On Narrativity and Narrative Flavor in Jazz Improvisation

2018 ◽  
Vol 74 (4) ◽  
pp. 1399-1424
Author(s):  
J Tyler Friedman

This essay investigates an established question in the philosophy of music: whether, and in what respect, music may express narratives. However, this essay departs in two essential respects from traditional treatments of the question. First, the jazz tradition instead of European art music is used as the primary source material. Second, instead of merely posing the question of whether music can harbor a narrative, this essay is oriented by what it argues is a common experience of “narrative flavor” in music – the feeling of having heard a story in non-representational sound. The essay seeks to account for the experiential givenness of “narrative flavor” with the assistance of contemporary philosophical work on narrative and musicological work on improvisation and musical motion. Working with a minimalist definition of narrative that requires (1) the representation of two or more events that are (2) temporally ordered and (3) causally connected, music is found to be able to satisfy the second and third conditions. However, the questionable representation capacities of music lead to the conclusion that music cannot, in the strict sense, harbor a narrative. The experience of narrative flavor is explained with reference to J. David Velleman’s concept of emotional cadence, Brian Harker’s work on structural coherence in improvisation, and Patrick Shove and Bruno Repp’s work on the perception of musical motion. These sources are utilized to demonstrate that improvisations can be structured so as to give the listener the impression of having heard a story by initiating and carrying out an emotional cadence.

2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 363-371
Author(s):  
Heiko Berner

Social innovations are targeted measures that are capable to resolve social problems (Rammert 2010) and they are directed towards an improvement of the situation (Gillwald 2000). Finally, they are directed towards an amelioration of the situation (Gillwald 2000). In Austria it is argued that ethnic business represents a type of social innovation (Haberfellner 2000). The question the paper addresses is if and to what extent ethnic business goes hand in hand with social developments and possibly boosts social change. Entrepreneurs of Turkish origin in Salzburg are the focus of analysis. The paper starts with a definition of the term ‚social innovation‘ (1), the issues of ethnic vs. migrant business (2.), followed by the description of the labour market situation of Turkish migrants in Salzburg and discrimination in the labour market (3.), and, to to round up, the analysis of biographic interviews with Turkish entrepreneurs in Salzburg (4.). The preliminary results show that there exist social problems such as the lower socio-economic situation of Turkish migrants in Salzburg and discrimination in the labour market. These problems can be seen as basis for the need of social innovations. But nevertheless Turkish run ethnic businesses in a strict sense of the word are no social innovation because they do not act against the problems in an intended way; they rather work on their own account. They may overcome disadvantages on the labour market but their actions are not directed towards overcoming the problem per se. It is much rather a transintentional aspect (Schimank 2010), which goes beyond the economic interest of the actors.


Author(s):  
Tim Rutherford-Johnson

By the start of the 21st century many of the foundations of postwar culture had disappeared: Europe had been rebuilt and, as the EU, had become one of the world’s largest economies; the United States’ claim to global dominance was threatened; and the postwar social democratic consensus was being replaced by market-led neoliberalism. Most importantly of all, the Cold War was over, and the World Wide Web had been born. Music After The Fall considers contemporary musical composition against this changed backdrop, placing it in the context of globalization, digitization, and new media. Drawing on theories from the other arts, in particular art and architecture, it expands the definition of Western art music to include forms of composition, experimental music, sound art, and crossover work from across the spectrum, inside and beyond the concert hall. Each chapter considers a wide range of composers, performers, works, and institutions are considered critically to build up a broad and rich picture of the new music ecosystem, from North American string quartets to Lebanese improvisers, from South American electroacoustic studios to pianos in the Australian outback. A new approach to the study of contemporary music is developed that relies less on taxonomies of style and technique, and more on the comparison of different responses to common themes, among them permission, fluidity, excess, and loss.


Author(s):  
Ursula Renz

This chapter discusses the implications of Spinoza’s concept of individual bodies, as introduced in the definition of individuum in the physical digression. It begins by showing that this definition allows for an extremely wide application of the term; accordingly, very different sorts of physical entities can be described as Spinozistic individuals. Given the quite distinct use of the terms divisibilis and indivisibilis in his metaphysics, however, the chapter argues that the physical concept of individuality is not universally applied in the Ethics but reserved for physical or natural-philosophical considerations. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the problem of collective individuals. It is argued that, while societies or states are described as individual bodies, they do not constitute individual group minds in the strict sense of the term for Spinoza. This in turn indicates that minds are not individuated in the same way as bodies.


2017 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 41-54 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Joyce

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to analyse the 2016 elections for Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs) and to compare them with those that took place in 2012. It seeks to evaluate the background of the candidates who stood for office in 2016, the policies that they put forward, the results of the contests and the implications of the 2016 experience for future PCC elections. Design/methodology/approach This paper is based around several key themes – the profile of candidates who stood for election, preparations conducted prior to the contests taking place, the election campaign and issues raised during the contests, the results and the profile of elected candidates. The paper is based upon documentary research, making particular use of primary source material. Findings The research establishes that affiliation to a political party became the main route for successful candidates in 2016 and that local issues related to low-level criminality will dominate the future policing agenda. It establishes that although turnout was higher than in 2012, it remains low and that further consideration needs to be devoted to initiatives to address this for future PCC election contests. Research limitations/implications The research focusses on the 2016 elections and identifies a number of key issues that emerged during the campaign affecting the conduct of the contests which have a bearing on future PCC elections. It treats these elections as a bespoke topic and does not seek to place them within the broader context of the development of the office of PCC. Practical implications The research suggests that in order to boost voter participation in future PCC election contests, PCCs need to consider further means to advertise the importance of the role they perform and that the government should play a larger financial role in funding publicity for these elections and consider changing the method of election. Social implications The rationale for introducing PCCs was to empower the public in each police force area. However, issues that include the enhanced importance of political affiliation as a criteria for election in 2016 and the social unrepresentative nature of those who stood for election and those who secured election to this office in these contests coupled with shortcomings related to public awareness of both the role of PCCs and the timing of election contests threaten to undermine this objective. Originality/value The extensive use of primary source material ensures that the subject matter is original and its interpretation is informed by an academic perspective.


2021 ◽  
Vol 26 (jai2021.26(1)) ◽  
pp. 10-20
Author(s):  
Shevchenko A ◽  
◽  
Sosnitsky A ◽  

The main problem today in the research and development of AI is the lack of a scientific definition of Intelligence, since it is impossible to do something incomprehensible. This fundamentally delegitimizes all developments in this area and science as a whole as a product of exclusively intellectual activity, and any scientific use of the term «Intelligence» in its strict sense is unreasonable. In this paper, this problem is solved by transition to a more general universal paradigm of cognition, which allowed us to deduce the desired definition and universal formalism of Intelligence in its strong sense. Unlike previous publications, the ontology and properties of Intelligence are specified here as necessary components of Intelligence, which are subject to subsequent concretization and materialization in different niches of existence. The results of the work are of both fundamental and applied general scientific importance for all technical and humanitarian applications of Intelligence


Author(s):  
Kirsty Hooper

What did the Edwardians know about Spain, and what was that knowledge worth? The Edwardians and the Making of a Modern Spanish Obsession draws on a vast store of largely unstudied primary source material to investigate Spain’s place in the turn-of-the-century British popular imagination. Set against a background of unprecedented emotional, economic and industrial investment in Spain, the book traces the extraordinary transformation that took place in British knowledge about the country and its diverse regions, languages and cultures between the tercentenary of the Spanish Armada in 1888 and the outbreak of World War I twenty-six years later. This empirically-grounded cultural and material history reveals how, for almost three decades, Anglo-Spanish connections, their history and culture were more visible, more colourfully represented, and more enthusiastically discussed in Britain’s newspapers, concert halls, council meetings and schoolrooms, than ever before. It shows how the expansion of education, travel, and publishing created unprecedented opportunities for ordinary British people not only to visit the country, but to see the work of Spanish and Spanish-inspired artists and performers in British galleries, theatres and exhibitions. It explores the work of novelists, travel writers, journalists, scholars, artists and performers to argue that the Edwardian knowledge of Spain was more extensive, more complex and more diverse than we have imagined.


Author(s):  
Bruno Nettl

Historically, research on improvisation has been related to the discovery of non-Western musics, folk music, and jazz, and has depended on the development of recording techniques for its principal kinds of data. The concept of improvisation is not unitary, but includes many vastly different kinds of un-notated music-making, which casts some doubt on the efficacy of the term itself. In the history of Western art music, improvisation was originally ignored or seen as craft rather than art, but since ca. 1980 it has occupied increased attention. The association of improvisation with oral transmission has sometimes been misunderstood. The most successful standard research study has been the comparison of performances based on a single model, for example, raga in India, maqam and dastgah in the Middle East, or a series of chord changes or a tune in jazz. Improvisation as a concept—for example, as a metaphor of freedom—has been important in recent research.


2017 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Barry Morton

This response to Marius Nel’s 2016 article (in Studia Historiae Ecclesiasticae no. 42, 1, 62-85) uses primary source material to refute his claims that John G Lake, the initiator of Pentecostalism in southern Africa, was an upstanding man of God. A wide array of American and South African sources show that Lake invented an extensive but fictitious life story, while also creating a similarly dubious divine calling that obscured his involvement in gruesome killings in America. Once in South Africa, he used invented “miracles” to raise funds abroad for the Apostolic Faith Mission. Before long, he faced many accusations of duplicity from inside his own church.


2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-78
Author(s):  
Muhammad Yusuf Patria

This article is aimed at discussing the critical analysis of a Muslim thinker, Malik Bennabi, of the state of contemporary Muslim society. This discussion uses a descriptive-analytic approach with Bennabi's works as the primary source and other supporting works as secondary sources. Bennabi's definition of a society, especially its origin, basic elements, and its stages, is described in detail as a basis for understanding Bennabi's thoughts. then, the article discusses Bennabi's analysis and criticism of the current state of Muslim society. For him, the root of all the problems experienced by Muslim society today is an internal weakness or what he calls "colonisability". This situation, according to him, creates vulnerable individuals and societies to be "colonized" again. Bennabi referred to these individuals in Muslim society as “Post-Muwaḥḥiddūn man”, as a sign that internal weaknesses began to emerge in Muslim society after the Muwaḥḥid dynasty. Based on his explanation, it can be concluded that the current Muslim society is disoriented and has lost its identity. The author also concludes that Bennabi's approach and analysis are able to describe the current state of Muslim society and the root of the problems it is experiencing.


1997 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
pp. 635-643 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ibrahim F. I. Shihata

This note addresses the possible correlation between “democracy” and “development”, and the implications, if any, of such a correlation for the World Bank. This calls, first, for providing a definition of the two concepts as they are used here. To clarify the matter further, a distinction is made from the beginning between “development” in the broad sense and the concept of “economic growth” in the strict sense.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document