Place, Meaning, Comunity, and In-Betweenness

The author presents bluegrass as a practice of in-betweenness, a way of dealing with authenticity, place, and genre. Scenes from a bluegrass workshop, a Prague pub jam, and an analysis of the the way musicians talk about their musical goals shows that Czech bluegrassers' projects are rooted in reality, nostalgia, imagination, and a mix of all three. The frame of musical pragmatics provides a way to consider these motivating factors, and how they play out socially. The author explains the methodology bi-musicality gained not as the disciple of a master musician, but as a student of the aesthetic, interpersonal, and transnational aspects of Czech bluegrass.

A System for Tuning Instruments Using Recorded Music Instead of Theory-Based Frequency Presets

Musical instrument tuners are devices that help musicians to adjust their instruments such that the played notes have the desired fundamental frequencies. In a conventional tuner, the reference tuning frequencies are preset, where the presets are obtained from tuning (musical scale) theory, such as twelve-tone equal temperament, or are user-specified temperaments. For many kinds of music in oral traditions, especially nonwestern music, widely accepted theoretical presets for tuning frequencies are not available because of the use of non-standard tunings. For such contexts, the “reference” is a master musician or a recording of a master musician. In this article, a tuning method and technology are presented that help the musician to tune the instrument according to a given (user-provided) recording. The method makes use of simultaneous audio and visual feedback during the tuning process, in which novel approaches are used for both modalities. For audio feedback, loopable stable frames, obtained automatically from the recording, are looped and played continuously. For visual feedback, a superimposed plot of the auto-difference functions is displayed instead of the conventional tuner's approach of detecting frequencies and displaying the amount of frequency difference between the input and the reference.

Virtually Audible in Diaspora

This essay explores the performance and pedagogical practices of Master Musician [Nhạc Sư] Nguyễn Vĩnh Bảo, a musician of nhạc tài tử Nam bộ [music of talented amateurs] who lives and works in Hồ Chí Minh City, but whose students reside primarily in diaspora. By critically engaging with the concept of “trans-nation”—a term coined by Yan Haiping—and invoking theories of transnational competence, the essay examines the processes by which Nhạc Sư Nguyễn Vĩnh Bảo creates a virtual diasporic community based around the performance and appreciation of traditional music practices.

Tejano Music in the Urbanizing Midwest: The Musical Story of Conjunto Master Jesse Ponce

This article explores the story and agency of conjunto master musician Jesse Ponce from his early life in San Antonio to his migration to northwest Ohio as an “authentic” Tejano (Texas-Mexican) musician. Although Ponce used this status as a form of cultural capital to construct his identity, integrate into local Latino communities, and interface with Latino cultural institutions, three outside agents, including the author, worked to publicize his expertise in Ohio, which, in turn, led to new acknowledgment and self-identification. The recent history of the “traditional” conjunto style is revealed as paralleling Ponce's career and aesthetic preferences. Both are in slight decline: Ponce, because of his failing health and resulting fewer performance opportunities; traditional conjunto, because of the rise of a more virtuosic “progressive” styleBourdieu's notion of cultural capital and Loza's concept of enculturation are utilized to explicate Ponce's experience and self-construction in urbanizing northwest Ohio. The author's experiences with Ponce (as promoter and musician) are included to demonstrate the constant negotiations between Ponce, his musical identity and authority, and the outside world