scholarly journals “Music is Language and Language is Music”

Ethnologies ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 145-171 ◽  
Author(s):  
Heather Sparling
Keyword(s):  
Language Policy ◽  
Language Learners ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Language Attitudes ◽  
Song Type ◽  
Musical Practice ◽  
Cape Breton ◽  
Current Attitude ◽  
Language And Music ◽  
History Of

Abstract In this article, the author considers the effects of language attitudes, a sociolinguistic concern, on musical practice. This article assumes that language and music attitudes are related as different expressions in and of a common cultural context. The author demonstrates how Scots Gaelic language attitudes in Cape Breton (where a few hundred people still speak the language) have developed, and considers the possible interplay with current attitudes towards two particular Gaelic song genres. Gaelic language learners and native/fluent speakers in Cape Breton articulated distinct and opposing attitudes towards the song genre of puirt-a-beul [mouth music], and these attitudes are examined in relation to those towards the Gaelic language and compared with their response to eight-line songs, a literary Gaelic song type. Detailed musical and lyric analyses of three Gaelic songs are provided to illustrate the connection between language and music attitudes. The current attitude towards Gaelic in Cape Breton is traced through the history of language policy in Scotland and Cape Breton. These sociolinguistic and musicological analyses are supplemented with ethnographic evidence.

scholarly journals Marking time and sounding difference: Brubeck, temporality and modernity

Popular Music ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 351-371 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andy Birtwistle
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Popular Press ◽  
Critical Writing ◽  
Musical Practice ◽  
News Stories ◽  
History Of ◽  
Marking Time

AbstractIn critical writing on the music of Dave Brubeck, little attention has been paid to the use of polyrhythm, despite the fact that this has been central to Brubeck's approach to jazz since the late 1940s. Focusing on work recorded by the ‘classic’ Dave Brubeck Quartet, the article aims to re-evaluate Brubeck's use of polyrhythm by situating it within a cultural history of modernity, rather than the established discourses of jazz musicology. The article revisits the early 1960s to reconstruct the context provided for the music not only by articles printed in the music press, but also by news stories and features run in the popular press, and by the visual signifiers that coalesce around Brubeck. Articulated through the key tropes of modernity and difference, the press's construction of Brubeck during this period signals the broad cultural context of Modernism as an alternative frame within which his musical practice might be usefully situated. The article explores how two key cultural artefacts emerging from this context – Brubeck's Oakland home, and the Miró canvas featured on the cover of the album Time Further Out – might serve to provide a productive means by which to re-evaluate the radical potential of Brubeck's polyrhythm.

scholarly journals Departments and disciplinary gatekeeping: The sociolinguistics of Spanish in US academia

2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 (263) ◽  
pp. 45-50
Author(s):  
José del Valle
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Language Learners ◽  
Social Practice ◽  
Spanish Language ◽  
The Us ◽  
History Of ◽  
Service Departments

AbstractIn his contribution, José del Valle looks at the intersection of the sociolinguistic study of Spanish in the US and the transformations of Spanish language departments in higher education. Del Valle traces the history of the institutionalization of Spanish teaching and study and its effects on linguistic research’s position within Spanish departments. Shifts in approaches to the use of language in social practice, and the growing demands on language units to act as service departments for language learners, has isolated scholars in those institutional homes from broader integration into sociolinguistic research.

The Qurʾān Encrypted

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 133-176
Author(s):  
Arianna D’Ottone Rambach
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Context ◽  
History Of

Abstract This article (re-)considers a unique Qurʾān manuscript (MS London, SOAS, 12217) in ciphered characters (Ar. al-taʿmiya), reminiscent of the ring letters of the Graeco-Egyptian tradition (Brillenbuchstaben). The case of this Qurʾān manuscript offers an opportunity to decode (Ar. istikhrāj al-muʿammà) a cryptographed text, to date and localize a very special Quranic codex, and to investigate the history of the collections it passed through, as well as the religious and cultural context of its production. Lastly, it examines the relations between Islam and magic—with which cryptography is often associated.

Christianity and Literature: Covertly Public, Overtly Private

1998 ◽  
Vol 47 (3) ◽  
pp. 261-283
Author(s):  
Martin E. Marty
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Context ◽  
Annual Convention ◽  
Modern Language Association ◽  
Job Description ◽  
Modern Language ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Religion ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Culture ◽  
Christian Century

This article is based upon an address to the Conference on Christianity and Literature at the Annual Convention of the Modern Language Association in Toronto on 29 December 1997. The invitation asked me to comment on the public/private distinction that I make as Director of the Public Religion Project and to accent the “cultural context,” which fits my History of Culture faculty assignment and three decades of writing Context, a newsletter relating religion to culture. I was to inform it theologically, which a divinity professor is supposed to be able to do, and to show some curiosity about the literary theme, as my decades-long stint as literary editor at The Christian Century should poise me to do. Under it all my limiting job description matches a badge provided me at a conference in Tübingen, where the hosts handed out identifications marked “Theologian of History,” “Theological Historian,” and “Historical Theologian.” Mine read simply, “Historical Historian.”—MEM

‘Loaded’: indie guitar rock, canonism, white masculinities

Popular Music ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-95 ◽  
Author(s):  
MATTHEW BANNISTER
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Context ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
High Culture ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Alternative Rock ◽  
Symbolic Identification ◽  
History Of ◽  
Important Means ◽  
White Masculinities

Indie alternative rock in the 1980s is often presented as authentically autonomous, produced in local scenes, uncaptured by ideology, free of commercial pressures, but also of high culture elitism. In claiming that the music is avant-garde, postmodern and subversive, such accounts simplify indie's historical, social and cultural context. Indie did not simply arise organically out of developing postpunk music networks, but was shaped by media, and was not just collective, but also stratified, hierarchical and traditional. Canon (articulated through practices of archivalism and connoisseurship) is a key means of stratification within indie scenes, produced by and serving particular social and cultural needs for dominant social groups (journalists, scenemakers, tastemakers, etc.). These groups and individuals were mainly masculine, and thus gender in indie scenes is an important means for deconstructing the discourse of indie independence. I suggest re-envisioning indie as a history of record collectors, emphasising the importance of rock ‘tradition’, of male rock ‘intellectuals’, second-hand record shops, and of an alternative canon as a form of pedagogy. I also consider such activities as models of rational organisation and points of symbolic identification.

scholarly journals Collecting locally : Walker Evans's photographs of Alabama in Alabama institutions

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mallory Lapointe Taylor
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
American South ◽  
The United States ◽  
History Of Photography ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Walker Evans ◽  
History Of ◽  
The American South

Within the United States, the American South can be perceived as its own entity. From the arts to Southern cuisine, the South commands attention with its own history, myths and culture. Within the history of photography, Walker Evans's photographs of Alabama are arguably some of the most culturally significant images taken of the state and its residents. This thesis investigates how photographs of Alabama are collected in the same locality. By examining the collecting practices of four Alabama institutions in regards to photographs in general, and Walker Evans specifically, this case study will expand on the question of how photographs, in a Southern cultural context, work to create a sense of place and attachment to local geography.

scholarly journals Structure, Function and Historical Importance of Watermills in the Swat Valley

2020 ◽  
Vol V (III) ◽  
pp. 237-245
Author(s):  
Faisal Khan ◽  
Junaid Babar ◽  
Zahir Hussain
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Context ◽  
Qualitative Method ◽  
Research Work ◽  
Modern Technology ◽  
Ancient Technology ◽  
History Of ◽  
Swat Valley ◽  
And Function ◽  
Mode Of Production

The paper deals with the architecture and function of watermills in Swat valley. Watermill is a seldom-used term; however, it has played a significant role in the socio-cultural and economic lives of people in the past. This research work explores the case study of water mills in the Swat region. It examined in detail its processing and operation. The watermill was not only an instrument used for grinding purposes but also determined the mode of production, class system and social values of people. Modern technology has though changed people's behaviors and social formations up to a large extent, but it couldn't erase people's memories and history. A qualitative method has been used for conducting this research work. An ethnic-archaeological method was focused on recording the history of this tremendous ancient technology which contributed widely to the socio-cultural context of people.

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