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WEEK 1

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"Contemplating Music" (1985)

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"Who Hears Here? Black Music, Critical Bias, and the Musicological Skin Trade” (2001)

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Music research methods

History of music studies

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Criticism: The study of meaning and value of art works.

New Musicology: Transformation, people thinking/studying differently. Aware of music being a social phenomenon.

Issue: Musicology has been defined the study of history of Western Music in high-art tradition. (very limited info)

Approaching Musicology with criticism

Musicology: History of W.A.M.

Music Theory: Analysis

Ethnomusicology: Everything else

It shows that Musicology back then standardized the study of Western Music and left out the history and analysis of everywhere else.

Ethnomusicology studies back then will only provide the culture of different places, leaving out history and analysis/theory of each places.

Limitation of analysis: It studies the text of the music, though it could be more through experiences and such. Criticism helps with this isues.

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Issue: The study of Black music is very limiting with no place to go, people back then perceived it as "just jazz and spirituals".

Related to Kerman's topic of needing criticism in studies such as Musicology.

Tracing the political economy of African American music.

There wasn't space for analysis for black music

(pg-17-19)

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Musicology back then was the study of Western Art Music, excluding everything else around the world

Music Theory was also (if not still) the standard for studying the analysis of Western Art Music back then, lacking in aspects of culture and much more.

Ethnomusicology back then, was the study of different cultures of music, excluding information about history and analysis.

Criticism: The study of meaning and value of art works.

Updating Musicology to integrate criticism thinking to provide culture.

Same with Ethnomusicology and Music Theory, all three studies are limiting, excluding the "rich" & "juicy" information.

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Traditional perspective on black music often marginalizes the experiences of artists and audiences

Baraka argues "that class and race in the American context should be central to jazz criticism and that writers on black music need to "set up standards of judgement and aesthetic excellence that depend on our [ ] native knowledge and understanding of the underlying philosophies and local cultural referents that produced blues and jazz in order to produce valid critical writing or commentary about it."

Need a more inclusive & critical approach to studying African American music, one that values its cultural narratives & societal connections.

Expanding boundaries of musicological traditions to better reflect the complexities of African American musical expressions.

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WEEK 2

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"The Castrato Meets the Cyborg" (2011)

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17th Century, trafficked & mutilated bodies were common around those times. Ex. Castrati/Castrato (Male singers who have been castrated to before puberty to maintain a high voice range)

"The changes relate both to the increasing association of high voices with female roles and to the rise of enlightenment philosophies that raised cultural consciousness about human rights and individual choice."

In the 17th century, many European countries preferred castrato's over females due to female bodies being too erotic for performances.

Royeur and the fountain

"In the early modern world the connections between humans and machines centered on matter, hydraulics, pumping fluids, and enhanced physicality. Forced worked on both humans and machines and served as their interface. This view lets us see the cyborg as a lens for understanding particular constructions of the human body, rather than a historically proscribed term of art."

"The castrati's voice exemplifies the notion of cyborg as Haraway famously defines it: "a fusion of the organic and the technical forged in particular historical, cultural practices." I am not positing the castrato as an automation, an early modern machine that might be understood as the precursor to the robot. Rather, their voices represents an ontological merging of cultural and natural artifacts."

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Castrato: High voiced male singer, castrated before puberty

Lead part in 17th/18th Italian operas.

Spain, Germany, Italy

Castrati were seen as sex symbols because they were sterile.

Preferred to castrate young boys for singing instead of women

Now, men conform their bodies (practice their voices/vocals) to hit higher ranges instead of being castrated.

Italian courts and churches hired the earliest castrati for social and economical purposes.

To preserve the high voices (investment)

Isn't sexual

Bonnie's intention was to make the past familiar, and the present strange

We're so quick to judge the procedures back then that similar procedures are happening right now. (models, athletes, etc.)

We're the products of entertainment industries

Cyborg theory: The "middle" between natural and technical world

Looking at history and the change over time

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History and historiography
Music history and historical musicology

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WEEK 3

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"Geri Allen’s Sacred Works: More Than the Music" (2020)

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Music theory

Music analysis

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Kerman: "While theory clearly is an indispensable part of the study of any one of the world's music systems, musicians who call themselves theorists nearly always confine themselves to Western art music, past and present"

Ramsey: "The listener, performer, and composer is not historically culturally, or socially situated vis-a-vis the musical materials under discussion."

Andrews: "Repetition is common in many forms of indigenous music, and Allen is well versed is now it functions within African American folk and vernacular traditions. Most significant to this understanding is the notion that repetitions are rarely literal."

Harmonic Analysis

"Moments"

Set class analysis

Andrews: "Although both jazz chord and set class nomenclature are used in the discussion below, the following commentary is not meant to be an analysis per se, Rather my goal is to use this analytic vocabulary to provide a method of descriptive commentary to the music."

Allen's Musical signature

Four- and eight- bar structures despite meter

Collective improvisation

Jazz lexicon

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Geri grew up in Detroit

Vibrant cultural & Musical environment

Her influences are Alice Coltrane, Tommy Flanagan, & Barry Harris

Her works reflects styles such as jazz, blues, R&B, funk, hip-hop & modern European classical music.

Admired composers Stravinsky, Debussy & Ravel

Mary Lou Williams

Both women faced challenges female artists in a male-dominated jazz.

Both loves integrating spirituality into jazz

Both deeply invested in education & mentorship

Her commitment to sacred music was linked to her admiration for Williams

Allen's sacred works

Deep spiritual & cultural awareness

Her upbringing in church

Exploration of Eastern philosophies

Views jazz as a spiritual expression

"For the Healing of the Nations"

Opens with "Lift Every Voice and Sing" signaling Allen's connection to African American history and social justice

Use of African American spiritual "Oh Freedom" and a fusion of sacred and secular traditions

"Stones and Streams"

Piece inspired by speeches of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Themes of Freedom and social injustice

Blending tonal & non-tonal elements

Geri Allen needs more recognition for her work

Her commitment to jazz as spiritual and cultural practice

Her music transcend boundaries

Her ability to honor tradition while innovating within it

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Barberini: In order to keep afloat, they would have castrati and trumpeter's to elevate or maintain their political/social status in Rome. (Pope Urban VIII, Rome)

Social, political, economical purposes

Gordon's reading relates to Kerman's thoughts on criticism and musicology, because it wants us to not only think about the musical/technical aspect of the subject but to think about the political/historical/economical portion of the "subject' (aka castrati, and why it was common back then).

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WEEK 4

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Anthropology and ethnography
Ethnomusicology and musical ethnography

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"Moving", in Shadow in the Fields" (2008)

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Ethnomusicology: Study of why & how human beings are musical (Rice 2014,1)

Ethnomusicology lacking certain aspects, very limiting, vis versa with music theory when it comes to Western Music.

"A generalized description of jams would go like this: A taiko jam is always loud, features extended moments of chaos, and is hugely enjoyable for the participants. That's always the point: A jam is a participatory event rather than one to be watched or listened to as an audience member." (pg.86)

Wong's method and how it can help with our own project is to immerse and participate as a player, rather than observing from the outside, to further your knowledge within the research.

Wong starts telling her stories about the 2 separate jams she participated in.

The 2nd jam was the one she felt more enjoyable with.

Bodily experience, her own experience

Very detailed about her observations

Love how she explains the different behaviors and actions each players does in when it comes to their level of taiko experiences.

Mixture of ethnography & performance

She explains taiko terms to make it more inclusive-ish to the readers.

It shows rather than tells. It is specific and particular.

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Methods of Ethnomusicology is still in question

Performative ethnography

"The question is whether there are effective ways to speak to all such readers at once ands still satisfy as both an ethnomusicologist and as a taiko player."

"Even as natives, we go where we don't belong, we transgress borders. And that is the funny thing about "native anthropology." Even when we work at home, we tend to respond and to write as if we were outsiders. That is, we continue to translate the ways of one group of people for another group of people. We don't assume a native audience, we assume an academic audience."

"The deeper purpose of my ethnographic practice is the matter of performative effects. How does taiko change the terms of racialized practices? What kinds of interethnic and intergenerational encounter does it teach and demand? How can we think of taiko as the public performance of critical pedagogy?

Allowing performance to be both the subject and medium of study, enabling deeper insights into cultural and social dynamics.

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WEEK 5

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"The Soundscape of Modernity" (2002)

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Science and technology studies

The scientific turn in music (studies)

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Archival, Acoustics, Architectural History, Economic History, Criticism

Challenge of syncing video and sound (vitaphone)

Core of early technology in the U.S. was black face, concert music, early European music.

"Thomas Edison's earliest ideas for creating moving pictures had been stimulated by his invention of the phonograph, and he had intended from the very start."

"Telephone engineers modified thier circuits to eradicate the electrical noise; spatial noise was eliminated by the construction of the soundproof and nonreverberant space of the telephone booth." (235)

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"Like the telephone, the phonograph introduced people to sounds that had been severed from architectural space, and it taught them to distinguish between desired sound signals and unwanted sounds or noises."

"From start to finish, phonographic sound was isolated as much as possible from any spatial context."

"But the modern auditorium was more than a conscious or unconscious attempt to simulate architecturally the sound of electrically reproduced music. While the popularity of this type of auditorium was certainly reinforced by the similarity of its sound to that of the new electroacoustic technologies, its origins preceded the diffusion of those technologies."

"Knudsen's research led him to argue in 1926 that the best environment for listening was the reverberation-free outdoors. Science reported upon this "contradiction of the widespread idea that a properly constructed auditorium reinforces and improves audibility", and the journal declared that auditorium walls were nothing but "a necessary nuisance."

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WEEK 6

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Popular music criticism

Pop culture

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"Black Noise" (1994)

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Methods Tricia Rose uses:

Criticism

Black cultural theory

Urban history

Personal experiences

Black feminism

Working-class opposition

Listening

Transcription

Music video analysis

Sampling

Participant observation

Media analysis

Literature review

Interviews in details

"The music itself" is insufficient

Sampling

Making records

Black teens and technology

Insurance policies

Looking/Researching at the music is not enough to cover all these issues

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"From the outset, rap music has articulated the pleasures and problems of black urban life in contemporary America. Rappers speak with the
voice of personal experience, taking on the identity of the observer or narrator. Male rappers often speak from the perspective of a young man who wants social status in a locally meaningful way."

"At the same time, the stories, ideas, and thoughts articulated in rap lyrics invoke and revise stylistic and thematic elements that are deeply wedded to a number of black cultural storytelling forms, most prominently toasting and the blues"

"Given the racially discriminatory context within which cultural syncretism takes place, some rappers have equated white participation with a process of dilution and subsequent theft of black culture. Although the terms dilution and theft do not capture the complexity of cultural incorporation and syncretism, this interpretation has more than a grain of truth in it. There is abundant evidence that white artists imitating black styles have greater economic opportunity and

access to larger audiences than black innovators."

"In short, it is black America's most dynamic contemporary popular cultural, intellectual, and spiritual vessel."

"Rap music, like many powerful black cultural forms before it, resonates for people from vast and diverse backgrounds. The cries of pain, anger, sexual desire, and pleasure that rappers articulate speak to hip hop's vast fan base for different reasons. For some, rappers offer symbolic prowess, a sense of black energy and creativity in the face of omnipresent oppressive forces; others listen to rap with an ear toward the hidden voices of the oppressed, hoping to understand America's large, angry, and “unintelligible” population."

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WEEK 7

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"Boccherini"s Body" (2005)

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Improvisation & composition

Performance as research

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Carnal musicology, under the performance methodology

The idea of understanding the body movements and its process through musical text

Similar concept with Method Acting

"I am aware of acting the connection between parts of someone who cannot be here in the flesh. I have become not just his hands, but his binding agent, the continuity, the consciousness; it is only a step over from the work of maintaining my own person as some kind of unitary thing, the necessary daily fiction of establishing and keeping a hold on identity."

Question: Are these body movements reciprocated? Even if the actual musician is dead, can they still respond back to your performance?

My response: In a way, yes? I think it's reciprocated because the musician is responding to the body movements by the musical notes throughout the piece.

Music is one of those things that sometimes cannot be backed up with science. In a way, the only way to back up music is just the feeling and vibes of it.

Thought: Author vs the work (performance). ex. whitney housten and dolly parton. ex. strange fruit.

Is music the text or performance.

Bring back the body into the texts.

Improvisation vs Composition, where is the boundary between these two ideas?

Every composers are improvisers

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"Because the performer's relationship to the work of art must have an extensively explored bodily element, a performing identification with a composer is based on a particular type of knowledge which could be called carnal."

"In terms of sensation, playing two strings at once will offer increased resistance to the right hand and arm; further resistance takes place between muscle groups: the deltoid and biceps..."

"In the sonata movement at hand, Boccherini invites an exploration of the pleasure of making resonant sound through the amount of repetition he provides; this gives the performer plenty of time in which to find the requisite muscular balance."

"To be launched upon a melody, airborne among the expressive and muscular demands of shaping it, seems only to be adequately described by reference to the experience of singing. David Sudnow remarks that a central process in learning an instrument is the acquisition of a "general style of bodily movement . . . of a complexity that in no way can be readily reduced to some existing equation" and which has the signal feature of generalizability to (and from) the rest of the body, rather in the manner of a hologram."

"I am aware of acting the connection between parts of someone who cannot be here in the flesh. I have become not just his hands, but his binding agent, the continuity, the consciousness; it is only a step over from the work of maintaining my own person as some kind of unitary thing, the necessary daily fiction of establishing and keeping a hold on identity."

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WEEK 8

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Reciprocity and justice
Activism as research

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"For the Daughters of Harlem” (2021)

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Week 8 Lecture (Ellie Hisama & Lucie Vágnerová)

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Week 8 Lecture (Ellie Hisama & Lucie Vágnerová)

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What are the intentions of these community based projects?

To provide a space to create music for black women in the Harlem community

The term soundworks

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The use of the term sound instead of music or piece relieves the participants of any rules that are relegated to either term."

"In introducing the students to a catalog of sound work that may not be juxtaposed in a genre- based course on contemporary music, we wanted to demonstrate the rich diversity of approaches to composition today and to emphasize that there is no single type of composer, genre, or style of music that we were privileging."

"The objective of contemporary education to turn out successful workers and consumers and the system’s attendant focus on standardized testing have also contributed to a long-standing lack of support for the arts. It is telling that even the very scarce coverage of vanishing music classes typically focuses on the documented correlation between music education and higher test scores in other “core” subjects such as math and science, and on the advantage of having a background in the performing arts that students can note in their college applications."

"This approach to music-centric academic work is self-consciously interested in reciprocity–– in addressing and redressing the “disparities often found between the university community, and the community within which it is located and upon whose service labour it depends.” Public- outreach is charity: universities often rely on the natural, infrastructural, and human resources of a surrounding community, so it is equitable to share our resources in return."

"The “Daughters” initiative is rooted in our concern with enacting social justice and is fundamentally site-specific and collaborative. That is, our work evolved from our interest in learning about and responding to the historical and current spatial and political contexts of our university and the surrounding community and from recognizing the resource gaps that demarcate this relationship."