as its leading instrument, especially since World War II.
This paper describes the ranges of functional variation among the instruments
commonly used, but concentrates on the diatonic accordion, also known as the une
rangée, or single-row button accordion. I discuss the role of the instrument and
player in the ensemble, the idiomatic implications of the instrument on musical style,
and also the implications of musical style on playing technique. How do the
limitations of the instrument shape musical thinking, and how does musical thinking
inspire playing technique on the instrument? I shall take into account physical
requirements for playing the instruments, transcription and analysis of accordion
performance, and verbal evaluations of accordion performance by informants. To
conclude, I will consider theories of embodied music cognition and their relevance to
emotion in light of this case study.
Workshop 5E Breakin' Out In A Cold Sweat: Authorship, Ownership and Agency in the
Digital Age
11:00-12:00 Friday, November 19
Chair: David Sanjek, BMI Archives
This workshop, sponsored by the Popular Music Section,will consist of a half hour
paper, a formal response and a discussion period. The paper explores the
relationship between of digital sound technology and issues of ownership, authorship
and agency. Copyright statutes depend upon the notion of "fixed form": intellectual
property must consist of material that exists in a "hard copy"; is transmissible over
time and space; and will be the same from one point of use to another. Obviously,
music that is created and would not otherwise exist without digital technology
possesses few of these qualities. That does not mean that the present copyright law
undermines or outlaws such compositions, but the statutes nonetheless fail fully to
address and protect the substance, moreover in some cases the very raison d'etre,
of these works. Furthermore, their lack of fixity pricks holes in the statutes as well as
makes more difficult the ownership, and subsequent protection of, that property.
One element of authorship this workshop addresses is the apparent erasure of the
individual author, or the "author effect" as it has been called. Works that do not
exhibit or attest to the individual actions and efforts of concrete individuals fail to
illustrate what I will refer to as the "sweat equity principle" - the fact that individual
effort and agency must be a constituent, even visible part of music-making. Finally,
the apparent absence of "sweat" in much digital music raises the consideration of
whether individual agency is being eroded or more radically redefined.
Session 5F Theorizing Asian American Musics: Identity, Negotiations, Multiplicity
11:00-1:00 Friday November 19
Chair: Deborah Wong, University of California, Riverside
Discussant: Joseph S.C. Lam
This panel features five presentations explicitly engaged with critical theory as a
framework for considering Asian American music-making. While the musical cultures
addressed are diverse (ranging from Asian American folk music, jazz, fusion, taiko,
music theater, and pop), each presenter makes an argument for maintaining
heterogeneous models for Asian America and Asian American expressive culture.
Drawing on cultural studies, Ethnic Studies, and anthropology, these presentations
situate Asian American music-making within dialogical processes of history and the
construction/maintenance of difference in American society. Moving between issues
of production and consumption, these presentations treat music as inherently
political and Asian American engagements with music as a less through which to
consider American ideologies of the foreign, the nation-state, American identity, and
community.
11:00 5F1
Asian Persuasion: Processes of Intercultural Music Performance in Asian American
Jazz
Anthony Brown, Asian American Jazz Orchestra
This multimedia presentation introduces the development of the Asian American
jazz movement in the San Francisco Bay Area over the past twenty years. With roots
in the social activism of the late 1960s and 70s as well as the tradition of jazz as social
protest as represented by Billie Holiday, John Coltrane, Charles Mingus, and Max
Roach, the Asian American jazz movement is an outgrowth of the free speech
movement at UC Berkeley and the Third World strike at San Francisco State
University. Musical coalitions including myself, Mark Izu, Jon Jang, Francis Wong, and
others influenced by the Chicago-based Association for the Advancement of Creative
Musicians (AACM) have culminated in the Asian American Jazz Festival, Asian Improv
Records, and the Asian American Jazz Orchestra.
The music of these composers is examined in terms of their intercultural
conceptual approaches to composition and improvisation, and performative styles and
conventions drawn from jazz, and traditional and contemporary Asian, European, and
African music. Issues of cultural empowerment and identity formation are examined,
particularly regarding music inspired by the World War II internment of Japanese
Americans and the 1987 Congressional resolution proclaiming jazz as a "rare and
valuable national American treasure, . . . a unifying force, bridging cultural, religious,
ethnic, and age differences in our diverse society." The salient features of this
internationally-acclaimed music are highlighted in video and recorded excerpts,
transcriptions and scores.
11:20 5F2
Folk and Fusion: Asian American Musical Identities in the 1970s
Oliver Wang, University of California, Berkeley
This paper focuses on two predominant forms of Asian American music-making in
the 1970s: folk influenced by the American 1960s folk tradition, and fusion styles
combining jazz, funk and pop. The theoretical framework that guides the paper
presumes that, for Asian Americans, music and social identity have been mutually
constitutive forces that help imagine an alternative community both inside and
outside of the American mainstream. In other words, this paper argues that Asian
American music has been a means through which Asian Americans have both claimed
an American identity denied to them through by the state and national culture, as
well as a way to fashion an alternative community to the national polity.
In particular, this paper examines folk and fusion as two distinct, yet not dissimilar
approaches. In the case of Asian American folk artists like A Grain of Sand, folk music
became a signifier of American identity and the performance of folk helped these
artists lay claim to an American identity rooted in a sense of the communal and
progressive. At the same time, the outspoken content of folk songs laid out an
alternative set of Asian American politics that subverted and criticized the mainstream
values of American society.
In the case of fusion groups however, form was an important statement of both
inclusion to American society, especially in imaging a diverse polyglot of cultures as
being representative of America. But it also was a way to signify alterity, through the
blending of Asian instrumentation and musical practice within a Western aesthetic.
Fusion became a way for groups like Hiroshima to fashion a "sound" for Asian America,
one grounded in the hybrid and syncretic.
This approach both acknowledges how the Asian American political movement of
the 1970s significantly affected Asian American cultural producers, but also shows
how music is a key site for identity formation as well, suggesting a dialogical
relationship between community ideologies and cultural product.
11:40 5F3
Finding an Asian American Audience: The Problem of Listening
Deborah Wong, University of California, Riverside
Reception, consumption, and audience remain undertheorized in ethnomusicology
and performance studies. Most work on Asian American music-making (my own
included) has focused on composers and performers, but this presentation will
consider the listening practices of several Asian Americans. In talking at length with
Asian American friends and acquaintances of several generations, I am inspired by My
Music (1993) and its lesson that people have considerable expertise about how they
use and value music in their lives. This paper thus emphasizes ethnography as an
essential inroad to the politics of everyday life, in this case, the politics of Asian
American listening habits.
Listening practices are a crucial interstice for commodity capitalism and subject
formation. At once intimate, individual, and inflected by global capitalist systems,
listening is a site where considerable slippage occurs between agency and coercion.
Neither producers nor consumers lie outside the sphere of commodity capitalism,
but some of the most challenging work in cultural studies considers where and how
intervention can matter. Listening can be treated as a site "where social
transformation appears in material form" (Kondo 1997).
This presentation follows these issues through my conversations with two Asian
American friends about their listening practices. One friend, a Japanese American
university administrator in his fifties, reflects at length on his preference for African
American popular musics during his
childhood/young adulthood and his subsequent shift to mainstream White American
musics during college. The other, a Filipino American undergraduate, explains his
preference for hip-hop as a joining of the aesthetic and the political. I address these
two listening histories as particular windows on Asian American strategies for identity
construction, arguing that such listening practices are constitutive sites for Asian
American subject formation.
12:00 5F4
Musical Spaces and Identity Politics: Negotiating an Asian American Existence in New
York City, the Case of Soh Daiko.
Paul Yoon, Columbia University
Although many scholarly works assume or promote the a priori existence of Asian
Americans (Wei 1993, Takaki 1989, Aguilar-San Juan 1994, Revilla, et al. 1993, Hongo
1995, Barringer 1993), the Asian American category is by no means natural or neutral.
Rather it arises primarily from an Anglo-American conception of all Asians being the
same, specifically Asians of Far East Asian descent (Eng 1998, Lowe 1996 & 1991,
Espiritu 1993). Of course, presumed for Asian American activism or recent scholarship
is the belief that this objectifying external perception can also initiate internal
cohesion. The question then becomes how and when do these internal and external
perceptions play with, work around, and/or contend with each other?
In this paper I will address these issues by focusing on the New York City based
Taiko (Japanese drum) group Soh Daiko. I argue that while Soh Daiko actively creates
a musical space for itself as an Asian American group, it, and Taiko in general, is also
perceived in ways which exotify the group as being a Japanese group (from Japan,
which is not the case), or an "Oriental" group, or a Japanese American group, to the
exclusion of other hyphenated Americans. I will show how Soh Daiko not only
counters these constructions while working within the confines of a larger
hegemonic delineation of the group as Asian American, but also promotes them, both
consciously or tacitly, in certain performance situations.
12:20 5F5
Journeys: Rethinking Asian American Cultural Identity Through Music
Su Zheng, Wesleyan University
From its early days, creating an entirely new "Asian American cultural identity" had
been an essential issue of the Asian American movement. But recent Asian American
cultural criticism has sharply problematized this notion in their critiques on
essentializing and homogenizing Asian Americans and Asian American cultural
identities. Ethnomusicological interest in "Asian American music," as related to the
politicized concept "Asian American," has been on the increase. However, my
contention is that an unexamined adaptation of the concept "Asian
American music" runs the risk of both reducing a complex transformative discourse to
an exclusionary ahistorical paradigm and erasing differences and multiplicity in Asian
American musics.
In their effort to reverse the perceived perpetual foreignness of Asians in
America, some Asian Americanists have de-emphasized the continuation of Asia to
America, and rejected diasporic cultural forms, including Asian musics. But can the
U.S. borders within which minority discourses have been formulated and ethnic
histories written still remain an absolute imperative that insists on its defining
authority and significance when capitalism, media transmissions, cultural productions,
and social agents have been transgressing, disrupting, and subverting them?
My paper will address these issues through discussion of two recent music theater
works centered around the concept of journey by Fred Ho (The New Adventures of
Monkey) and Tan Dun (Marco Polo). By comparing their approaches towards diasporic
musical expressions and cultural references, I will consider Lisa Lowes (1991)
proposition of replacing the common theme of "vertical" model of culture in Asian
American discourses which focuses on the processes of "becoming American" through
the loss of "original" Asian cultural traits, with a "horizontal" model which celebrates
"differences and intersections" as empowering means in American cultural politics
1:00-2:30 Performance:
Western/Asian Hybridity in Art Music Composition
Jonathan Kramer, North Carolina State University; Christopher Adler, University of
North Carolina, Greensboro
Hybridity of musical languages is one of the defining features of twentieth century
composition. Composers from Debussy to Colin McFee, Alan Hovhaness, and Lou
Harrison have used Asian materials freely in their work. Indeed, the discipline of
Ethnomusicology is to a large part responsible for the availability of Asian sounds and
compositional procedures to composers of art music in the West. At the same time,
Asian musicians (Tan Dun, Toro Takumitsu, Chinary Ung, I Nyoman Windha, etc.) are
obtaining Western-style academic training and gaining footholds at the forefront of
late twentieth century stylistic movements. Cellist Kramer, who has done extensive
study as both performer and scholar of traditions of India and Korea, and composer
Adler will present a performance/discussion on the theme of hybridity. The
presentation will feature Cambodian composer Chinary Ung's Khse Buon for solo cello
and a premiere by Adler of a composition for cello and traditional Thai instruments.
Educated at Manhattan School of music and Columbia, Ung undertook an extensive
study of Kmer and other Asian traditions following the "Killing Fields" of the late
1970's, fashioning a pan-Asian musical language. Adler's compositions are informed by
an intensive, long-term study of the musics of Thailand and he himself performs
traditional and new compositions on both ranaat ek and khaen. Discussion on the
aesthetic and ethical issues raised by compositions which attempt to merge Eastern
and Western musical languages-techniques, timbres, modes, tuning systems, etc.-will
be led by performer Kramer and composer/performer Adler.
Session 6A Ethnomusicology and History III--The Construction of History
2:30-4:30 Friday, November 19
Chair: Charlotte Frisbie, Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville
2:30 6A1
Where's the riot in "Zoot Suit Riot?"
Charles Sharp, University of California, Los Angeles
The song "Zoot Suit Riot" by the popular neo-swing group the Cherry Poppin'
Daddies was on the Billboard charts for over thirty-four weeks and has sold over one
million copies. This seems somewhat ironic for a song that refers to the horrors of
the actual Zoot Suit Riots, which were a series of violent attacks on
Mexican-American youth by White service men in Los Angeles during 1943. Countless
newspaper articles praise the song and the band for, above all else, their sense of
style. I argue that, regardless of how it is portrayed by the Cherry Poppin' Daddies,
their fans, and the media, the song can be read for its political content. I examine
how the mainstream media has erased any political message, manufacturing a product
based on nostalgia, which doesn't include the reality of riots. With critical theory,
especially that of bell hooks' concept of "eating the other," I show how the past has
been othered, which reduces difference into a style. This commodification
depoliticizes such songs as "Zoot Suit Riot", making it merely another tune suitable
for dancing. Using the riot as signifier of the past eclipses the Chicano victims of the
actual riots. Through the critical examination of commodification, we can open up
such dialogues that lie hidden just under the surface of popular culture.
3:00 6A2
"Contexting" and the Creation of Meta-Narratives: The Historicizing of Popular Music
on VH-1
Jason Oakes, Columbia University
Western popular music seems to be increasingly historicized and rationalized,
whether in the explosion of rock and pop biographies, box-set packages and other
recording compliations, or in the creation of the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame. Why has
the construciton of historical meta-narratives become predominant within musical
genres that are supposedly based in ephemerality and disposability? Can this
historicizing tendency be ascribed to generational nostalgia, pre-millennial
summation, or postmodernist versioning? To address these questions I will take a
detailed look at the programming of VH-1 (a cable music channel) which currently
features "documentary" shows such as Behind the Music, Legends, and Before They
Were Rock Stars, as well as Pop-up Video (a "making-of " video show), Rock 'n' Roll
Jeopardy (a rock history game- show), and rebroadcasts of American Bandstand.
VH-1 has greatly increased its viewership by shifting its programming focus away
from music videos. Shows that use a strategy referred to as "contexting" are
designed to hold viewers' attention by creating a narrative framework. Additionally,
these programs create a template for mass-media reception using techniques that
have previously been associated with subcultural groups. Meta-narratives are formed
through the collection and re-contextualization of popular culture artifacts.
Methodologically, I will use an ethnographic approach in the study of this
mediascape. Data will be drawn from interviews with show producers and
particpants, readings of audience reception based on internet discussion groups and
direct questioning, and also in a musically-based content analysis of the shows
themselves.
3:30 6A3
Kalenda from Colonial Origins to Contemporary Invention: A Study in Distant and
Recent History
Julian Gerstin, Western Kentucky University
Dozens of historical descriptions of the dance known as kalenda (kalinda, calenda)
provide evidence of a widespread, neo-African syncretic dance/music early in
Caribbean colonial history. Yet the descriptions do not match, ranging from male
stick-fighting to erotic couple dancing to adaptations of French contredanse.
Tracing the history of colonial kalendas suggests (1) that an early syncretic or
transcultural form evolved within the first few generations of slavery; (2) that it
continued evolving into a number of local derivatives; and (3) that tracing these
evolutions underscores connections between islands settled by the French, and the
importance of French colonialism throughout the Caribbean. This history also argues
for the value of comparing contemporary kalendas and cognate dances, particularly
some of the less-well-known traditions of the smaller islands.
The paper then focuses on Martinique, where several distinct dances either are
named kalenda, or link to kalenda's history through similarities of choreography and
instrumentation. I demonstrate the connection of one 18th-century kalenda to the
dance currently known as mabelo. I then describe how various parties (performers,
folklorists, musicologists) portray the authenticity of one or another type of kalenda,
focusing on an erotic couple version, which I demonstrate was invented by tourist
troupes after WWII. This foray into recent musical history helps demonstrate how
contemporary constructions of Martinican identity and culture use, and abuse, both
the colonial and the recent past.
4:00 6A4
A Drum by Any Other Name
Jane Freeman Moulin, University of Hawaii at Manoa
As ethnic groups search for musical icons that will differentiate them from their
neighbors and allow them to proclaim their cultural uniqueness in an expanding
global world, knowledge of earlier musical practices and the tracing of artistic
histories become ever more useful. For some places in the Pacific, however, the
results of ethnographic fieldwork alone are not yielding answers to the questions
about tradition that are so important to Islanders today.
One such case involves the Tahitian slit-drum, one of the primary instruments for
dance accompaniment in French Polynesia. While the instrument enjoys a dominant
place in contemporary Tahitian musical culture, its obscure history has fostered both
heightened artistic tensions with neighboring islands and a sense of cultural angst.
Tahiti's combination of a long-standing openness to innovation and change,
far-reaching social and cultural developments, and extensive population movements
make it impossible to reconstruct the early story of dance drums from purely
ethnographic fieldwork. In such case, a combined approach that weaves together
the methods of historical musicology and ethnography may be more appropriate to
the nature of the work itself as well as the needs of the community involved.
The last two decades have been a time of increased regional emphasis on tradition
in the Pacific. For Tahitians, however, looking backward raises the uncomfortable
question of where to turn when the previous links to traditional oral history are so
shattered and when history seems so impoverished. Tahitians who are concerned
with culture and heritage appear resigned to a perceived cultural loss. Tahitians now
believe, for example, that the slit-drum is a recent import to Tahiti from the Cook
Islands or other islands to the West--a view reinforced by the repeated, often
vociferous, accusations of their neighbors in the Cook Islands. This paper challenges
that assumption and, by using historical methods to illuminate contemporary musical
knowledge, expands current ideas of the history and terminology associated with the
slit-drum on Tahiti.
Session 6B Dance and Social Meaning
2:30-4:30 Friday November 19
Chair: Amy Stillman, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
2:30 6B1
Ballroom Dance: The Appeal and Problem of the Exotic
Joanna Bosse, Millikin University
During this century, ballroom dance/music has developed into a highly codified
tradition accommodating a complex hierarchical structure of subgenres and explicit
documentation outlining criteria for its judgment. Some of the oldest dances, such
as the waltz and tango are "classic" dances and hold their places at the top of this
hierarchy, while the hustle and salsa, the newest additions, are placed at the bottom
in the category of "street" dances. Using a combination of ethnographic and
historical approaches, this paper explores the nature of this hierarchy--what
motivates and perpetuates its existence and how it is that dances can rise within this
structure over time. More specifically, I am concerned with the preponderance of
Latin American dance genres, their inclusion in this hierarchy, and the implications
of their incorporation. It is based on fieldwork with ballroom dancers living in the
midwest United States and supplemented with historical data useful for placing this
specific case study within the larger national context of relations between European
Americans and Latin Americans in the Twentieth Century.
Throughout the history of ballroom dancing, its North American proponents,
primarily upper-class Euro-Americans, have been both intrigued and outraged by what
they believe to be the highly sexual and exotic nature of Latin American
couple-dance genres such as tango and samba. In this paper I suggest that it is
precisely the contradictory nature of these reactions, in conjunction with other
contributing factors, that have stimulated the development of ballroom dance/music
and its hierarchical structure.
3:00 6B2
Oooooooooo!! That's My Ssong!!: The Rupture of the Get-down, Rapture of African
American Bodies
Kyra D. Gaunt, University of Virginia
Gestural and kinesic cues can signal the ways of being and knowing blackness as an
embodied ideology offering an avenue into understanding African American musicking
beyond visual miscues of skin color, dress, or colloquialisms. The sonic ideals of black
popular music are composed and performed to engender relationships among parts of
the body, to accompany bodies in concert with other bodies, and to allow improvised
"habits of movement" (Matory, unpublished mss., 1997)--what I call "paradigmatic
performativity"--that then represent African American expressivity in space and time.
The display and performance of exuberance reflects a certain "controlled freedom"
(Floyd 1995) in being black that extends beyond the dance floor.
This paper will examine the significance and interaction of sounds and kinesthesia
in rapturous moments of black social interaction particularly at DJed parties and
informal social
gatherings for dance. Moments of elation can mark and symbolize relationality,
community, and power, point to aesthetic ideals in the selection and succession of
songs, and serve as frames for subsequent interactions and discourse. Shared social
exuberances also contribute to the lingua franca of African American vernacular
language (of the tongue, the body, and musical styles) and discourse that later
informs the visual and sonic dimensions of popular music and videos. The negotiation
of style, ethnicity, and gender will also be discussed.
3:30 6B3
Shifting Selves: Embodied Metaphors in Dance
Tomie Hahn, Tufts University
This presentation opens with a brief dance to demonstrate codeswitching
metaphors present in performances of Japanese "traditional" dance by Japanese
Americans. This paper proposes that, through the introduction and enactment of
multiple identities via metaphor in Japanese dance, Japanese Americans are provided
with a means of approaching their complex identities in America. Although I will
focus on the Japanese American experience, dancers of other Asian styles (where
codeswitching is present) have spoken to me of an embodied sense of identity
through metaphor.
Japanese traditional dance is primarily based on a narrative. To convey the story
a vocalist narrates the plot and provides the voices of the individual characters. In
turn, dancers express the narrative with their bodies. Often one dancer shifts
smoothly yet convincingly between a wide variety of characters to unfold the story.
This trained dance ability to "shift" between characters metaphorically mirrors a
social coordination of self present and respected in daily life in Japan. Social
anthropologists have noted that `self' in Japan is relational, and that the conceptual
flexibility of self permits individuals to interact in a wide variety of social levels. I
have observed that Japanese dance training, as a means of transmitting embodied
cultural knowledge, simultaneously transmits concepts of a shifting, or flexible sense
of self.
When Japanese traditional dance is transplanted and taught in the United States,
the Japanese sensibility of "shifting" between characters within a dance as well as
conceptual metaphors of a flexible sense of self are transmitted. For Japanese
Americans and biracial individuals, additional levels of identity shifting and meaning
are layered onto this "traditional" performance.
Session 6C The Musical Indigenization of Christian Ritual
2:30-4:30 Friday, November 19
Chair: T.M. Scruggs, University of Iowa
This panel will explore Christian ritual as a musical point of intersection between
the indigenous and extra-local. The panel presentations will privide cross-cultural
case studies of the indigenization of various types of Christian worship, with examples
from Central America, southern and eastern Africa and northern India.
2:30 6C1
Bulabo: Indigenizing "Sacred Power" in Sukumaland, Tanzania
Gregory Barz, Vanderbilt University
In the introduction to Enchanting Powers: Music in the World's Religions,
Lawrence Sullivan suggests that religious music is particularly powerful, especially in
its ability, its "mimetic capacity," to accommodate other realities within its
performance as well as stimulate and inspire other realities. It is within the
performance of rituals that the political and the sacred often combine in their effort
to create a musical fusion, as Philip Bohlman suggests elsewhere in Enchanting
Powers.
In this paper I extend Sullivan's thesis concerning religious music's ability to adapt
sacred power to new cultural expressions by focusing on Bulabo, an annual ng'oma
(drum and dance) festival among the Sukuma people of Tanzania celebrating the feast
of Corpus Christi. Sponsored by the Sukuma Museum and elders of traditional Sukuma
dance societies, Bulabo was originally conceived in the early 1950s as a way of
incorporating Sukuma songs and dance into church rituals. The week long festival
centers on the ritual processional of Corpus Christi, involving competitive dance,
singing, and other musical performances.
Bulabo creates sacred ritual spaces within which traditional Sukuma culture is
performed. Yet in many ways the sacred power of Bulabo as religious music moves
beyond the promotion of Sukuma culture toward the facilitation and incorporation of
external realities. Such contemporary realities are provoked into resonance,
especially in dance competitions between the Bagika and Bagalu dance societies. My
reflections on Bulabo draw on fieldwork in interlacustrine East Africa, as well as on
earlier work with Kwaya singing communities along coastal Tanzania.
3:00 6C2
Inculturation is Indianization not Hinduization
Stephen Duncan, Eastern New Mexico University
Music has long been one of the most important aids to worship in the Catholic
Church. The Second Vatican Council sought to make both liturgy and music more
accessible to the faithful. The Church responded by seeking to incarnate itself in
the local community. Non-Western peoples were both allowed and encouraged to
use the culture and traditions of their lands in their worship. Native dress, musical
instruments and architecture were borrowed and a renewal of the worship life of the
Church began.
This paper explores the inculturation of Catholic liturgy in India through the
documents of the Second Vatican Council along with the Post-Conciliar documents of
the Roman Curia and the documents of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of India
(C.B.C.I.). The development of the Bhakti (devotion) Path within Hinduism gave rise to
two musical forms that have been adopted by the Catholic Church in India: bhajan
and kirtan.
By the beginning of the Second Vatican Council there were three Rites in India:
The Latin Rite, the Syro-Malabar Rite and the Syro-Malankara Rite. Each of these is
now exploring the use of indigenized music in the liturgy. The CBCI has promoted the
use of Indian music and art in all aspects of the liturgy. The most common adaptation
(outside of the vernacular languages) is the use of the Indian musical genre of
bhajan.
The presentation will include audience participation in bhajans, following those
published by Sangeeta Abhinay Academy of Music and Dance (Bombay, India).
3:30 6C3
Popularizing Sacred Performance: A View from 1990s South Africa
Carol Muller, University of Pennsylvania
In a New Republic article, Katherine Bergeron analyzes the popularity of the Chant
recording on 1994 American Classical and Pop music charts. She reads this
popularization of sacred performance as a late 20th century European American
culture response that articulates a desire to connect with a virtual sanctity as a form
of spiritual tourism, a kind of materialist exoticism. In this paper, I contrast
Bergeron's Chant narrative about sacred music in America, with a controversial
recording of sacred music made by a member of one of South Africa's oldest
indigenous religious communities, ibandla lamaNazaretha. While both the US and
South African producers repackaged sacred music to extend their markets, the
reception of the recordings has been significantly different.
In the first section, I briefly summarize first the early 20th century transformation
of the Euro-American "hymn" in ibandla lamaNazaretha to suit contemporary aesthetic
ideals of "Africanness," including sacred dance performance, and second, the
consolidation of a Nazarite performance (ca. 1920-1985). The paper focuses on
recent changes to the Nazarite "hymn" repertory with the introduction of organ
accompaniment and a "temple choir" (ca. 1987), and subsequent versions of the
hymns performed in a more current and commodified gospel style. I examine musical
changes to the Nazarite repertory on the recording, and the responses of members
to these shifts. I argue that tensions in ibandla lamaNazaretha have arisen out of a
shifting sense of the boundaries of the sacred and its clash with the marketplace in a
rapidly transforming late 20th sociopolitical environment.
4:00 6C4
Contradictions of Musical Vernacular and Sacred Ritual: Latin American "Folk Masses"
and the Misa Campesina Nicaragnense
T.M. Scruggs, University of Iowa
While within Catholicism there has been a long history of the use of local
languages and musics in the mission to Christianize the Americas, the celebration of
mass has strictly conserved both linguistic (Latin) and musical European content. The
pronouncements of Vatican II (1962-65) led to the widespread introduction of
vernacular language and in several parts of Latin America it also inspired the creation
of masses utilizing the "musical vernacular," in effect, the integration of local folk
music into the ritual in place of music retaining the estalished European style. New
masses influenced by the movement known as Liberation Theology further altered the
lyric content to include a stance of a "preferential option for the poor." The best
known of these latter masses was the Misa Campesina Nicaragnense [Nicaraguan
Peasant Mass]. In this paper I examine the manner by which this newly composed
"folk mass" deliberately draws from and recontextualizes local musical traditions in an
attempt to propose a new set of meanings for the Catholic ritual and a different
engagement between worshipers, the church establishment and the community at
large. A primary focus is the multiple conceptions of the appropriate role of music
making in the process of religious fulfillment. I look at ways in which the musical
expression of political advocacy, ethnic identity, religious belief and the meanings
assigned by different sectors of the religious community to particular musical forms
and instruments intersect with and reveal ethnic and national concerns.
Session 6D Music, Community, and the Internet
2:30-4:30 Friday, November 19
Chair: René T.A. Lysloff, University of California, Riverside
Despite a relatively brief existence, the Internet has created radically new modes
of communication and self-expression among a growing segment of the world
population with access to its technology. Perhaps most significantly, the web has
provided a space for the extension and/or creation of communities--serious, playful,
and imagined--that reenvision the parameters of human interaction. When
communities of common interest relocate or form anew online, they exist in varying
degrees of separation from the corporeal world. For many users, the web is merely
another tool in the arsenal of communication technologies available to their
pre-existing communities. On the other end of this spectrum, however, lies the
"simulated" community, a web of interaction without referent in the "actual" world.
This panel will explore the relationship between the virtual and actual worlds
maintained by a number of Internet-based musical communities, and the loosening of
referentiality in that relationship as virtual simulation occurs. Each paper will
present an ethnography of a particular web community, positioning its "relations of
commonality" (Shawn Wilbur) and modes of expression within a larger discourse on an
emergent technoculture. We will also examine the ambiguous social space created
by the Internet as a site for creative expression and counter-hegemonic activity, a
space nevertheless subject to the mediations and impositions of an increasingly
dominant commercialism.
2:30 6D1
S(t)imulating Community: Virtual Drum Corps and the Hyperreal
Jonathan Ritter, University of California, Los Angeles
Rooted in neighborhood clubs and fraternal organizations, the American drum and
bugle corps activity is practically and ideologicallly organized around the idea of
"community." The advent of web communication in the early 1990s served to solidify
and expand that community through promotional websites, chatrooms, and
publication of scores from the summer competition circuit. In recent years,
however, online drum corps fans have also spawned an emerging realm of "fantasy
drum corps," in which dozens of fictitious drum and bugle corps compete in imaginary
online competitions. Drawing on cannibalized scores from the regular season, virtual
corps directors construct their units literally from the pieces of actual corps,
selecting particular drum lines, horn lines, and visual effects to determine scoring in
the online competitions. Unlike similar fantasy sports leagues, fantasy drum corps has
generated a creative world of fictitious competitors, each with their own web page,
show concept, uniform, musical repertoire, and organizational history. The material
on these sites is a mixture of appropriated images from actual corps' webpages,
names and information lampooning known figures and actual corps, and
newly-created concepts and repertoire. These sites recall Jean Baudrillard's
assertion of the hyperreal; the circulation and recycling of (real) drum corps images
disintegrate into self-referential details and constant reproduction.
I will explore the multiple strategies virtual corps players utilize to both simulate
and stimulate the actual drum and bugle corps community, challenging corps
traditions with creative innovations while evoking nostalgia for the "real thing"--drum
corps and community--through appropriations of cherished symbols.
3:00 6D2
In the Virtual Field: Ethnography and Internet Communities
Eric Martin Usner, University of California, Riverside
With increasing frequency, ethnomusicologists and ethnographers are using the
Internet as an ethnographic source. More than simply a convenient means by which
to gather information, the Internet provides a public space for the individuals to
"meet" one another and assemble into social collectivities. In many cases, these
associations of persons (listservs, chatrooms, etc.) With similar interests eventually
come to constitute Internet or virtual communities for their members.
My paper explores various models for thinking about the social relationships
formed when people communicate via Internet, specifically addressing the question
of how these relations create and constitute "community." I explore the evolution of
the concept of community--from German sociologist Ferdinand Toennies through
Benedict Anderson's theory of "imagined communities," to the recent discussions of
Internet or "virtual" communities. After delineating a working model for community, I
move to a discussion of its possible applications for understanding how and when the
social relationships formed online may function within this construct. Drawing on my
own fieldwork and participant observation in the online swing dance community, I
offer ways we might conceive of "Internet communities", locating the collectivities of
individuals with whom I have been consulting among the possible notions of Internet
or "virtual" communities that I have posited. Through this paper, I hope to
demonstrate that the associations of individuals formed online need to be conceived
of as communities and to elucidate that the Internet--by providing a public space for
the communing of peoples (per)forming and evolving individual and collective
identities based on ongoing relationships--represents a compelling and uniquely
challenging new site of ethnographic inquiry.
3:30 6D3
"Ghetto-Youth:" Cyberspace and Constructions of Community Surrounding Tricky
Dale Chapman, University of California, Los Angeles
Recently, the ideas of theorists such as benedict Anderson have become
influential as scholars have tried to grapple with complex issues of identity formation
and community in late capitalist society. The social alienation brought on by such
forces as the emergence of the global marketplace have led many to seek new
sources of community through the new social windows opened up by contemporary
communications technology. In cyberspace, the technology of the mailing list offers
new possibilities for identity construction, while introducing a strange new logic into
the realm of interpersonal relations.
One such mailing list, "Ghetto-Youth," is devoted to Tricky, one of the more
influential artists in the genre of electronic music known as "trip-hop." Far from
being the only topic of conversation, the idea of Tricky operates as a central node
around which musicians and consumers produce discourses about aesthetics,
commodification, and cultural politics. The nature of the discussions on
"Ghetto-Youth" prompt several questions about music and community in the 1990s: to
what degree do such commodities as the CD operate as sources of community? Do
mailing lists enable a democratization of public discourses, or do they introduce new
varieties of hegemony? I will draw upon materials submitted to the "Ghetto-Youth"
list to allude to new possibilities for social formation presented by contemporary
information technology.
4:00 6D4
Musical Life in Softcity: Ethnomusicologists and the Post-Human Other
René T.A. Lysloff, University of California, Riverside
In this paper I discuss the political economy of musical life on the Internet.
Despite its relatively brief existence, the Internet has become a kind of complex
city-state, what William J. Michael calls "Softcity." Analogous in many ways to a real
world metropolis, Softcity is a vast electronic urban sprawl of personal, government,
and corporate websites. A large portion of its population belongs to one or more of
the diverse social groups accessible through the Internet. Each of these
communities are in turn made up of individuals with uniquely human but mutable
identities--that is, online personas that may or may not have similarities to the
embodied persons behind them. Thus, Softcity is a place inhabited by
technologically enhance, post-human identities.
For ethnomusicolgy, online post-humanism has profound implications. The
Internet is giving rise to new communities unconstrained by time and place,
populated by personas rather than embodied persons, and structured according to
new social configurations and hierarchies. It forces us to rethink about what it
means to be human and what denies humanly made music. Drawing from examples in
my own research, my paper will examine the dilemmas and possibilities of
ethnographic research on the internet.
Session 6E Performance of the Oral Tradition in Jewish Contexts
2:30-4:30 Friday, November 19
Chair: Mark Kligman, Hebrew Union College
Discussant: Kay Kaufman Shelemay, Harvard University
This panel explores performance of the oral tradition in present day Jewish life.
Through focusing on performance in ritual contexts of various Jewish traditions we
will highlight the process of communication in these events: communication of a text
and the communication of other cultural and spiritual ideals. Many aspects inform
performance based upon aesthetics and expectation of participants, the repertoire
choices of the leader, and the knowledge and skill of all involved. The music of most
Jewish traditions has not appeared in writing until the modern period, some Western
and non-Western Jewish traditions are still transmitted orally. Performance of oral
traditions remains an important part of Jewish life in a variety of contexts.
In this panel the various presentations will focus on specific aspects of a Jewish
tradition: Kligman will focus upon the Judeo-Arabic synthesis in the liturgical
performance of Syrian Jews in Brooklyn Sabbath prayers; Summit will look at a Boston
Orthodox synagogue and highlight the issue of authenticity in the public performance
of readings of biblical texts; Cohen will look at the aesthetics of music and prayer as
created and transmitted through Reform Jewish songleaders; and Jacobson will look
at Yiddish choirs in New York as a performing community. These liturgical and
non-liturgical events under exploration represent formal rituals (Kligman and Summit)
or regularly performed occurrences (Cohen and Jacobson). Performing the oral
tradition remains as a powerful force both inside and outside the synagogue in
present day Jewish life.
2:30 6E1
Creating a Cultural and Religious Synthesis Through Music: The Sabbath Morning
Prayers of Syrian Jews in Brooklyn
Mark L.Kligman, Hebrew Union College
Based primarily upon fieldwork carried out during 1991-1992 among Syrian Jews in
Brooklyn, this paper will draw upon interviews and transcriptions, from earlier
studies, in order to place modern Syrian musical and liturgical practice within an
historical and cross cultural comparative framework. Through focusing on the music
within a liturgical context, this study concludes that through wide-ranging music and
textual interaction, this Jewish ritual is delivered in a manner infused with Arabic
cultural aesthetics. Arabic melodies undergo a process of adaptation into Syrian
liturgy through the paraliturgical song repertories in which Arabic texts are replaced
with Hebrew words. Next, selected Arabic melodies, already ingrained in
paraliturgical practice, their associated performance styles, and their extra-musical
associations are incorporated into the liturgy. The Judeo-Arabic heritage reflected
and perpetuated in the Syrian-Jewish liturgy goes beyond an adaptation of the
surface features of musical style to constitute a deep sharing between what are
often constituted as separate cultural worlds. This paper will utilize audio recorded
examples that demonstrate this process of cultural and religious synthesis.
3:00 6E2
Constructing Authenticity through the Performance of Sacred Text
Jeffrey A. Summit, Tufts University
Every week, in Jewish congregations throughout the world, scriptural text is
chanted in the synagogue in a ritual that dramatically re-enacts the revelation of the
Law on Mount Sinai. The highly detailed and musically nuanced performance of
Torah requires that the reader memorize both the pronunciation of unvocalized
Hebrew text and the taamei hamikra (cantillation marks) that indicate the musical
motif applied to each word of scripture. In many congregations, across
denominational lines, busy lay congregants spend hours every week preparing to
"read Torah" at Sabbath services. Many understand this proper performance of
sacred text as a way to position themselves at the core of authentic religious
experience. Increasingly, these oral traditions are not learned through face to face
interaction with cantors, rabbis or other teachers but from cassette tapes or with
the help of computer programs such as "Haftutor." I will examine why certain men
and women see the performance of text as a key to authentic religious expression
and how the application of new technology is changing the transmission and
realization of these oral traditions.
3:30 6E3
A Different Way to Pray: Aesthetics of Music and Worship Among Reform Jewish
Songleaders
Judah Cohen, Harvard University
The Reform Jewish songleader is a significant figure in the recent history of
American Reform Jewish liturgy and music. Emerging in the 1950s and 1960s from the
network of Reform Jewish summer camps in the United States, the songleader was
originally a camper or counselor who took responsibility for organizing meaningful
religious services with the campers. Today, about four decades later, songleaders
have a national network and hierarchical system, an articulated approach to prayer,
a method of pedagogy (including publications dependent upon oral transmission), an
impressive repertoire, and a standard of sound based on an American folk revival
aesthetic. These continue to be propagated in many religious settings around the
country on a regular basis of all ages.
In my presentation, I will examine this songleading aesthetic as it is expressed in
the process of transmission. What values (musical, religious and otherwise) do
songleaders pass among themselves? What values do they communicate to a
congregation? I will attempt to address these issues through observations of
songleader-led religious events (especially services and concerts), as well as
discussions with several songleaders themselves. Moreover, I will suggest that these
values reflect more than just a changing approach to prayer within certain Reform
Jewish populations. Rather, I will try to show that this musical aesthetic is an
impetus in itself for liturgical reflection and change within the larger world of Reform
Jewish religious practice.
4:00 6E4
"As If We Were at the Barricades:" Singing Practices and Survival Strategies of a
Yiddish Chorus in Manhattan
Marion S. Jacobson, New York University
How can a musical group survive when the values that have sustained it have
eroded? This paper presents a case study of tradition in crisis mode, addressing the
evolution of a politically-charged subculture into a musical affinity group/social club.
Addressing issues surrounding identity, musical practice and expressive behavior in
the Workmen's Circle Chorus of New York City, I demonstrate how the group grapples
with questions about its furvival and its relevance to contemporary Jewish cultural
practice. The focus of this paper is the Chorus's weekly rehearsals, where a core
group of volunteer singers and their conductor stage multiple competing versions of
musical aesthetics and competence.
Poster Session:
Aspects of Musical Transmission Among Cajun Accordion Players
Christopher J. Della Pietra, Southeastern Louisiana University
The subject addressed in this study was the acquisition of musical competence
and repertoire by practicing Cajun accordion players. The problem examined in this
study was to discern and describe the means and processes of transmission of the
music performed by Cajun accordionists in dance bands. The purpose of this study
was to add to the body of knowledge concerning the transmission of oral musical
traditions by describing the learning process of current practitioners of Cajun dance
music. Semi-structured interviews were selected for developing an understanding of
the musicians' awareness of their learning processes, experiences, and
self-knowledge (Finnegan, 1992; Kivale, 1996). The informants were selected as
representative of authentic Cajun musicians by their association with L' Association
de Musique Cadien Francaise de Louisiane, which is the governing body of the annual
Le Cajun Festival and Music Awards, an event with music and dancing held in
Lafayette, Louisiana. The accordion players' musical skills and sensibilities were
learned through an intense process of experimentation and revision.
7:00-8:00 Video:
Qoyllur Rit'i, Pilgrimage and Transformation: A Woman's Journey in an Andean Sacred
Festival
Holly Wissler, University of Idaho
This 55-minute video documentary is about the sacred Andean festival of Perú
known as Qoyllur Rit'i. In this annual pilgrimage, thousands of people trek to the
15,000 feet base of three sacred glaciers for ritual worship. About 100 costumed
groups representative of Andean mythology express their devotion through song and
dance in a three-day non-stop ceremony. Since the 18th century, Catholicism has
been a strong aspect of the festival, making today's Qoyllur Rit'i a fascinating
synthesis of Andean and Catholic traditions.
This video has a three-fold narrative: An overview of Qoyllur Rit'i and the
complexity of its meaning; the unique perspective of following one dance group,
their year-long preparations, rehearsal process and rituals, and thirdly Holly Wissler's
personal journey of being chosen to be mayordoma for this group, the challenges of
fulfilling that role and a powerful transformation experienced as a direct result of
performing repetitive rituals with her group.
In the 1998 Qoyllur Rit'i celebration, Holly Wissler, a graduate student in music at
the University of Idaho, performed the roles of mayordoma (sponsor) and
accompanying musician with the Qapaq Qolla dance group from Ttio, in Cusco, Perú.
It was the first time in the living history of this festival that an outsider to Peruvian
culture performed these roles, making possible a unique documentary about Qoyllur
Rit'i from an inside perspective.
This video is a joint project by graduate students Holly Wissler, music, University
of Idaho and Gabriela Martinez, film, San Francisco State University, with
collaboration from cinematographers Flynn Donovan (Portsmouth, New Hampshire)
and Númitor Hidalgo (Cusco, Perú).
7:00-8:00 CD-ROM Presentation and SEM A-V Committee Roundtable:
Ethnographic Representation in the Era of Interactive Media
Suzel Ana Reily, Queen's University of Belfast
Although ethnomusicologists have often been quick to incorporate technological
developments into their field research, serious consideration of what is represented,
and how it is represented, is only now beginning to take place in the discipline,
following recent debates on ethnographic representation in anthropology. Indeed,
representational media continue to be used primarily following a "realist" paradigm, in
which recordings, video clips, and photographs are drawn on mainly to illustrate
descriptive ethnography. This is perhaps a consequence of the dominant mode
employed in the dissemination of ethnomusicological knowledge: the published text,
which is rarely accompanied by more than recorded musical examples on a CD,
tucked into the back cover of the book. However, new technological
developments-the CD-ROM and the World-Wide-Web in particular-present new
alternatives for ethnographic representation, and call upon researchers to re-assess
their uses of representational media in their work. These media do not only allow for
incorporating sound and video clips into the text, their interactive potential
significantly alters the relationship between "readers" and "the text."
This presentation will contribute to the debate on ethnographic representation in
ethnomusicology by discussing a project which involved transferring John Blacking's
ethnographic representations onto a CD-ROM format. Although his fieldwork was
guided by a realist paradigm, the representation of the material attempted to
encourage an interactive "reading" of the ethnography, but it also aimed to preserve
the authou's objectives in the publications.
Saturday, November 20
Session 7A Music and Emotion I
8:30-10:30 Saturday, November 20
Chair: Margarita Mazo, Ohio State University
8:30 7A1
Musical Meaning, Emotional Experience, and the Social Significance of Vodou Ritual
Singing
Rebecca D. Sager, The University of Texas at Austin
This paper develops a theoretical approach to musical meaning and emotional
experience derived from my recent ethnography of Vodou ritual song in Haiti's
Departement du Nord. ("Vodou" refers to a religious culture and a group of spirits, as
well as the rituals honoring and beseeching those spirits.) In my study of Vodou
singing, I use a syncretic analysis (synthesizing preliminary musical, linguistic and
social analyses) to examine the active shaping and negotiation of song meanings
during ritual performance. Upon this foundation, I explore the relationship of
musical meanings to emotions. While I engage extant social theories, I highlight
Haitian perceptions about the emotional content of Vodou singing in the ritual
context.
Vodou rituals are performed in the context of Haiti's hopelessly fractured society
where persecution of Vodou is exacerbated by abject poverty, political and
ideological conflicts. Ritual singing calls the spirits who address these grave social
problems in their strategic play of sung and spoken discourse. In my presentation, I
identify emotions that are publicly encoded in stereotyped ritual
discourses--especially singing. In Vodou ritual, music can excite heightened
experiences, agitating internal feelings or mental states. During such a musical
experience, particular socially sanctioned emotions emerge and abide. Musical
experiences trigger culturally defined yet personal emotions that lead to a
transcendence of personal identity, i.e., possession by a Vodou spiri-t-the
embodiment of a collective self, or the "other self" within (Blacking 1995:177). The
possibility of social reordering and healing is contingent upon this subjective
experience of spirit possession.
9:00 7A2
Song Texts and Emotional Transformation: Arabic Love-Lyrics as Tools of Ecstasy
Ali Jihad Racy, University of California, Los Angeles
This paper explores the relationship between sung poetry and the generation of
feeling, in particular the ways in which lyrics contribute to the overall ecstatic
experience associated with music. The topic of study is a vast repertoire of love
song texts used in Arab music, especially within a traditional domain known
collectively as tarab and directly correlated with ecstatic evocation. Addressing the
historical, literary, and mystical backgrounds of the lyrics and discussing their primary
position in Arab musical artistry, the study posits possible explanations of how these
sung poems operated emotionally. For example, it is argued that their efficacy is
intimately linked to their somewhat abstract and stereotypical amorous themes,
images, and scenarios; the personal or self-referential mode in which they
communicate; and the semi-formal, highly conventionalized literary idiom they
embrace. Furthermore, the paper demonstrates that the lyrics transform poets,
composers, performers, and listeners, on several interconnected levels; a) directly,
through the use of emotionally loaded expressions, b) by creating a condusive
sonic-semantic ethos, and c) through symbolic suggestion, largely in the form of
induced amorous-ecstatic transpositions. At the same time, it is shown that a certain
synergy exists between the poetry and the music. Intended to be performed
musically, the lyrics realize their full ecstatic potentials fundamentally as "sung
emotions". Referring to specific contributions from cultural anthropology and
literary studies, the paper presents a theoretical format for studying an often
ignored, but highly significant facet of music making.
9:30 7A3
Phantom Nostalgia and Recollecting (from) the Colonial Past in Madagascar
Ron Emoff, The University of Texas at Austin
Musical practices throughout Madagascar reflect ways in which Malagasy people
have cultivated a fondness for materials and expressive forms connected to the
French colonial era. Such musical preferences sometimes also intone feelings of
displacement or longing arising from the inequities of colonial and post-colonial
encounter. Edith Piaf and early jazz for instance are quite popular with some
specific Malagasy people, who lament nonetheless that their lives have never been
referentially in-synch with the worlds of experience that initially gave sentimental
efficacy outside of Madagascar to these musics. What I'm calling phantom nostalgia--a
desire to be or appear to be Other by striving to assume a distanced, other
sentimentality-arises. A nostalgia-like fondness for Piaf though can still work in a
strategy of social and political maneuvering, for instance as a display of class
distinction.
On the other hand, in tromba spirit possession ceremony in which music plays a
vital role, Malagasy do become powerful Others, by taking into the body royal
ancestral spirits or even the spirits of vazaha (white outsiders). In this paper I will
discuss varied ways in which Malagasy people, who maintain a strong belief in the
powers inherent in sound, have selected fragments from often disparate pasts to
construct meaningful, feelingful wholes in the present. Sometimes these sentimental
appropriations have created disjunctures, sometimes they have filled them in. I will
also connect local circumstances in Madagascar to a more expansive theory of how
certain musics attain affective potency in contested-over locales.
Session 7B Contest-ing Tradition: Cross-Cultural Studies of Musical Competition
8:30-10:30 Saturday, November 20
Chair: Shannon Dudley, University of Washington
Discussant: Frank Gunderson
This panel will explore issues of musical competition in Trinidad carnival,
Sundanese wayang, barbershop quartets, and Native American performance events.
Many, if not most ethnomusicologists work in areas where formal or informal
competition is an important part of music-making, and yet there are few theoretical
studies of competition to guide us. How or why might we distinguish competitive
considerations from the many other contingencies of musical performance? What
social and historic factors contribute to making music a focal point of competition
(or not) in a given community? How are lines drawn to distinguish informal and formal
competition? Whose interest do organized competitions serve and how do they
function to control, to preserve, or to promote musical values and identities? How
do competitions affect the development of musical traditions and communities?
Scholars of many different musics will recognize the importance of at least some of
these questions to their own work, and could profit from a focused, cross-cultural
exploration of music and competition.
8:30 7B1
Creativity and Control in Trinidad Carnival Competitions
Shannon Dudley, University of Washington
This paper analyzes how organized competitions during Trinidad carnival have been
used to control aesthetic expression and public behavior, and how these attempts at
control are balanced by the creative impulses of participants. Carnival has been an
occasion for conflict between different social groups in Trinidad at least since
Emancipation in 1838, and establishment concerns about carnival's disruptive
potential are reflected in a series of British colonial laws and police actions in the
second half of the 19th century. From the turn of the century onwards, the battle
for social control has also been waged on a more symbolic and aesthetic field in
masquerade, calypso, and steelband competitions organized by middle class sponsors
and government agencies. These art forms were already guided, however, by
conventions of competition which had developed in the context of neighborhood
rivalries and ritual (or actual) combat. These "informal" competitive conventions
coexist with the "formal" criteria of adjudication and rewards in recent sponsored
competitions. While today's competitions--like Calypso Monarch, Panorama
(steelband), and Band of the Year (masquerade)--are rooted partly in colonial or
nationalist cultural hegemony, they are also characterized by artistic creativity,
festivity, and resistance to authority. Using examples from steelbands, especially, I
illustrate significant musical developments that could not have been predicted from
the competitions' official criteria, or from the intentions of their sponsors.
8:50 7B2
>From Here to Confraternity: Competition and Contest in American Barbershop
Harmony
Gage Averill, New York University
The barbershop revival movement, spearheaded by SPEBSQSA (Society fo the
Preservation and Encouragement of Barber Shop Quartet Singing in America, founded
1938), was one of a number of neo-Victorianist social movements in early Twentieth
Century America emphasizing issues of character, small-town values, and male
camaraderie in the face of a rapidly-evolving cultural landscape. Its initial growth was
built around informal singing ("gangsings") and semi improvised close harmony
(woodshedding), but an early "parade of quartets" in a Tulsa, OK Masons' Hall soon
evolved into annual, national conventions featuring quartet and chorus competitions.
Over the years the international conventions have come to serve as the "finals" of a
vast, tiered competitive system involving local and regional contests as well.
The adjudication criteria have exerted a powerful influence over the sound of
barbershop harmony in the last sixty years, helping to preserve certain stylistic
characteristics of turn-of-the-century close harmony singing while strikingly altering
others. The role of competition in the barbershop revival movement has been a focal
point of aesthetic discourse and a flashpoint for concerns over the direction of the
organization. This paper examines the consequences of competition on both the
musical sound and social organization of barbershop harmony. I argue that the
inauguration of a competition system for SPEBSQSA was an organization-building
strategy that mixed an ideology of fraternity and camaraderie with a system of
ritualized adversarial relations to produce profound changes in barbershop
performance and style.
9:10 7B3
Cultural Policy and Cultural Practice: The State (of) Sundanese Wayang Golek
Contests in New Order Indonesia
Andrew Weintraub, University of Pittsburgh
In 1968, a few years after the bloody tragedy that ushered in Soeharto's New
Order government, the state-sponsored Central Wayang Foundation of West Java held
the first annual Sundancese wayang golek (rod-puppet theater) competition in West
Java. Wayang was identified as a tool for social and political critique, and because of
earlier associations with the PKI (Partai Komunis Indonesia, or Indonesian Communist
Party), became a particularly important site for the New Order government to
organize and regulate. Along with competitions, wayang associations, schools,
publications, and seminars proliferated in the increasingly contested terrain of
wayang performance in New Order Indonesia. By sponsoring competitions, New
Order cultural apparatuses were able to register and license theater troupes as well
as to observe and monitor their activities. Tetekon, the aesthetic elements of
performance, were officially documented, codified, and classified as evaluative
criteria in an effort to control the boundaries of musical and theatrical practice.
In this paper, I analyze the ways in which tetekon came to take on particular
meaning when enframed within competitions. Emphasis was placed on etiquette
(etika), technique (tehnik), and the ability to "harmonize" (harmonisasi) with the
demands of the contest, advancing a model of wayang that directly conflicted with
the "popular," which tended to favor communication (komunikasi) and entertainment
(hiburan). In effect, wayang competitions came to represent cultural contests over
the meaning of the art form itself. By examining the role of tetekon, and their
application as evaluative criteria in wayang competitions, the effects of official
cultural apparatuses in relation to Sundanese wayang may be properly understood.
9:30 7B4
Changing Traditions in Post-Colonial Native American Musical Practices
Maria Williams, University of Alaska, Fairbanks
The paper analyzes the traditional roots of a contemporary music competition--the
music/dance contests of the World Eskimo and Indian Olympics. Alaska Natives have a
dual perspective: they prize an individual's accomplishments while at the same time
expect that individual to maintain a group or community identity. Although concepts
such as "showing off" exist in most Native American societies, they are balanced with
a strong sense of personal reserve and humility. For example, contest dancing is a
focal point of contemporary Powwows and although it is a time when an individual
can "show off," it is bound by strict parameters. In Alaska the dance groups that
participate in competition must also balance the contradiction of flaunting oneself
while maintaining the ideal of group identity. The paper asks the following questions:
How has the contemporary concept of competition changed or modified traditional
dancing and music? Are the emerging changes indicative of post-colonial strategies
of cultural survival? Has the idea of competition spread to other tribal gatherings in
Alaska? Have Alaska Natives maintained their cultural ideals of personal humility in the
setting of music contests, and if so, how have they achieved this? The paper attempts
to elucidate the more complex dynamics that lie beneath the surface of the
music/dance contests of the World Eskimo/Indian Olympics.
Session7C Music and Nationalism
8:30-10:30 Saturday, November 20
Chair: Donna Buchanan, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
8:30 7C1
"To Uplift National Integrity and Safeguard Cultural Heritage:" State Patronage of the
Sixth Annual Music Competition of the Union of Myanmar (Burma)
Gavin Douglas, University of Washington
In the past few years the SPDC (State Peace and Development Council) government
of The Union of Myanmar (Burma) has progressively increased the amount of funding
and media attention given to some of the traditional musical arts of the country.
Included in these efforts is the recent creation of an annual singing, dancing,
composing and performing music competition. The sixth annual competition, held in
October of 1998, was the largest of its kind thus far, stretching for two and a half
weeks across four of Yangon's (Rangoon's) largest venues and offering multiple
instrument and age-level categories.
Through the lens of this competition efforts to encourage Burmese traditional
music will be discussed in light of the national unity agendas of the present
dictatorship. An examination of the state media coverage, the style of patronage and
the changes introduced to the music via the boundaries of the contest itself will
reveal how the tradition is being used as a political tool. The competition, it will be
revealed, serves multiple yet contradictory ends in its designated role of "(U)plifting
national prestige and integrity and preserving and safeguarding of cultural heritage
and national character."
9:00 7C2
>From "the Other" to "the Self:" Western Music in Korea and Nationalist Intellectual
Discourse
Okon Hwang, Eastern Connecticut State/ Wesleyan
Since Western music was introduced to Korea about one hundred years ago,
Koreans have treated this imported cultural activity with respect, equating it with
cultural sophistication and prestige. Western music has been embraced to a point
that it dominates music curricula in public and private schools, while Korean students
are heavily represented in most major music conservatories in Europe and the United
States. However, examination of the presence of Western music in Korea in an
academic manner did not become significant until the nationalist discourse advocated
by a few music critics and social scientists started to form a major intellectual trend
in the 1980s.
This paper examines the discourse on Western music in Korea in relation to the
overall nationalist debate. After briefly surveying the history of Western music in
Korea, the paper will describe two factors which eventually brought it to prominence
as one of the main subjects of inquiries: 1) the work of Lee Kang-sook (a music critic
and educator) and 2) the discourse of the 1980s. It will then describe the impact of
this development on the general musical world in Korea. The paper will conclude
with the change of the direction that took place during the early 1990s and will
attempt to theorize the internalization process that changed Koreans' perception of
Western music from "the West as the Other" to "the West as the Self."
9:30 7C3
Baiao, Luiz Gonzaga, Lampiao, and Vargas: or the Music, the Musician, the Bandit, and
the President
Adriana Fernandes, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
This paper centers on the music of Luiz Gonzaga during the years 1948-1954.
Gonzaga was a famous northeastern musician who joined the great Southern
migration of the 1930s to Rio and Sao Paulo in search of the improved living
conditions advertised by the federal government. Gonzaga popularized a music called
Baiâo, which according to him, was a synthesis of rural styles. This music will be
analyzed in relation to the political context of the period and the nationalism of
President Vargas. The meanings of costuming used in Gonzaga's performance is also
particular significant as an allusion to Lampiâo, a famous bandit of 1920s in the
hinterlands of Northeastern Brazil.
A key issue addressed in this paper is the apparent contradiction between a music
that was patronized by a populist dictatorship marked by a strong censorship, which
nevertheless allowed an explicit reference to a legendary outlaw. Approaching this
problem through semiotics, I will show the intricacies of Vargas's political agenda, and
how a music of rural origin was used to win political support of the large
Northeastern poor population, both in the Northeast and especially in Southern
Brazil. The signs used to captivate those people were the music, the
instrumentation, the lyrics, and also the reference to an outlaw who was feared yet
admired by poor northeasterns, and ultimately killed by the government that initially
supported him.
My goal is to solve this complex of controversies establishing links between a
bandit and a president through Baiâo music and its leading musician.
10:00 7C4
The Ghana Dance Ensemble: Music, Dance and the Construction of Post-Colonial
National Identity
Leigh Creighton, University of California, Los Angeles
Kwame Nkrumah had both a political and a cultural vision for Ghana when he
pushed for national independence and later became the first Ghanaian Head of
State. Politically, he believed that Ghanaians should control their own territory.
Culturally, Nkrumah saw the need for Ghanaians to reassert their artistic talents in
reaction to restrictive British colonial policies. The creative philosophy which he
called "African Personality" involved the rehabilitation of cultural values and the
inclusion of an African perspective in all areas of life, including nationhood (Cultural
Policy in Ghana 1975: 9).
The power of music and dance as tools for the revival, promotion and maintenance
of this type of "African identity" cannot be underestimated. As national folkloric
groups like the Ghana Dance Ensemble were created after independence, they
represented the integral nature of music and dance in Ghana, and provided an
entertaining presentation of Ghanaian culture for
non-Ghanaians. Their staged concerts, in turn, served to construct a sense of
national identity within Ghana, and to promote the nation internationally.
Interestingly, this process of situating traditional music and dance in a concert
setting inverted one goal of Nkrumah's "African Personality." An African perspective,
or aesthetic, was reaffirmed through these performances, but those who designed
the Ensemble also incorporated a strong Western aesthetic into its configuration and
promoted this aesthetic within their staged performances of traditional music and
dance. This paper will investigate the intricacies of these co-existing aesthetics to
identify the nature of national identity in post colonial Ghana.
Session 7D Issues in Indian Music
8:30-10:30 Saturday, November 20
Chair: Daniel Neuman, University of California, Los Angeles
8:30 7D1
Traditions in Transition: Sarod and Sitar Performance in the Early Twentieth Century
David Trasoff, California State University, San Marcos
Sarod and sitar, the two most important stringed instruments used in the
performance of Hindustani classical music, have presented a more or less unified
common performance practice in the last half of the twentieth century. The
ordered presentation of alap and jor (exposition in free rhythm) followed by vilambit
and drut gat (slow and fast compositions) transcends even the boundaries of gharana
(lineage) as heard in the music of the best-known artists of this period: Ali Akbar
Khan, Ravi Shankar, Vilayat Khan and Amjad Ali Khan.
Examination of evidence drawn from recordings, conference proceedings and oral
histories indicates that while there were significant common elements of playing style
shared by these instruments, the performance practice of sitar and sarod differed in
many significant respects. Oral history suggests that these two instruments
substantially shared a common performance practice of stroke patterns (bol-s) and
styles of compositions (gat-s). Analysis of recordings from the first decades of the
twentieth century, however, shows that performers of sarod and sitar in fact took
quite different approaches to these elements of performance. Further, the
selection of ragas recorded, as well as those played for the national music
conferences of the period, suggest that sitar and sarod presented different
repertoires as well.
The longer period of time during which the sitar became acculturated as an Indian
classical instrument, and the close association of sitar performers with the core of
the Hindustani tradition may well account for many of these distinctions. Sarod, by
contrast, was a new instrument, played primarily by relative outsiders. In light of
these significant differences the transformation of sarod performance and its rise to
co-eminence with sitar as a classical instrument in the space of three decades is all
the more remarkable.
9:00 7D2
Historical Evidence for Dhrupad as a Musical Genre at the Mughal Court
Richard Widdess, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London
A feature of the North Indian classical tradition of vocal music is its variety of
styles or genres, including dhrupad, khyal and thumri. Each genre is differentiated
from the others by a combination of factors, including the type of composition used,
aspects of vocal style and voice production, and other aspects of performance
practice. In addition, aesthetic and ideological differences can be observed. Each
genre appears to have emerged at a different period of history, and in differing
social, political and cultural contexts. We might reasonably hope that the processes
by which these genres came into being would be illuminated by historical
documentation. The paper will consider in this light evidence for dhrupad
performance and transmission in 16-17th century documents from the courts of the
Mughal emperors Akbar, Shahjahan and Aurangzeb. These sources reveal not only
technical details of performance practice but also aesthetic and ideological
concepts that are directly relevant to later musical history in North India; they shed
light on the origins, development and incipient decline of dhrupad as a genre. Such
evidence is also relevant to the re-evaluation or revival of dhrupad that is occurring
in India today.
9:30 7D3
Vanquished Warriors Make Great Musicians
Nazir Ali Jairazbhoy, University of California, Los Angeles
A fascinating aspect of society in India is that it is divided into structural groups
generally referred to as castes. What is not usually emphasized is that there are
many different groups that occupy the same structural position, perhaps the most
striking example of which are the many communities of bards/storytellers/musicians
in India. Just in Western India and Pakistan, more than 50 such communities have
been mentioned in the literature. Many of them are attached to particular families
or communities and function in a jajmani feudal pattern as clients of their patrons.
Interestingly, musician communities are, by tradition, always ranked at the bottom of
the social hierarchy--sometimes even equivalent to untouchables.
An examination of legends and historical sources shows that communities,
especially those of the warrior class, khatriya, or kshatriya, after being subjugated,
were driven to the bottom of the heirarchy and compelled to adopt the role of
musician. This paper will present evidence to support the thesis that vanquished
warrior communities have often been converted to musician communities by their
conquerors, and that many of them have become excellent musicians.
Session 7E Reflections on Ethnographic Method
8:30-10:30 Saturday, November 20
Chair: Dale Olsen, Florida State University
8:30 7E1
Which Side are you on? "Victim Art" and the Cultural Politics of the Art---Ethnography
Continuum
Heidi Feldman, University of California, Los Angeles
When an artist integrates the voices and images of survivors into a performance, is
the result art of victimization? In 1994, choreographer Bill T. Jones presented
"Still/Here," an evening-length work involving dance, theater, live music, and video
installation. Jones (who is HIV-positive) derived his choreographic inspiration and live
video footage from "survivor workshops" he conducted with people fighting
life-threatening conditions.
According to Arlene Croce--The New Yorker's senior dance critic--"Still/Here" was
"victim art," and thus unreviewable. Not only did Croce decide against reviewing the
work, she refused to see it. Ironically, she wrote about it anyway, in a controversial
New Yorker article, attacking Jones and his production and warning audiences to
stay away. Croce's piece touched a nerve. Artists, presenters, writers, and scholars
flooded The New Yorker with letters, both attacking and supporting a critic's right to
castigate a performance that she had not seen.
I argue that the "Still/Here standoff" is an example of the culture politics of mixing
art and ethnography along an increasingly evident continuum. My paper examines
this event from several perspectives: Croce's avoidance of "Still/Here" and her
obsessive gaze at its creator; Jones as an ethnographic artist; and Croce's use of
metaphors of infection. I conclude with examples of this art-ethnography continuum
at work in recorded music linked to victimization and/or cultural survival (Steve
Reich's "Different Trains," Deep Forest's "Sweet Lullaby," and Steve Feld's "Voices of
the Rainforest"), where too much art--or too much ethnography--can also be a
dangerous thing.
9:00 7E2
When You Know Something is Happening, But You Don't Know What it Is
Edward Herbst, City University of New York
This paper posits the questions, "what, where, and how," as a continuation of my
reflexive study of indigenous Balinese performance theory/ phenomenology of
performance, developed in "Voices in Bali" (Wesleyan U. Press 1997). The intention is
to delve into certain essentials regarding approaches to ethnography and
intercultural modes of communication. As we travel along local paths of feeling,
perception, and expression, our own ways of integrating the ethnographic
experience are shaped and articulated accordingly. A dialogic process leads through
a forest of culturally-specific information and symbols, but also posits broad questions
about the nature of form and time. Related elements to be considered are Balinese
ways of processing time, from every-day calendrical, to the performative, to the
cosmological. Time, that seemingly disembodied factor, both shapes and is creatively
shaped by human activity. It can also be fought with and subdued by means of music,
dance, puppetry and ritual. This paper also delves into Balinese approaches to
"where and how something is happening," through kinesthetic transmission of musical
knowledge, especially pertaining to vocal technique and the "movement of sound
through the body."
9:30 7E3
Writing Down and Writing Up: The Possibilities of On-Site Ethnography
Andrew Killick, Florida State University
Despite an extensive re-thinking of the practices of fieldwork in both
ethnomusicology and anthropology in recent years, it remains an almost
unquestioned assumption that finished ethnographic writing will be produced away
from the field. While the importance of on-site "fieldnotes" has been recognized in a
broadening of the concept to include impressions, emotions, and reflections as well
as more narrowly "scientific" kinds of data, these notes are still largely conceived as
"writing down" what one is discovering, which will be "written up" for presentation to
one's scholarly peers only after leaving the site of research.
My own experience, however, calls this assumption into question in that both my
master's thesis and doctoral dissertation were written without leaving the site of my
research (Seoul, Korea) and only defended and revised after returning to my
degree-granting institutions. In the light of this experience, I wish to examine some
of the implications and possibilities of an option that seems rarely to have been
considered. In particular, I will stress how modern communications technologies,
available in many field sites today, facilitate both continual revision of writing
(without a radical disjuncture between "down" and "up" phases) and instant
long-distance communication with colleagues and advisors; how continued access to
informants while writing facilitates checking of one's findings and especially of the
musical skills one has learned, as well as "dialogic editing"; and how such a practice,
though obviously not suitable for every fieldwork situation, might offer one fruitful
response to the postcolonial critique of ethnography.
10:00 7E4
Beyond the Six O'clock News: In Search of Palestinian Music and Dance
Jennifer Ladkani, Florida State University
Images of a Palestinian persona, ranging from terrorist to peacemaker, have
occupied a constant presence in international media for over fifty years. Despite this
fact, Palestinian culture has remained paradoxically enigmatic. Perhaps it has been
beyond the reach of scholars who focus instead on Palestine as merely one half of a
political conflict. Perhaps a distinct Palestinian music and dance has slowly emerged
only within these fifty years. The urgency of such a study is guided by the notion
that many Palestinians view the arts as their proof of existence (past), their only
voice to the outside (present), and their key to eventual independence (future).
This paper, based on my time as a 1998-99 Fulbright Scholar, discusses the music
and dance activities in Ramallah (West Bank) and Amman, Jordan as a focal point for
this preliminary step inside the world of the Palestinian people. Ramallah, considered
part of the "homeland" and known as the cultural capital of Palestine, has become
the breeding grounds for unique artistic combinations and struggles between new
and old, religious and secular, Palestinian and Israeli. This is in contrast to the
Palestinian exile communities like Amman, where, in the wake of a forced Palestinian
diaspora, professional and amateur troupes have developed as the primary carriers of
music and dance traditions and where accompanying ideologies are strikingly
different. The material presented reflects the way my Palestinian-American heritage
colored my experiences during my attempt to understand the contemporary nature,
functions, politics, and aesthetics of Palestinian music and dance.
Session 7F The Study of Musical Instruments
8:30-10:30 Saturday, November 20
Chair: Matthew Allen, University of Oklahoma
8:30 7F1
"Them, Those, and Us:" Mapping the Variety of Cultural Traditions of Mizmar (Folk
Oboe) Performance in Present-Day Egypt
Scott L. Marcus, University of California, Santa Barbara
The world of mizmar (folk oboe) performance in Egypt has been little studied.
Brief encyclopedia entries give little or no attention to mizmar music cultures,
focusing instead on the instrument's physical structure and the variety of names used
for the instrument. Folklorists in Egypt have similarly not addressed the issue of
cultural traditions, choosing to see any
variations in practice as being without significance. "There is only one mizmar
tradition in Egypt," one of Egypt's most prominent folklorists commented.
"Instruments of different sizes exist, but everyone performs one and the same
tradition." During six months of research in 1998, I had the opportunity to research
the world of Egyptian mizmar performance. While there are fundamental similarities
among all existing mizmar traditions in Egypt, most striking is the performers' own
understanding that the country contains three distinct and separate traditions.
"There are 'them,' 'those over there,' and then there's 'us.'"
My paper seeks to establish the geographical, cultural, and musical boundaries of
these three distinct traditions. In addition to playing instruments of different shapes
and sizes, the traditions differ in terms of repertoire and, perhaps, most importantly,
in terms of many aspects of identity.
My paper has relevance for students of double reed traditions throughout the
Middle East, South Asia, and East Asia for shedding light on an instrument family that
seems to have had shared roots in a distant past. Evidence of external origins (both
"gypsy" and "Turkish") of Egypt's mizmar traditions speaks to these shared roots.
9:00 7F2
Voicing/Ventriloquizing: The Violin in South India
Amanda Weidman, Columbia University
Although the golden age of India is usually placed in Orientalist accounts in the
pre- colonial era, the golden age of Karnatic music is conventionally placed at the
peak of colonialism, the early to mid-nineteenth century. While the composers of
this golden age were at work, a new instrument was changing the face of Karnatic
music: the European violin. This paper follows the career of the violin from its arrival
in South India (circa 1800) to the present. Tracing the position of the violin in the
twin discourses of modernization and authenticity so foundational to the twentieth
century revival of Karnatic music as `classical,' it shows how attitudes toward the
violin in South India have changed and how notions of the voice have been
fundamentally altered as a result. The adoption of the violin into Karnatic music
altered the status of the voice and thus the order of composing; in the early
twentieth century the violin shed its old `fiddle' image for a new classicized image
when it became the necessary accompaniment to the voice. The violin's uncanny
ability to be both Western and Indian at the same time, and to reproduce the voice,
made it quintessentially modern; it was perceived, unlike the too-traditional veena or
the `mechanical' harmonium, as the ideal instrument for bringing Karnatic music into
the modern age. A consideration of changing violin styles in the twentieth century
and the role of the violin in experimental music shows how the violin keeps
rearticulating Karnatic music's relationship to the West.
9:30 7F3
In Search of the Indian guitar
Martin Clayton, Open University
This paper is based on a study of the guitar, its players and its repertoire in India,
and discusses issues relating to identity and globalization in music.
Although the guitar has been known in India for some considerable time,
particularly in areas such as the former Portuguese colony of Goa, it has experienced
a huge increase in popularity since the 1940s. Crazes for the Hawaiian, guitar and
electric guitars have seen the instrument's several variants play an increasingly
important role in Indian film and popular music, in Western-style-rock and jazz and
even in Indian classical music. Although one of the most popular instruments in the
subcontinent (second only perhaps to Western-style keyboards, electronic and
hand-pumped), the guitar continues to be associated with the West, and in particular
with the small (2.3%) Christian community, (comprising mainly Anglo-Indians, Goans and
inhabitants of the North-Eastern states), from which most professional players are
drawn.
This paper will look at the place of the guitar in Indian culture, at the ways in
which it is not only seen as something Western and modern (and therefore alien and
potentially threatening), but also appropriated by Indian musicians who have
developed ways of playing ragas on it (with or without modification to the instrument
itself).
Session 8A Music and Emotion II
11:00-1:00 Saturday November 20
Chair: Jane Sugarman, State University of New York, Stony Brook
11:00 8A1
A Socio-Emotional Ontology of Musical Symbolism
Elizabeth Tolbert, John Hopkins University
What is the nature of musical symbolism? Building on the Peircean insight that
symbolic processes are hierarchical, I propose that musical symbols, symbols in the
Peircean sense of conventional, arbitrary signs, depend on lower order signs, i.e., on
prior icons and indices, for their emotional effects. However, in a break with a
traditional Peircean approach, I further suggest that these so-called lower order
signs are in fact only possible within the realm of the fully symbolic, a sphere that,
contra a strict interpretation of Peirce, includes both linguistic and non-linguistic
symbols. By examining the indexical/symbolic threshold in music and language from
evolutionary and developmental perspectives, I submit that both musical and linguistic
symbols are derived from culturally specific, non-linguistic, spatio-temporal concepts,
concepts that in turn structure other cultural domains. These foundational
spatio-temporal concepts are rooted in iconic and indexical processes, and are
implicated in the earliest experiences of self and other. These, symbols of any kind,
including musical symbols, are inherently social, are constructed intersubjectively
using analogical processes, are iconic and indexical to bodily experience, and
expressed symbolically in reference to culturally specific processes of subjectivity.
Such an approach suggests a socio-emotional ontology of musical symbolism, one that
retains audible traces of its iconic and indexical roots.
11:30 8A2
Dimensions of feeling and emotion in ritual music of the Kotas, a south Indian tribe
Richard Wolf, Harvard University
In this paper I explore the emotional textures of two kinds of ceremonies, those
for divinity and those for the dead, performed by the Kotas, a small tribe in the
Nilgiri hills of south India. I consider how Kotas configure relationships between
emotion, music, and ritual, and how these configurations fit into Kota ritual
categories of "god" (devr) and "death" (tav), categories which also encompass the
most important types of Kota vocal and instrumental music. I ponder the culture of
emotion by examining two relatively stable systems: 1) The system of Kota terminology
for feeling and emotion, particularly as it applies to music, divinity, and death; and 2)
the system of formal associations between ritual/musical subcategories and emotions.
Then, to relate these systematic frameworks to issues "on the ground," I try to
explicate the discrete, sometimes idiosyncratic ways in which some individuals
conceptualize and represent connections between musical sound and feeling. The
emphasis in this paper, therefore, is on the relationship between shared formal
structures and the ways people make sense of these structures. I also suggest
possible methodological strategies for studying music and the emotions in ritual
settings generally, drawing briefly on fieldwork experiences from other parts of south
Asia. I conducted field research for the Kota data from 1990 to 1992 when I lived in
the Kota village of Kolmel, and for approximately four months during the years 1997
and 1999.
12:00 8A3
Nashe (Ours): A Case Study of Identity, Emotions, Music, and Dance among Ukrainian-
Americans
Daria Lassowsky Nebesh, Independent
Societies condition emotional and physical responses through cultural training.
Through music and dance an emotion may stimulate a physical response or an affect.
In some societies, certain songs and dances elicit laughter or tears that may be
partnered with a cultural meaning, such as weeping for a deceased relative or one's
homeland. Songs and dances may evoke temporary emotional reactions and may
instill more lasting feelings. This paper will discuss lasting emotions and those
emotions associated with identity, such as a sense of belonging and ownership, and
how they influence the activities of Cheremosh, a Ukrainian-American dance and
music group.
In the group, an effort is made to condition an emotional response to music and
dance in order to evoke a sense of identity. The members of the group are aware
that they are American, yet they feel Ukrainian. The aesthetics of the music, dance,
and material art produced by the groups are determined by emotional responses
rather than by rational thought. Often the members of Chreremosh refer to the
sense of "nashe" (ours) when discussing or explaining why something is danced or
played a certain way. When something feels Ukrainian to them, then it is correct,
and vice versa. Some of the older members can outline rules of aesthetics in detail,
but the majority of the members learn to identify traditional elements through
emotional responses, specifically the sense of nashe. Also, I have observed a conflict
between the artistic quality versus the emotional response in establishing the
performance requirements. This paper will discuss this sense of nashe, the emotions
associated with this sense, and how it all influences the musical and dance elements
in the Cheremosh performing ensemble.
Session 8B Music Theory and Social Meaning
11:00-1:00 Saturday, November 20
Chair: Edward O. Henry, San Diego State University
11:00 8B1
Spiralling Chinese Cyclic Theory and Modal Jazz Practice Across Millenia; The 60-Tone
Case of John Coltrane (1926-67) and Ching Fang (78-37 B. C.)
Hafez Modirzadeh, San Francisco State University
Western musicological perspectives towards the pedagogy and analysis of jazz
styles have continued to fall short of finding relevant continuity with all of John
Coltrane's modal developments from his mid-periods (1958-64). At best, the Greek
heptatonic system, used well enough for an earlier modal period with Miles Davis,
cannot apply to consequent pentatonic-cyclic practices thereafter. A recent
discovery with Coltrane's 1960 hand-drawn geometric diagram (the only one of its
kind, published without explanation by Yusef Lateef) appears to relate directly to
Ching Fang's 60-tone spiral of the early Han dynasty (3rd century B.C-A.D.). In all, it is
proposed here that, for the first time, we have plausible clues indicating the late
tenor saxophonist's knowledge of and execute a truly original "Afro-Asian" approach
to improvisation, but also sensibly places his previously perceived excursions in tonal
substitution (i.e. "Giant Steps") as actually part of an uninterrupted modal transition
between linear-heptatonic and non-linear (or cyclic) constructs. Given this
contention, that for Fang and Coltrane, such musical connections may indeed
transcend all expected contexts of culture, time and space, then more serious
non-western considerations could forward the study of historical jazz practices in
particular. This, as well as interrelating the aural, improvised, and emotive powers of
musical theories in general.
11:30 8B2
The Role of the Baron Rodolphe D'Erlanger in Shaping Modern Tunisian Music Theory
Ruth Davis, Cambridge University
In Tunisia today, the standard curriculum adopted by high schools and music
conservatories includes theoretical studies of the Tunisian melodic modes (maqamat)
and rhythmic-metric genres (iqa'at) presented in western staff notation. The use of
both notation and didactic theory in the indigenous Arab repertory derives ultimately
from the efforts of the European patron and scholar, the baron Rodolphe d'Erlanger.
Resident in Tunisia since 1911, d'Erlanger's alleged mission was to rescue Tunisian
music from the corrupting influences of modernisation and westernisation, and from
the ignorance of its musicians, whom d'Erlanger perceived to be handicapped by
their lack of a verbalised music theory. Through the 1920s until his death in 1932,
d'Eranger transformed his Moorish palace in Sidi Bou Said into a center of musical
performance and scholarship featuring leading Tunisian musicians and scholars; they
were joined in 1931 by the Syrian Shanykh 'Ali al-Darwish, who imported theoretical
models developed in Cairo and Istanbul. d'Erlanger's efforts culminated in his
pioneering six-volume study La Musique Arabe, and in his seminal reports on the
maqamar and iqa'at of contemporary Arab music, presented to the 1932 Cairo
Congress.
This paper will examine d'Erlanger's unique contribution to the creation of a
modern Tunisian music theory. Adapted and elaborated by subsequent generations
of Tunisian music scholars, d'Erlanger's analytical methods provided the foundation for
the theoretical concepts that are now commonly perceived to underlie Tunisian art
and popular musical repertories.
12:00 8B3
Reaching Back and Reaching Out: the Persian Radif since 1978
Bruno Nettl, University of Illinois
Taking an essentially historical approach, this paper explores and interprets the
role of the radif of Persian music--the basis for improvisation and composition--since
about 1978. It is based on fieldwork in Iran before 1978, on publications emanating
since that time in Iran, and on recent fieldwork in the USA. Loosely codified before
1900 by a group of musicians including Mirza Abdollah, by 1960s the Radif was being
maintained in separate versions by many leading musicians, suggesting a process of
dispersion. Contrary developments appear to have set in since the Revolution,
including: 1) the conceptual restandardization of the radif and its representation as
the work of Mirza Abdollah, transmitted by Nour-Ali Boroumand, a major figure in the
preservation of Persian music in the period 1965-1978; 2) the unprecedented
publication in Iran of several printed or recorded versions of the Radif, but the
absence of recorded improvisations; 3) the use of the concept of the Radif as
generative force for a variety of compositions and improvisations of traditional,
experimental, western-derived, and popular music in the Iranian diaspora. The
recent history of Persian music is characterized by the Radif's growing significance
and centrality inside and outside Iran. With recorded illustrations, the paper
suggests that the Radif, as an identifiable musical work, became an icon of national
unity and centralized control in Iran, and indexical of the Persian character of the
musical culture of the Iranian diaspora.
12:30 8B4
Analogy and the Genesis of Abstract Musical Concepts
Marc Perlman, Brown University
How do abstract musical ideas develop? How do people come to articulate them?
Recent research has noted the role of metaphor (cross-domain mappings) in music
theory, i.e. the use of non-musical phenomena (waterfalls, organic growth, etc.) to
express abstract musical concepts. But such concepts are also produced by analogy
(intra-domain mappings), the projection of concrete musical practices into an
abstract domain. I propose musical equivalents to the two kinds of abstraction
recognized by Roy D'Andrade (content-based abstraction versus abstraction by
recoding). I illustrate various types of musical abstraction with examples drawn from
several cultures: Central Javanese theories of "implicit melody," Schenker's Urlinie, V.
N. Bhatkhande's reworking of the concept of "that," Berlioz's concept of "rhythmic
consonance," and the thoughts of an Irish fiddler on how to arrange a concert
program of traditional dance tunes.
Session 8C Music in Latin America
11:00-1:00 Saturday, November 20
Chair: Larry Crook, University of Florida, Gainesville
11:00 8C1
The Bandit, the Hero, and the Narco: Subcul and the Narco: Subcultural Values,
Commercialism, and Popular Mexican Music
Helena Simonett, University of Zurich
This paper focuses on a particular repertory of Mexican popular music, the
so-called narcomusica and the narcocorridos. (Narco is short for drug dealer:
narcocorridos are ballads that narrate episodes from the adventurous life of the drug
dealers.) Since the 1970s, popular music from the northwestern part of Mexico,
especially from the State of Sinaloa, has become more and more associated with the
subculture of its drug dealers. Apart from the narcos' economic power, there are
several other factors that helped this subculture become a very strong force in
Mexican society (as well as in Mexican/Mexican American communities in the United
States). Images of the Sinaloan character that have been perpetuated in folklore and
songs facilitated the acceptance of certain subcultural values among a large public,
even though the original values, shaped during the Mexican Revolution (1910), were
severely distorted. The modern hero, the drug dealer, embodies the virtues of the
bandido, the criminal or outlaw, widely celebrated in Mexican popular culture, music
and movies.
This paper illuminates the complex ways in which drug cultivation, trafficking, and
violence have become accepted among a large population (in Mexico and in the
United States) by considering the cultural predicament, both present and past. It will
be shown how an openly celebrated bandido cult unites and fuses folklore with
delinquency and violence and how violence in relation to drug trafficking is
celebrated and commercialized in popular music.
11:30 8C2
"The disc is not the Avenue:" Live and Studio Aesthetics in Samba Recording
Frederick Moehn, New York University
Rio de Janeiro's samba schools are the central attraction in the city's famous
carnival celebrations. By the time the schools parade through the sambadromo at
carnival, the majority of the spectators are able to sing along with the sambas, having
heard them for months in heavy radio rotation, and many will have bought the
compilation CD of sambas from the fourteen "grupo especial" schools. I observed the
making of this CD during three weeks in October 1998 in the recording studio,
Companhia dos Técnicos (Company of technicians), and I witnessed the negotiations
between producers and samba school directors over recording aesthetics. The
foremost conflict arose from the desire of the producers to "clean" ("limpar") the
sambas of what they regarded as excessive shouting and unnecessary drum breaks
characteristic of carnival processions. As the producers often said to the directors
of the samba schools, "The disc is not the avenue." In this paper I examine the
contrasting views of what recorded carnival samba should sound like and analyze the
effects that the changes in recorded versions of sambas has had on live carnival
performances. I connect this material to a larger debate over the relationship of
recorded to live performance and over the degree to which one functions as
"advertisement" for the other.
12:00 8C3
Brazilian Samba as a Practice and as a Hierarchic Structure; A Synchronic Approach
Luiz Fernando Lima, University of Helsinki
This paper concerns Brazilian samba, aiming at a critical interpretation of this
practice as a synchronic system. The main corpus focused is the partido alto
tradition from Rio de Janeiro. The basic assumption is that the samba is part of a
structure of relationships which involves codes of different quality, such as sounds,
social roles, situational circumstances, individual previous life experiences and body
gestures. A comparison between performances in different settings is offered: a
communal gathering a stage show a TV presentation, and a recording played in a
middle-class party. The claim is that in each environment a specific hierarchic
structural arrangement is more pertinent than others, thus some musical codes are
more highlighted. The ethnographic data is combined with a holistic definition of the
"samba world" to set up meaningful frames over which the musical analyses are based.
Another achievement is a connection between a social structure built upon personal
relationships and a system of different musical layers interacting simultaneously.
Accordingly, the theoretical and methodological background combines insights from
ethnomusicology and popular music studies with musical semiotics to propose a
heterodox approach to this contemporary practice.
Session 8D Native American Music, Intertribalism, and Technology
11:00-1:00 Saturday November 20
Chair: Victoria Lindsay Levine, Colorado College
11:00 8D1
"That Our Voices May Be Heard": Repatriation and Contemporary Representation of
Frances Densmore's Teton Sioux Collection, 1911-14
Pauline Tuttle, University of Washington
Frances Densmore's Teton Sioux collection, recorded on Standing Rock
Reservation between 1911 and 1914, is the most comprehensive documentation of
Lakota song to date. In this paper I explore the musical legacy of Densmore's Teton
Sioux work and its perceived significance to contemporary Lakota musicians. I begin
by tracing the repatriation and revitalization process initiated in 1982 by Hunkpapa
Lakota singer, flute player, and dancer, Tokeya Inajin (Kevin Locke). Taking an
ethnohistorical approach, I also discuss the impact of Densmore's field methodology
on decisions which are being made today about the revitalization, commercial
representation, and community use of the Densmore collection.
When Tokeya Inajin's great-grandfather, Itun'kasan-lu'ta (Red Weasel), recorded his
Sun Dance songs for Densmore, his hope was that "our voices may be heard by future
generations." Today, renditions of many of the songs Densmore recorded can be
heard in Standing Rock Nation at school functions, community celebrations,
ceremonial activities, around the powwow drum, on KLND radio station, and on
commercial recordings. In these various performative contexts, I ask: whose voices
are being heard and how are they being interpreted and represented? My primary
focus throughout the paper is on Tokeya Inajin's incorporation of this material into
his performance practice, educational efforts, and plans for future projects. Data is
drawn from archival sources and ongoing field work which I began in the winter of
1997. The paper is complemented by audio and visual examples illustrating Tokeya
Inajin's musical and conceptual reinterpretation of selected songs from Densmore's
field collection.
11:30 8D2
Singing for Garfish: Music and Woodland Intertribalism in Oklahoma
Victoria Lindsay Levine, Colorado College; Jason Baird Jackson, Gilcrease Museum
The dance songs performed as part of seasonal ceremonies are an integral aspect
of contemporary life among Woodland Indians of eastern Oklahoma. The members of
each ceremonial ground perform communal rituals throughout the summer at their
own stomp dances grounds, in addition to sending out delegations to visit other
stomp grounds on every available weekend. Thus Woodland peoples participate in
communal rituals held at Shawnee, Yuchi, Creek, Cherokee, Seminole, and Delaware
grounds located throughout eastern Oklahoma. As a result of this pattern of social
and ritual interaction, certain dance songs exist in the repertories of several
Woodland communities, but in each case, the song has been modified to conform to
local musical and aesthetic values. Using the Garfish Dance song as a case study, this
paper explores the role of music in maintaining a state of dynamic equilibrium
between tribalism and intertribalism among Woodland peoples in Oklahoma. The
paper has been co-authored by an ethnomusicologist and an anthropologist, who are
currently involved in collaborative archival research and fieldwork in several
Woodland communities.
12:30 8D4
Recording Culture: Aesthetics and Social Power in a Native American Recording
Studio
Christopher Scales, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
This paper examines the social and creative roles played by Sunshine Records, an
independent recording studio and record label in Winnipeg, Manitoba, in the
Manitoban Native community. I examine the aesthetic and processual potentials and
limits offered by the recording studio environment in general, and more specifically,
a studio self-consciously dedicated to the production and promotion of a wide
variety of First Nations musics.
The success and longevity of Sunshine Records is significant for two reasons.
First, Sunshine Records has served as one of the few stable musical institution in
Winnipeg dedicated to servicing the Native sector of the population and has thus
become a one of the few places where Native musicians are welcomed and valued as
artists and performers. It has become a nexus of urban Native musical activity where
new Native musical styles are envisioned, constructed and distributed. Thus,
Sunshine Records has served as a resource for the construction and presentation of
musically encoded Native identity for both Natives and non-Natives in Winnipeg,
Manitoba and across Canada. The music produced at Sunshine serves to actively
create possible social spaces and alternate subjectivities for First Nations peoples
both in their local communities and nationally. Second, in the often economically
volatile world of the music industry, where independent labels come in and out of
existence with alarming frequency, Sunshine Records has remained a relatively stable
corporate entity. Eschewing the pursuit of a distribution deal with one of the six
major corporate labels, Sunshine has remained committed to serving local Native
communities in Winnipeg and in northern Manitoba.
Session 8E Talking About Timbre
11:00-1:00 Saturday November 20
Chair: Thomas Solomon, University of Minnesota
Discussant: Steven Feld, New York University
Our title for this panel is meant to evoke both ethnomusicological discourse about
timbre and the discourses of timbre we have observed and documented
ethnographically. Moving beyond the commonplace critique of the lack of attention
given to timbre in western musicological discourse, we argue that timbre can and
should be systematically investigated through qualitative and quantitative methods.
Producers and consumers of music often have highly developed vocabularies for
talking about specific timbral qualities; attention to the patterning of metaphor in
this talk can tell us how discourses of timbre are sites for negotiating power-laden
meanings and embodying these meanings in metalanguage. A phenomenological
approach to timbre can also make use of computer-aided sound analysis that allows
the researcher to quantify acoustic correlates of discourse on timbre. The papers in
the panel collectively argue that discourses of timbre are deeply felt ways of evoking
how sound qualities embody felt meanings/meant feelings.
11:00 8E1 Talking About Timbre
Thomas Solomon, University of Minnesota
It has become a commonplace in ethnomusicology to critique approaches that
define musical sound purely in terms of rhythm and melody. Despite this recurring
criticism, there has not been a systematic attempt to define a theory of timbre or
implement methods for investigating it. A few researchers have made significant
contributions to a cross-cultural approach to timbre; Alan Lomax's set of cantometric
parameters for grading vocal qualities is one important example. But such broadly
based comparative methods do not give us resources for constructing a
phenomenology of timbre--a way of understanding how timbres work as
meaning-bearing sign vehicles. While western musicological discourse may lack a
metalanguage for timbre, ethnographic research has shown that music producers and
consumers often have highly developed ways of talking about timbre. A way to get
hard data about timbre is to pay attention to these discourses--how people talk
about why Hank Williams' voice is so evocative, how electric guitarists talk about how
they choose which setting on which effects pedal to use for a particular song. Ideas
about timbre are often expressed through metaphors that evoke experiences of
synesthesia; sound qualities are evaluated and commented on in the language of
color, texture, taste. Rather than assume that such talk is simply a vague, random
attempt to quantify the unquantifiable, the challenge to the ethnographer is to
explore the patterning of meaning in the metaphors used to talk about timbre, and
understand how these patterns are feelingfully linked to specific acoustical
correlates.
11:20 8E2
Discourse on Timbre among Temple Drummers in Kerala, India
Rolf Groesbeck, University of Arkansas, Little Rock
Scholarly considerations of musical sound in India often center around such topics
as melody type, meter, and improvisation, roughly following the models of Indic
musicology. It is unfortunate that timbre often receives short shrift in this literature,
since consideration of musicians' discourse about timbre may reveal ways in which
musicians embrace or contest larger values. Specifically, in this paper I will discuss
Kerala temple drummers' use of timbral terms such as "sweetness" (madhuram),
"music" (sangitam), and "weight" (kanam), arguing that they are often employed for
the purposes of imagining a shared nostalgic image or negotiating constructions of
authenticity. For instance, one performer, angered by another more eccentric
performer's popularity, attacked the tone quality of a specific drumstroke played by
the latter, accusing it of lacking "music;" he thus emphasized the latter's putative
separation from a shared image of tradition and by implication authenticated his own
less popular style. Another performer, eager to cement his reputation among older
connoisseurs, reminisced about a time in which the "sweetness" of one's timbre,
rather than virtuosity or improvisatory skill, supposedly determined a drummer's
reputation. These and other examples indicate that study of local discourse on this
issue is helpful in understanding how musicians negotiate concepts of legitimacy and
in doing so compete for limited performance opportunities. I conducted the field
research for this paper in Kerala mostly in 1988-90, during which time I took centa
drumming lessons; my own demonstrations of the timbres under consideration will
accompany my presentation.
11:40 8E3
Vocal Articulation in Country Music: a Micro-analysis
Aaron Fox, Columbia University
Country music singing style is often described in impressionistic terms which refer
to the embodiment and stylization of particular affects. While the significance of
stylized vocal affect is widely recognized among the genre's fans and critics, the
precise techniques through which this stylization is achieved by singers have never
been formally described. In fact, the language used to describe country music
singing typically naturalizes the projection of affect, or at best collapses the refined
and subtle range of highly stylized vocal markers of embodied affect into the generic
categories of "crying" or "nasality." In this paper, I examine some very precisely
specified articulatory distinctions which are characteristic of the singing style of
three working-class Texas country singers from different generations. Using
computer-generated spectrograms, I will discuss the dynamic shaping of lines of text,
movements between spoken and sung articulations, pharyngealization, vibrato,
pulsation, single cry-breaks, multiple cry-breaks, and cry-breaks conjoined to
pitch-bends, among other expressive articulations. I show how these articulations
are markers both of individual style and working-class tradition, and are carefully used
to shape the interpretation of particular songs texts and genres. I argue that this
subtle grammar of vocal style is a crucial aesthetic dimension of country music as a
vernacular musical style, which has never been adequately analyzed in the country
music literature, in which a mythology of country as aesthetically simplistic and
technically unsubtle music misinforms both positive and negative critical perspectives
on the genre.
12:00 8E4
Icons of Style, Indexes of Identity: Country Singing in San Carlos
David Samuels, University of Massachusetts
In this paper I will focus on vocal timbre as an element of style in the performance
of country music on the San Carlos Apache reservation in southeastern Arizona.
Based on data recorded in rehearsals, performances, and conversations with a
number of country musicians in the community, I will discuss how singers manipulate
the phonological space of vocal production to avoid vocal timbres coded as
"redneck" or "hillbilly."
The popularity of country western music in Native American communities across
the United States is undeniable, and has been a locus of ethnomusicological interest
for some time. A number of authors have argued that indigenous "identity" is
revealed in the "hybridization" of native and popular styles. In this paper I propose
two additional arguments. First: there is an imperfect fit between country music's
class-based feelingfulness and the individual or community histories of San Carlos.
Second: the enjoyment of country music in San Carlos is inseparable from
community members' consciousness of this imperfect fit, and thus country's
repertoire of expressive vocalization is often resisted at the level of phonology and
sung timbre.
In the paper I bring together four features relating to music, language, and
symbolic activity: iconity, indexicality, syntacticity, and consciousness or ideology. I
argue that, as indexical features of musical production become felt as syntactic, they
are likewise felt as iconic. I argue further that stylistic consciousness in San Carlos is
poltically engaged, and thus, in turn, recognizes and severs the naturalness of this
created iconicity.
12:20 8E5
Metaphors of Sound: Structure and Use in Music Production
Thomas Porcello, Vassar College
This paper explores the phonological, semantic, cross-sensorial, and performative
structuring of metaphoric descriptions of musical timbre. Using English data
recorded from naturally occurring speech and via elicitation during studio sessions in
Central Texas, I analyze how audio engineers and studio musicians discursively
negotiate mapping musical sound to linguistic sense and reference. I argue that,
contrary to popular opinion, metaphoric descriptions of musical sound (often focused
on timbral features) are not mere jargon, nor collections of subjectively deployed
vocabulary items. Rather, the use of metaphors among musicians and engineers often
reveals structured semantic fields, and thereby provides a highly efficient means for
communicating fine-grained information about musical acoustics. The paper
highlights three structuring features: acoustic iconicity, synaesthetic semanticity,
and verbal performance. The first concerns words whose vowel and consonant
shapes are at least partially mimetic with the musical timbre in question, while the
second refers to metaphors relying more strictly on linguistic (and cultural) meaning
for their salience. Both kinds of metaphors frequently draw from senses other than
hearing, despite being used to point to acoustic phenomena. Verbal performance,
defined here as the strategic deployment of linguistic suprasegmentals in
conversation, is frequently used by interlocutors to further link linguistic meaning
and musical sounds. I argue that as evolving recording and reproduction technology
has increasingly linked commercial musical appeal to the aesthetics of recorded
sound, audio engineers and studio musicians have thus developed a systematic
technical vocabulary built around metaphor, and that shared competence in its use
is crucial for professional competence.
1:30-2:30 Performance Workshop--"Making Hard Stuff Easy: Balinese Rhythm, Trust,
and the Defiance of Entrainment"
Michael Bakan, Florida State University
Using methods derived from reflection on my own experiences in Bali as a student
of beleganjur drumming (as explored in my book Music of Death and New Creation,
University of Chicago Press, 1999 [in press], I will teach the participants in this
workshop to perform complex Balinese interlocking rhythms with their voices and
their hands. The specific musical materials and pedagogical techniques employed will
serve to exemplify broader conceptual strategies for teaching complicated rhythms in
the classroom or in other settings, the kinds of rhythms that are relegated to the
"too hard" category in most teaching situations.
My own experiences as both a music learner in Bali and a gamelan and percussion
teacher and clinician in the United States have convinced me that the difficulties
many Western music learners--even highly competent musicians--experience in the
domain of rhythmic competence stem more from matters of mental attitude and
worldview than from anything inherently "musical." By facilitating a shifting of
attention to different ways of thinking and not thinking about rhythmic structure and
execution, I hope in this session to both offer practical guidelines on improving
rhythmic skills and stimulate dialogue on the role and potential of intercultural
musical experience in fundamental and advanced musicianship.
1:30-3:00 Video:
Bomba: Dancing the Drum
Roberta L. Singer, City Lore
Bomba is the only music and dance genre that clearly reveals Puerto Rico's African
heritage. The Cepeda family of Santurce, Puerto Rico, is known as the "patriarch
family of bomba." In the face of often overwhelming odds the family has struggled
throughout this century to preserve and perpetuate the bomba tradition within their
family as a Puerto Rican cultural expression. The patriarch of the family, Don Rafael
Cepeda, was awarded an NEA National Heritage Fellowship for ensuring this
"paramount expression of Puerto Rico's African heritage for future generations."
"Bomba: Dancing the Drum" is a 60-minute documentary in which the Cepeda family
and their bomba tradition each provide the lens through which the other can be
experienced and understood. The work contains moving cinema verite scenes,
compelling interviews with members of the Cepeda family, and stunning performances
filmed at community and family bomba events ("bombazos") including the funeral of
Don Rafael, and in rehearsal for performance. Its aim is to situate bomba in its family,
community and historical contexts while showing the complexity of the genre as an
artistic expression.
1:30-2:00 Video:
Play Tabla
Frances Shepherd, Kingston University
Play Tabla is an instructional video with a companion manual. The video was
completed in March 1999 in collaboration with ETRC (Educational Technical and
Resources Centre) at Oxford University and the manual on which it is based was
published in 1992. The authors of the manual are Pandit Sharda Sahai and Frances
Shepherd.
The tabla is an extremely popular instrument in the UK with people from all ethnic
groups, ages, and backgrounds wishing to learn it. Tabla classes abound in all cities
with sizable populations of people whose roots are in the Indian sub-continent.
Several teach-yourself manuals are available and stocks in specialist instrument shops
are constantly being depleted by keen students of tabla. Despite the great demand
for a teaching video this is the first one on the market in the UK.
Pandit Sharda Sahai is a traditional musician and he provides the teaching in the
video, either to students on set or directly to camera. Explanations of all technical
terms are given along with notations of the strokes and pieces taught. The method of
teaching used is based on the traditional method of teaching and a western approach
to teaching and explaining technique. Sharda Sahai provides several performances.
The script was written by Caroline Howard Jones, a student of Sharda Sahai. The
video is just under two hours long and in eight sections. It was filmed and edited by
ETRC at Oxford University.
2:00-2:30 Video:
Wayang golék: Performing arts of Sunda (West Java)
Martin Clayton, Open University
Wayang golék is the rod-puppet theater tradition of Sunda (West Java), a vibrant
mixture of storytelling, songs, and instrumental music. This video introduces the
wayang golék tradition, focusing on puppeteer, musician, and puppet maker Atik
Rasta and his family. Footage from an all-night performance, recorded live in Java, is
combined with interviews in which the artists describe their art and family history.
This film, made by a BBC team for the Open University, is concerned with
Sudanese performing arts and their practitioners, issues of change and adaptation,
and the place of the performing arts in Sudanese culture.
Sunday, November 21
Session 9A Music in Diaspora Communities
8:30-10:30 Sunday November 21
Chair: Timothy Rice, University of California, Los Angeles
8:30 9A1
A Question for Gomidas
Laura Osborn, University of California, Los Angeles
Gomidas Vartabed--ethnomusicologist, priest, scholar--is possibly the best known
figure in Armenian music. My aim in this paper is not to further canonize this man
and his work, but rather to explore the causes and implications of widespread
acknowledgment of his centrality to Armenian music.
A discussion of Gomidas and his work can focus the question, what is Armenian
about Armenian music? He himself, as well as his research, embodied the confluence
of East and West that frequently characterizes Armenian culture. Gomidas was
schooled in Berlin around the turn of the century, and collected thousands of folk
tunes from several cultures around the Anatolian plateau, with a focus on the music
of Armenian peasants.
Gomidas invites contemplation of the multiple interpretations of the material
available to us. For example, his writing reveals an affection for the folk, a
perspective which has been as variously interpreted as the songs he collected. Some
analysts now suggest that his work aimed to distill the Armenian folk tradition from
outside influences, while others focus on Gomidas' analysis of folk music which
created the basis for a national style of composition. I suggest that our
understanding must also consider the academic times in which Gomidas worked, and
look at the romantic canvas on which Western-minded researchers painted in the
early 1900s.
The paper will include historical and theoretical background, discussion and
playing of musical examples, and explorations of the topic as part of Armenian studies
and ethnomusicology.
9:00 9A2
What Color is Music?
Julia Banzi, University of California, Santa Barbara
In this presentation, I explore the concept of creating, perpetuating, and
successfully marketing a need and desire for the traditionally despised. Within the
context of the popular music industry, I examine possible scenarios as to the
tremendous success and popularity of Gypsy music in the 90's. Simultaneously,
rampant and international persecution of Roma "Gypsies" continues by private
citizens and Governments alike and shows little signs of relenting. In "What Color is
Music," I explore how a careful selection of descriptive adjectives, color choice, text
and symbolism are subtly combined and orchestrated with past romantic images,
forming a mutually supportive relationship reflected in sophisticated marketing and
promotional materials. Color choice is pivotal in this commercial representation of
music and certain musics are often consciously or unconsciously associated with
certain colors. A simple change in color can profoundly affect our perceptions of
the culture, music and musicians. Through an examination of choices in imagery,
adjectives and color used by popular media to market Gypsy music, we can hope to
come closer to understanding this rare duality of adulation and abomination that
Gypsy music and musicians embody for the West, and in so doing, confront the fears
and desires of our own society. My work draws from fieldwork in Spain since 1989
and fieldwork in Eastern Europe since 1997.
9:30 9A3
"Songs the Gypsy Played For Us:" "Gypsy Music," Exoticism and "Heimat" during the
Nazi Period
Brian Currid, Humboldt University Berlin/University of Jena
In this paper, I will examine the way in which so-called "gypsy" music functioned as
a complex point of social articulation within Germany under the Nazi regime. The
figure of the "gypsy" was one of the central icons of "degeneracy" in the Nazi period,
the ultimate result of which was the brutal mass murder of up to 600,000 "gypsies" by
the "Third Reich". But if we look to the evidence of popular culture from the
period, we witness the figure of the gypsy developed into a highly complex icon of
both "traditional" modes of collectivity and urban, exotic, cosmopolitan capitalist
glamour. "Gypsy" music and musicality remained a positive source of fantasy in the
Third Reich, even while the machinery of extermination was fully operative.
In order to understand this problem, in this paper I examine the relationship
between forms of exoticism and the production of an ersatz Heimat in the use of
gypsy music and musicality in musical film of the period, and illustrate the two sides
of this racial coin and the role of gypsy music in the production of both these
complex forms of social fantasy. Shuttling between two ideological poles in the
production of an acoustics of national publicity, "gypsy" music and musicality were a
central point of contradiction between fantasies of the national and the
cosmopolitan in the Nazi period, and illustrate the ways in which these fantasies are
mutually determining in the context of modern mass culture.
10:00 9A4
The History of Bhojpuri Song: An Odyssey Across Three Oceans
Helen Myers, Central Connecticut State University
The displaced songs of an exiled population are the subject of this paper on the
topic of Indian village music. The diaspora of Bhojpuri peoples ranges from their
homeland--the exhausted farmlands of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar--to outposts of the
former Empire: tropical islands of Trinidad, Mauritius, and the Fijian archipelago. The
Indian immigrants of these islands recall different versions of the Bhojpuri repertory.
The Trinidadians remember songs that are sung today in Ghazipur and Gorakhpur; the
Mauritians, songs from Arrah and Chapra, and Fijians, songs from Banaras. This music
illumines the crumbling and disorganized papers that constitute the historical
accounts of the British system of indentured labor (1934-1017), a cruel scheme under
which these once-called "Coolies" were removed from India to man colonial sugarcane
plantations.
This account of Bhojpuri music across three oceans is more than a tale of
marginalization. In Trinidad, Bhojpuri music sings of vitality, growth, musical
ingenuity, and the joys of Western harmony; in Mauritius, it rings of prosperity, a
thriving local recording industry, of baubles and properly-educated dancing girls, of
astute Bombay traders and inscrutable Tamil mendicants; and in Fiji it bitterly weeps
for a better land and a better time, for a disinherited people whose livelihood faces
extinction in the new millennium, and whose song is accompanied by child tassa drum
dancers and penniless dhantal virtuosos.
This circumstance--of an Indian peasant people, transported to three islands,
united by songs from a bygone age, divided by their new repertories--invites foreign
scholars to observe well and report with clear (and pleasing) words how song tells
their history.
Session 9B Grey-Out, Creativity, and World Music
8:30-10:30 Sunday, November 21
Chair: Eric Charry, Wesleyan University
8:30 9B1
"Give up the Dhol!:" "Grey-out' and Traditional Musician Communities in Rajasthan,
India
H. Roger White, University of Wisconsin, Madison
Ethnomusicological formulations of `grey-out' commonly invoke concern for the
effects of market capitalism (via media outlets and popular music) on the integrity or
endurance of local music traditions worldwide. Public discussions in India about
`tradition' or `local' arts and artists, suggest that this is a timely issue, as alarmed
observations about recent changes in Indian cultural life crowd the opinion pages of
newspapers and magazines. In the Indian state of Rajasthan, the vitality of local music
traditions has long been attributed to the activities of specialist musician
caste-communities. In this paper, based on nearly a year of research in Rajasthan, I
consider `grey-out' from the perspectives of two related `traditional' musician
communities, Dholi and Damami, whose social identity is increasingly less associated
with music-making.
Through interviews with members of these hereditary musician communities, I
encountered two linked, recurring themes. The first is the complex relationship
between the social category of `traditional' or `caste musician' in contemporary
Rajasthan and the importance of izzat (`honor' or `respect'). When discussing the
future, many members of these communities consider `grey-out' a positive or even
necessary trend due to the unique social stigma attached to their community and, by
extension, their musical activities. The second is that with the explosion of available
outlets for popular music there is a progressively declining audience for these
musicians. In considering these themes, my paper frames the concept of `grey-out'
ethnographically, avoiding both a simplistic nostalgia for the passing of tradition and a
reductive overstatement of transformations of musical life in this part of India.
9:00 9B2
"World Music" Before the Global Age: the Case of Indonesia's Kroncong
Sarah Weiss, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Discussions of globalization and world music assert that the present moment is
unique in human history. Never before have so many musics been available for so
many people to listen to nor has making music been so fraught with politically volatile
issues. As Tim Taylor puts it, "the ways in which [musicians mix things up]
have...partially changed from older modes of cultural interaction in modernity. The
dynamics of collaboration, representation, and appropriation create new complicated
political and subject positions that shift with increasing frequency" (Global Pop
Routledge 1997). Implied is the assumption that the results of these most recent
"global" interactions are more compelling than those of the past. The meaning of the
past for understanding the present is left unstated.
In this paper I will investigate the cultural interactions which fostered the
development of Indonesian kroncong at the beginning of the century under Dutch
colonial rule and determine the relationship between the shifting identities,
collaborations, representations, and appropriations present in kroncong with those
described in the discourse on global world musics of today.
To suggest, as Viet Erlmann (Public Culture 8/3, 1996) has done, that in contemporary
Western culture `the past has been completely supplanted with the logic of the
present [and] the modernization process is complete' is to persist in an old,
evolutionary understanding of the logics of the past or other cultures. The study of
world music today should include understandings of the past and decenter our
Western perspective on the topic.
9:30 9B3
The Reception of Christian Pop in Hungary
Barbara Rose Lange, University of Houston
Christian pop from the U.S. ranks among the most pervasive of mass musical idioms.
It exercises influence not only because of its familiar sound, but also through the
promotional techniques used by missionaries, who (for those who are receptive to
their message) can wield authority on aspects of musical and worship style as well as
Biblical exegesis. This paper, based on twenty-four months of fieldwork conducted in
Hungary throughout the 1990s, examines the responses to Christian pop by
Pentecostal and evangelical believers in Hungary. Christian pop, through its
connection with missionary activity, was among the most pervasive representations of
Western mass culture in post-Socialist Eastern Europe. I believe that the case of
Christian pop illustrates that grey-out is indeed an issue, but that it is dependent
upon the social position of the receiving constituency. Young urban believers have
completely embraced the idiom, which resembles the familiar and fashionable
Europop style. Church authorities approve of the industrial discipline that is evident
in Christian pop. But Rom (Gypsy) Evangelicals are indifferent to the style and have
created their own genre of Christian song that draws from secular music oriented to
a Rom audience.
10:00 9B4
Vallenato: Relocalizing the Global
Ana Maria Ochoa, Instituto Colombiano de Antropologia
Vallenato is a musical genre which originated in the Atlantic Coast of Colombia and
has become the most widespread music in the country and the one which represents
Colombia in the international market today. This process of massification has
occured via music festivals stimulated by political elites and by the music industry and
has generated a fragmentation of the genre into several modalities associated to
different ideological issues and circuits of production. Some of these modalities, like
that promoted by the Festival of the Valenato Legend of Valledupar or pop vallenato
star Carlos Vives, claim adherence to the local, via their record productions or forms
of cultural display. In this paper I explore the political consequences of redefinition
of the local tradition of vallenato, via iodeologies related to concrete ciruits of music
production. Specifically, I explore the relationship between local versions of magical
realism (macondismo), world music and return to the local, especially with reference
to the style of Carlos Vives and his mode of insertion in the music industry.
Session 9C Music and the Sacred
8:30-10:30 Sunday November 21
Chair: Martha Davis, University of Florida at Gainesville
8:30 9C1
Improvisation, Variation, and Divine Embodiment in the Performance of Cuban Santeria
Katherine Hagedorn, Pomona College
This paper focuses on improvisation, variation, and "embodiment" in the music of
the polytheistic Afro-Cuban religion popularly known as santeria. In santeria, musical
performance is essential to communicating with deities, known as orichas. Each
oricha "owns" particular songs, drum rhythms, and dances, and it is the combination
of the oricha's rhythms (played on the sacred batá drums) and praise songs that calls
it to earth, "embodying" it, so that it may speak and dance through the body of a
possessed devotee.
Yet these praise songs and batá rhythms are subject to improvisation and variation
by whomever performs them. There are at least two distinct styles of santeria
musical performance in Cuba, one from Havana and one from Matanzas, and within
each of these regional practices, individual stylists continue to emerge. How closely
must a ritual musician follow textual, melodic, and rhythmic archetypes in a religious
performance for that performance to be considered effective? How many
improvisational liberties can one take before the songs and rhythms are no longer
recognizable to the religious practitioners or to the orichas themselves, and thus can
no longer evoke the deities? Drawing on my fieldwork over the past ten years with
ritual musicians in Cuba and the United States, I will consider a small corpus of praise
songs, melodies, and batá rhythms of a primary oricha in order to explore how
musicians and other religious practitioners of santeria create and modify rhythm,
melody, and movement as a means of "embodying" otherwise abstract images of the
divine.
9:00 9C2
Sacred Representations: Hallowed Ground and Festival Bound
David Lynch, The University of Texas at Austin/The Austin Chronicle
In a June 4, 1998 issue of The New York Times Gerard Kurdjian, Artistic Director of
the Fés Festival of World Sacred Music, said: "Ritual aspects have to be performed in
specific places...When you take them out of those places, they lose their meaning.
But the sacred is something much larger than the liturgical and ritual. The thread
that links them is the emotion that all these musics provoke in the heart of the
listener."
Kurdjian draws a distinction between the liturgical and the sacred, yet removing
sacred musics from their respective "specific places" raises additional questions.
Once defined, what occurs when sacred music is recontextualized? What happens
when third parties, such as record labels and concert promoters, mediate the
re-presentation of sacred music for commercial gains? How do the musicians who
perform sacred music negotiate this debated terrain? And, finally, how does the
interest in sacred music both mirror and distinguish itself from the recent focus on
world music in general?
Using the Fés Sacred Music Festival as a point of departure, and drawing on my
experience as a music writer for Texas cultural weekly The Austin Chronicle, this
paper will discuss and investigate what happens when sacred music is put on stage,
recontextualized and re-presented. In addition, interviews with musicians and
producers will be incorporated, as well as the research of Kirshenblatt-Gimblett,
Rouget, Bendix, Ellingson and Baumann. My aim is not to provide answers, but rather
to initiate a dialogue of what-and where-is sacred music.
9:30 9C3
The Traditional in the Post-traditional World: Buddhist Monastic Ritual and the Music
Industry
Pi-yen Chen, University of Chicago
This paper studies the contemporary practice of the Chinese Buddhist monastic
core liturgy (the daily service) in relation to the music industry. The daily service
serves for Buddhism as a forceful constituent of monastic doctrinal enactment and
renders the monastery meaningful through displaying its multidimensional
representations to society. The tradition of the daily service, nevertheless, is
conveyed by the human agents who perceive, interpret, and reinscribe it. The
cultural meaning of the daily service becomes mobile, especially when encountering
and mingling with the expressive medium of material culture and consumer goods.
In this paper I argue that new forms of monastic social relationships and
communication are shaped through the exposure of the daily service as a formerly
isolated information-system and distinct group-experience of Buddhist monasteries to
the wider society by the mass media and the industrial network. In conjunction with
the music industry, the daily service becomes an object for integrating monastic and
social information and experience. Musical recordings, for example, undermine the
relationship between physical location and information access. Such access was
formerly only available in face-to-face encounters. The commodification of ritual also
complicates the representations of the monastic tradition and the relationships
between monastic codes and musical practices. In the post-traditional world,
monastic practices and meanings are often redirected through the fluidity of
perspectives and technologies that both endure and encourage changes of the
tradition, because they help the monastic community to incorporate drastic social
transformations into existing cultural frameworks and to distribute inscribed
representations of the tradition.
Session 9D The Social Significance of Style
8:30-10:30 Sunday, November 21
Chair: John Murphy, Western Illinois University
9:00 9D1
"It just doesn't sound authentic:" Reflections on the Use of Live Instrumentation in
Hip-Hop
Joseph Schloss, University of Washington
The use of digital sampling technology has become central to the practice of
hip-hop production. While journalists, academic theorists, and non-hip-hop musicians
tend to focus on sampling's relative moral value as a methodology, most hip-hop
producers view sampling from an aesthetic perspective. Simply put, sampling is not
valued because it is convenient or morally justifiable, but because it is beautiful.
When previous studies have viewed hip-hop sampling from an aesthetic
perspective, they have tended to present it as an example of postmodern pastiche,
with all its attendant theoretical implications: juxtaposition of disparate aesthetic
systems, blank parody, fragmentation, lack of historicity, and so forth. While these
studies have been valuable, their reliance on the theoretical terminology and
paradigms of culture studies carries with it the suggestion that there is no
significantly articulated aesthetic discourse that is indigenous to hip-hop music. This
is simply not the case.
In fact, a hip-hop samplers' discourse does exist, and one of its most telling
aspects is its resistance, on aesthetic grounds, to the use of live instrumentation
when that option is available. This paper, based on my fieldwork among hip-hop
producers, will explore the nature of this resistance, and its implications with regard
to a larger hip-hop aesthetic.
9:30 9D2
What Monophony Means: History, Progress and the Development of Polyphonic Music
in Turkey and in Europe
Robert Labaree, New England Conservatory
In the view of the founders of the Turkish Republic in the 1920s there was no
mistaking the lessons which history had taught them: the road to modernity led
directly westward, unmistakably marked by such enduring monuments of European
civilization as secularism, state capitalism and parliamentary government. The linkage
between social progress and cultural forms was no less clear to the reformers: in
music, the monophonic model of music-making had been superseded, in their view,
by the polyphonic one, laid to rest for all time--and for the whole world--during the
European renaissance. Today, the relative prestige of polyphony--more specifically,
triadic harmony--compared to the traditional Ottoman modal system (makam) still
persists in Turkey as a semi-official state ideology, despite an equally persistent
nationalist ideology favoring indigenous forms and the gradual increase in the number
of schools, performers and recordings of makam music over the past two decades.
This paper will attempt to bring traditional Ottoman monophonic modal practice,
polyphonic experiments within the makam system and 20th century Turkish opinion
into dialogue with the more familiar details of European theory and practice from
roughly the 9th to the 15th centuries. While initially the debate over the
appropriateness of monophony and polyphony as self-conscious cultural choices for
Turkish society may strike westerners as artificial and anachronistic, the image of
many centuries of European development methodically compressed into a few
decades provides a unique opportunity to reflect on what these developments have
in fact meant to the west and to the world.
Session 9E Issues of Authenticity: Three Asian Case Studies
8:30-10:30 Sunday, November 21
Chair: Frederick Lau, California Polytechnic State University
9:00 9E1
Amateur Music-Making as a Site for Negotiating Musical Aesthetics: the Korean Case
Inok Paek, Queen's University of Belfast
The growing `official' interest in the promotion of traditional music (kugak) in
Korea needs to be understood in the political, social and cultural climates of Korea in
the 1960s which were marked by the notion of `self-reliance'. Although the Korean
government initially poured all available resources into rescuing the staggering
economy, attention was soon redirected towards overall national development,
including the revitalization of traditional culture which had suffered under
industrialization and north American cultural and economic domination. This new
focus on self-reliance provided a direct challenge to previously held assumptions of
the desirability of Westernization and subsequently inevitable abandoning of
tradition.
With this social background in mind, this paper aims to discuss two specific areas
concerning the public perception of kugak. The first part considers reasons for
continuing widespread negative attitudes towards traditional music and musicians.
The second part discusses the motivations of amateur musicians, particularly
housewives in the context of emerging middle-class audiences, and younger urban
generations participating in nationalistically inspired musical activities.
The paper's conclusion is that the growing motivation to learn traditional music
reflects the on-going social revaluing of traditional music. The increasing interest in
traditional music-making also mirrors the changing economic and political climate of
modern Korea. Moreover, amateur music-making is the site where the diverse
motivations of course organizers, professional and amateur musicians and wider
society come to merge with the mutual role of constructing a new Korean identity.
9:30 9E2
Chinese Street Opera and the Production of Authenticity in Singapore
Tong Soon Lee, University of Durham
The concept of authenticity is bounded with issues of identity, nostalgia, and
tourism, in the context of inventing and reviving traditions in contemporary societies.
The "Traditional Chinese Street Opera" performance series by the Chinese Theatre
Circle in Singapore is a case in point.
Chinese street opera essentially refers to a performance site, that is, Chinese
opera performed on temporary stages in open spaces. It also refers to a
performance practice traditionally associated exclusively with professional opera
troupes, which are full-time, itinerant groups of performers who earn their living by
performing in religious contexts. Beginning in the 1970s, however, there have been
state-sponsored street opera performances by amateur opera troupes, which are
groups of middle-class opera enthusiasts engaging in operatic practices as a form of
recreation. Indeed, amateur troupes have come to represent the Chinese street
opera tradition in contemporary Singapore, a phenomenon that raises issues
concerning musical performance, group identity, and cultural representation.
The Chinese Theatre Circle is an "amateur-turned-professional" opera troupe. Its
weekly performance is located in Clarke Quay, a historic site refurbished as a tourist
hub juxtaposed with facilities and performance events that are modern and western,
traditional and local. More importantly, the performance practice of Chinese
Theatre Circle, like that of other amateur troupes, redefines the concept of Chinese
street opera through its discourse on authenticity.
My paper explores the social and performance dynamics that shape the meanings
of authenticity, expressed through, and further generated by, the "Traditional
Chinese Street Opera" series. I want to show that the fetish with the "authentic"
constitutes a desire to express allegiance to the mainstream culture. More
importantly, it effects a process of social distinction through music performance.
Index of Presenters
Adler, Christopher
Allen, Matthew (7F)
Aracena, Beth K. (3D2)
Atkins, E. Taylor (4D3)
Averill, Gage (7B2)
Babiracki, Carol (3E4)
Bakan, Michael
Banzi, Julia (9A2)
Barz, Gregory (6C1)
Berger, Harris (1B)
Berkman, Franya (2E2)
Besiroglu, Sehvar (2C4)
Booth, Gregory D. (4A3)
Bosse, Joanna (6B1)
Bowman, Robert (5D)
Brett, Thomas (1E3)
Brown, Anthony (5F1)
Buchanan, Donna (7C)
Callen, Jeffrey (4D1)
Camino, Suzanne (1D4)
Capwell, Charles (5C1)
Cavicchi, Daniel (5A4)
Chapman, Dale (6D3)
Charry, Eric (9B)
Chen, Pi-yen (9C4)
Chongson, M. Arlene (3D1)
Chuse, Loren (1B3)
Clark, Jocelyn (2D4)
Clayton, Martin (7F3)
Coaldrake, A. Kimi (1E2)
Cohen, Judah (6E3)
Cooley, Timothy J. (4A4)
Cornelius, Steven (2F)
Creighton, Leigh (7C4)
Crook, Larry (8C)
Currid, Brian (9A3)
Currie, A. Scott (4D2)
Davis, Ruth (8B2)
DeLapp, Jennifer (1D1)
de Mel, Vasana (1A)
DeWitt, Mark F. (5D3)
Diamond, Beverley (3E1)
Douglas, Gavin (7C1)
Dudley, Shannon (7B1)
Duncan, Stephen (6C2)
Emoff, Ron (7A3)
Fales, Cornelia (4E1)
Fargion, Janet Topp (5B2)
Feld, Steven (8E)
Feldman, Heidi (7E1)
Fenn, John (5B1)
Fernandes, Adriana (7C3)
Fernandez, Raul (4D4)
Florine, Jane L. (2A3)
Fox, Aaron (8E3)
Garcia, David (2B1)
Gaunt, Kyra D. (6B2)
Gelfand, Alexander (1C3)
Gerstin, Julian (6A3)
Gilman, Lisa (3B4)
Gooding, Erik D. (5A1)
Greene, Paul D. (4E2)
Groesbeck, Rolf (8E2)
Gross, Kelly (4C3)
Guilbault, Jocelyne (5B3)
Gunderson, Frank (7B)
Guy, Nancy (1A)
Hagedorn, Katherine (9C2)
Hahn, Tomie (6B3)
Harnish, David (4C1)
Henry, Edward O. (8B)
Herbst, Edward (7E2)
Hill, Stephen (3B3)
Howard, Keith (2D1)
Hughes, David (4C2)
Humphreys, Paul W. (3D3)
Hwang, Okon (7C2)
Jackson, Jason Baird (8D2)
Jacobson, Marion S. (6E4)
Jairazbhoy, Nazir Ali (7D3)
Johnson, Jill (4B3)
Johnson, Sherry A. (3C4)
Joo, Sunghye (4B2)
Kaye, Andrew L. (5A3)
Killick, Andrew P. (2D)(7E3)
Kisliuk, Michelle (4C3)
Kligman, Mark (6E1)
Knauer, Lisa (2B2)
Knopoff, Steven (1B2)
Kobayashi, Eriko (4A1)
Koh, Joann (1E1)
Koskoff, Ellen (3C)
Kramer, Jonathan
Labaree, Robert (9D3)
Ladkani, Jennifer (7E4)
Lam, Joseph S.C. (5F)
Lange, Barbara Rose (9B3)
Lapidus, Ben (2B3)
Lau, Frederick (9E)
Lee, Byong Won (2D3)
Lee, Tong Soon (9E2)
Levine, Victoria Lindsay (8D2)
Lightbourn, Alyssa (3C3)
Lima, Luiz Fernando (8C3)
Locke, David (1C)(4C)
Long, Lucy M. (1D2)
Lui, Terrance (4B)
Lynch, David (9C3)
Lysloff, Rene T.A. (6D4)
Marcus, Scott (4C4)(7F1)
Maurey, Yossi (3C2)
Mazo, Margarita (7A)
McCann, Anthony (1A)(3A)
Meintjes, Louise (2A)
Miller, Sara Stone (3B1)
Mills, Sherylle (1A)
Moehn, Frederick (8C2)
Moisala, Pirkko (3E3)
Monson, Ingrid (4D)
Moore, Robin (2B4)
Modirzadeh, Hafez (8B1)
Moulin, Jane Freeman (6A4)
Muller, Carol (6C3)
Murphy, John (9D)
Myers, Helen (9A4)
Nakamura, Kiwamu (3C1)
Nebesh, Daria Lassowsky (8A3)
Neeley, Paul (1C1)
Nerell, Loren (5C3)
Netsky, Hankus (2E1)
Nettl, Bruno (8B3)
Neuman, Daniel (7D)
Noll, William (4A)
Oakes, Jason (6A2)
Ochoa, Ana Maria (9B4)
Olsen, Dale (7E)
Osborn, Laura (9A1)
Paek, Inok (9E2)
Perlman, Marc (8B4)
Perullo, Alex (2A2)
Petzen, Jennifer (2C1)
Porcello, Thomas (4E)(8E5)
Qureshi, Regula (3D)
Racy, Ali Jihad (7A2)
Ragland, Catherine (5D2)
Ramnarine, Tina K. (1B)
Rasmussen, Anne K. (4C5)
Rausch, Margaret (2C2)
Reily, Suzel Ana
Rice, Timothy (9A)
Ritter, Jonathan (6D1)
Rodger, Gillian M. (5A2)
Sager, Rebecca D. (7A1)
Samuels, David (8E4)
Sandstrom, Boden (4E3)
Sanjek, David (3A)(5E)
Savaglio, Paula (4B1)
Scales, Christopher (8D3)
Schloss, Joseph (9D1)
Schrag, Brian (3B2)
Schuyler, Philip (5B)
Scruggs, T.M. (6C4)
Seeger, Anthony (3A)
Sercombe, Laurel (3A)
Shank, Bradley C. (2A1)
Sharp, Charles (6A1)
Sheen, Dae-Cheol (2D5)
Shelemay, Kay Kaufman (6E)
Shepherd, Frances
Simonett, Helena (8C1)
Singer, Roberta L.
Slobin, Mark (2E1)
Solis, Ted (4C6)
Solomon, Thomas (8E1)
Spiller, Henry (5C2)
Stock, Jonathan (4A2)
Summit, Jeffrey A. (6E2)
Talmage, Matthew (1C2)
Thorne, Cory W. (1D3)
Tolbert, Elizabeth (8A1)
Trasoff, David (7D1)
Tsukada, Kenichi (1C4)
Tuttle, Pauline (8D1)
Um, Hae-Kyung (2D2)
Usner, Eric Martin (6D2)
Vetter, Roger (4C8)
Wallach, Jeremy (4E4)
Wang, Oliver (5F2)
Waterman, Christopher (3B)
Weidman, Amanda (7F2)
Weintraub, Andrew (7B3)
Weiss, Sarah (9B2)
White, H. Roger (9B1)
Widdess, Richard (7D2)
Wienrich, Inis (2C3)
Williams, Maria (7B4)
Winant, S. Louis (5D1)
Wissler, Holly
Wolf, Richard (8A2)
Wolitz, Seth L. (2E4)
Wong, Deborah (5F3)
Wong, Isabel K. F. (1E4)
Yoon, Paul (5F4)
Zheng, Su (5F5)
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