The Radical Temporality of Drum and Bass

One of the key features of many genres within Electronic Dance Music (EDM) is the creation of simultaneous temporal layers. Genres such as drum and bass, dubstep, and future bass frequently use manipulation of rhythmic ostinati and subtle sonic shading to shift the listener’s perception between these multiple layers; for example, from a fast, intricate motion in the groove, suggestive of the ‘tensed’ experience of A-time, to a slow (or even a-temporal) motion in the vocals, pads, or instrumental lines, creating a sudden feeling of musical ‘space’, which might in turn connote a ‘tenseless’ B-time. This technique allows producers to create layered temporal narratives within the music, creating a complex landscape of musical momentum. Drawing on literature and methods from both sociology and philosophy, this chapter explores the complex relationship between these temporal systems, and in turn demonstrates how drum and bass offers a form of temporal resistance to contemporary life through both the sonic and social experience that the music offers. It concludes by arguing that, through the temporal ruptures caused by its uncertain shifting temporality, drum and bass provides clubgoers with a powerful ontological experience that illuminates the contradictions of time in a uniquely embodied way.

Environmental Friendliness of a Person’s Musical Space as a Factor of Personality Disharmony Prevention

The article discusses correlations between a person’s musical space and the degree of personality harmony. The sound environment of a person always influences personality formation and his/her behaviour. By studying a person's musical preferences, a degree of harmony of his/her personality development can be understood. The article's purpose is to determine the correlation of musical preferences with the existence of personality disharmony and types of his/her relationships with others, as well as to determine the specifics of the impact of music on personality features of people with special needs. The authors started from the assumption that, depending on his/her personality traits, a person prefers certain patterns of musical discourse. The empirical study aimed to study relations of such personality features that testify the personality disharmony and are manifested in non-viable relationships with others. The personality manifestations in communications and educational activities were also analyzed. It was determined that music therapy plays an important role in the formation of their personalities for people with special needs. The correlation of personality traits with the perception of music has shown that persons with the external locus of control choose musical discourses that, as for their psychological content, reflect uncertainty, amorphy of world perception or its simplicity, primitiveness; on the contrary, persons with the internal locus of control choose energetic, purposeful music. Persons with the disharmonious type of relationships choose music whose psychological and emotional content reflects the next personality traits: possible aggressive behaviour; a life course that does not demand serious decisions, irresponsibility, and reluctance to resolve complex situations.

CULTURAL MEANING OF JAZZ (THROUGH THEODOR ADORNO’S CONCEPTION)

The article examines the patterns of development of one of the important musical trends in the XX and the XXI centuries in terms of its socio-cultural and socio-philosophical characteristics. The analysis takes into account Russian and Western (European and American) trends and assessments. The article captures the methodology of Theodor Adorno’s position, his political and musicological views. Attention is paid to the mechanisms of development of spiritual culture in a post-industrial society. The author substantiates the hypothesis and elaborates the idea of the great potential of jazz as a productive form of development and improvement of culture. The musical trends of the mid-twentieth century demonstrated radical transformations of jazz and rock music under the influence of commercialization, which demanded the simplification of the figurative system and language, active use of technical achievements, and mediation of musical space. The transformation of music and musical space contributed to the restructuring of society’s existence and consciousness, which in turn influenced the change of musical aesthetics and consumerized it.

Classical crossover in the modern musical space of Ukraine

The purpose of the article is to consider the genesis of the classical crossover and traces its path of development in the Ukrainian cultural and artistic space. The methodology involves a combination of historical and cultural, analytical, and comparative methods, which clarified the place of the classical crossover in modern music culture. The scientific novelty of the study is that for the first time in Ukrainian science, Ukrainian representatives of the classical crossover are considered. Conclusions. At the turn of the 20th – 21st centuries one of the areas that synthesize the achievements of academic and variety (rock, pop, electronic music) art has become a classic crossover. The origins of this trend are more ancient and go back to the 1960s when the first attempts were made to synthesize academic and variety performance. Famous Ukrainian singers of the academic school D. Hnatiuk, Yu. Gulyaev, A. Mokrenko, D. Petrinenko, L. Ostapenko performed both classical and variety works. Today, a striking example of the synthesis of academic and variety vocal art is the duets of F. Mustafayev – T. Samaya and V. Stepova – V. Sinchuk. Ukrainian singer, soprano of the new generation Arina Domski is the only representative of the Ukrainian scene, which consistently turns to the direction of the classical crossover, synthesizing in its performance variety and academic vocal repertoire.

Manifestations of the “non-classical” in the orchestral manner of C. Debussy

The relevance. Multidirectionality of artistic searches in the musical art of the first half of the XX century fully complies with the worldview and values of European culture of that time. The change of perception of the world, matter, time and space is objectified in the sound matter of musical works. Among the composers who have a defining role in paving the ways for new music, we should mention C. Debussy. The purpose of the article is to identify and systematize of “non-classical” features in the orchestral manner of C. Debussy. The novelty of the article is the study of the orchestral manner specifics of C. Debussy as “non-classical” in certain traits. The methodology. The article uses functional, historical, comparative, analytical and complex methods. The theoretical basis of the study are the works of V. Bobrovskyi (2018), H. Golovynskyi (1981), S. Iskhakova (1998), L. Kokoreva (2010), S. Mozhot (2006). The result. Extrapolation of scientific statements of V. Bobrovskyi, H. Golovynskyi, S. Iskhakova, L. Kokoreva, S. Mozhot to the sphere of orchestral thinking and orchestral manner of C. Debussy allowed to reveal signs of “non-classical” as the ones that draw a boundary between the principles of classical-romantic orchestration (based on functional harmony) and new music of the XX century. It is the “non-classical” features that allow to create a new sound matter, a new perception of space and time in the orchestral works of the composer. In our opinion, the manifestations of the “non-classical” are: 1) functional restructuring of the orchestral texture on the basis of non-hierarchy as the dominant principle; 2) building a dense, “concrete” in terms of eventfulness and, at the same time, light (massless), broad musical space, 3) levelling the boundary between the exposing (more integral and continuous) type of orchestration and developing (smaller, dialogical, discrete); 4) interpenetration of continuity and discreteness (discrete continuity) at the level of thematics and orchestration as a consequence of erasing the boundary between the functions of background and relief and the exposing and developing orchestration types. The practical significance. The results of the work can be applied in the training courses “History of orchestral styles”, “History of foreign music”, which are studied in higher education institutions; in further scientific researches.

Billy Higgins in the Zone: Brushwork, Breath, and Imagination

This Chapter presents an analysis of the late drummer and community leader Billy Higgins’s improvised brushwork and breathing strategies in his performance on Hoagy Carmichael’s “Georgia on My Mind” on his frequent collaborator’s Charles Lloyd’s recording The Water Is Wide (2000). Connecting with the book’s theme of political and cultural considerations of what it means to create Black musical space, Ashon Crawley’s “black pneuma” interpretive frame is used to help understand Higgins’s breathing strategies relative to his drumming as an orchestration of individual and community sound. Higgins’s breathing strategies during improvisation are theorized as a way to cross bar lines, accessing all colors of the human condition while creating a Black sense of musical place. Higgins’s values of musical place-making thrive through his ego-denying philosophy for the benefit of group sound throughout his career and within the social movement of Leimert Park.

Terence Blanchard and the Politics of Breathing

This chapter discusses trumpeter Terence Blanchard’s composition “Breathless” (2015). “Breathless” was Blanchard’s response to the 2014 killing of Eric Garner by members of the police on Staten Island and his musical connection to the Black Lives Matter social movement. Blanchard sonically represents breathlessness harmonically, rhythmically, and melodically within the values of Black musical space. It is argued that Blanchard’s orchestration of reverbed male and female sounds of exhalation with the spoken-word lyrics of JRei Oliver is a social critique of systemic violence. This chapter explains how Blanchard’s music is in conversation not only with the Black Lives Matter movement but with the archives and community repositories of improvised social justice music by past African American musicians who have historically created a Black sense of place through musical practices.

Crossing Bar Lines

This book provides an interpretive framework for understanding how African American creative improvisers think of musical space. Featuring a Foreword by eminent scholar Robin D.G. Kelley, this is the first critical improvisation studies book that uses Black Geographies theory to examine the spatial values of musical expression in the improvisational and compositional practices of trumpeters Terence Blanchard and Ambrose Akinmusire, drummers Billy Higgins and Terri Lyne Carrington, and pianist Andrew Hill. Bar lines in this book serve as a notational and spatial metaphor for social constraints connected to systemic and structural white supremacy. Crossing them therefore applies not only to conceptions of Black spatiality in musical practices but also to how African American musicians address structural barriers to fight the social injustices that obstruct freedom and full citizenship for African Americans and other marginalized groups. Defined by both liminal and quotidian reality, Black musical space, like Black feminist thought, is about theorizing through the lived experiences of Black people which reflect different genders, sexual identities, political stances, across improvisational eras. Using this theory of Black musical space, the book explains how these dynamic musicians explicitly and implicitly articulate humanity through compositional and improvisational practices, some of which interface with contemporary social movements like Black Lives Matter. Consequently, Crossing Bar Lines not only fills a significant gap in the literature on African American, activist musical improvisation and contemporary social movements, but it gives the reader an understanding of the complexity of African American musical practices relative to fluid political identities and sensibilities.

Unified Fragmentation: Andrew Hill’s Street Theory of Black Musical Space

This chapter examines Andrew Hill’s philosophical approach to improvisation based on a textual analysis of his unfinished theoretical treatise called Project Acculturation (1994) found amongst Hill’s papers in his archives at the Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers University. At the heart of Hill’s theory is a pedagogical paradigm he called “street approach to jazz improvisation.” Hill wanted institutional music curriculum to acculturate to the ways of learning that had shaped his musical approaches that extends from his experiences as a young musician in the Chicago Black jazz clubs, where he was encompassed by feeling of Black sociality. This is a feeling which he says is missing in what he calls white jazz. This chapter claims scholarship on Hill has largely focused on analyzing his compositional and improvisational analysis because he resisted musical and political categories. Hill’s musical approach to musical space in his composition “Malachi” (2006) is analyzed.

The Sonic Archive of Black Spatiality

The epilogue expands on the purpose of the book and the author’s approach to it. Although the book does not abandon positivism, the author never privileges traditional research musicological methods over his own lived experience—as an African American improviser, composer, and theorist—or the lived experiences of the improvisers discussed in the book. The chapter expresses a hope that the book will provide further insight into the relationship between African American improvised music and cultural notions of spatiality in relation to improvisation. The chapter further elaborates on Black musical space: it is not defined by a defiance of whiteness or white supremacy. It is defined by joy, struggle ad infinitum, and reliance on community. Black musical space expressed through humanity ultimately escapes attempts to codify it. The chapter continues with a final summary of the author’s findings about each musician discussed in the book. While Blanchard, Higgins, Carrington, Akinmusire, and Hill express their ideas differently in the language of Black musical space, they are all connected by how they cross bar lines to emphasize the social context connection between their lived experiences and their improvisational and compositional practices.