Imagined Hearing

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeanette DiBernardo Jones
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Political Identity ◽  
Deaf Culture ◽  
Musical Culture ◽  
Linguistic Differences ◽  
Rock Band ◽  
Musical Practices

Using as case studies the creative works and performances of Deaf musicians, including the Deaf rock band Beethoven’s Nightmare and rappers Sean Forbes and Signmark, this essay challenges the hearing world to think about the alternative modes of hearing that a deaf musical culture offers. Examining the musicians’ biographies, repertories, performance spaces, and audiences within a greater context of Deaf culture and history, this essay argues for a way of making and listening to music that is specifically Deaf, a way that celebrates deafness and also situates the Deaf as a minority within a hearing world. Musical practices that arise from this political identity create a Deaf musical culture that calls us to acknowledge the linguistic differences and histories that are present in the performance and reception of Deaf music.

Humanism and Music

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher M. Driscoll
Keyword(s):  
Artificial Intelligence ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
Popular Music ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Contemporary Music ◽  
Theoretical Relationship ◽  
Rock Band ◽  
Historical Developments ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter explores the relationship between humanism and music, giving attention to important theoretical and historical developments, before focusing on four brief case studies rooted in popular culture. The first turns to rock band Modest Mouse as an example of music as a space of humanist expression. Next, the chapter explores Austin-based Rock band Quiet Company and Westcoast rapper Ras Kass and their use of music to critique religion. Last, the chapter discusses contemporary popular music created by artificial intelligence and considers what non-human production of music suggests about the category of the human and, resultantly, humanism. These case studies give attention to the historical and theoretical relationship between humanism and music, and they offer examples of that relationship as it plays out in contemporary music.

Extraordinary voices: Helen Keller, music and the limits of oralism

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 139-156
Author(s):  
Michael Accinno
Keyword(s):  
World View ◽  
Musical Culture ◽  
Vocal Production ◽  
Cultural Logic ◽  
Human Voice ◽  
Shared Identity ◽  
Helen Keller ◽  
Voice Teacher ◽  
Musical Practices ◽  
Opera Singers

Abstract This article examines iconic American deafblind writer Helen Keller's entræ#169;e into musical culture, culminating in her studies with voice teacher Charles A. White. In 1909, Keller began weekly lessons with White, who deepened her understanding of breathing and vocal production. Keller routinely made the acquaintance of opera singers in the 1910s and the 1920s, including sopranos Georgette Leblanc and Minnie Saltzman-Stevens, and tenor Enrico Caruso. Guided by the cultural logic of oralism, Keller nurtured a lively interest in music throughout her life. Although a voice-centred world-view enhanced Keller's cultural standing among hearing Americans, it did little to promote the growth of a shared identity rooted in deaf or deafblind experience. The subsequent growth of Deaf culture challenges us to reconsider the limits of Keller's musical practices and to question anew her belief in the extraordinary power of the human voice.

Tudorism in English Music, 1837–1953

Tudorism ◽  
2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
STEPHEN BANFIELD
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
National Culture ◽  
New Music ◽  
Musical Composition ◽  
Political Agenda ◽  
Musical Culture ◽  
Early Music ◽  
General Picture ◽  
English Music

Between the early nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries, a cultivated relationship with the music of a favoured period in the distant national past was a pervasive aspect of high, and sometimes lower, musical culture in England. This chapter first sketches a general picture of that relationship before presenting some particular case studies. It addresses the following questions: to what extent does Tudorism in music refer to the revival of music itself, to what extent to its stylistic emulation in nineteenth- and twentieth-century English compositions? Was it a matter of appealing to the Tudors to set a political agenda for music? Tudorism in English music was many things but also one very definite thing — a conscious modelling of style or atmosphere in musical composition on that of a perceived golden age of national culture. It was in some respects part of the early music movement that Harry Haskell identified as beginning in 1829 with Mendelssohn's revival of J. S. Bach's St Matthew Passion, yet not the same thing insofar as that movement was about reviving discarded old music and Tudorism was about creating new music in an earlier image.

‘Sparks of Meaning’: Comics, Music and Alan Moore

2015 ◽  
Vol 140 (1) ◽  
pp. 121-162
Author(s):  
Tim Summers
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Comic Books ◽  
Musical Theatre ◽  
Significant Part ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Musical Culture ◽  
Alan Moore ◽  
V For Vendetta

ABSTRACTComics have become a significant part of modern popular culture. This article examines the ways in which music is involved with comics, and develops methods for analysing musical moments in comic books. The output of the writer Alan Moore (b. 1953) is used as the domain for examining music and comics. This popular author's works are notable for their sophisticated use of music and their interaction with wider musical culture. Using case studies from the comic books V for Vendetta (1982–9), Watchmen (1986–7) and the second and third volumes of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2002–12), the article demonstrates that the comic can be a musically significant medium (even to the point of becoming a piece of virtual musical theatre), and argues that music in comics serves to encourage readers to engage in hermeneutic criticism of musical and musical-literary texts.

scholarly journals A Critical Realist Study of Political Identity in Aotearoa New Zealand: Materiality, Discourse and Context

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Jay Woodhams
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Political Identity ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Capital City ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Critical Realist ◽  
Micro Level ◽  
Discursive Context

<p>Political identity is a complex phenomenon that is generated within a rich sociocultural context. This thesis examines political identity in informal talk which is situated within a relatively under-explored context, New Zealand’s capital city and political centre, Wellington. Grounding the study within the critical realist model of stratified reality provides the philosophical motivation to explore multi-layered discourses alongside the extra-discursive referents that underpin them. The analysis centres on a model of identity, contra postmodernism, which shows that identities, while socially recognised in discourse, are articulated in reference to physical and social structures. I adopt a comprehensive multi-layered approach to discourse by examining the macro sociocultural influences that appear to pattern interaction across the country, the meso-level subnational discourses that influence dialogue at a more situated level and the micro-level interactional stances taken up in everyday communication. Discourse at all levels is implicated in the identities I examine in this thesis and it is against this backdrop that I unpack political identity into its indexed discourses and constitutive stance acts.  Framed by my ethnographic immersion in the study context and drawing on in-depth semi-structured interviews with twenty-six individuals, I explore the way in which discourse and stancetaking are implicated in the genesis of the participants’ political selves. I first consider the extra-discursive context, including the geographical, economic and cultural structures that underlie New Zealand discourses. This is followed by detailed analysis of sociocultural discourse as it appears in talk. I identify egalitarianism and tall poppy as two related discourses which are embedded within the historical context of the country. I also explore four subnational discourses relating to Wellington city, including the political town, left-wing and small town discourses, which occur alongside a discourse of contrast. These sociocultural and subnational discourses influence much of the talk that occurs in reference to politics in Wellington and are thus implicated in political identity as it is generated in moment-by-moment interaction. To explore this in further detail I examine the micro-level of interactional discourse, more specifically the processes of stancetaking, in two detailed case studies. The two focus participants demonstrate prominent stance processes which I argue are central to much identity work: intersubjectivity, in which the stances of all those involved in the discussion interact in complex ways; and multiplicity, when participants take numerous stance directions that appear to contribute to different aspects of their identities. The intensive focus on the case studies, alongside analysis of the full discursive and extra-discursive context, provides a multi-layered and philosophically anchored approach that seeks to contribute to current understandings of and approaches to the study of discourse and identity.</p>

Body and Spirit in a Post-1960s World

2019 ◽  
pp. 118-139
Author(s):  
Christopher J. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Political Identity ◽  
Primary Source ◽  
Individual Case ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Social Protest ◽  
Musical Style ◽  
Hip Hop Culture ◽  
Racial Profile ◽  
And Gender

This chapter, in contrast to those that emphasize analysis of individual case studies, intentionally employs an omnibus approach, providing relative discussions of four highly disparate public dance cases in North America: 1960s social protest (especially the 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention), the Gay Rights movement (especially the Stonewall Uprising in New York in 1969), East Coast hip hop culture in the early 1970s, and the politicized noise-and-dance of 1980s punk rock. It thus emphasizes the wide range of historical and social contexts in which “subaltern dance” may be consistently theorized as realizing political intentions, with case studies that are diversified by era, political identity, racial profile, musical style, and gender orientation. Primary source evidence includes film, video, still photography, audio, and period descriptions.

scholarly journals Music and the Jesuit “Way of Proceeding” in the German Counter-Reformation

2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 377-397
Author(s):  
Alexander J. Fisher
Keyword(s):  
Appropriate Use ◽  
Musical Culture ◽  
Religious Difference ◽  
Steady Growth ◽  
Present Essay ◽  
Gradual Shift ◽  
Counter Reformation ◽  
Musical Practices ◽  
Musical Resources ◽  
Attitudes Toward Music

The present essay considers the Jesuits’ relationship to musical culture along the confessional frontier of Germany, where the immediate presence of religious difference led to an explicit marking of space and boundaries, not least through visual and aural media. While Jesuit reservations concerning the appropriate use of music were always present, individual churches and colleges soon developed ambitious musical practices aimed at embellishing the Catholic liturgy and stimulating religious affect. The present essay traces a gradual shift in Jesuit attitudes toward music between roughly 1580 and 1650, showing steady growth in the Society’s use of musical resources in churches, colleges, hymnbooks, processions, and theatrical productions in the confessionally-contested German orbit.

EPINICIAN VARIATIONS: MUSIC AND TEXT IN PINDAR,PYTHIANS2 AND 12

2013 ◽  
Vol 63 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-56 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tom Phillips
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
Musical Performance ◽  
Musical Culture ◽  
Classical Greece ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Musical Practices ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Archaic And Classical Greece

The importance of music for epinician, as for all other types of choral performance in Archaic and Classical Greece, has long been recognized, but the exiguousness of the evidence for the compositional principles behind such music, and for what these poems actually sounded like in performance, has limited scholarly enquiries. Examination of Pindar's texts themselves for evidence of his musical practices was for a long time dominated by extensive and often inconclusive debate about the relations between metres and modes. More recently scholars have begun to explore Pindar's relations to contemporary developments in musical performance, and in doing so have opened up new questions about how music affected audiences as aesthetically and culturally significant in its own right, and how it interacted with the language of the text. This article will investigate the performance scenarios of two of Pindar's epinicians, arguing that in each case the poems contain indications of specific musical accompaniments, and use these scenarios as a starting point for engaging with wider interpretative questions. The self-referential dimension of these compositions will be of particular importance; I shall argue that Pindar deployed a type of musical intertextuality, in which his compositions draw on pre-existing melodic structures, utilizing their cultural associations for the purposes of his own pieces, a process crucial to the dynamics of performance of the poems concerned. By doing so I shall attempt to reach a better understanding of the roles played by music in epinician performance and of Pindar's place in relation to the musical culture in which he worked.

How Ubiquitous Technologies Support Ubiquitous Music

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew R. Brown ◽  
Damián Keller ◽  
Maria Helena de Lima
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Pervasive Computing ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Musical Experience ◽  
Musical Interactions ◽  
The World ◽  
Musical Practices ◽  
Human Skills ◽  
Practical Experiences ◽  
Improve Access

Pervasive computing technologies are providing opportunities and challenges for new musical practices and offering greater access to musical interactions for people at all levels of musical experience. In this chapter we review theoretical insights and practical experiences of taking advantage of these opportunities and meeting these challenges; we describe how to leverage ubiquitous technologies to support ubiquitous music; and we discuss ideas and techniques that can assist in ensuring that social music activities provide an appropriate variety of experiences and strategies to maximize socially positive and musically creative outcomes. Strategies include starting with what is known and available, enhancing human skills with computational automation, and increasing participation through simplification to improve access and promote cultures of open sharing. Three case studies illustrate how these ideas are put into practice, covering experiences from across the world based in varied social contexts and using differing technologies, but sharing the same ambition of enhancing everyday experience through musical interactions mediated by pervasive technologies.

Narrative, vocal staging and masculinity in the ‘Outlaw’ country music of Waylon Jennings

Popular Music ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 343-358 ◽  
Author(s):  
Travis D. Stimeling
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Country Music ◽  
Sound Studies ◽  
Women's Liberation ◽  
Liberation Movement ◽  
Recorded Sound ◽  
Women’S Liberation ◽  
Musical Practices ◽  
Movement Building

AbstractEmerging in the early 1970s, the work of Outlaw country artists might be heard as exploring a crisis of masculinity resulting from developments in the women's liberation movement. Building on recent research in recorded sound studies, this essay explores how the vocal staging practices deployed in Outlaw country recordings offer a unique musical exploration of the duality of the outlaw's masculinity. Using case studies drawn from Waylon Jennings' Outlaw-era recordings, this article examines how Jennings, working with co-producers ‘Cowboy’ Jack Clement, Chips Moman and Willie Nelson, among others, deployed vocal staging practices in conjunction with other musical practices to construct narratives that reveal the ‘outlaw’ character's psychological turmoil and reflect the complicated state of working-class American masculinity in the age of women's liberation.

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