Cinematic Journeys to the Source

2018 ◽  
pp. 372-388
Author(s):  
Lisa Osunleti Beckley-Roberts
Keyword(s):  
African Americans ◽  
Documentary Films ◽  
Martin Scorsese ◽  
Atlantic Trade ◽  
Coconut Tree ◽  
Music Making ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Ongoing Dialogue

“Cinematic Journeys to the Source: Music Repatriation to Africa in Film” critically explores four documentary films that feature the repatriation of a musician or group of musicians to Africa. More specifically, it asserts that for these artists, their music has created the opportunity for both them and their audience to collectively remember an African past and either consciously or subconsciously is the metaphorical site of repatriation before the physical travel takes place. The author argues that music communities emotionally repatriate through their participation in music making and that in turn makes physical repatriation possible. The chapter makes these points by exploring the concepts of memory, identity, and performance of ethnicity. The films, They Are We, by Emma Christopher; Throw Down Your Heart, starring Béla Fleck, by Sascha Paladino; Feel Like Going Home, which stars Corey Harris, by Martin Scorsese; and Search for the Everlasting Coconut Tree, starring and directed by Adimu Madyun are reviewed based on their contribution to the ongoing dialogue about the negotiation of relationships between Africans and African Americans, perceived healing of the trauma of the trans-Atlantic trade of enslaved people and the lasting effects of it, and the role that music has played in pursuit of achievement of these goals.

Music of Tragedy

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Naomi A. Weiss
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Context ◽  
Musical Language ◽  
New Approach ◽  
Late Work ◽  
Music Making ◽  
Dramatic Action ◽  
Instrumental Accompaniment ◽  
And Performance

The Music of Tragedy offers a new approach to the study of classical Greek theater by examining the use of musical language, imagery, and performance in the late work of Euripides. Drawing on the ancient conception of mousikē, in which words, song, dance, and instrumental accompaniment were closely linked, Naomi Weiss emphasizes the interplay of performance and imagination—the connection between the chorus’s own live singing and dancing in the theater and the images of music-making that frequently appear in their songs. Through detailed readings of four plays, she argues that the mousikē referred to and imagined in these plays is central to the progression of the dramatic action and to ancient audiences’ experiences of tragedy itself. She situates Euripides’s experimentation with the dramaturgical effects of mousikē within a broader cultural context, and in doing so, she shows how he both continues the practices of his tragic predecessors and also departs from them, reinventing traditional lyric styles and motifs for the tragic stage.

The Oxford Handbook of Time in Music

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Studies ◽  
Music Theory ◽  
Musical Work ◽  
Musical Practice ◽  
Musical Time ◽  
Music Making ◽  
Nature Of Time ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
Profound Insight

As the art that calls most attention to temporality, music provides us with profound insight into the nature of time, and time equally offers us one of the richest lenses through which to interrogate musical practice and thought. In this volume, musical time, arrayed across a spectrum of genres and performance/compositional contexts is explored from a multiplicity of perspectives. The contributions to the volume all register the centrality of time to our understanding of music and music-making and offer perspectives on time in music, particularly though not exclusively attending to contemporary forms of musical work. In sharing insights drawn from philosophy, music theory, ethnomusicology, psychology of performance and cultural studies, the book articulates a range of understandings on the metrics, politics and socialities woven into musical time.

Musical involvement outside school: How important is it for student-teachers in secondary education?

2010 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 151-170 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dimitra Kokotsaki
Keyword(s):  
Student Teachers ◽  
Music Teachers ◽  
Performance Standards ◽  
Music Teacher ◽  
Music Making ◽  
School Music ◽  
Perceived Impact ◽  
And Performance ◽  
High Level ◽  
Graduate Certificate

This study aims to assess the perceived impact of Post-Graduate Certificate in Education (PGCE) music students' engagement in music making outside school on their teaching. Fifty-one students training to become secondary school music teachers in England were asked to report on the perceived impact that their participation in music making outside school had on their lives during their training and on its expected impact as a qualified music teacher. They believed that being musically involved outside school has both personal and professional benefits for them as it has the potential to increase their anticipated job satisfaction as qualified teachers and help them become better teachers. They all expressed a desire to be involved in such musical activities as qualified music teachers because they felt that these can help them maintain their enthusiasm, be more confident and motivated, and keep their technique and performance standards to a high level.

The Impact of Technologies on Society, Schools, and Music Learning

2017 ◽  
pp. 276-290
Author(s):  
Valerie Peters
Keyword(s):  
Music Education ◽  
New Technology ◽  
Traditional Music ◽  
First Century ◽  
Music Culture ◽  
Professional Musicians ◽  
Rock Band ◽  
Music Making ◽  
And Performance ◽  
The Impact

This chapter examines how music education can benefit from the use of new electronic tools and materials for music making that allow learners to combine their interests and prior understandings toward deepening their engagement in music. By exploring how rhythmic video games like Rock Band bridge the large chasm that exists between youths’ music culture and traditional music education; how inexpensive recording hardware and software such as Audacity and GarageBand have provided youth with opportunities to compose and perform as only professional musicians could in the past; and how software like Impromptu successfully engages youth in music composition and analysis by enabling users to create and remix tunes using virtual blocks that contain portions of melodies and rhythmic patterns, this chapter argues that twenty-first-century music education, with the help of new technology, has the potential for engaging greater numbers of young learners in authentic music making and performance.

scholarly journals A Foreign Sound to Your Ear

2013 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven Rings
Keyword(s):  
Longitudinal Study ◽  
Analytical Techniques ◽  
Schema Theory ◽  
Moving Target ◽  
Spectrographic Analysis ◽  
Methodological Pluralism ◽  
Music Making ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Insight Into

This article presents a “longitudinal” study of Bob Dylan’s performances of the song “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)” over a 45-year period, from 1964 until 2009. The song makes for a vivid case study in Dylanesque reinvention: over nearly 800 performances, Dylan has played it solo and with a band (acoustic and electric); in five different keys; in diverse meters and tempos; and in arrangements that index a dizzying array of genres (folk, blues, country, rockabilly, soul, arena rock, etc.). This is to say nothing of the countless performative inflections in each evening’s rendering, especially in Dylan’s singing, which varies widely as regards phrasing, rhythm, pitch, articulation, and timbre. How can music theorists engage analytically with such a moving target, and what insights into Dylan’s music and its meanings might such a study reveal? The present article proposes one set of answers to these questions. First, by deploying a range of analytical techniques—from spectrographic analysis to schema theory—it demonstrates that the analytical challenges raised by Dylan’s performances are not as insurmountable as they might at first appear, especially when approached with a strategic and flexible methodological pluralism. Second, the article shows that such analytical engagement can lend new insight into an array of broader theoretical questions, especially those concerning the refractory relationship between song and performance in Dylan’s practice. Finally, the paper illustrates that a close, analytical attentiveness to the sonic particulars of Dylan’s live performances can open our ears to the cacophony of musical pasts that animate his music making.

scholarly journals TWO APPROACHES TO RESTORING HISTORICAL BUILDINGS AND ENVIRONMENTS FOR THE THEATRE FUNCTION

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-98
Author(s):  
Dolgoy S. ◽  
Bosyy P. ◽  
Keyword(s):  
State Of The Art ◽  
The State ◽  
Documentary Films ◽  
Historical Buildings ◽  
Theatre Companies ◽  
The World ◽  
Permanent Home ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Architectural Reconstruction ◽  
New Facility

The architectural reconstruction and technical refurbishing of the new facility of the School of Performance were concerned with accommodating the needs of teaching, production, and performance in a found space, the basement of Ryerson University’s Student Learning Centre with utilizing of the state-of-the-art technologies. Kyiv Academician Theatre of the Podil, one of the leading drama theatre companies in Ukraine, has finally got the permanent home with the state-of-the-art performing facility. However, the fact that construction of the building was sponsored by the Roshen Company owned by Petro Poroshenko, former President of Ukraine, as well as the appearance of the theatre’s exterior caused a lot of public controversies. The experience of these reconstructions was reflected in two documentary films presented at the Our Theatre of the World section of Prague Quadrennial in 2019.

scholarly journals Vocal Education in Kazan: From Amateur Music Playing to Professional Training

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (SPE2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Yulia Aleksandrovna Martynova ◽  
Dmitry Yevgenyevich Martynov ◽  
Alina Mikhailovna Sukhova ◽  
Leila Aivazovna Nurgalieva
Keyword(s):  
Music Education ◽  
Professional Training ◽  
Music Teachers ◽  
Cultural Center ◽  
Professional Performance ◽  
Music Making ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Gathering Place ◽  
Xix Century ◽  
Historical Methods

The article is devoted to vocal education in Kazan as part of a general cultural process. Kazan as “a gathering place of two worlds – the Western and the Eastern”, was the leading music and cultural center. This city was simultaneously one of the largest provincial centers of Russian culture, and Muslim Tatar’s. During the XIX century in Kazan not only amateur music-making was actively developed but also were created music-public associations and private music teachers became widespread. The concert and performance in Kazan inevitably went through single phases and stages of development common to the whole country. Over time, amateur performance gives way to professional performance. The article is used a set of humanitarian and historical methods. The materials may be interesting for researchers of music education in Russia, as well as Russian provincial culture.

scholarly journals Music making politics: beyond lyrics

Politik ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
M.I. Franklin
Keyword(s):  
Political Engagement ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
Music Making ◽  
Musical Arrangements ◽  
Micro Level ◽  
Production Practices ◽  
And Performance

In this article I argue that considering how any sort of music is made more closely - as sonic material, performance cultures, for whom and on whose terms, is integral to projects exploring the music-politics nexus. The case in point is “My Way”, a seemingly apolitical song, as it becomes repurposed: transformed through modes of performance, unusual musical arrangements, and performance contexts. The analysis reveals a deeper, underlying politics of music-making that still needs unpacking: the race, gender, and class dichotomies permeating macro- and micro-level explorations into the links between music, society, and politics. Incorporating a socio-musicological analytical framework that pays attention to how this song works musically, alongside how it can be reshaped through radical performance and production practices, shows how artists in diverging contexts can ‘re-music’ even the most hackneyed song into a form of political engagement. 

scholarly journals The creative work of large ensembles

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Cottrell
Keyword(s):  
Complex System ◽  
Creative Process ◽  
Conventional Approach ◽  
Creative Work ◽  
Creative Agency ◽  
Music Making ◽  
Choral Rehearsal ◽  
Large Ensembles ◽  
And Performance ◽  
External Forces

Preparing large ensembles for performance involves musical, social, logistical and financial challenges of a kind seldom encountered in other forms of collective music-making. The conventional approach to meeting the challenges that arise during rehearsal is to appoint a single musical overseer, usually a conductor, whose ostensible role in musical preparation is to directly influence the musicians while working towards the creation of a musical product to be delivered in later performances. Rehearsal leadership, viewed from this perspective, moves predominantly in one direction, from conductor to ensemble. But such a perspective oversimplifies the conductor’s relationship with the ensemble, the relationships between the musicians, and the strategies that the latter must employ when working in large ensembles. Conceptualizing the ensemble as a complex system of interrelated components, where leadership and creative agency are distributed and developed through rehearsal to achieve what audiences assume to be a unified whole, yields new understanding of the work of large ensembles. This chapter examines these components of the creative process in orchestral and choral rehearsal and performance, the internal and external forces shaping and constraining that process, and the approaches that individual musicians and conductors could adopt in response to the changing contexts in which such creativity might be manifested.

scholarly journals Ethnic Documentary Films as a Mirror of National and Cultural Traditions (For Example Republic of Tatarstan)

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 7377-7381
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Groups ◽  
Spiritual Development ◽  
Social Orientation ◽  
Documentary Films ◽  
Cultural Traditions ◽  
Foreign Culture ◽  
The Republic ◽  
And Performance ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Historical Reflection

The mediatization of the public sphere leads to the intensification of the processes of intercultural interaction, which increases interest in new formats for reflecting the characteristics of the cultural and spiritual development of a person, one of which is ethnic documentary cinema. It allows you to widely represent the national cultures of different nations, immerse yourself in the world of a foreign culture, to reduce the degree of uncertainty arising from a foreign culture, to facilitate communication between ethnic groups. A functional and meaningful analysis of ethno-documentary films created by filmmakers of the Republic of Tatarstan in 2017-2019 allowed us to determine the features of the ethno-documentary genre. These include: the close connection of ethnic cinema with the development of academic anthropology and the need for a visual reflection of the life and culture of ethnic groups; focus on intercultural communication; the formation of the image of an ethnos on the basis of "internal observation", that is, the ability to be inside events and cultural traditions, which allows you to get away from distorting the picture. Considering the multinational aspect of the development of ethno-documentary in the Republic of Tatarstan, it was emphasized that one of the most important tasks of filmmakers in this context is to preserve the national image and identity, develop tolerance, strengthen interethnic harmony, foster respect for the culture, traditions and customs of different nationalities. The ethnic component of the documentary cinema of Tatarstan involves the historical reflection of national traditions inherent in a particular people, with an emphasis on reflecting in reality the original way of life, life, national and cultural traditions. The ethno-documentary of the Republic of Tatarstan is in a state of deep renewal, which is associated with the spread of the festival movement in Tatarstan, in particular, the work of the Kazan International Muslim Film Festival, which allows the formation of national reserves of ethno-documentary and gives impetus to the development of Tatarstan documentary films. We should talk about the special aesthetics of films, which largely borders on the principles of arthouse cinema, but fits into the mainstream of young Tatarstan cinema. It is based on the techniques of chronicling, films have a primarily social orientation in the spirit of “cinema-direct” (“direct cinema”), the Tatar alternative and performance. One of the leading functions of ethno-documentary is the communicative function, along with the integrative and research. Their implementation contributes to the comprehensive reflection of the national traditions of the Tatar people and peoples living in the Republic of Tatarstan.

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