MACSEM 2023

Abstracts​

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Saturday, April 1

9:00 - 9:45 Panel 1 - History (Chair: Michael Iyanaga)

• Jackson Albert Mann, "Jawsmiths and Folk-Singers: Communist Folklorization, U.S. Left-wing Musical Performance Practice, and the Songs of the Industrial Workers of the World"

  • ​For decades, the U.S.’ Left-wing and labor movements’ conception of revolutionary working-class music has been dominated by a canon and performance practice derived from the Communist Party USA’s (CPUSA) Popular Front-era folk-revival (1939-1949). This has produced a situation where the musics of the U.S.’ revolutionary working-class have been coded as trans-historically Appalachian, as it was mostly on Appalachia’s regional styles that CPUSA folk-revivalists based their notions of ‘folk.’ Indeed, contemporary renditions of the songs of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), a U.S. socialist labor union well-known for its music (1908-1917), are usually in Appalachian-derived styles, despite little historical evidence they were performed this way. Primary sources relevant to the early IWW’s music indicate its membership boasted a heterogeneous performance practice reflective of the Union’s international, multi-ethnic membership. The earliest extant recording of an IWW song, Finnish-American singer Hannes Saari’s 1928 Finnish-language rendition of Joe Hill’s 1915-composed “Workers of the World, Awaken,” arranged as a march for a small orchestra, further supports the theory that IWW music was performed in diverse instrumentations and styles. Through an analysis of the remaining evidence, this presentation will reveal the reality of the early IWW’s performance practice and break the hold that Popular Front folk-revivalism has on contemporary U.S. Left-wing musical life, not in order to dismiss the legacy of the folk-revival, but to broaden historical conceptions of U.S. revolutionary working-class music and open future musical possibilities.

• Isaac Mast, “Far Across the Ocean (They've got the Honolulu Craze): The Uncanny Migration of a Tin Pan Alley Tune”

  • ​From the first documented Hawai’ian exhibit at the 1867 Paris Exposition to the last exhibit submitted by a Hawai’ian monarch at the 1888 Sydney World Fair, radical economic, social, and political change set the stage for a massive shift in Hawai’ian cultural expression. Rooted in Hawai’ian traditions but with English lyrics and Ragtime influences, Hapa-Haole music, literally “half-white/half-Hawaiian,” emerged as the new sound of Hawai’i, initiating the nation’s rise to the forefront of the Pan-Pacific-themed 1939 Golden Gate International Exposition. Scholars Elisse La Barre and Christopher Balme both speak to the genre’s prevalence following the 1915 Pan-Pacific International Exposition, and identify a proliferation of media, for example, Richard Tully’s 1912 play and eventual film adaptation in 1932, Bird of Paradise. Through deeper analysis of Hapa-Haole music’s birth, it is clear that a few key determinants laid the foundation for its prodigious popularization, unveiling an enduring global fascination with the idyllic and primitivist characterization of island culture. This study offers a new perspective on Hapa-Haole music through a case study of one Novelty Hawaiian song, Far Away in Honolulu; They’ve got the Tango Craze, written by American brothers, Burt and Frank Leighton, both vaudeville and minstrel performers with brief but influential careers as composers. Contributing to a post-Orientalist critique of transnational American entertainments during the broader 20th century, I trace their influence from the song-pluggers of Tin Pan Alley, to the global stage at the World Fairs, and follow the song’s migration to the record bins of Germany and Scandinavia.

• Shuang Wang, “Media as a Sieve in the Ages of Transformation -- Trends of Popular Music in 20th-Century China”

  • ​Since the development of record companies in old Shanghai, China, in the 1910s, sound circulation media, such as gramophone and radio broadcasting, have changed the way Chinese audiences perceive music. As Theodor W. Adorno argued, these new technological means dismiss the structural appreciation of music. The sound from these new media directly affected the receiver's auditory experience in a distinct way from live performances. Due to the different accessibilities of media channels to different places, including mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and overseas Chinese communities, popular music in these areas reflected different trends and styles. Between 1949 and 1976, the communist People's Republic of China (PRC) preferred patriotic songs and group listening to the radio, while outside the mainland, capitalist Taiwan and Hong Kong inherited the popular music of old Shanghai in the 1930s and released many commercial vinyl records and CDs. In this paper, I argue that sound media proactively shaped the different music cultures and aesthetic pursuits of chronologically and geographically diverse Chinese audiences. I examine several historical moments that altered Chinese political situations, commercial preferences, and technological availabilities in the 20th century. Drawing from historical documents, I consider the origins of the Chinese record industry and compare the different ways that the industry developed in China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, both before and after the founding of the PRC.

 

10:00 - 11:00 Panel 2 - Sampling (Chair: Kendra Salois)

• Rômulo Moraes, “Sampling as Telematic Collaboration”

  • ​In the 1985 book Into the Universe of Technical Images, Vilém Flusser predicted the future of culture as a self-enclosed game of permutations in which, instead of creating new information, humans would simply recombine all available information in virtually unforeseen ways. This "telematic society", as Flusser called it, would be characterized by a collaborative 'play' with cultural elements always already provided to everyone. As the myth of the Romantic author dissolved, Flusser argued, creative products would become just inputs in humanity's conversation.
    In 1991, only six years after Flusser's book, Warner Bros would win a landmark lawsuit against rapper Biz Markie for the unauthorized use of Gilbert O'Sullivan's song "Alone Again (Naturally)" in his 1989 album I Need a Haircut. Coming from the 1980s hip-hop tradition of sampling, Markie claimed such appropriative composition was widespread, without success. The judge who settled the case ridiculed these claims and considered Markie's artwork itself a type of intellectual theft, citing the Bible – "thou shall not steal" – to issue a $250,000 fine to Markie's label and refer the matter to criminal courts.
    Almost 40 years after the publication of Flusser's book, musical sampling – the recombination of cultural elements through technical reproducibility – has become a mass phenomenon. Yes, much of the most radical political values tied to sampling culture have now been subsumed under legal procedures guided by corporate interests; and yes, the Romantic ideal of authorship still holds a strong grip over musical discourses, including those of sampling artists. Yet sampling persists as a possible practical model for the system of collaborative creation that Flusser envisioned as the basis of post-historical culture. This paper analyzes the tensions between authorship and collaboration in sample-based music vis-a-vis the Flusserian concept of telematic society.

• Basile Koechlin, “Activating sound archives through sampling: the acholitronix of Leo PaLayeng”

  • ​In 1954, ethnomusicologist Klaus Wachsmann made around 200 recordings among the Acholi people of Northern Uganda and, despite claims in academic circles about their relevance to a broader range of listeners, few audiences beyond scholars have engaged this collection thus far. Following current approaches to applied ethnomusicology and archival sound curation, I am developing research methods as part of my PhD to circulate these recordings in the region. In this regard, I work closely with my associate Leo PaLayeng, an Acholi traditional musician, producer, and one of the pioneers of acholitronix, an electronic genre based on Acholi traditional music. Since last December, PaLayeng started sampling these archival materials as a way to invite the ancestors present in the recordings in the musical and cultural work he’s conducting in the region. In this paper, I relate PaLayeng’s use of the recordings with the scholarship on the ethical and cultural issues pertaining to the sampling of ethnographic recordings.

• Hexing Xiao, “Neoliberalism and Dialect Rap: GAI’s Accent, Resilience, and the Chinese Dream”

  • ​The overnight rise of Chinese dialect rapper GAI was unprecedented. The artist had little public exposure until the summer of 2017 when he placed first in the initial edition of the reality competition, The Rap of China. Yet in June 2021, GAI became the first hip-hop artist to be applauded by a full article in People’s Daily, the Chinese Communist Party’s official newspaper. Due to the government’s strict censorship of the genre, most Chinese hip-hop artists work in the underground, making GAI’s achievements particularly notable and curious. Where academic and journalistic accounts of GAI’s career have focused mainly on how the controversial rapper adapted to the government’s political agendas by changing his musical materials and styles, this paper takes a different track. Rather than attributing his success simply to selling out or self-censorship, I argue that GAI’s work articulates a neoliberal, grassroots culture of resilience. GAI’s music is especially marked by his accent which features a mixture of southwest Chinese dialects, evoking the rapper’s own experience as a migrant laborer in larger, more industrialized cities. The subject materials of his tracks, his unconventional sampling of folk tunes, and his visual styling gesture further to an urban-rural disparity caused by the country’s capitalizing process. And it is the blend of such elements that makes GAI’s artistic rhetoric unusually powerful.

• Vishruth Nagam

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11:00 - 11:45 Panel 3 - Critical Interventions (Chair: Anne Rasmussen)

• Molly Joyce, “Virtuosity from Disability: Exploring multidisciplinary offerings from dance to music”

  • ​As a disabled composer and performer, I have found limited definitions of virtuosity existing. These understandings are based on specific skills rather than a spectrum of physicality. I seek to cultivate virtuosity learned from disabled dancers, utilizing examples from Marc Brew and Kayla Hamilton. This will convey how virtuosity from disability is critical in moving towards more inclusive and exciting potentials.
    Scholarship in disability studies and music from Joseph Straus (2011), Blake Howe (2016), and Marianne Kielian-Gilbert (2006) has critiqued the stigmatization of disability within music. Petra Kuppers, Philip Auslander, and Carrie Sandahl’s work look at disability, performance, and dance. Kuppers proclaims that disability and dance are where the private and public meet (2003). Auslander and Sandahl describe disabled bodies as “bodies in commotion,” dancing across artistic and discursive boundaries and challenging understanding of disability and performance (2005).
    Disability and music scholarship focuses on discipline-specific relevance rather than cross-disciplinary exchange across artistic forms. Cross-disciplinary research in disability arts is needed between disciplines dance and music, especially as dance is arguably the most-developed discipline in disability arts. In a mixed-method design involving interviews and case study analysis, I will develop a composition/performance work series and written paper cultivating virtuosity learned from disabled dancers, expanding upon my collaborations with dance and applying intersemiotic integration to serve these processes. Intersemiotic integration serves the originating culture (dance) and receiving culture (music) for a mutually beneficial methodology.

• Dilshan Weerasinghe, “‘I Got A Story To Tell’: Hip hop, Storytelling, and Music Making as Creative Ethnographic Practice Through Feeling as Knowing”

  • ​What role does music making play in ethnographic research and scholarship, particularly in the context of hip-hop? Numerous different angles have been taken when it comes to creative scholarship and art in the field of ethnomusicology, and here I hope to build on that, examining how music making functions as ethnographic practice, as a means of documenting and expressing stories and feelings unable to be captured by traditional academic research or articles. I explore work from ethnomusicologists such as Ama Aduonum, looking at research methods not traditionally used within the field, as well as the work of Cassandra Hartblay looking at the art installation and performance as ethnographic process, working against the idea of “textocentrism”. I also draw on historian Saidiya Hartman for examples of creative representations of ethnographic narratives, black studies scholar and poet Fred Moten, as a foundation for concepts such as breaking form, and poets Aimé Césaire and Audre Lorde for ideas around poetic and artistic ways of knowing through feeling and artistic practice. I put these concepts in tandem with work surrounding hip-hop to explore and discuss how music making and creative practice function as ethnographic research and are able to document stories and feelings that elude traditional research practices and outputs, detailing one such recent music making art installation project as an example, to explore how music making and creative practice function as storytelling and ethnographic process in the context of hip-hop.

• Dani Hawkins, "Writing Music / Writing Movements"

  • ​How might examining musicians’ self-transcriptions help scholars write about decolonial & abolitionist movements? Generations of ethnomusicologists have explored how transcription never exactly reproduces performance, and it is by now a scholarly truism that academic writing about decolonization turns it into a metaphor. But does transcription turn music into a metaphor? To argue that it need not, I bring eight summers of ethnography with contradance musicians rooted in the back-to-the-land movement into dialogue with decolonial & abolitionist movements in unceded Indigenous territory and the urban US. Despite vast differences, each of these movements challenges the inevitability of colonial modernity; and, in each case, this antimodern radicalism dissipates when notated. The chasms between their political projects – waiting out the modern order’s collapse with a “good life” of homesteading and old-time jams versus confronting its police forces in eviction barricades and resistance camps – only underscores writing’s capacity to cannibalize very different radicalisms. My study participants, however, unexpectedly offer a compellingly concrete model of radical writing. I outline how their transcriptions erase their music’s radicalism and compare this to parallel erasures in scholarly decolonial and abolitionist writing. The vagaries of the musicians’ transcriptions do not turn their music’s radicalism into metaphor because of how they strategically appropriate writing – particularly its unsuitability for representing the nonmodern beyond metaphor – to create space for antimodern performance. They leave their radicalism unwritten, in other words, to make room for it in action. Might approaching decolonial and abolitionist writing similarly – as transcription – help scholars avoid metaphor’s political diminishments?

 

1:00 - 1:45 Panel 4 - West African Jazz (Chair: Noel Lobley)

• Juwon Adenuga, "Music Synthesis: Jazz appropriation in Yoruba Popular Music"

  • ​In recent times, Nigerian jazz musicians have, through musical intermingling, initiated a transculturation process between Yoruba popular music and jazz music, advancing its sonic realizations and revitalization. In this presentation, I examine a case study of the transculturation process between Yoruba popular music and jazz music by analyzing “Iwa Rere,” a composition by Wole Oni, a prominent Nigerian jazz musician and producer. “Iwa Rere” (Good Behavior) is a hybrid work comprising elements of apala—a Yoruba popular music genre—and jazz music. This synthesis is often referred to as “apala-jazz.” “Iwa Rere,” as an example of apala-jazz, combines the use of Yoruba indigenous instruments and adherence to the tonal inflections of the Yoruba language in its phrasing and the use of extended harmonic realizations and jazz traditional improvisatory riffs. These musical elements further inform us of the similarities between African and African American musics, where the latter could be posited as an extension of the former. How is jazz music seamlessly assimilated into apala in this composition? This presentation explores the close relationship between jazz music and Yoruba music, particularly how elements of jazz music are similar to—and have been appropriated in—Yoruba musical styles, and further speaks to the idea of fluid musical boundaries.

• Taiwo Nelson, "Gospel Jazz in Nigeria: A Case Study of Elijah Alebo"

  • ​In the early 1990s, Nigerian church musicians began rearranging church hymns/tunes in the style of jazz. Most of these musicians had their training in orthodox church music and grew up learning traditional (local) musical instruments. Their exposure to jazz was through reality shows on Nigerian National Television, such as the JAZZ ALLEY SHOW, JAZZ AT THE EPICUREAN, PORT HARCOURT JAZZ FESTIVAL, THE BAR BEACH SHOW WITH ART ALADE, AND URBAN GOSPEL MUSIC happening in America at the same period. These reality shows gave them a new sense of musical direction, suitable for recontextualizing the local hymns for the contemporary youths exposed to jazz music at the time. The result birthed the idea of gospel jazz in Nigeria. Through an oral interview, this paper focuses on Gospel jazz musician Elijah Alebo to answer three questions: How did jazz come to Nigeria? How has jazz influenced Nigerian musicians, and how has Gospel jazz developed in Nigeria?

• Ernest Owusu-Poku, "Impact of Jazz on Highlife: the contribution of Records"

  • ​In most scholarly literature on highlife music (such as John Collins 2018; Nate Plageman 2013, and Austin Emielu 2013), jazz’s impact on highlife is socio-historically traced to the emergence of dance orchestras in Ghana from 1914 onwards as well as the arrival of American and British troops who introduced the idea of jazz combo bands in the local nightclubs during World War two. This suggests that jazz’s earliest impact on highlife began in the context of live performance and nurtured what I call “master-to-student apprenticeship” as the central pedagogy in the composition and performance of highlife. Although these contextual inputs have partly influenced the development of highlife music, little attention is drawn to the role jazz recordings also played in the artistic creation and performance of the music during its nascent stages. Since the early 1920s, Ghanaian musicians have been exposed to recorded jazz music through the wonders of the global recording industry. It was through listening and emulating the music performance exemplified on those jazz records that many local musicians gained their thrust as active performers in the highlife music trade around the 1920s and 1960s. It is the purpose of this presentation to demonstrate how American jazz recordings served as a model for how highlife music should be composed, staged, and performed in Ghana. I focus my discussion on the circulation of jazz recordings in Ghana from the 1920s-1960s and how some Ghanaian musicians drew on those recordings as a pedagogical tool for gaining mastery in composing, arranging, and performing highlife.

 

2:00 - 2:45 Panel 5 - Material Culture (Chair: Agustina Checa)

• Josh Brew, “Of Materiality and the Environment: Towards a Sustainable Ecology with Palmwine Music?”

  • ​Ghanaian traditional music depends heavily on the environment in its creation and performance practices, but are these practices environmentally sustainable? For instance, almost all musical instruments of Ghanaian origin are made from plants and animal resources. Thus, this paper foregrounds the crucial role of Ghanaian music and stakeholders in supporting the knowledge and understanding required for sustainable management of its natural resources, significantly when rampant illegal mining in Ghana is degrading water bodies and forests.
    Focusing on Ghanaian Palmwine music, this paper seeks to explore the potential of how this musical tradition can contribute to the sustenance of the environment in both its musical and material culture. Palmwine music emerged along the coast of West Africa in the early 20th century due to the fusion of guitar traditions and indigenous musical resources. Ghanaian Palmwine music, until recently, was at the brink of extinction, but the intervention of two young bands - Legon Palmwine Band and Kwan Pa–– whose activities are revitalizing the music tradition. Hence, for a music tradition that is being “saved,” does it have what it takes to save the environment? How does ‘persons’ meaningful sustenance of their musical cultures contributes to a healthy ecology? The possible connection between Palmwine music and the natural environment lies, at least, in its moniker. Thus, this music tradition presents a fertile site for exploring the relationship between music and the environment in the Ghanaian context. The paper is framed within music sustainability, critical organology, and eco-musicology discourses.

• Melissa Camp, “Echoes of the 1919 Revolution: Arabic Nationalist Records at the British Library”

  • ​From 1919 to 1922, Egyptian nationalists revolted against their British occupants and established the Kingdom of Egypt. The revolution, and politics surrounding it, signaled a decades-long struggle for complete independence until the Suez Crisis of 1952. Moreover, the 1919 Revolution was a byproduct of the nahda (“Arab Awakening”) movement in the Middle East/North African region. Intellectuals and artists developed a new Arab modernity by establishing newspaper presses, reviving Classical Arabic poetry and literature, and standardizing Arabic musical practices. Musicians such as Mūnīra al-Mahdiyya and Sayyid Darwish also played an important role in shaping the sounds of the revolution and nahda through utilizing new recording technologies to disperse anti-colonialist nationalist sentiments.
    Although these musicians’ works were influential during the 1919 Revolution, the question remains of their role within the colonial archive in which they reside today. In my ethnography of the Arabic Music on Shellac Records Collection at the British Library, I trace the legacy of colonialism that looms in the accessibility and organization of its contents. “Bassarah Barrajeh” (“The Fortune Teller”), by both Darwish and Al-Mahdiyya, is one such case study I use to highlight the intricate histories of anti-colonial nationalist songs and the archives which house them. Drawing on methodological scholarship about archives surrounding revolutions and political events (Trouillot 1995; Abu-Lughod 2018; Wenz 2020), I analyze the agency of these Egyptian voices and their nationalist sentiments within the confines of the colonial archive, as well as current Anglo-Muslim relations that shape the bias grain of researchers and archivists today.

• Kajwan Ziaoddini, “Tape Masters: Negotiating Iranian Classical Music through Governmental Policies and the Cassette Industry”

  • ​In the 1980s and 1990s, cassettes were widely used for music recordings, production, dissemination, and consumption in Iran. There were cassettes companies operating under government control. Simultaneously, due to the religiopolitical policies of the newly established Islamic government, musical activities generally went under strict supervision, and some musical genres, such as popular music, were banned in the public sphere. Despite this, Iranian classical music was one of the few genres considered harmless by the government. As a result, Iranian classical musicians were permitted to participate in the state-controlled cassette industry and they voluntarily channeled their activities to the medium.
    The vogue of the cassette industry and the state tolerance of Iranian classical music led to a mutually beneficial relationship between the genre and the medium. The cassette industry helped Iranian classical music to gain popularity among the middle class, who could afford the low-price tapes. In the period known as “the golden era of classical music,” cassettes also impacted the way musicians established the form, ensemble, and other musical components of the genre, such that they have remained definitive of the genre, even after cassettes fell out of use.
    I argue that state-controlled cassette tapes influenced not only the music itself, but also how musicians and audiences perceived the genre. Based on investigating the cassettes released in the period and interviewing musicians and the cassette company managers, this study shows how a recording medium can have long-term impacts on the musical genre.

 

3:00 - 3:45 Panel 6 - Environments (Chair TBC)

• Rachel Horner, "Tracing the Communicative Sound Space of València’s Mascletà"

  • ​From excited conversations and musical recordings to firecrackers and brass band jams, March is a month filled with sound in València, Spain. Every afternoon from March 1 to 19, a barrage of carefully coordinated fireworks fills the plaza outside City Hall with cloudbursts of smoke and a cacophony of explosions. This pyrotechnic display, the mascletà, energizes community members and tourists in anticipation of the region’s annual Falles Festival. Unlike typical firework shows, the mascletà happens at midday and, thus, prioritizes the creative manipulation of explosive sound over colorful illuminated designs. Adding to this festive soundscape are recorded songs and improvised street performances that operate in tandem with the more comprehensive sonic phenomenon of language. In Valencia, where Valencian Catalan shares joint co-officiality with Castilian Spanish, language-dependent cultural practices are indispensable to the regional dialect’s continued vitality alongside the hegemonic force of the dominant national language. Accordingly, this paper investigates how sounds intermingle within the mascletà and blur the perceived divisions between linguistic and non-linguistic sign systems in a fluid, intrasemiotic exchange. This involves listening in to the mascletà’s soundscape, but it also requires listening out for the many streams of sound that intersect within the mascletà to generate what Valencian anthropologist Francesc Llop i Bayo would call the mascletà’s sound space, or a grouping of voluntary sounds that reflects a community’s values. In this analysis, I destabilize the rigid epistemological and disciplinary boundaries that typically frame language, music, and sound, toward the development of a nonhierarchical network of sonic significance.

• Nic Vigilante, “‘The Future of Live Music’: Video Game Concerts and Liveness in Virtual Worlds”

  • ​Live concerts within video games have become hugely popular in the last three years, with performances by artists such as Lil Nas X, Ariana Grande, and Travis Scott each drawing tens of millions of attendees. These virtual concerts are characterized by their fundamental interactivity; they take place in semi-persistent virtual worlds already inhabited by attendees and draw upon the communicative, visual, and embodied grammars of these worlds to create immerse and communal experiences. In this paper, I focus on concerts within the games Fortnite and Roblox, where what it means to be “live” is a question not only of temporality and agency but also one of collective affect. Central to these concerts is what I refer to – following scholars such as Philip Auslander and Paul Sanden – as liveness, a social affective state that emerges through the commodification and manipulation of the sense of the live’s absence. Liveness is the affective terrain upon which the live is understood as such, an affective terrain that becomes perceptible only in moments of its (actual or feared) absence. What is live about these video game concerts, I argue, is not the music but rather the sense of liveness arising from the audiences’ collaborative and collective actions – from dancing together to recursively watching others watch. An ethnographic methodology based on being-with-in-feeling highlights the contexts in which liveness takes shape, as well as what these ideas can tell us about the possible futures of concertgoing and sociality within Web3.

• Rubens De la Corte, “Blocos Feministas: The Latest Feminist Movements Reclaiming Women's Space in the Street Carnaval of Brazil”

  • ​In this paper, I discuss the recent empowering movements led by feminist, LGBTQ+, and Afro- Brazilian organizations during Carnaval in Brazil, emphasizing Bloco Pagu and Bloco Afro Ilú Obá de Min, two of the most renowned street Carnaval groups from São Paulo. As a prologue, Carnaval, its origins, characteristics, and how it was implemented and developed in Brazil will also be covered. Additionally, I address the women’s participation and the crucial role of the first Black matriarchs of samba, paving the way to the development of the music style that became an identity symbol of Brazil when the nationalist government of Getúlio Vargas and the patriarchal elite in the 1930s appropriated it. In my concluding thoughts, I argue that most Brazilian feminist blocos adopt contemporary forms of popular feminism instead of grassroots movements to unite women and achieve visibility. These Brazilian blocos neglect the dangers of post-feminism and neoliberal feminism as a commodity, still controlled by patriarchy, and in the service of just a few. However, it is crucial to differentiate the feminism adopted by Brazilian Carnaval blocos from the kind of feminism voiced by extremely successful high-profile women who turn to the image, appearance, and visual icons as the ultimate inspiration for other women.

 

4:00 - 5:30 Keynote: Steven Lewis

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Sunday, April 2

9:00 - 9:30 Panel 7 - Indigeneity (Chair TBC)​

• Tim Booth, “‘Giving Nature a Voice’: The Settler-Colonial Soundscape of a New Zealand Forest Sanctuary”

  • ​The Royal Forest and Bird Society is one of New Zealand’s best recognized nature-conservation NGO’s. The slogan “giving nature a voice” promotes its environmental-philanthropic mission, and emphasizes an interrelationship between charity and aural agency. Beyond the giving of monetary donations, supporters can also give through voluntary labor. In this paper I draw on recent ethnographic fieldwork attending to the experiences of volunteers working in a New Zealand forest sanctuary named Bushy Park Tarapuruhi, currently owned by Forest and Bird. I demonstrate an ethnographic approach to natural soundscapes that highlights the interconnectedness of human and more-than-human communities as they recover together from a natural and cultural legacy of colonial violence.
    In developing this ethnographic approach to soundscape analysis I adapt Steven Connor’s notion of “vocalic space”. Connor describes the voice as a mediator between the phenomenological body and its social and culture contexts. I expand this definition to include natural and historical contexts. I address the mediating role of vocality as a way to better understand the entanglement of colonial histories and anthropocene natures in the everyday management and maintenance of Bushy Park Tarapuruhi. Examining what it means to “give nature a voice” also highlights the conflict at the heart of contemporary settler-colonial environmental institutions as they attempt to reverse the ecological damage of global imperial expansion, and the assimilation/elimination of Indigenous peoples and worlds. I argue this is a necessary component of self-critique for music and sound studies as it seeks to further contribute to environmentalist research and activism.

• Kathleen King, “Silent Preservation and the Harmful Eradication of Noisy Humanity”

  • ​Preservation is a quiet endeavor. Both historical and natural preservation have often centered on concepts of silence and silencing to contain and control histories, objects, and landscapes. Through examining the role silence plays in preservation, I connect the absence of sound to the erasure of peoples and communities in areas of cultural and natural preservation. By linking the role of silence in museums and cultural sites to the new Quiet Parks movement, this paper aims to showcase the ways quiet is used to limit Indigenous connection to space and objects in the name of preservation, a practice engaged with by sound ecologists, museum curators, and park and museum visitors in the United States and abroad. This glaring absence of Native sound in our National Parks and museum spaces is a direct consequence of colonial action, and despite the dangers of industrial noise to natural ecosystems outlined by sound ecologists such as Schafer and Krause, the limiting of human interaction and noise production in parks is directly linked to colonial thinking and Western Preservation methods. These direct anti-Indigenous actions led to a ubiquitous collection of gaping, constructed silences in designated preservation spaces. My work aims to remind us that humans have always been part of natural soundscapes; our breath, our songs, our footsteps—each rhythm of our lives contributes the sounds of the world around us, and our preservation systems should reflect that bountiful collection of human noise rather than reject our natural sonic contributions in favor of constructed silence.

 

9:45 - 10:45 Panel 8 - War / Protest (Chair: Tracey Stewart)

• Alexandra Yaralian, “Repurposing Music for a Revolution: Patriotic Songs of Armenia”

  • ​During the Hamidian Massacres of the late 1800s through the aftermath of the 1915 Armenian Genocide, civilian militia and special operation forces were established throughout the Ottoman Empire to protect Armenian communities against the perpetrators of the genocide. These militia were known as “fedayees” or freedom fighters and dozens of songs emerged during that period glorifying battles, memorializing heroes, and providing hope to soldiers and civilians alike. These fedayees would eventually transform themselves into a unified political organization known as the Armenian Revolutionary Federation who remain a strong political force in Armenia and the diaspora. During the period leading to the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh War, fedayee songs saw a resurgence to promote morale among the soldiers and instill patriotism among the Armenian population.
    I argue how patriotic songs were repurposed to adapt to the current conflict in Armenia represented by two prominent fedayee songs: “Zartir Lao,” originally sung as a lullaby, and “Gini Lits,” a song referencing the assassination of Talaat Pasha. This paper covers two versions of both songs: one by a soldier at the frontlines of the war, Arthur Khachents, and the other by the symphonic metal band, Adana Project. I discuss the history of the songs in their context and compare how these contemporary artists stylized these songs both musically and lyrically to cater to today’s audiences in Armenia and the diaspora where they were widely viewed through social media as tools to connect viewers to the fedayee spirit, expand awareness, and as fundraisers for Armenian soldiers.

• Sepehr Pirasteh, “Pushing against the social norms through different ways of creating protest music”

  • ​Since the death of 22-year-old Jina Mahsa Amini in police custody, Iran has faced a new political upheaval under the motto, “Women, Life, Freedom.” While international news coverage of these demonstrations has focused on women’s rights, the protestors have been explicitly demanding broader political changes encompassing freedom, justice, and democracy, in ways that recall previous Iranian political movements. Based on the experience of having organized and participated in demonstrations in the diaspora and observed videos of demonstrations in Iran, this paper analyzes the use of voice and sound in these protests. First, protesters link past movements to the present through symbolic elements, poetic structures, and rhythms. They create affective resonances by setting certain words of chants in specific voice registers and by marching in place. They cross boundaries and push against social norms through strong language, forming a dialectical tension between themselves and security forces. Second, I show that protest performances in Iran and its diaspora have different characters due to vastly different legal frameworks. Protests at Iranian universities are presentational due to the risks of prosecution. In contrast, US protests among the Iranian diaspora are more participatory, due to the privilege of freedom of assembly. In both locations, the repetition of the formal and rhythmic structures of chants once used for the removal of the Shah in 1979 are repurposed to demand not only political change but also social change.

• Daniel Murray, “Echoes of Change: How the Shift in Palestinian Protest Music has Garnered Global Attention”

  • ​Art and music represent fluid, creative spheres which cannot be easily controlled or suppressed; thus, they have become prime platforms for expression in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. From political statements to calls for rebellion, music has been utilized often in the Palestinian struggle. In this project, I argue that the nature of this lyrical form of social opposition has evolved in two diverging directions. While always espousing a spirit of resistance, popular Palestinian music associated with the struggle has become forked between a call to arms celebrating martyrdom, and a more nuanced message of social justice. As noted by ethnomusicologist David McDonald (2009) many newer artists highlight the injustice of the situation, challenge the legitimacy of Jewish occupation, and cry out indignation rather than cry for violence. This newer music appeals to a broader international audience through the use of purposeful musical choice, such as including lyrics in English and even Hebrew, and taking a pacifist stance while still maintaining a sense of defiant protest. I would further argue that the shift in style of Palestinian music reflects the growing internationalization of the conflict itself. By supplementing my academic literature review with an analysis of audiences’ digital engagement through social media hashtags, YouTube comments, and online discussions of artist popularity, I aim to show how, in contrast to the traditional use of music as a way to rally the palestinian people for war, this new approach is allowing Palestinian artists to garner positive attention from the wider world stage.

• Cibele M. Moura, “On Transgression, ‘Alternative Facts,’ and the New Right in Brazil”

  • ​During the 2018 Family March with Bolsonaro, thousands of Bolsonaro supporters trailed behind a sound truck moving slowly through the main avenues of Recife, Brazil. Many carried yellow and green balloons, reproducing the colors of the Brazilian flag, while passionately chanting MC Reaça’s “Bolsonaro’s Prohibited Funk.” The song, a twisted version of MC João’s hit song “Slum Party,” seemingly re-enacted the transgressive aesthetics of funk proibidão (strongly prohibited funk) despite a dominant national discourse that marks the genre as distasteful, criminal, and, above all, obscene. If Bolsonaro’s New Right campaign appealed to the conservative morality of evangelical movements—among whose members were some of the staunchest critics of Brazilian funk—how should we understand the unexpected cannibalization of this song?
    Through interviews with Bolsonarists and textual analysis of “Bolsonaro’s Prohibited Funk,” I explore how the New Right co-opts funk’s politics of transgression and, in so doing, distances itself from the traditional right-wing political and aesthetic canon. This move not only expropriates the political opposition from one of its main strategies but also constructs New Right leaders as truth-tellers amid economic crises and increasing sentiments of political vertigo. This discussion draws on recent studies on post-truth politics to show how the positions of this movement were validated despite the falsity of their statements and the blatant brutality of their regime. Tracing the contrafact recreations of songs like “Bolsonaro’s Prohibited Funk” offers an opportunity to address the role of popular music in cultures of disinformation, an underexplored topic in music studies.

 

11:00 - 12:15 Panel 9 - Scenes (Chair TBC)

• Flan Sheahan

• M. Rizky Sasono, “We’re an indie band, not a World Music ensemble! Claims and politics of indie in Indonesia’s independent music scene.”

  • ​This paper examines the discourse surrounding La Marupè, an album recorded by an indie band, Theory of Discoustic (TOD), from Makassar, South Sulawesi, Indonesia. The album is characterized by its poetics of local language, folklore, and sound. While the independent music scene (indie) adapts to global sounds of popular music, their local sounds could potentially be deemed as “World Music,” an economic sound regime stressing on ethnic attributes (Novak 2017; Fermont 2018). For some Indonesian indie scenesters, the term “World Music” has colonial associations, exoticization, and subject to essentialized identity of national pride . TOD’s ethnic sounds support the assumption of music from faraway communities outside the center (read: Jakarta and Java), who have been marginalized by the national development scheme. In this paper I scrutinize the history of independent music in Makassar, TOD’s social history, the social life of La Marupè sound, to reflect on what Indonesian indie musicians consider as “World Music,” and what is not. In 2019 La Marupè received a critical acclaim as the best album of 2018, from Tempo - a Jakarta based national magazine renowned for their critical journalism. Reflecting on TOD as a stigmatized “regional indie band” who claimed national recognition, I also examine TOD’s attributes of indie-as-anarchy (Graeber 2004; Jepessen 2018), and operate through networks of actors from various intellectual and artistic scenes. The examination into TOD furthers our understanding of popular music in Indonesia’s and its geopolitics dimension, a legacy of the New Order regime.

• Hannah Nieman, "Punk House: A Comparative Examination of DIY Music Scenes in Williamsburg and Richmond Virginia"

  • ​Musical communities, specifically those involving young people, are built within the spaces and venues that welcome them. My presentation is a comparative investigation of the contexts, both physical and social, for the original music scenes at William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia and the Richmond Punk scene of the early 2000s, which was connected to Virginia Commonwealth University. In Richmond, venues such as Nanci Raygun, Alley Katz, and 9th North Boulevard were integral to the scene, and their closing led to the displacement of the music and the dissolution of its community. In Williamsburg, the Meridian, a house that sits on the outskirts of William and Mary’s campus, serves as the musical and communal hub of the student band scene. Now in its third decade, the student-run hub for the arts has remained a haven for those seeking an alternative to campus parties and the city’s family and tourist centered offerings. My fieldwork includes experience as a staff member of the Meridian, interviewing staff and band members, organizing student band shows, and looking at historical Meridian documents and zines from the Richmond scene. Drawing on the convergence of geography, policy, and music in Will Straw's “Cultural Scenes” and Christopher Dalbom dissertation, “Underground in the Confederate Capital: Punk Subculture in Richmond, Virginia”, I seek to answer the questions: How does the history of Richmond’s scene inform the current scene at William and Mary? How do venues contribute to music scenes? and What is the tradeoff between institutional support and DIY culture?

• Evelyn Zelmer, "Grimalkin Records: Genderqueer Identities, Genrequeer Music, and Radical Reciprocity in Richmond, Virginia"

  • ​This short ethnography explores the interplay of genre, gender, and professional music within and surrounding Grimalkin Records, a Richmond-based queer and trans music collective which supports marginalized musicians locally and globally. By centering QTBIPOC and neurodiverse artists and engaging in grassroots mutual aid, Grimalkin exemplifies intersectionality and mutuality. As their musicians receive personal and professional assistance, their audiences are enriched by the unique cultural productions of typically suppressed voices.
    Because the construction and maintenance of both genre and gender rely on embodiment, performance, and categorization, I argue that Grimalkin's gender-expansive musicians are especially inclined to produce genre-fluid, experimental music and to challenge normative boundaries. Furthermore, through its membership in anti-capitalist aid networks and its non-hierarchical organizational structure, Grimalkin actively queers a nonprofit system that is traditionally subservient to heteronormative neoliberalism. Richmond's already hospitable queer arts culture, multi-genre music scene, and vibrant ecosystem of LGBTQ+ resources all work reciprocally with these experimentations.
    This paper builds upon recent literature on queer ethnomusicology by Barz and Cheng (2020), journalistic accounts of the Richmond LGBTQ+ music scene, and Miller's (2016) gendered sociological assessments of urban music cultures. Original participant observation and interviews with Grimalkin artists and board members then reveal the inherently queer processes of self-identification, naming, and community-building that directly improve the material welfare of their musicians. In further contribution to the field of ethnomusicology, this paper's ethnographic material can be found in an online digital archive documenting the music scene in Richmond (audible-rva .org).

• Stephanie Espie, “Impact of COVID-19 on Network Building in Trinidadian Youth Spaces”

  • ​Since its inception in 1976, Junior Panorama, the annual youth steelband competition in Trinidad and Tobago, has fostered important networks between school bands, community youth bands, and community adult bands. School and youth bands rely on adult bands for access to resources such as steelpans and racks, rehearsal space, pan tuners, and arrangers. Adult bands provide these resources in hopes of using these networks as a tool of recruitment. These band-to-band networks have continued to develop over the past 40+ years, even as additional support for the youth competition from both the Trinidadian government and private corporations has grown. When the COVID-19 pandemic forced youth steelbands to stop rehearsing and performing for almost two years, and subsequently canceled Junior Panorama in both 2021 and 2022, these networks halted. As bands began to re-establish themselves and prepare for the 2023 competition, they have had to either restore these halted relationships, or find new networks to depend on. In this paper, I use the concept of music “scenes” first established by Bennett and Peterson (2004) to theorize the development of networks surrounding the Junior Panorama competition, the impact of COVID on these networks, and the re-establishment of these networks in preparation for the 2023 Junior and senior Panorama competitions. Utilizing ethnographic analysis from fieldwork completed between 2021-2023, I argue that despite COVID halting the developing networks between adult and youth bands, they still remain fundamental to the success of steelbands across Trinidad, solidifying the need for further research into youth steelband practices.