Deciding For or Deciding With: Student Involvement in Repertoire Selection

When music educators discuss repertoire, they often discuss what pieces to perform and when in the year to perform them. In this article, I ask, “ Who should choose the music for ensemble study, and how should it be chosen?” I share a rationale for why music educators might include students in ensemble repertoire selection and several ways they might open the repertoire so their students can contribute to the process. Based on my interest in how teacher–student dialogue can occur in this process, I draw from conversations I had with six orchestra teachers and twenty-seven of their students. The approaches presented here come from my interviews with these six teachers, from others with whom I have since collaborated, and from my own experience as an educator. Music educators may find these approaches useful for discussion, study, and implementation of more inclusive practice.

A Germline-Encoded Structural Arginine Trap Underlies the Anti-DNA Reactivity of a Murine V Gene Segment

Autoimmunity may have its origins of early repertoire selection in developmental B cells. Such a primary repertoire is probably shaped by selecting B cells that can efficiently perform productive signaling, stimulated by self-antigens in the bone marrow, such as DNA. In support of that idea, we previously found a V segment from VH10 family that can form antibodies that bind to DNA independent of CDR3 usage. In this paper we designed four antibody fragments in a novel single-chain pre-BCR (scpre-BCR) format containing germinal V gene segments from families known to bind DNA (VH10) or not (VH4) connected to a murine surrogate light chain (SLC), lacking the highly charged unique region (UR), by a hydrophilic peptide linker. We also tested the influence of CDR2 on DNA reactivity by shuffling the CDR2 loop. The scpre-BCRs were expressed in bacteria. VH10 bearing scpre-BCR could bind DNA, while scpre-BCR carrying the VH4 segment did not. The CDR2 loop shuffling hampered VH10 reactivity while displaying a gain-of-function in the nonbinding VH4 germline. We modeled the binding sites demonstrating the conservation of a positivity charged pocket in the VH10 CDR2 as the possible cross-reactive structural element. We presented evidence of DNA reactivity hardwired in a V gene, suggesting a structural mechanism for innate autoreactivity. Therefore, while autoreactivity to DNA can lead to autoimmunity, efficiently signaling for B cell development is likely a trade-off mechanism leading to the selection of potentially autoreactive repertoires.

Priestesses of Art

This chapter delves into the largely unexplored intersections of gender stereotypes and art-religious rhetoric in music criticism. It introduces case studies on the priestesses of art—and champions of Brahms’s compositions—Clara Schumann and Amalie Joachim, showing how for these performers, repertoire selection and performativity influenced the creation of motherly priestesses. In the context of nineteenth-century discourses on gender and sex roles, intensified by the nascent women’s rights movement, we encounter a paradox of the pure style: Priestesses were invested with a kind of natural sensual authority that was suited only to women as primordial life-givers. This analysis establishes a more nuanced gendered context for understanding the priestly rhetoric and its criticism.

Repertoire Selection Processes of Basic School Marching Band Instructors in Ghana

The purpose of this study was to investigate into the repertoire selection practices of Basic school marching band instructors in Ghana. Questionnaire and semi-structured interview guide designed for the collection of data obtained demographic information and identified the criteria and procedures used by basic school band directors in selecting repertoire for their bands. An instrumental case study design allowed me to gain an in-depth understanding of band instructors’ perspectives. Data were solicited from 26 school band directors selected using snowball sampling method. Of the 26 directors invited to participate, all agreed to do so and actually responded to all questions. Results revealed that the three most frequently reported sources of repertoire selection were other band experiences, recommendations from colleagues, and school ensemble participation. The three factors most frequently reported as affecting repertoire selection decisions were the appeal of the music to self, appeal of the music to colleagues, the audience appeal to the music, and students’ appeal to music. Recommendations drawn from the research findings included the following: repertoire for school band methods and wind literature classes needs to be more adequately addressed, and school band instructors in Ghana should focus more on ‘quality’ and consider the human subjective elements as alternatives.

Finding the Right Islam for the Maldives: Political Transformation and State-Responses to Growing Religious Dissent

At the first glance, the Maldives appear not to be prone to religious conflict. The archipelago state comprises a religiously and ethnically homogenous society, the different islands have been subject to shared Islamic rule for centuries and even constitutionally religious homogeneity is granted by making every citizen a Muslim and religious diversity prevented by limiting naturalisation to a specific Muslim group. Yet, today allegations of a threat to Islam play a major role in political mobilisation, the Maldives are faced with Islamist violence, and Maldivians have joined the Islamic State and al Qaeda in disproportionally high numbers. The paper seeks to find an answer to the question of how the repression of dissent under the Gayoom regime and the expansion and rise of violent Islamism relate in the Maldivian context. Next to the theoretical model, the paper will provide an introduction to the Maldivian political culture and the reasons for changes therein. It will shed light on the emergence of three major Islamic streams in the Maldivian society, which stood opposed to one another by the late 1990s and early 2000s, and show how Gayoom’s state repression of dissent initiated an escalation process and furthered Islamist violent politics. The paper will argue that while state repression of dissent played a significant role in the repertoire selection of Islamic non-state agents, the introduction of fundamentalist Islamic interpretations through migration, educational exchange programmes and transnational actors have laid the ground for violence in the Maldives.

REPERTOIRES OF CONTENTION IN REPRESSIVE STATES: THREE-GORGES-DAM MIGRANTS’ PETITIONING IN BEIJING*

This study advances our understanding of the processes whereby actors select and play out particular tactics and framings from “repertories of contention” to fight against repressive states. Empirically, it focuses upon a unique dataset captured from a discussion group of 140 participants in an instant messenger app—WeChat. Related to a petition campaign in Beijing, the data reflect the claims of over 1,000 petitioners who had been forced to relocate to different parts of China by the building of the Three Gorges Dam (1994–2006). The real-time chronological exchanges online among petitioners and other displaced persons reveal the petitioners’ tactics against the state’s counterpetition strategies, and the motives behind the petitioners’ repertoire selection. Theoretically, this study seeks to understand this case of grassroots resistance in terms of Bourdieu’s concept of habitus. It shows that the actors pursued parochial and rent-seeking motives—as symbolized in the discursive usage of nao (or troublemaking)— more than their defense of legal and constitutional rights as citizens. Both the characteristics and outcomes of such repertoire selection, shaped by what I call the habitus of nao, are discussed.