Browsing by Subject "Ethnomusicology"
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Item Another kind of truth : a study of self-mythology in popular music(2013-05) Moench, Michael Creighton; Slawek, Stephen; Carson, Charles D.The connection between music and the formation of identity has been extensively explored in Ethnomusicology, as has the connection between music and the articulation of personal truth and knowledge. One peculiar artifact in the history of American popular music that raises many questions about both identity and truth is the interaction between musical performance and personal mythology. Many musicians have actively cultivated a mythic self--‐conception, while still others have gone to the lengths of creating an entire new name and history for themselves in their performances and recordings. My interest in this essay is to explore the production, transmission and modification of mythemes and mythology in conjunction with the production of musical sounds and other aspects of performative artistry. In particular I am examining the careers of Sun Ra, Jimi Hendrix, Sly & The Family Stone, Parliament--‐ Funkadelic and Prince in order to explore how and why these musicians created a coherent mythology in their art, or contributed to mythic, archetypal conceptions of themselves in the press and popular culture. Rather than analyzing the musical and visual productions of these artists as expressions contingent on the narrative or ideological intentions of their respective “myths”, or taking the reverse course of treating alter--‐egos and personal myths as superficial trappings of show business that coexists with the true essence of their art (e.g. the music itself) I am examining the recursive interaction between sound, image, and storytelling. Drawing on concepts from scholars of myth like Claude Levi--‐Strauss, Joseph Campbell and Bruce Lincoln, as well as scholars of Black Music history such as Paul Gilroy and Guthrie Ramsey, I intend to demonstrate that in art as in life, mythology is a vital part of how we perceive our world and ourselves. Furthermore, these examples illustrate that art is often a holistic experience where elements of sound, vision, and story are interdependent and can seldom if ever be truly separated.Item Bat people : multispecies ethnomusicology in Austin, TX and Chiapas, MX(2019-07-01) Graper, Julianne Laurel; Moore, Robin D., 1964-; Carcamo-Huechante, Luis; Carson, Charles; Ryan, Michael J.; Seeman, Sonia; Smotherman, MichaelIn an age characterized by narratives of environmental crisis, understanding the interrelations among humans and other species is crucial. Human-non-human relationships form the basis for how we define concepts such as “humanity” and “modernity,” extending beyond simple survivalist dependencies into our aesthetic practices. Multispecies ethnography is a recent trend in anthropology and science and technology studies that has begun to address the issues of non-humans’ involvement in what are typically considered human cultural practices, but so far this trend has not reached into related disciplines like ethnomusicology. My dissertation project brings multispecies ethnography into ethnomusicology, particularly exploring bat-human interactions in Austin, TX, and Chiapas, MX, and the ways in which they are articulated sonically and aesthetically. Using a mixture of traditional ethnography, “ethnography of science” (following Stefan Helmreich), and internet research, I explore ways in which humans and bats are entangled through technology, art, and science, creating each other through their interrelations. More specifically, I explore how bat migratory processes contribute to the music-based tourist industry in Austin, TX; how scientists, artists, and visually-impaired humans use echolocation to understand bat subjectivities, revising pre-existing notions of sound and the senses in the process; how anthropologists have perpetuated colonialism by incorrectly assigning bats as important symbols to Tsotsil communities in Chiapas, MX; and how Texas-area biologists use terminology associated with singing to reconsider the relationships between bats and humans.Item Cultural policies of the past, or a direction for the future? : the implications of intangible cultural heritage in the 21st century(2017-05) Lahasky, Sarah; Moore, Robin D., 1964-Efforts to document and preserve musical practices have played an important role in ethnomusicology since the formal inception of the discipline in the 1950s. Governments, NGOs, and transnational organizations such as UNESCO have promoted the protection of traditions for myriad reasons, including boosting national sentiment and capitalizing on touristic endeavors. However, these safeguarding projects often come with unwanted consequences to the local culture bearers and their customs. Cultural policies that recognize and aim to preserve particular musical practices increase the risk of commodification and exploitation. One notable example of influential cultural policymaking is that of UNESCO’s 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage. This paper synthesizes common critiques and themes of existing literature on music as intangible cultural heritage, especially relating to UNESCO’s 2003 Convention. It also offers recent case studies of ethnomusicological involvement in cultural policymaking that will help to ensure positive results for local practitioners and their musics in the future.Item Disciplining the popular : new institutions for Argentine music education as cultural systems(2010-05) O'Brien, Michael Seamus, 1978-; Moore, Robin D.; Erlmann, Veit; Slawek, Stephen; Keeler, Ward; Costa-Giomi, EugeniaThis dissertation focuses on a recent but growing movement in Argentina, state-sponsored formal institutions of popular music education. The musics taught in these schools – tango, jazz, and Argentine folk idioms – have historically been excluded from the country’s formal music education systems. Recent moves to standardize and legitimize these musics in this new institutional context raise questions of canon formation, pedagogical praxis, aesthetics and musical meaning that have implications far beyond the classrooms where they are implemented. I examine two of these schools based in and around the capital city of Buenos Aires: the Escuela de Música Popular de Avellaneda, and the Tango and Folklore department of the Conservatorio Superior de Música “Manuel de Falla.” I adopt an ethnographic approach that considers broad structural and policy issues of power distribution, state intervention, and cultural nationalism. I also examine how these structures play out in discourse and practice within and beyond the classroom, shaped by and in turn shaping students’ and teachers’ aesthetics, politics, and subject positions. I then analyze the output of several musical groups composed of current students and recent graduates of these programs, exploring the notion of an emerging institutional aesthetic and the extent to which these institutions act as homogenizing influences or engender creative divergence. Finally, applying Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of a field of cultural production, I question the extent to which this new “música popular” is truly popular, ultimately arguing that it occupies a sort of third space between mass culture and high culture, replicating some avant-garde assumptions about the role of art as anti-commercial, yet simultaneously embracing a symbolic economy that valorizes populist and subaltern identities and ideologies.Item Improvising difference : constructing Canarian Jazz cultures(2012-08) Lomanno, Mark Joseph; Erlmann, Veit; Seeman, Sonia Tamar, 1958-; Miller, Karl; Jones, Meta D; Moore, RobinThis dissertation is a performance of and around borders, emphasizing how physical and virtual boundaries impact members of a community on the global periphery. More specifically, it interrogates the ways in which Canarian jazz musicians encounter and interact with the multiple types of actively produced aislamiento (isolation). As an autonomous community of Spain, the vestiges of colonialism are quite present in everyday Canarian life, despite many inhabitants' self-identification as African. This project traces three main lines of inquiry: the historical construction of the Canary Islands as exoticized periphery; the eradication of the Afro/Canarian subject through the ongoing ideological and physical violence; and the ways in which Canarian populations are re-asserting their identities—as Afro/Canarian, diasporic, and trans-Atlantic—through critical performance against trenchant stereotypes and the dominant paradigms that propagate them. Throughout the dissertation, I examine how surfaces—architectural, cartographic, scholarly and sonic—act to frame (and mask) cultural and musical identity. The ideological seams of these surfaces can function as interstitial spaces from which critical resistance can be performed through improvising musical and discursive acts. Just as Canarian jazz musicians play against and across dominant paradigms to subsist, I will demonstrate how interstitial research methodologies can break open the potentially obscuring surfaces that these paradigms construct. I extend David Sudnow's notion of the "articulational reach" and his phenomenologically informed exploration of piano performance into ethnographic research, emphasizing how my own subjectivity as researcher/pianist impacts and shapes the project. Crucial to Sudnow's "reach" is its inherently improvisatory emergence and the uncertainty of its outcome. In short, the ways in which Canarian musicians must improvise performances in musical and social environments will be examined and resonating with an approach imbued with the same improvising, subjective unfolding—both in terms of research methodology and of writerly perspective. The dissertation could be read as an unfolding, improvised construction that is constantly accruing new meanings: its chapters are not so much driven by an overarching or individual theses so much as by the spinning out of possible responses to the questions surrounding the project's initial premises.Item La etnomusicología aplicada: una historia crítica de los estudios de la música indígena de México(2008) Alonso Bolaños, MarinaEste artículo presenta una historia crítica de los estudios de las expresiones musicales indígenas de México, historia que aborda la etnomusicología aplicada (etnomusicología institucional), particularmente en los proyectos de grabación in situ y la publicación fonográfica realizada por las instituciones gubernamentales encargadas de la documentación, preservación y difusión del patrimonio cultural. El estado de la investigación sobre la música indígena permite familiarizarse con las tradiciones intelectuales a partir de las cuales “lo indio” y las músicas indígenas han sido “observadas” y concebidas; algunas de las figuras claves en este proceso; y las tendencias generales.Item Music, media and the metropolis : the case of Austin's Armadillo World Headquarters(1985) Menconi, David; Burd, GeneItem “Neki Dječaci (Some Boys)” : narratives of homoromanticism and homosexuality in Yugoslav popular music of the 1980s(2017-05) Jorgensen, Laura Kristine; Seeman, Sonia Tamar, 1958-; Moore, Robin DIn the region of the former Yugoslavia, religious leaders and anti-LGBT activists claim that homosexuality is not native to the area but rather is an import from the west, and they use such rhetoric to commit and incite violence against queer communities. However, a history of homosexuality in the region has long been supported by evidence from social and religious practices, legal code, and sexology. In a contribution to that history, this reports explores interpretations and implications of popular music narratives that also reference the existence of homosexual desire, people, and culture in Yugoslavia. Following the decriminalization of (implicitly male) homosexuality in some regions of Yugoslavia in 1977, many of the country’s most popular rock and pop bands released songs with lyrics, sounds, and even videos which implicitly or explicitly draw on narratives of homosexual desire. The majority of these artists did not publicly identify themselves as homosexually-desiring or active, nor were they involved with the nascent local gay cultural and political movement of the 1980s; their narratives appear to be imagined fantasies of the kinds of situations and emotions experienced by those with homosexual desires. Regardless of the songwriters and performers’ own sexuality, such narratives serve as a recognition of homosexual desire and communities in the region, and ex-Yugoslav fans and listeners have claimed these songs as a meaningful part of their local history of homosexuality. Less well known is the new wave ( novi val) band Borghesia, whose members were among the most active organizers of that gay movement and whose songs and videos more explicitly and personally express non-normative desires and lives. While Borghesia was not as famous as Yugoslavia’s rock stars, they were the first openly queer artists in a region that now has a thriving and growing queer musical subculture. By referencing or representing homosexual desire through musical narratives across the spectrum of popular styles, all of these artists contributed to a record of homosexuality in the former Yugoslavia.Item Out the country : language, music, feeling, and sociability in American rural working-class culture(1995-08) Fox, Aaron A., 1964-; Not availableItem Padavali-kirtan : music, religious aesthetics, and nationalism in West Bengal’s cultural economy(2014-05) Graves, Eben Morse; Slawek, Stephen; Erlmann, Veit; Ghosh, Kaushik; Hansen, Kathryn; Kumar, Shanti; Moore, RobinThis dissertation studies the devotional musical genre of padāvalī-kīrtan from the early twentieth century until the present in the Indian state of West Bengal. In particular, I study how the interrelated spheres of religious aesthetics, Bengali cultural nationalism, and the genre’s relationship with economic exchange impact the performative and discursive spheres of padāvalī-kīrtan. The textual repertoire of this genre draws from, and informs, the Hindu devotional practice of Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavism, specifically focusing on the religious aesthetic concept of the “devotional mood” (bhakti-rasa). This connection with religious aesthetics further impacts the performance style of padāvalī-kīrtan, which uses a specific type of musical form with long meters and slow tempos to create padāvalīkīrtan’s ritual frame of performance. In addition to the influence of religious aesthetics, I investigate how the Bengali nationalist elite defined padāvalī-kīrtan as a symbol of Bengali cultural nationalism in the early twentieth century, and thus sought to overturn a sense of cultural loss experienced under colonial rule. This project re-emphasized the image of the religiously devout and musically skilled kīrtan musician as a way of distancing the genre from other Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava-influenced traditions that were in a state of ill repute at that time. The current phase of padāvalī-kīrtan performance that I study through performance-based and ethnographic analysis is defined by the rise of entrepreneurial and marketing strategies that musicians employ to find new audiences for padāvalī-kīrtan. This move to create new markets for kīrtan becomes an issue of contention with urban-based musicians, journalists, and cultural activists, and I study these debates surrounding padāvalī-kīrtan’s relationship with economic exchange through the theoretical lens of the cultural economy. I argue that the pejorative attitudes directed at present-day professional kīrtan musicians overlook the genre’s long history of adapting to shifting systems of patronage and financial support throughout the colonial and postcolonial periods.Item Palatial soundscapes : music in Maya court societies(2014-05) Duke, Bethany Kay; Stuart, David, 1965-Music is a powerful force. It highlights social hierarchies and relationships. It is a means by which the ordinary everyday can be transformed into the sacred. It has the ability to change our daily routine. How though, was music used, and in what ways did it function in the courtly society of the ancient Maya? In Classic Maya iconography we frequently find scenes of dance performance, ritual, or palace scenes depicted with musicians. Rarely however, are musicians the central focus of the action taking place. Were Maya musicians simply a background ‘soundtrack’ to the primary action unfolding or were they an integral part of Maya courtly life?This thesis conducts an iconographical analysis of the representations of music, musical instruments, and musicians among the Maya along with the consideration of archaeological evidence. The evidence considered comes primarily from the iconography of musicians and musical instruments depicted on several painted ceramic vessels but also takes into consideration iconography found in the murals of Bonampak and the paintings at Naj Tunich Cave, as well as archaeological evidence that appears in the form of preserved instruments at sites such as Pacbitun and the Copan Valley. For the ancient Maya, music was segmented. This is seen in the types of instruments and their groupings as portrayed in Maya iconography. These groupings denote differing categories of musical forms and functions which pertain to particular settings, such as interior palace settings as compared to exterior public settings.In exploring these images, many characteristics common to the depiction of musicians in interior palace settings become apparent that are not see in depictions of musicians in exterior public settings. First, the musicians are depicted kneeling, seated, or standing still. Second, they are located furthest from the most prominent figure. Third, acoustics do not affect instrument choice. Fourth, the form of attire varies more greatly in interior settings than in exterior settings. Finally, the order of instruments remains as standard as those in exterior settings. These scenes provide further evidence of instrument specialization and musical segmentation in Maya music and emphasize the significance music held in Ancient Maya Culture.Item Psychobilly : imagining and realizing a "culture of survival" through mutant rockabilly(2011-05) Kattari, Kimberly Adele; Moore, Robin D.; Erlmann, Veit; Menchaca, Martha; Miller, Karl; Seeman, SoniaIdentifying simultaneously with the cool 1950s greaser, the punk rebel, and the zombies, murderers, and monsters of horror lore, psychobillies (“psychos”) cobble together an identity that expresses their subcultural subjectivity. They construct and cultivate an alternative present, a participatory culture that offers multiple strategies for relieving the pressures of working-class life, for experiencing pleasure despite hardship. As one research participant put it, “psychobilly is a culture of survival.” This dissertation explores the interwoven, multiple reasons why musicians and fans identify with this alternative, underground culture, tracing the integral role it plays in their lives and the ways in which psychobillies creatively reconstitute aspects of the cultural past in the present. I focus on the advantages that a tight-knit social community confers and on the ways in which various fantasies and lived practices provide transcendental escape as well as feelings of control and power. My research draws both from a long line of cultural studies and from more recent trends in popular music scholarship that focus on musical meaning in everyday life. Accordingly, I employ an ethnographic writing style that privileges the multiple voices and identities of my research associates.Item Regional Mexican radio in the U.S. : marketing genre, making audiences(2011-05) Morgan, Melanie Josephine; Tucker, Joshua; Moore, Robin; Seeman, Sonia; Rodriguez, América; Menchaca, MarthaThis dissertation investigates how Regional Mexican radio in the U.S. tracks and drives changes in Mexican-American identity by combining different musical genres to create composite portraits of its audiences. Regional Mexican radio, which plays a mixture of ranchera, norteño, banda, and other regional Mexican genres to target a largely working-class audience of recent immigrants, is currently the most popular Spanish-language format in the U.S. Programmers for these stations act as mediators, navigating the public relation between notions of Latino identity constructed by national Spanish-language media conglomerates and local demographics. By modifying the generic composition of their playlists to strike a compromise between the two, they both monitor and produce the sociomusical categories that distinguish their listenership. Ethnographic research at Regional Mexican radio stations in Austin and San Antonio demonstrate the role that institutional organization plays in creating programming. National conglomerates that increasingly own these stations determine the broad outline of the industry, but local programmers make most decisions about programming content. Based on a historical review of Tejano radio, I argue that the musical mixtures created by Spanish-language programmers have responded to both past and present social and economic challenges facing Mexican-American immigrants. Through detailed analysis programming at five Regional Mexican stations, I argue that each variety of music played signifies regional, generational and gendered variations of Mexican-American identity that stations combine in different proportions to reflect local listenership. I also explore the role of station-sponsored events in gathering information about listeners. Events encourage listeners to embody their status as part of the Regional Mexican audience, a concept ultimately constructed by the radio stations. Ultimately, this dissertation adds to existing literatures on Spanish-language media, radio and Mexican-American music.Item Rumba and the vocal performance of Cuban femininity : a call for new forms of interdisciplinary research(2016-05) Chapman, Katherine Snow; Moore, Robin D., 1964-; Seeman, SoniaThis project brings together distinct areas of scholarship — rumba, the voice, and gender — that have never influenced one another strongly, and suggests similar comparisons and modes of analysis within other Afro-diasporic genres. My paper discusses existing literature on rumba, gender performativity, the voice, and timbre. It then uses these literatures in analysis of a performance by Celeste Mendoza and argues that rumba provides an exemplary site for the study of Cuban gender roles. My primary purpose is to suggest new avenues of research and to provide a sketch of what such analysis might look like, rather than undertaking a detailed case study. Discussion of Celeste Mendoza thus represents a starting point for research that I hope will be done in the future.Item Sung poetry in Umm Kulthum’s films : a linguistic and musical analysis(2012-08) Stokes, Corinne Alden; Brustad, Kristen; Woodbury, AnthonyThe beloved songs of Egyptian singer Umm Kulthum exist today not only in collective memory, but as a vital part of the soundscape of contemporary Egyptian life and social discourse. The lyrics of Umm Kulthum's songs represent some of the best-known poetry of the Arab world, written in a range of styles by Egyptian and non-Egyptian poets. In this thesis I examine the intertwined nature of poetry and song through study of the [sung poems] of Umm Kulthum's musical films. Because sung poetry is often inseparable from its sounded performance, I draw on methodologies from musicology, linguistics, and poetics to explore the aesthetics of the [sung poems] through interactions of form, register, music, and meaning. The detailed study of these intersecting features contributes new insight into the role of performance in shaping language register and meaning.Item Unbuckling the German belt : the history of opera audiences in San Antonio(2011-05) Alba, Ernest Isaiah; Keeler, Ward; Straubhaar, JosephOpera is unique among forms of Western classical music and performing arts in that it has always been a popular and accessible form of “cultured” entertainment. As a city with one of the longest and richest histories of opera performance in Texas, San Antonio provides a significant opportunity to survey the relationship between this popular art form and discourses of identity, power, and difference across ethnic, class, and gender divisions. This paper has two aims. First, it investigates the history of opera reception in San Antonio in order to examine changes in the traditional values of its citizens over the past century, focusing on the influence of ethnic identity among German immigrants. Then, it looks at the scholarship on cultural performance in various contemporary situations analogous to that of San Antonio and constructs five key processes of identification that show how individuals contextualize themselves in shared histories and identities through their participation in cultural performance of opera.Item Visual music : an ethnography of an experimental art in Los Angeles(2010-05) Cardoso, Leonardo de; Erlmann, Veit; Seeman, SoniaThis report focuses on social networks surrounding visual music, a sub-field of audiovisual experimental art in which hearing and seeing intersect, often through the music-oriented manipulation of abstract imagery and audio-visual synchronization. The discussion evolves from my fieldwork in Los Angeles, where I interacted with artists, archivists, publishers, institutions, software developers, and scholars. Taking into account Howard Becker's notion of art world, Pierre Bourdieu's ideas of cultural and economic capitals, and Bruno Latour's actor-network theory, I try to understand how these groups have been trying to establish visual music-networks. Although elements of visual music have been present in various media and artistic trends (color organs, abstract films, VJing-DJing, etc.), the field's history and premises are still little known, in part because the very term 'visual music' is a contested one. Due to its entertainment/cultural industries, Los Angeles is a place where multiple processes of high tech differentiation coexist; since the 1930s the city's technocultural environment (from film production to academic programs on computer animation) has lured artists interested in visual music. Not surprisingly, the city holds the only two institutions directly related to visual music in the country. I navigate through this field by considering some intersections between science, art, and technology.Item The voice of the future : seeking freedom of expression through VOCALOID fandom(2014-05) To, Kit Yan; Slawek, StephenHatsune Miku is a celebrity; she is also a virtual singer with no real entity. The phenomenon of her success in Japan and abroad provides the starting point for this report, which examines the different forms of collaborative creativity that grow out of social energy arising from a collective interest in the dazzling Vocaloid characters and VOCALOID singing synthesis technology. From an outside observer's perspective, the feverish reception of this anime character may be found to be uncanny. How can this "unreal" thing possess such affective power? By attaching themselves to a non-real object, are Japanese otaku (nerds) exhibiting pathological tendencies? Or has their frequent exposure to anime and manga predisposed them to be emotionally receptive to virtual characters in way that neophytes lack the experience to understand? Taking a cue from Bruno Latour, this report confronts these questions by opening the malfunctional social black box of otaku group formation. I try to understand how the meaning of otaku is made stable through a social explanation, and why the VOCALOID fandom is distinct from ordinary people. In contrast to the technological determinism and socially determined use of technology, I apply Actor-Network-Theory's theoretical and ethnomethodological perspectives to the VOCALOID community constituted from sociotechnical networks. Based on a position of ANT that each actor interacts with other actors (human and nonhuman) that constitute the network, this report looks at the particular media platforms and their infrastructures that allow the distribution and circulation of songs and videos. I then provide my ethnographic account based on a local VOCALOID event in Hong Kong in an attempt to understand how fans are recruited to the network, and what their motivations to collaborate, create, and share are. Making the connections evident, I conclude that the stereotypical social theory is somewhat unessential to our understanding of social relations.Item Western classical music in San Antonio : performing arts in the context of urbanization, globalization, and nationalization(2017-05) Alba, Ernest Isaiah; Keeler, Ward; Menchaca, Martha; Hartigan, John; Straubhaar, Joseph; Amado, AndresStudies of the development of Western classical music in the United States have often argued that a cultural hierarchy exists in which popular culture (television, movies, and pop-rock music) and its consumers are culturally divided from “high” culture (avant garde art, theater, and symphony). In the last two decades or so, scholars have attempted to “rescue” high culture from this assumption by arguing alternatively that the roots of high culture in American culture are popular and that high culture was popularized in the years following WWII. I conduct an ethnographic investigation of Western classical music performance organizations in San Antonio, a major American city with a rich history in the performing arts, in order to assess the role that high art culture plays in the lives of informants. I argue that classical music, rather than playing the role of a subaltern form of cultural expression, instead is crucial in shaping the postwar national identity and the modern urban, gentrified living experience. Audience experiences of Western classical music – packaged as cosmopolitan and elite – are different from both the highly commoditized popular music tradition and the locally consumed folk music tradition. I contend that audience members, musicians, and managers and artistic directors, as three distinct groups of performers negotiate the tensions bound up in the circulation of Western classical music in different ways that reflect the role of ethnicity, nationalism, and capitalism in the development of Western Classical music in the early 21st century.Item World music in the elementary and junior high general music curriculum : an analysis from an ethnomusicological perspective(1984) Hunt, Lilian Wong; Not available