Street Music

Music ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Watt ◽  
Daniel Bacchieri

For centuries, street musicians, or buskers, have been plying their trade the world over. However, the study of street music and musicians is an emerging field of research. It is richly interdisciplinary and reaches into many fields, including anthropology, art history, cultural studies, ethnomusicology, human geography, law and legal studies, marketing, and musicology, as well as tourism and urban studies. The topics on which scholars write largely include noise and regulation, protest, aesthetics of space, and studies of street musicians in particular cities and countries on every continent. The genres of music include street cries and brass bands, along with studies of solo instruments such as the harp, violin, voice, and accordion. The literature on street music can be categorized into three overlapping areas: historical, ethnographical, and philosophical and social. Historical studies are concentrated on street cries and street singing. Ethnographical studies are evident in a range of historical studies but also in contemporary accounts of artists from New York to Moscow and Rio de Janeiro to Melbourne. Encounters with buskers provide not only insight into the reasons they perform, but also the repertory they play and the influence of audiences and technology on their performance. Where and how musicians perform also tell us about the precarious place street musicians occupy in the cultural economies of place, especially in relation to the use of digital culture and e-commerce as a means of making money and publicity. Philosophical and social inquiry asks questions about the nature of the space street music occupies; the ways in which it is and owned, shared, or a contested space; and the psychology of creativity in the moment of performance for both musician and audience. At the heart of much of the literature on street music is the way street sound and music has been captured over the centuries. Early modern studies rely on texts—and textual analyses—to speculate on the style or mode of singing that street criers and performers used to disseminate their messages or to perform. Studies from the late 18th century rely on artworks such as woodblocks, engravings, etchings, and oil paintings to depict the sound. In the 19th century, musical transcriptions begin to appear as a way to approximate the sound of the street (usually sounds created by solo performers), but today transcription is less of a requirement. Video-recording and other forms of digital imaging are capturing the sounds and music of street musicians and their sometimes international careers. Some studies adopt theoretical approaches drawing on the work of such writers as Michel de Certeau, Erving Goffman, Henri Lefebvre, Jacques Attali, and Richard Florida.

1994 ◽  
Vol 15 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 121-127
Author(s):  
Nils Martola

Per Kalm was born in 1716 in Sweden, the son of a family of Lutheran clergymen from the province of Ostrobothnia. He began his studies in natural sciences at Åbo Akademi in 1735, moved to Uppsala University in 1740, and soon became one of Carl Gustaf Linné’s foremost disciples. Pehr Kalm was considered as one of the purest exponents of 18th century Enlightenment and rationalism in Sweden/Finland. In October 1747 he commenced his journey to America, and returned to Stockholm in June 1751. His primary objective was to collect seeds of plants and trees considered to be economically useful for Sweden. During the journey Kalm kept a detailed diary in which he wrote observations on the weather, on plans and agricultural matters, on sundry customs among ethnic groups he met, reported discussions with different people, and made extracts from sources he deemed interesting.


1984 ◽  
Vol 98 (2) ◽  
pp. 98-109 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Bruyn

AbstractFrom 1911 to 1961 Félix Chrétien, secretary to François de Dinteville II, Bishop of Auxerre in Burgundy, and from 1542 onwards a canon in that town, was thought to be the author of three remarkable paintings. Two of these were mentioned by an 18th-century local historian as passing for his work: a tripych dated 1535 on the central panel with scenes from the legend of St. Eugenia, which is now in the parish church at Varzy (Figs. 1-3, cf. Note 10), and a panel dated 1550 with the Martyrdom of St. Stephen in the ambulatory of Auxerre Cathedral. To these was added a third work, a panel dated 1537 with Moses and Aaron before Pharaoh, which is now in New York (Figs. 4-5, cf. Notes I and 3). All three works contain a portrait of François de Dinteville, who is accompanied in the Varzy triptych and the New York panel (where he figures as Aaron) by other portrait figures. In the last-named picture these include his brothers) one of whom , Jean de Dinteville, is well-known as the man who commissioned Holbein's Ambassadors in 1533. Both the Holbein and Moses and Aaron remained in the family's possession until 1787. In order to account for the striking affinity between the style of this artist and that of Netherlandish Renaissance painters, Jan van Scorel in particular, Anthony Blunt posited a common debt to Italy, assuming that the painter accompanied François de Dinteville on a mission to Rome in 1531-3 (Note 4). Charles Sterling) on the other hand, thought of Netherlandish influence on him (Note 5). In 1961 Jacques Thuillier not only stressed the Northern features in the artist's style, especially in his portraits and landscape, but also deciphered Dutch words in the text on a tablet depicted in the Varzy triptych (Fig. I) . He concluded that the artist was a Northerner himself and could not possibly have been identical with Félix Chrétien (Note 7). Thuillier's conclusion is borne out by the occurrence of two coats of arms on the church depicted in the Varzy triptych (Fig. 2), one of which is that of a Guild of St. Luke, the other that of the town of Haarlem. The artist obviously wanted it to be known that he was a master in the Haarlem guild. Unfortunately, the Haarlem guild archives provide no definite clue as to his identity. He may conceivably have been Bartholomeus Pons, a painter from Haarlem, who appears to have visited Rome and departed again before 22 June 15 18, when the Cardinal of S. Maria in Aracoeli addressed a letter of indulgence to him (without calling him a master) care of a master at 'Tornis'-possibly Tournus in Burgundy (Note 11). The name of Bartholomeus Pons is further to be found in a list of masters in the Haarlem guild (which starts in 1502, but gives no further dates, Note 12), while one Bartholomeus received a commission for painting two altarpiece wings and a predella for Egmond Abbey in 1523 - 4 (Note 13). An identification of the so-called Félix Chrétien with Batholomeus Pons must remain hypothetical, though there are a number of correspondences between the reconstructed career of the one and the fragmentary biography of the other. The painter's work seems to betray an early training in a somewhat old-fashioned Haarlem workshop, presumably around 1510. He appears to have known Raphael's work in its classical phase of about 1515 - 6 and to have been influenced mainly by the style of the cartoons for the Sistine tapestries (although later he obviously also knew the Master of the Die's engravings of the story of Psyche of about 1532, cf .Note 8). His stylistic development would seem to parallel that of Jan van Scorel, who was mainly influenced by the slightly later Raphael of the Loggie. This may explain the absence of any direct borrowings from Scorel' work. It would also mean that a more or less Renaissance style of painting was already being practised in Haarlem before Scorel's arrival there in 1527. Thuillier added to the artist's oeuvre a panel dated 1537 in Frankfurt- with the intriguing scene of wine barrels being lowered into a cellar - which seems almost too sophisticated to be attributed to the same hand as the works in Varzy and New York, although it does appear to come from the same workshop (Fig. 6, Note 21). A portrait of a man, now in the Louvre, was identified in 197 1 as a fragment of a work by the so-called Félix Chrétien himself (Fig. 8, Note 22). The Martyrdom of St. Stephen of 1550 was rejected by Thuillier because of its barren composition and coarse execution. Yet it seems to have too much in common with the other works to be totally separated, from them and may be taken as evidence that the workshop was still active at Auxerre in 1550.


2022 ◽  

The Federalist is widely considered to be one of the most influential political writings in the early United States. Consisting of eighty-five essays in total, the first seventy-seven essays were originally published in New York newspapers between October 1787 and April 1788, and the final eight appeared in the first collected edition of The Federalist in 1788, although they were later republished in New York newspapers as well. The Federalist was written collectively by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay to promote the ratification of the newly drafted Constitution. In keeping with the conventions of 18th-century public political debate, The Federalist was published under the pseudonym “Publius” to present its arguments to the public in anonymous terms, focusing attention on the content of the essays rather than the personal views or personalities of the authors. Although Hamilton, Madison, and Jay would not be formally identified as the authors of The Federalist until the publication of a notice in The Port-Folio on 14 November 1807, their collective authorship was widely known by the 1790s, and their reputations as respected statesmen and innovative political thinkers brought considerable attention and credibility to their arguments. Through the voice of Publius, The Federalist explains and defends the core principles and structure of the new government outlined within the Constitution, while also identifying the flaws and weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation. In doing so, The Federalist provides substantive critical and philosophical discussions of federal governance and its relationship to the principles of plural sovereignty, national unity, republican representation, citizenship, national security, commercial interests, and the separation of powers, all of which had a profound influence, not just on the ratification debates, but also on subsequent interpretations of constitutional language and authority, from the founding period to the present. While scholars have endlessly debated the political, historical, philosophical, literary, and cultural impact of The Federalist, these essays continue to serve as foundational texts for studying the politics and culture of the early United States, as well as contemporary interpretations and revisions of constitutional principles in legal, legislative, and cultural spheres.


M/C Journal ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel De Zeeuw ◽  
Marc Tuters

At the fringes of the platform economy exists another web that evokes an earlier era of Internet culture. Its anarchic subculture celebrates a form of play based based on dissimulation. This subculture sets itself against the authenticity injunction of the current mode of capitalist accumulation (Zuboff). We can imagine this as a mask culture that celebrates disguise in distinction to the face culture as embodied by Facebook’s “real name” policy (de Zeeuw and Tuters). Often thriving in the anonymous milieus of web forums, this carnivalesque subculture can be highly reactionary. Indeed, this dissimulative identity play has been increasingly weaponized in the service of alt-right metapolitics (Hawley).Within the deep vernacular web of forums and imageboards like 4chan, users play by a set of rules and laws that they see as inherent to online interaction as such. Poe’s Law, for example, states that “without a clear indicator of the author's intent, it is impossible to create a parody of extreme views so obviously exaggerated that it cannot be mistaken by some readers for a sincere expression of the parodied views”. When these “rule sets” are enacted by a massive angry white teenage male demographic, the “weapons of the geek” (Coleman) are transformed into “toxic technoculture” (Massanari).In light of an array of recent predicaments in digital culture that trace back to this part of the web or have been anticipated by it, this special issue looks to host a conversation on the material practices, (sub)cultural logics and web-historical roots of this deep vernacular web and the significance of dissimulation therein. How do such forms of deceptive “epistemological” play figure in digital media environments where deception is the norm —  where, as the saying goes, everyone knows that “the internet is serious business” (which is to say that it is not). And how in turn is this supposed culture of play challenged by those who’ve only known the web through social media?Julia DeCook’s article in this issue addresses the imbrication of subcultural “lulz” and dissimulative trolling practices with the emergent alt-right movement, arguing that this new online confluence  has produced its own kind of ironic political aesthetic. She does by situating the latter in the more encompassing historical dynamic of an aestheticization of politics associated with fascism by Walter Benjamin and others.Having a similar focus but deploying more empirical digital methods, Sal Hagen’s contribution sets out to explore dissimulative and extremist online groups as found on spaces like 4chan/pol/, advocating for an “anti-structuralist” and “demystifying” approach to researching online subcultures and vernaculars. As a case study and proof of concept of this methodology, the article looks at the dissemination and changing contexts of the use of the word “trump” on 4chan/pol/ between 2015 and 2018.Moving from the unsavory depths of anonymous forums like 4chan and 8chan, the article by Lucie Chateau looks at the dissimulative and ironic practices of meme culture in general, and the subgenre of depression memes on Instagram and other platforms, in particular. In different and often ambiguous ways, the article demonstrates, depression memes and their ironic self-subversion undermine the “happiness effect” and injunction to perform your authentic self online that is paradigmatic for social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram. In this sense, depression meme subculture still moves in the orbit of the early Web’s playful and ironic mask cultures.Finally, the contribution by Joanna Zienkiewicz looks at the lesser known platform Pixelcanvas as a battleground and playfield for antagonistic political identities, defying the wisdom, mostly proffered by the alt-right, that “the left can’t meme”. Rather than fragmented, hypersensitive, or humourless, as online leftist identity politics has lately been criticized for by Angela Nagle and others, leftist engagement on Pixelcanvas deploys similar transgressive and dissimulative tactics as the alt-right, but without the reactionary and fetishized vision that characterises the latter.In conclusion, we offer this collection as a kind of meditation on the role of dissimulative identity play in the fractured post-centrist landscape of contemporary politics, as well as a invitation to think about the troll as a contemporary term by which "our understanding of the cybernetic Enemy Other becomes the basis on which we understand ourselves" (Gallison).ReferencesColeman, Gabriella. Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy: The Many Faces of Anonymous. New York: Verso, 2014.De Zeeuw, Daniël, and Marc Tuters. "Teh Internet Is Serious Business: On the Deep Vernacular Web and Its Discontents." Cultural Politics 16.2 (2020): 214–232.Galison, Peter. “The Ontology of the Enemy.” Critical Inquiry 21.1 (2014): 228–66.Hawley, George. Making Sense of the Alt-Right. New York: Columbia UP, 2017.Massanari, Adrienne. “#Gamergate and the Fappening: How Reddit’s Algorithm, Governance, and Culture Support Toxic Technocultures.” New Media & Society 19.3 (2016): 329–46.Zuboff, Shoshana. The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power. New York: PublicAffairs, 2019.


2018 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 24-45 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aurélia Michaud-Trévinal ◽  
Thomas Stenger

Twenty years after the pioneering article devoted to interactive home shopping by Alba et al., this research intends to study the situation of home online shopping (SHOS). An observation is carried out using video recording to examine the real practices that occur behind the screen. Two theoretical approaches are distinguished (classic and participatory). A new conceptualization of the situation is proposed that rests on three factors: the participants, spatial dimension, and time dimension. An analysis of the results highlights a main participant who interacts with other participants and business websites in addition to their spatial mobility and the materiality of the situation with its discontinuous characteristic. The fragmentation of the SHOS is emphasized. In addition to a new conceptualization of the situation, this research aims to relativize the online immersion process (flow) and to integrate the SHOS into a real omni-channel strategy.


2021 ◽  
pp. 146247452110349
Author(s):  
Alexander F. Roehrkasse

In the late 18th century, lenders’ right to imprison borrowers for defaulting on debts was taken for granted. By the mid-19th century, this power was widely and permanently revoked. Using a variety of archival evidence, this study explains the historical demise of the debtors’ prison in New York State, the first Western jurisdiction to permanently abolish imprisonment for debt. Tracing seven decades of contestation over moral aspects of credit exchange and incarceration, it shows that the development of capitalist markets, including their cultural and technological consequences, was necessary but not sufficient to render the debtor's prison obsolete. Rather, the development of a liberal polity and a penal state institutionalized new moral views about the use of force in economic exchange, consolidating the legitimacy of bodily detention around the punishment of crimes rather than the coercion of private agreements. The analysis has implications for theories of states, markets, and violence, as well as for recent trends in penal debt, debt resistance, and prison abolition.


Author(s):  
Christopher Ebert

The concept of “Latin America” gained currency only in modern times, and its use as an organizing concept for the early modern period is limited. The best way to understand the involvement of the Dutch Republic in overseas colonizing efforts is through the idea of Atlantic history. This involvement was part and parcel of the fitful consolidation of the Republic in the latter decades of the 16th century, as the “rebellious provinces” took their war with Habsburg Spain to Spanish Atlantic possessions. A more sustained assault on the Iberian Atlantic began with the chartering of the first Dutch West India Company (WIC) in 1621. A short-lived invasion of Salvador da Bahia, Brazil’s colonial capital, was followed by a successful occupation of the rich sugar-producing captaincy of Pernambuco from 1630 to 1654. Dutch New York, by way of comparison, was a small venture. Grand schemes for large Dutch colonies in territories claimed by the Spanish and Portuguese monarchies came to nothing, and the WIC was reorganized in 1674 with more modest ambitions. The Dutch subsequently established a vigorous presence in Suriname, Curaçao, and a handful of islands in the Lesser Antilles embracing plantation agriculture, trade, and financial services. This bibliography examines Dutch Atlantic world historiography with a focus on competition with the Iberian empires, especially in Brazil. It also discusses works on other Dutch outposts, which are considered collectively as a “Caribbean zone,” whether mainland or island. Administered only loosely by the second WIC, these colonies became sites of vigorous interaction with all the other European Atlantic powers throughout the 18th century. Other sections list works on the Dutch in the Atlantic slave trade and slavery in Dutch colonies, the history of Portuguese Jews in the Dutch Atlantic world, and published primary sources relevant to Dutch Atlantic history.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document