Tag Archives: Ethnomusicology

Sounding a history of Ukrainian sovereignty: An annotated bibliography

Seven strings/Сім струн (dedicated to Uncle Michael)*

 For thee, O Ukraine, O our mother unfortunate, bound,
 The first string I touch is for thee.
 The string will vibrate with a quiet yet deep solemn sound,
 The song from my heart will gush free.

 My song o’er the earth’s distant reaches will fly in its task
 With my dearest hopes as its guide;
 Wherever it speeds o’er the world among mankind, ’twill ask
 “Know ye where good fortune doth bide?”
  
 And there somewhere yonder my song solitary will meet
 With other such wandering lays,
 And then, joining in with that loud-singing swarm, will fly
 Away over thorn-studded ways.
  
 ’Twill speed over ocean’s blue bosom, o’er mountains will fly,
 And circle about in free air;
 ’Twill soar ever higher far up in the vault of the sky
 And maybe find good fortune there.
  
 And finding it somewhere, that longed-for good fortune may greet
 And visit our dear native strand,
 May visit and greet thee, Ukraine, O thou mother most sweet,
 Ill-starred and unfortunate land. 

By Lesâ Ukraїnka, translated into English by Percival Cundy in Spirit of flames: A collection of the works of Lesya Ukrainka (New York: Bookman Associates, 1950)

*Uncle Michael was Ukraїnka's Uncle Mihajlo (Mihajlo Dragomanov, 1841-95), a significant Ukrainian cultural and political figure.

_______________________________________

  • Noll, William. “Cultural contact through music institutions in Ukrainian lands, 1920–1948”, Music-cultures in contact: Convergences and collisions, ed. by Margaret J. Kartomi and Stephen Blum. Australian studies in the history, philosophy and social studies of music 2; Musicology: A book series 16 (Sydney: Currency Press; New York: Gordon and Breach, 1994) 204–219. [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 1994-4762]

Abstract: In the first half of the 20th century, the networks of music institutions in the two zones of the Ukraine were largely conceived and implemented by urban-born and urban-trained activists who were consciously creating institutionalized links with rural populations. The music and dance practices developed and distributed through these institutions were derived from rural populations, although they were stylized, notated, and arranged by urban dwellers in ways that were thought to appeal to both urban and rural groups. Most of the musical performances took place in local centers that were part of a widespread national network. Activists in western Ukraine used music to help establish and maintain a Ukrainian national identity among a large rural population with ethnic minority status in the Polish state. In eastern Ukraine the music network was intended to be the primary shaping force of village musical culture.

  • Poljak, Dubravka. “Aspekt samoupravnosti u baladnih junaka ukrajinske narodne balade”, Zbornik od XXV kongres na Sojuzot na Združenijata na Folkloristite na Jugoslavija/Rad XXV kongresa Saveza Udruženja Folklorista Jugoslavije, ed. by Lazo Karovski and Goce Stefanoski (Skopje: Sojuz na Združenijata na Folkloristite na Jugoslavija, 1980) 109–112. [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 1999-31936]

Abstract: Examines the theme of self-determination in the Ukrainian heroic ballads.

  • Berthiaume-Zavada, Claudette. “Résonances de la bandoura ou la mémoire vive d’un peuple”, Construire le savoir musical: Enjeux épistémologiques, esthétiques et sociaux, ed. by Monique Desroches and Ghyslaine Guertin. Logiques sociales: Musiques et champ social (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2003) 129–142. [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2003-16721]
Reproduction of an old-world style bandura made in Toronto by William Vetzal

Abstract: Considers the Ukrainian duma as a cultural artifact that reveals how knowledge can be built on the basis of and by means of music. The duma is a musical genre, a half-sung, half-recited epic with different accompaniments depending on the period (the lira, the kobza, and, more recently, the bandura). The bandura, a Ukrainian national symbol, is the guardian of the collective memory of the Cossack epics and of historical events. The Ukrainian duma is an example of a multifunctional form of expression in which the musical aspect is inseparable from the social, and where a musical instrument and a musical form can convey the values of a people and provide trails for the researcher to follow in understanding the behavior of a population.

  • Ostashewski, Marcia. “Identity politics and Western Canadian Ukrainian musics: Globalizing the local or localizing the global?”, TOPIA: Canadian journal of cultural studies 6 (fall–winter 2001) 63–82. [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2001-22653]

Abstract: Explores how Ukrainian musicians in Western Canada use music to construct local senses of identity and Ukrainianness, while participating in a more global sense of Ukrainian history and nationhood.

  • Bajgarová, Jitka. “Ukrainische Musik: Idee und Geschichte einer musikalischen Nationalbewegung in ihrem europäischen Kontext—Lipsko, 7.–9. května 2006”, Hudební věda 2/43 (2006) 215–216. [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature with Full Text, 2006-30845]

Abstract: A report on the conference on Ukrainian music and nationalism, which took place in Leipzig from 7 to 9 May 2006.

  • Helbig, Adriana. “The cyberpolitics of music in Ukraine’s 2004 Orange Revolution”, Current musicology 82 (fall 2006) 81–101. [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2006-8421]

Abstract: Analyzes the relationship between political activism and what the author terms cybermusicality—an engagement with Internet music and its surrounding discourses that enables musical creativity both online and off. By looking into cybermusical phenomena in a non-Western context, this study moves beyond geographically and culturally limited analytical approaches that privilege Web-based music in the West and promote an uncritical celebration of the Internet as a technology of only the developed world. Music and the Internet played crucial roles in Ukraine’s 2004 Pomarančeva Revolûcia (Orange Revolution) when nearly one million people protested against election fraud, mass government corruption, and oligarchic market reforms. Prior to 2004, media outlets in Ukraine such as television, radio, and newspapers were government-controlled and censored. In contrast, the Internet grew in popularity as a technology that people could trust and helped activate the masses in anti-government protest. The article analyzes the revolution’s music and recordings disseminated on the Internet and examines the representative power of political song. This repertoire functioned as a particularly salient expression of citizen empowerment through the interpretation and evaluation of truth (pravda), a concept understood in the rhetoric of the revolution as the public’s “right to know” what is at the core of post-Soviet Ukrainian government propaganda.

  • Kiânovs’ka, Lûbov Oleksandrìvna. “Soziokulturelle Funktionen der ukrainischen nationalen Chorbewegung in Galizien nach 1867”, Chorgesang als Medium von Interkulturalität: Formen, Kanäle, Diskurse, ed. by Erik Fischer, Annelie Kürsten, Sarah Brasack, and Verena Ludorff. Berichte des interkulturellen Forschungsprojekts Deutsche Musikkultur im östlichen Europa 3 (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2007) 403–411. [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2007-34444]
Ukrainian Bandurist Chorus 1999

Abstract: After 1867 cultural areas with a strong national patriotic component began to develop within the Ukrainian choral movement. Numerous Polish choirs (Echo, Lutnia (Lute), Lwowski chór męski (Lemberg men’s choir), etc.), and Ukrainian choirs (Teorban, Bojan, Bandurist, etc.) emerged which pursued national goals in addition to societal and social objectives. The socio-cultural functions of Ukrainian choirs, which were representatives of an ethnic group without a state of their own, are examined. Their functions can be summed up as follows: establishing a national mind-set, aided by the choral culture, which was the focus of the political elite; promoting the formation of a national identity and a national memory by reviving the (ethnic) song culture; furthering general musical education by providing knowledge of the great international and national works, previously inaccessible to many; musical education—the professional musical academies of the Ukraine subsequently developed from the music schools and choirs, stimulating musical creation—a whole host of “national” compositions were composed especially for choirs; representative tasks; the “transfer” of the political and socio-cultural structures of choirs to other organizations with a similar orientation such as publishing houses, museums, and libraries.

  • Wickström, David-Emil. “Drive-ethno-dance and Hutzul punk: Ukrainian-associated popular music and (geo)politics in a post-Soviet context”, Yearbook for traditional music 40 (2008) 60–88. [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature with Full Text, 2008-8821]
Ruslana in London, October 2016

Abstract: Focuses on how Ruslana, Gajdamaki, and Svoboda—contemporary groups playing Ukrainian popular music—fashion themselves based on their country of (perceived) origin and what role politics, history, and traditional music play in that process. Using a postcolonial perspective, the author argues that the identity constructed by Ruslana and Gajdamaki functions to assert Ukrainian sovereignty and thus distinguishes the Ukraine from its former colonizer Russia, while Russian-based Svoboda exoticizes the Ukraine by drawing on colonial representations of the country.

  • Kušnìruk, Ol’ga. “Refleksìâ nacìonal’nogo v muzičnomu diskursì”, Studìï mistectvoznavčì 4:28 (2009) 43–47. [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2009-21736]

Examines the category of nationalism in music from the perspective of non-Russian musicology and proposes to introduce this category into the terminological apparatus of the modern Ukrainian musicology.

  • Wickström, David-Emil. Okna otkroj!—Open the windows! Scenes, transcultural flows, and identity politics in popular music from post-Soviet St. Petersburg (Ph.D. diss., University of Copenhagen, 2009). [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2009-22095]

Abstract: Focuses on music production in post-Soviet St. Petersburg from the perspective of local groups, the processes that enable these groups to tour Central Europe, as well as how the groups respond to social and cultural changes in their creative work. The aim is to provide a better understanding of popular music’s role in society, especially related to music, migration, and transcultural flows, specifically focusing on the ties to the post-Soviet emigrant community in Germany. These findings also provide a deeper understanding of cultural processes in the second decade after the fall of the Soviet Union. The first part examines popular music production from a scene perspective as theorized by Will Straw (1991, 2004) and others. This is done based on experiences with the St. Petersburg group Svoboda. By tracing the social networks and hubs, as well as underlying discourses, an overview of music production in the St. Petersburg rock scene is given. The same approach is applied to the scene approach to the Russendisko, a fortnightly discotheque in Berlin run by two emigrants from the former Soviet Union playing post-Soviet popular music, with a high percentage of St. Petersburg groups. The Russendisko is special since it targets a German and not an emigrant audience. The focus is both on the Russendisko itself as well as related events in Germany. Drawing on Ulf Hannerz’s theorization of transcultural flows (1992, 1996) some of the (cultural) flows to and from St. Petersburg are traced. Here the focus is on the flow of music aided by media and people within the frames “form of life” and “market” to both St. Petersburg and Berlin. Since influences from the music style ska were quite prominent in the music heard at the Russendisko, the discussion centers around the presence of reggae and ska in St. Petersburg. Here again Svoboda, whose self-proclaimed style is Ukra-ska-Pung (Ukrainian ska punk) is used as the link between the two cities, especially since some of the group’s songs are also played at the Russendisko. An important connection between St. Petersburg and Berlin that has provided the basis for the Russendisko is the massive emigration from the former Soviet Union to Germany after 1990, which is also briefly discussed. The final part turns to identity constructions, especially how bands from St. Petersburg create a band image and market themselves. Here the focus is on how these constructions relate to concepts of collective identities, especially how groups assert their origin (from St. Petersburg/Russia) and ideas of Russian national identities. One notion of Russian national identity is that Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus historically belong together. Inspired by post-colonial theory, the relationship to Ukraine is given special attention by comparing representations of Ukraine by the Russian group Svoboda and the Ukrainian performer Ruslana. The last section returns to Germany and examines first how the band identities shift when promoted to a primarily non-Russian speaking audience within the Russendisko scene. At the same time the Russendisko seems to be part of a broader German and Austrian musical focus on the East–especially linked with music from the Balkans–and the discussion is broadened to include this perspective. Returning to the post-Soviet musicians living in Berlin, the discussion is rounded off by examining why the term diaspora is not applicable within the post-Soviet emigrant community. A related monograph is cited as RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2014-78783.

  • Yekelchyk, Serhy. “What is Ukrainian about Ukraine’s pop culture? The strange case of Verka Serduchka”, Canadian-American Slavic studies/Revue canadienne-américaine d’études slaves 44/1–2 (spring–summer 2009) 217–232. [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2010-342]
Vêrka Serdûčka

Abstract: The Ukrainian cross-dressing and language-mixing pop star Vêrka Serdûčka (played by male actor Andrij Danilko) is the most controversial product of Ukrainian post-Soviet mass culture. Ukrainian nationalists reject Serdûčka as a parody of their nation, while Russians took umbrage at her 2007 Eurovision entry, which allegedly contained the words “Russia goodbye”. This article interprets the character of Serdûčka as a jester, who makes audiences laugh at their own cultural stereotypes and prejudices, and at the same time as a representative of Ukraine’s living traditional culture, reflecting an ambiguous national identity of this essentially bilingual country.

  • Lastovec’ka-Solans’ka, Zorâna Mykolaїvna. “Rol’ tradyciї ta nacional’nyh cinnostej u duhovnij kul’turi ukraїnciv”, Naukovij vìsnik Nacìonal’noï Muzičnoï Akademìï Ukraïni ìmenì P.I. Čajkovs’kogo 85 (2010) 36–50. [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2010-16673]

Abstract: Discusses the Ukrainian sociocultural values through the prism of their traditions. Sociocultural dynamics of cultural development, individual ethnic-aesthetic culture, nation’s genetic memory, national self-identification, and their expression in musical art are analyzed.

  • Radzievskij, Vitalij Aleksandrovič. “Muzykal’naâ kul’tura na ukrainskom Majdane”, Muzykal’naâ kul’tura v teoretičeskom i prikladnom izmerenii. I, ed. by Irina Gennadievna Umnova (Kemerovo: Gosudarstvennyj Universitet Kul’tury i Iskusstva, 2014) 88–96. [RILM abstracts of Music Literature, 2014-80333]

Abstract: Describes the musical components of the majdan culture as the main sociocultural dimensions of the Ukrainian culture. The music of the Èvromajdan is discussed.

  • Schwanitz, Mirko. “Rüben sammeln und Sex Pistols hören: Die ukrainische Revolution und der Mut ihrer Künstler”, Österreichische Musikzeitschrift 69/2 (2014) 62–64. [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2014-11161]

Abstract: Discusses the poet and writer Serhìj Žadan, who is considered one of the most powerfully eloquent poets in Europe, with reference as well to selected Ukrainian artists and their situation. Ukraine is presented as the country where most poets, authors, and singers are fighting fiercely for their vision of a new and freer homeland. The translator and author Ûrìj Prohas’ko figures as one of the most important cultural mediators between Ukraine and the German-speaking countries. Andrej Kurkov, internationally the best-known and most-translated Ukrainian author, offered prescient warnings about the scenario that has now come to pass.

  • Morozova, Lûbov’ Sergeevna and Katarzyna Kramnik. “Sounds of Maidan”, Glissando: Magazyn o muzyce współczesnej 26 (2015) http://glissando.pl/en/tekst/sounds-of-maidan/. [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2015-3900]

Abstract: Discusses the soundscape of the Majdan Nezaležnostì (Independence Square) in Kiïv during Èvromajdan.

  • Sonevytsky, Maria. “The freak cabaret on the revolution stage: On the ambivalent politics of femininity, rurality, and nationalism in Ukrainian popular music”, Journal of popular music studies 28/3 (September 2016) 291–314. [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2016-5972]
The Dakh Daughters at Rudolstadt-Festival 2016.

Abstract: In the winter of 2013, as dramatic political demonstrations overtook central Kiïv, Ukraine, screens around the world projected live video feeds of the protests first referred to as Èvromajdan, and later simply as Majdan. Social media was pivotal in inciting the groundswell of opposition that eventually led to the abdication of power by President Vìktor Ânukovič. As part of the broad social contest over meaning that has characterized the Ukrainian Majdan and the ongoing war in Ukraine’s eastern borderlands, online communities have interpreted Majdan-themed music videos in dialectically opposing ways, engaging in bitter feuds over the meanings of politically charged tropes on the comment boards of websites and social media feeds, each side accusing the other of propagandizing on behalf of either Putin’s Russia or the US and European Union. This polarized battle over interpretation often mirrored the entrenched discourse over Ukraine’s liminal geopolitical position: forever the quintessential borderland, buffering an expanding Europe from the Russian sphere of influence. This article considers one such contested performance that circulated in the form of an edited music video, the Èvromajdan performance of the piece Gannusâ by the Ukrainian freak cabaret act known as the Dakh Daughters, a Kiïv-based collective of female actors and musicians known for their dramatic, collage-based musical performance pieces.

  • Kiânovs’ka, Lûbov Oleksandrìvna. “Verluste des ukrainischen Musiklebens in der Periode der ‘Hingerichteten Renaissance’: 1930er Jahre und nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg”, Musicology today: Journal of the National University of Music Bucharest 7/3:27 (July–September 2016) 241–258. [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature with Full Text, 2016-34688]

Abstract: Describes the tragic events of the Ukrainian musical culture in the period of Stalin’s terror. The author explains—from a social and political perspective—the reasons why Ukrainian art and the Ukrainian intelligentsia had been subjected to repression. Most of the prominent artists were murdered; other examples of reprisal are considered, against the director, actor, public figure Les’ Kurbas, and against choreographer, composer, manager Vasil’ Mikolajovič Verhovinec’. The cruel extinction of blind kobza-players under Harkìv is also described. Even after World War II, repressions against Ukrainian artists hadn’t been stopped, as we find out from the case of the composer Vasil’ Oleksandrovič Barvìns’kij.

  • Sonevytsky, Maria. Wild music: Sound and sovereignty in Ukraine. Music/culture (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 2019). [RILM abstracts of Music Literature, 2019-11778]

Abstract: What are the uses of musical exoticism? This book tracks vernacular Ukrainian discourses of wildness as they manifested in popular music during a volatile decade of Ukrainian political history bracketed by two revolutions. From the Eurovision Song Contest to reality TV, from Indigenous radio to the revolution stage, the author assesses how these practices exhibit and re-imagine Ukrainian tradition and culture. As the rise of global populism forces us to confront the category of state sovereignty anew, the author proposes innovative paradigms for thinking through the creative practices that constitute sovereignty, citizenship, and nationalism.

– Compiled by Katya Slutskaya Levine, Editor, RILM

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Filed under Ethnomusicology, Europe, featured, Instruments, Musicology, Performance practice, Performers, Politics, Popular music

Music & minorities

On 6 December 2021 the Music and Minorities Research Center at the Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst Wien launched Music & minorities (M&M; ISSN: 2791-4569),

A peer-reviewed English-language, online-only, fee-free, diamond open access journal, M&M is dedicated to the scholarly exploration of the multi-dimensional field introduced by the concepts of music and minorities. It is published by mdwPress.

The journal is inclusive of music, dance, and other sound-based social phenomena. The term minority refers to communities, groups, or individuals that are at risk of discrimination on grounds of ethnicity, race, religion, language, gender, sexual orientation, disability, political opinion, displacement, social or economic deprivation, and their intersections.

Contributions to M&M may address all aspects of music and/or dance in the context of minorities. This may encompass aspects like genres of music and/or dance of certain minorities, societal discourses thereon, relationships between hegemonic and marginalized groups, depictions of minorities and/or their musical expressions in other contexts, or the meanings and values that are attributed to musical and other performing practices.

M&M encourages a diversity of approaches and methods, such as ethnography, theoretical reflection, historiography, or other forms of cultural criticism and social analysis. M&M is a forum for both foundational and engaged/applied research. The journal also welcomes interdisciplinary approaches.

Below, Dawood Sarkhosh, an Afghani singer/songwriter currently living in Vienna, is one of the musicians discussed in the inaugural issue.

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Filed under Ethnomusicology, New periodicals

Queer musicology: An annotated bibliography

Drummers of Fogo Azul perform at the New York Pride Parade on June 30, 2019. Photo credit: Luiz C. Ribeiro/New York daily news

The word queer originally meant strange, or odd, and was used as a derogatory term for non-heterosexuals. Beginning in the 1980s, scholars and activists began using the term to refer to sexual or gender identity minorities, such as gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, etc., as a way to combat social stigma.

Since the emergence of queer theory in the 1980s, a growing number of music scholars have begun to focus on the connections among gender identity, sexual orientation, and music/sound. Critical of biologically-based orientations, and emphasizing social gender roles and sexual orientations, queer theory has inspired music scholars to re-examine musicians, music, sound, narrative, and aesthetics through the lens of sex and gender. Below, we share some literature of queer musicology collected by RILM.

– Mu Qian, Editor, RILM

__________________________

  • Moon, Steven. “Queer theory, ethno/musicology, and the disorientation of the field”, Current musicology 106 (2020) 9–33. [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2020-13066]

Abstract: Examines the development of ethno/musicologies’ (queer) theoretical borrowings from anthropology, sociology, and literary/cultural studies in order to historicize the contemporary queer moment both fields are experiencing, and demonstrates the ways in which it might disorient the field. It traces the histories of this queering trend by beginning with early conceptualizations of the ethno/musicological projects, scientism, and quantitative methods. This is in relation to the anthropological method of ethnocartography in order to understand the historical difficulties in creating a queer qualitative field, as opposed to those based in hermeneutics. The first section places the problematics of this enumeration in dialogue with the ethno/musicologies’ tendencies towards nationalizing and globalizing narratives that often run contrary to a queer project. The second section steps back in time to understand how music studies, broadly, entered the queer conversation through early feminist literature in ethnomusicology and historical musicology, as well as literary/cultural studies and anthropology.

  • Maus, Fred Everett. “Classical concert music and queer listening”, Transposition: Musique et sciences sociales 3 (mai 2013) 11p. [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature with Full Text, 2013-31866]

Abstract: The norms of the classical music concert, familiar from the 20th century onward in European and United States contexts, favor an apparently uniform practice of attentive, silent listening, the audience seated in rows with a uniform visual focus. However, within this appearance of quiet conformity, listeners have diverse, intense experiences. The discontinuity between experience and demeanor reflects powerful cultural oppositions between inner and outer, public and private. The discontinuity is particularly stark in light of the erotic qualities of music, as described in brilliant work by Susan McClary (Feminine endings, 1991; RILM 1991-2755) and Suzanne Cusick (On a lesbian relationship with music, 1994; RILM 1994-2517). My essay returns to their work, expanding their accounts to consider a broader range of sexual subjectivities, including bottom subjectivity as described by Trevor Hoppe and femme subjectivity as described by Ann Cvetkovich.

  • Hankins, Sarah. “Ethnographic positionality and psychoanalysis: A queer look at sex and race in fieldwork”, Queering the field: Sounding out ethnomusicology, ed. by Gregory F. Barz and William Cheng (New York: Oxford University Press, 2020) 353–363. [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2020-170]

Abstract: Explores the queer dynamics of heterosexual interactions, thinking through issues of race by way of gender. The author further complicates matters by weaving ethnographic discourses of positionally together with psychoanalytic theories of sexuality and the subject. She seeks to bring psychoanalysis—a process she has relied on in her private life to address painful experiences—into some kind of consonance with the academic discourses that have long been touchstones of her professional life. By investigating the multivalent, confusing, and sometimes contradictory dimensions of her own fieldwork, she hopes to encourage further conversations about how sexuality and race intersect in known and unknown ways for other queer ethnographers, in other cross-cultural contexts. Her case study of the Rasta Club in south Tel Aviv is a vivid reflection on queer identity within the context of heterosexual interactions, especially violent ones.

  • Künzig, Bernd. “New queer music: Homosexualität und Neue Musik—Eine Ästhetische Spurensuche”, Neue Zeitschrift für Musik 178/1 (2017) 12–16. [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature with Full Text, 2017-40456]

Abstract: The degree to which sexual orientation affects artistic production has been discussed in various contexts—especially in the anglophone world. However, with respect to composition it remains an open question. This is true of homosexuality, too, which could be openly discussed after the sexual revolution of the 1968 movement. Even today, if one pursues the inquiry, one comes across many not so obvious connections between music and sexuality.

  • Sullivan, James. “The queer context and composition of Samuel Barber’s Despite and still“, Twentieth- and twenty-first-century song cycles: Analytical pathways toward performance, ed. by Gordon Sly and Michael Callahan (New York: Routledge, 2021) 79–96. [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2021-264]

Abstract: The author’s approach to Barber’s Despite and still (1968) foregrounds Barber’s autobiographical connection to the cycle, particularly his sexuality and his relationship with Gian Carlo Menotti. With regard to the texts that Barber chose, which include poems by Robert Graves and Theodore Roethke and an excerpt from James Joyce’s Ulysses, the author shows how each text touches upon a particular point of tension in Barber’s relationship with Menotti. Musically, he then demonstrates how Barber’s settings dramatize that tension through the manipulation of perceived meter, especially via close imitation. The essay thus integrates musical analysis with poetic structure and biography.

  • Jones, Matthew J. “‘Something inside so strong’: The Flirtations and the queer politics of a cappella”, Journal of popular music studies 28/2 (June 2016) 142–185. [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2016-19760]

Abstract: Initially formed in 1987, The Flirtations billed themselves as “the world’s most famous, openly-gay, all-male, politically active, multicultural, a cappella singing doo-wop group”. Over the course of the next decade, The Flirts—as they were affectionately known—recorded three albums, crisscrossed the globe to perform at gay pride events and AIDS rallies, sang in small theaters and concert venues, and even appeared in a Hollywood film (Jonathan Demme’s Philadelphia released in 1993). Committed advocates of LGBT rights, feminism, multiculturalism, and AIDS activism, The Flirtations used the nostalgic sounds of close-harmony a cappella singing to deliver political messages, enlighten listeners, and entertain audiences. Through fluctuations in membership, personality conflicts, and the AIDS-related deaths of two founding members, The Flirtations kept singing and left behind a unique repository of queer music at the end of the 20th century. Drawing on previously unavailable archival materials, new interviews with surviving members of the group, and close readings of select musical examples, I situate The Flirtations within the history of U.S. close-harmony singing and examine the queer politics of a cappella in their music.

  • Doyle, JD. “Queer music radio: Entertainment, education, and activism”, Journal of popular music studies 18/2 (2006) 215–219. [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2006-5846]

Abstract: Queer music heritage, hosted by the author on KPFT-FM, Houston, Texas, seeks to educate and entertain audiences in the name of LGBT activism. The radio program is designed as a way to share music from a variety of genres—including blues, country, and disco—with gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, and questioning lyrical themes. Music and interviews are organized into themed shows that address issues such as the concept of “gay music”, expressing sexual identity, and the shifting cultural place of sexual identity in history.

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Filed under 20th- and 21st-century music, Ethnomusicology, Musicology, Popular music

Soundscape: Schafer’s heritage and an annotated bibliography

Raymond Murray Schafer (1933–2021), the Canadian composer, author, educator, and ecologist who coined the term soundscape, died on 14 August at 88. Through the years Schafer’s concept of soundscape has inspired scholars in not only musicology and ethnomusicology, but also history, anthropology, and more.

In 1969, with the aim of “finding solutions for an ecologically balanced soundscape that harmonizes the relationship between human society and its sound environment,” Schafer founded the world soundscape project at the Simon Fraser University. Based on this project, his book, The tuning of the world, was published in 1977 (reprinted in 1993 and retitled as The soundscape: Our sonic environment and the tuning of the world). Schafer’s visualization of the sound environment led to the concept of soundscape, which refers not only to the sounds in people’s environments, but also to the interactions between people, their hearing, their sound environment, and their social environment.

The concept of soundscape inspired new approaches for musicological research. Since Schafer first suggested this term, generations of scholars not only focused on sound itself, but also interpreted various cultural phenomena from the perspective of sound: echo, noise, silence… these terms are seemingly abstract, yet each contains deep meaning and controversy. Since the 1970s, the sound environment we live in has been changing rapidly. Considering the harmony and balance that the concept of soundscape has emphasized from the very beginning, what will be the relationship between human communities and ecology in the future? Please join RILM in following recent publications on sound studies.

(Introduced and compiled by Liu Xintong)

Schafer, R. Murray. The soundscape: Our sonic environment and the tuning of the world (Rochester: Destiny, 1993). [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 1993-3992]

Abstract: Studies the evolution of soundscapes in connection with culture, urban development, and technology. The soundscape—a term coined by the author—is our sonic environment, the ever-present array of noises with which we all live. Beginning with the primordial sounds of nature, we have experienced an ever-increasing complexity of our sonic surroundings. As civilization develops, new noises rise up around us: from the creaking wheel, the clang of the blacksmith’s hammer, and the distant chugging of steam trains to the “sound imperialism” of airports, city streets, and factories. The author contends that we now suffer from an overabundance of acoustic information and a proportionate diminishing of our ability to hear the nuances and subtleties of sound. Our task, he maintains, is to listen, analyze, and make distinctions. As a society we have become more aware of the toxic wastes that can enter our bodies through the air we breathe and the water we drink. In fact, the pollution of our sonic environment is no less real. Schafer emphasizes the importance of discerning the sounds that enrich and feed us and using them to create healthier environments. To this end, he explains how to classify sounds, appreciating their beauty or ugliness, and provides exercises and “soundwalks” to help us become more discriminating and sensitive to the sounds around us. This book is a pioneering exploration of our acoustic environment, past and present, and an attempt to imagine what it might become in the future. 

The study of soundscape has developed considerably since Schafer first used the term. However, Schafer’s own work and his world soundscape project have received much criticism, primarily because of his way of treating sound as an objectified presence, ignoring its experiential nature, and his project’s failure to include the sound cultures of Canada’s First Nation peoples. However, Schafer’s concept of soundscape opened up new horizons in sound studies, and subsequent scholars have continued to build on his foundation to expand the theoretical framework of soundscape. Below are some examples of cutting-edge research on soundscape.

Abe, Marié. Resonances of chindon-ya: Sounding space and sociality in contemporary Japan. Music/culture (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 2018). [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2018-3821] 

Abstract: Investigates the intersection of sound, public space, and sociality in contemporary Japan. Chindon-ya, dating back to the 1840s, are ostentatiously costumed street musicians who publicize a business by parading through neighborhood streets. Historically not considered music, but part of the everyday soundscape, this vernacular performing art provides a window into shifting notions of musical labor, the politics of everyday listening and sounding, and street music at social protest in Japan. Against the background of long-term economic downturn, growing social precarity, and the visually and sonically saturated urban streets of Japan, this book examines how this seemingly outdated means of advertisement has recently gained traction as an aesthetic, economic, and political practice after decades of inactivity. It challenges Western conceptions of listening that have normalized the way we think about the relationship between sound, space, and listening subjects, and advances a growing body of interdisciplinary scholarship that examines the ways social fragmentation is experienced and negotiated in post-industrial societies.

Ochoa Gautier, Ana María. Aurality: Listening and knowledge in nineteenth-century Colombia. Sign, storage, transmission (Durham: Duke University Press, 2014). [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2014-65359]

Abstract: Explores how listening has been central to the production of notions of language, music, voice, and sound that determine the politics of life. Drawing primarily from 19th-century Colombian sources, the author locates sounds produced by different living entities at the juncture of the human and nonhuman. An “acoustically tuned” analysis of a wide array of texts reveals multiple debates on the nature of the aural. These discussions were central to a politics of the voice harnessed in the service of the production of different notions of personhood and belonging. Thus, Latin America and the Caribbean emerge as a historical site where the politics of life and the politics of expression inextricably entangle the musical and the linguistic, knowledge and the sensorial.

Daughtry, J. Martin. Listening to war: Sound, music, trauma and survival in wartime Iraq (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015). [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2015-10080]

Abstract: A groundbreaking study of the centrality of listening to the experience of modern warfare. Based on years of ethnographic interviews with U.S. military service members and Iraqi civilians, as well as on direct observations of wartime Iraq, the author reveals how these populations learned to extract valuable information from the ambient soundscape while struggling with the deleterious effects that it produced in their ears, throughout their bodies, and in their psyches. He examines the dual-edged nature of sound—its potency as a source of information and a source of trauma—within a sophisticated conceptual frame that highlights the affective power of sound and the vulnerability and agency of individual auditors. By theorizing violence through the prism of sound and sound through the prism of violence, the author provides a new vantage point for examining these strangely conjoined phenomena. Two chapters dedicated to wartime music in Iraqi and U.S. military contexts show how music was both an important instrument of the military campaign and the victim of a multitude of violent acts throughout the war.

Dillon, Emma. The sense of sound: Musical meaning in France (1260–1330). New cultural history of music (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2012-25429]

Abstract: Among the most memorable innovations of music and poetry in 13th-century France was a genre that seemed to privilege sound over sense. The polytextual motet is especially well-known to scholars of the Middle Ages for its tendency to conceal complex allegorical meaning in a texture that, in performance, made words less, rather than more, audible. What did it mean to create a musical effect so potentially independent from the meaning of words? Is it possible such supermusical effects themselves had significance? A radical recontextualization of French song in the heyday of the motet ca. 1260–1330 makes the case for listening to musical sound against a range of other potently meaningful sonorities, often premised on non-verbal meaning. In identifying new audible interlocutors to music, our ears are opened to a broad spectrum of sounds often left out of historical inquiry, from the hubbub of the medieval city; to the eloquent babble of madmen; to the violent clamor of charivari; to the charismatic chatter of prayer. Drawing on a rich array of artistic evidence (music, manuscripts, poetry, and images) and contemporary cultural theory locates musical production in this period within a larger cultural environment concerned with representing sound and its emotional, ethical, and social effects. 

Manabe, Noriko. The revolution will not be televised: Protest music after Fukushima (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015). [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2015-13996] 

Abstract: Nuclear power has been a contentious issue in Japan since the 1950s, and in the aftermath of the Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster, the conflict has only grown. Government agencies and the nuclear industry continue to push a nuclear agenda, while the mainstream media adheres to the official line that nuclear power is Japan’s future. Public debate about nuclear energy is strongly discouraged. Nevertheless, antinuclear activism has swelled into one of the most popular and passionate movements in Japan, leading to a powerful wave of protest musicMusic has played a central role in expressing antinuclear sentiments and mobilizing political resistance in Japan. A combination of musical analysis with ethnographic participation offers an innovative typology of the spaces central to the performance of protest music—cyberspace, demonstrations, festivals, and recordings. These four spaces encourage different modes of participation and methods of political messaging. The openness, mobile accessibility, and potential anonymity of cyberspace have allowed musicians to directly challenge the ethos of silence that permeated Japanese culture post-Fukushima. Moving from cyberspace to real space, the author shows how the performance and reception of music played at public demonstrations are shaped by the urban geographies of Japanese cities. While short on open public space, urban centers in Japan offer protesters a wide range of governmental and commercial spaces in which to demonstrate, with activist musicians tailoring their performances to the particular landscapes and soundscapes of each. Music festivals are a space apart from everyday life, encouraging musicians and audience members to freely engage in political expression through informative and immersive performances. Conversely, Japanese record companies and producers discourage major-label musicians from expressing political views in recordings, forcing antinuclear musicians to express dissent indirectly: through allegories, metaphors, and metonyms.

Schwarz, Arman. Puccini’s soundscapes: Realism and modernity in Italian opera. Centro Studi Giacomo Puccini: Premio rotary Giacomo Puccini ricerca 2 (Firenze: Leo S. Olschki, 2018). [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2018-58613]

Abstract: From the bells in Tosca and the birdcalls in Madama Butterfly to the horns and sirens in Il tabarro and the music box melodies that inspired Turandot, Puccini’s operas rely to an unprecedented degree on realistic and seemingly unmediated acoustic objects. Focusing on the pervasive if little-discussed aspect of the composer’s art, presented are two categories of sound and realism to rethink the shape of Puccini’s career, and to offer new interpretations of many of his major works, as well as those of his contemporaries. It asks how Italian composers responded to some of the fundamental transformations of auditory culture during the fin-de-siècle, and resituates their works within the discourses (aesthetic, political, and technological) of Italian modernity.

Rasmussen, Anne K. Women, the recited Qur’an, and Islamic music in Indonesia (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010). [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2010-6148]

Abstract: Going to the heart of religious musical praxis in Indonesia, home to the largest Muslim population in the world, this book explores a rich public soundscape, where women recite the divine texts of the Qur’ān, and where an extraordinary diversity of Arab-influenced Islamic musical styles and genres, also performed by women, flourishes. Based on unique and revealing ethnographic research beginning at the end of Suharto’s New Order and continuing into the era of Reformation, the book considers the powerful role of music in the expression of religious nationalism. In particular, it focuses on musical style, women’s roles, and the ideological and aesthetic issues raised by the Indonesian style of recitation.

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Jon Higgins and Karnatak music

Jon B. Higgins first encountered Karnatak music as an undergraduate at Wesleyan University in 1962. He was awarded a Fulbright scholarship in 1964 to begin study in India, and was granted an unprecedented third year extension based on the seriousness of his efforts. His first public appearance at the Tyāgarāja ārādhana at Tiruvaiyaru in 1965 was the beginning of many successful concerts to follow.

Over the next 20 years he distinguished himself as an accomplished performer, earning a sizeable and appreciative audience both in India and North America. He began teaching in 1971, finally settling at Wesleyan in 1978, where, along with his many administrative responsibilities, his singing and his interest in South India remained a constant preoccupation.

His interest and love for Karnatak music was a passionate one that fed into the strong belief that the best way to understand a music—either to talk or to write about—is to know it well from the inside.

This according to “Jon B. Higgins (1939–84)” by Tanjore Viswanathan (Ethnomusicology XXX/1 [winter 1986] pp. 113–114).

Today would have been Higgins’s 80th birthday! Below, one of his studio recordings.

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Iconography in early ethnomusicology

 

Visual depictions of music and music making outside of Europe can be found in abundance in 17th- and 18th- century travel accounts, missionaries’ reports, and books predicated on the idea of the universality of music.

Illustrations of non-European music from this period reflect the early stages in Europe of an ethnomusicological conception of the world, and their pictorial rhetoric often encompassed areas of study that continue to interest scholars in the 20th century. The close connection between image and concept in musicological thinking suggests that the history of the field may perhaps reach further back and may have developed more cohesively than is currently assumed.

This according to “Missionaries, magical muses, and magnificent menageries: Image and imagination in the early history of ethnomusicology” by Philip V. Bohlman (The world of music XXX/3 [1988] pp. 5–27).

Above, in his Moeurs des sauvages amériquains, comparées aux moeurs des premiers temps, Joseph-François Lafitau depicted the imaginary world of Native American myths as well as the empirical world of his observations.

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El oído pensante

El oído pensante

In 2013 the Centro Argentino de Información Científica y Tecnológica (CAICYT) launched El oído pensante, an open-access, peer-reviewed online journal that aims to promote the discussion of theoretical, methodological, and epistemological dilemmas faced by various kinds of music research.

Unpublished articles in Spanish, Portuguese, and English dealing with ethnomusicology, anthropology, sociology of music, popular music studies, musicology, and cultural studies, among other disciplines, are received. Particularly welcome are writings that address theoretical paradigms, methodology, transdisciplinarity, knowledge validation, research ideologies, representation resources, narrative strategies, ethic and esthetic research perspectives, relationships during the fieldwork experience, social and political research significance, the researcher’s perceptive and conceptual baggage, new technologies, and their ways of spreading and sharing knowledge.

Since the intention of the journal is to promote critical thought aimed to dismantle usual concepts and to open new approaches, papers restricted to analyzing particular cases will not be accepted. However, it is expected that authors bring some cases into the text in order to support their main ideas. All articles are abstracted in Spanish, Portuguese, and English.

Below, Um a zero by Pixinguinha and Benedito Lacerda, a work discussed in the inaugural issue.

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American cantorate

david koussevitsky

American cantorate presents all of the raw data of the 1984–86 NEH-funded project History of the American Cantorate, which was directed by Mark Slobin.

This free online resource includes over 100 listenable oral history interviews of cantors; a listenable 93-cantor core sample of sung selections of 8 liturgical texts, a first in Jewish music studies; questionnaire survey responses of hundreds of cantors and lay leaders; letters solicited from rabbis about working with cantors; research reports and data summaries commissioned for the project; and ongoing additions of archival documentation.

David Koussevitsky is one of the cantors featured in the study. A related video is here.

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Síneris

Launched in 2012, Síneris is a monthly Spanish online musicology journal born from the experience of some of the members of the now-extinct Jugar con Fuego.

The journal aims to present research papers, essays, literary creations, opinions, interviews, and criticism of recent works, performances, and writings. It casts a wide net, including Western classical music, ethnomusicological topics, popular music, cinema, and dance.

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Analytical approaches to world music

Founded in response to the excitement generated by the First International Conference on Analytical Approaches to World Music in 2010, Analytical approaches to world music (ISSN 2158-5296) brings together disciplines including music theory, ethnomusicology, musicology, cognitive psychology, computer science, and mathematics for a cross-cultural dialogue that aims to promote and enhance understanding of the diverse collection of traditions that is commonly referred to as world music.

Edited by Lawrence Shuster and Rob Schultz, the inaugural issue of this peer-reviewed online journal includes articles by Robert Morris, Sarah Weiss, David Locke, Richard Widdess, Jay Rahn, and Michael Tenzer.

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