Music Final Exam
The case of Spice?
- Spice was asked to perform on a gala celebrating the success of Jamaica's athletes in the Rio Olympics, she performed the songs in a much more toned-down form than her usual style but it was considered "inappropriate" by many Jamaicans - Her body is what represented "downtown" experiences and aesthetics so no matter what she performed her presence was deemed as "inappropriate" - her musical object (songs), discusses cunnilingus (female oral sex) the song names cunnilingus as not only a desirable practice for Jamaican women, but one that is already taking place and needs to simply be affirmed - relates to patterns or reception b/c society does not view her music as appropriate
Justin Bieber in Dancehall aesthetics?
- encounter's Jamaican dance styles, grooves, dance, instruments contributes to sound Gets dancers to reflect and dress, moves themselves reference "sorry" Is it problematic? Use someone else's stuff, profiting on that sound Built in audience, not really his sound Potentially problematic ? He has money and access, accessing a privilege that the dancehall musicans dont have Dancehall culture as a space for creators of dancehall culture and consumer to take control of their own representaion
Problems with National identity (Carlos Chavez)?
1. He is serving as a symbol of a tradition that took place among other composers in Mexico, and across Latin America a. In titling his symphony Sinfonia India, Chavez is collapsing the difference between the distinct indigenous traditions the melodies came from b. Demonstrates that constructions of authority are subjective and never disinterested - Chavez is incorporating indigenous performers but borrowing melodies - Collapsing groups into the indian, instead of individuality
Schafer also worries about soundscape?
1. increasing industrialization is Romantic and anti-modernist (many have criticized him) 2. he believes some sounds belong in the world soundscape, and others are unwanted noise. - problem b/c people have different understandings of what makes for a "healthy" soundscape and his efforts to "compose" the world soundscape are colonialist
Koto?
13 stringed zither plucked with small finger-pricks - Player places the instrument on a mat or low table over movable bridges and plucks the strings using plectra on the thumb - Represents music of edo era, developed from a court tradition and gradually entered the home, played by members of the rising merchant class as an emblem of cultural accomplishment - Popular for middle class Japanese girls - sounds very slow, ring then quiet
Steelband?
1890-1930's - after a ban on stick fighting and drums during the years of active tamboo bamboo, rhythmic expression continued to be important - A company in Trinidad called Crix Crackers and they make 5 gallon tins for the crackers and sound good when you bang on them (old brake parts sound good to), Garbage cans can be loud and give a good bark to - By the 1920s and 30s bands of revelers would avail themselves to whatever sounded good and they could get their hands on - By 1937 and 1941 these metallic instruments became available in large quantities - By the 1940s someone figured out that oil drums lasted longer and sounded better than any other material used, and someone figured out you could dent them and get different notes - In the 1950s the steelpan became part of the national vision of independence, the Steel Band Association was formed that year . Steelpan traveled to England and was a hit in 1951. By 1963 Panorama was a government-sponsored competition complete with big prizes and huge corporate sponsorship - Played in smaller ensembles and soloists were common, played arrangements of calypsos - Today the steelpan is found in many locations throughout the Caribbean and in many US universities
Hollywood films 1970's?
1970's - found composers trying to idealize native American culture, as the real thing, real America - Composers tried to score native Americans the same way they scored other characters, trying to defamilairize sounds for the viewers, - more experimental, audiences read in translation or subjective to native american language they do not understand - do more than 50's
Shamisen?
3 stringed lutes played with a pick, picks up speed faster than koto - represents music of edo era - Belongs to a world of the theatre with its colorful and exciting entertainment
Steven Feld's term _____ refers to the ways of knowing an environment through sound
Acoustemology
Calypso?
As early as 1780's the word cariso was used to describe a French creole song, and after emancipation in 1838 cariso was perfected by the (mostly female chant wells) These chantwells assisted by drums made stick fighting/kalenda happen, French creole remained the principal language of cariso until the 1880s when English began creeping in by mid-century - To clean up the carnival drumming was banned in the Musical Ordinance of 1883, and 1884 stick fighting was banned - Tamboo bamboo came to replace the drums (and sticks) in 1890's, consisted of 3 different instruments (each from bamboo): Boom, foule, cutter with this ban on stickfighting it made men become much more involved pushing women to the sidelines - Next important development was in the form of 2 widely popular verse forms: single and double tone, Single tone: 4 lines, picong style double tone: 8 lines, Sans Humanite - String bands were also becoming prominent in Trinidad with 2 main styles Pasillos and Castilians the Pasillo (paseo, double step) is the rhythmic grandfather of the modern calypso BY TURN OF CENTURY, calypsonians began performing in tents, leaving the streets to tamboo bamboo and charging admission to shows - Contests between tents became a norm and in 1939 Growling Tiger was crowned the first calypso monarch of Trinidad EVENTUALLY, string band sound was replaced by sounds of the big band
What are the key components of Schafer's soundscape?
Aural space, sound signals, soundmarks and keynote sounds musical composition as a soundscape, or a radio program as a soundscape or an acoustic environment as a soundscape. To read a sophisticated chart used by phoneticians, extraordinary skill and patience is requiring - A writer is trustworthy when writing about sounds directly experienced and intimately known Ex : all quiet on the Western Front the author was actually there
Rihanna using dance hall in Work?
Bajan lead singer (Rihanna) featuring a Canadian rapper (Drake) in a video filmed in Toronto - setting is a Jamaican spot that recalls the bar/club hybrid that is a staple in Jamaica - all dancers from caribbean, every one knew how to move when beat dropped - audiences: Jamicans living in Canada, and the US, Jamicans in Jamaica other caribbean people in the Caribbean or in North America, African Americans, americans - dancehall beat and music video Rihanna is using her platform as an artist to spread a song that is rooted in dancehall aesthetics. The song has a particular niche b.c it sounds foreign (lyrics are jamaican patois) It is interesting b/c she's a Bajan artist singing with Drake who is Canadian but her likeness essentially enables the song to be a global hit. So the audience includes Jamaicans in Jamaica, America and beyond as well as people outside the Jamaican diaspora. People assume her to be more authentic b/c she is foreign but familiar She is almost like a liaison between true dancehall and the "outside" white world b/c people have become familiar with rihanna's "island vibes" but still accept her in a hollywood "white washed setting" Setting in music video also linked to dancehall
Trinidad's 2 types of carnival music?
Calypso Steelband
The music that accompanied stick fighting in Trinidad was called?
Cariso/kalenda
Hollywood films 1980's?
Dances with Wolves draws on the same strategies as any liberal western - white protagonist comes to know the nobility and wisdom of the Indians, mourning their vulnerability in the face of advancing white civilization - Pits the meaningless, bureaucratic, greedy, wasteful, stupid culture of the US army against the unified culture, generosity, intelligence, gentle humor and respect for the earth that characterize the Sioux - Indians here represent traditional American community and values, seeing the Indians as traditional Americans - The prewar Indian was an obstacle to overcome, the postwar Indian has emerged as the ideal American.
The term (within film studies) for being able to SEE what you are HEARING on the screen is
Diegetic
Trace the ways in which Native Americans have been represented and scored in Hollywood films. 1930's?
Early film in the 1930's has traded on stereotypes of the drum, Native Americans stood in the way of Cowboy's manifest destiny - In the classic Hollywood film, the genre has not treated Native Americans tribes as people with their own histories but rather "all-purpose enemy ready at the drop of a tomahawk to spring from the rocks and attack wagon trains, Calvary patrols and isolated pioneer settlements." - Hollywood Indians tends to be represented as bloodthirsty marauders or romanticized noble savages - These stereotypes came from a Euro-American all-purpose shorthand representing primitive or exotic people
Shakuhachi?
End Blown Flute, soft and gentle flute like sound - The Meian and Kinko schools, also based in Kyoto and Tokyo represent the main traditions of Shakuhachi performance
Suzanne Lefont?
Her article "very straight sex" draws our attention to sexual norms that European and African peoples brought with them to the colonial space of Jamaica - Africans and Europeans responded to each other's sexual norms in one or more of 4 processes - The process of rejection rejecting the sexual norm closely correlates with Isawna and Spice how these norms were rejected and how they felt that they could freely discuss sex and there opinions which were in contrast with men at the time - Dancehall musicians do not discuss oral sex unless to denounce it and vaginal penetration is the only sanctioned form of sex among black jamaicans
Urbanization involved in transforming one Latin American musical genre
In the 20th century Latin America became the worlds most urbanized region, by 2050 the UN estimates that 9 out of 10 Latin American citizens will live in a city - Forro emerged into the national imagination within Brazil b/c of the rural to urban migration and b/c this Brazilian state was attempting to find a more centralized mode of engagement across the nation. - In the mid 20th century many people were moving from places like the sertao and the state of Bahia to the big cities of Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo. - Northeastern stereotypes were growing up around these migrations and many were singing about the region in their choros. - Choro is a genre that is played in an ensemble of both composed and improvised material, that is quite fluid. This genre included a mandolin, violao (tenor guitar) and pandeiro (tambourine/ frame drum - Luiz Gonzaga sold the musical style forro on radio shows, in concert, and on record. This music was traditionally played for emsembles like dance parties. - The Forro as a emerging genre in Brazil represents the political need for centralization, to the economic need of many laborers to relocate to urban centers, and the ability of radio to create solidarities and imagined communities (Brazil as a unified nation).
The most prevelant style of music performed in powwows is called?
Intertribal
Role of dancehall music and/or culture in the controversy surrounding Ishawna's "Equal Rights" and Spice's Rio Gala?
Ishawna is a female deejay who claims to represent women and to speak to women's issues in her music, she tramples all over the practice of respectable sex that has been the norm in dancehall culture since its emergence in the late 1970s - Men push back against her trying to silence her, obstructing her on set so that she cannot finish the set - All the white, many female fans stand behind her claiming that she represents them and that what she advocates in "Equal Rights" is fair - Her song has had power in Jamaican society and the Jamaican diaspora have taken part (embodies a contentious Jamaican woman) Dancehall music has been a site of sexual debate since late 1970's and early 1980's - Had graphic lyrics about sex, violence, and dancing - "downtown" creation and expressed "downtown" ideologies and aesthetics - Used as a way out of poverty - coincides with questions of identity
3 interrelated theater traditions?
Kabuki Bunkraku Noh
The three types of theatre we discussed from Japanese traditional music are?
Kabuki, Bunkraku, and Noh
According to R. Murray Schafer, the fundamental tone of an acoustic community, heard continuously in the background, is called _____
Keynote sound
Music in Latin America, discourses of indigenous identity in both Mexico and the Andes. Indigenous identity employed to create forms of National identity?
National Identity - Carlos Chavez - Used what he perceived as indigenous sounds to create Mexican identity - capturing socio-political context (re forging mexican identity) Mexican revolution as ways to re incorporate indigenous groups, interest in portraying them in art and music - Claimed to have used 3 Indian melodies collected by researchers from different groups - Intended markers of non-European musical practice (heterophony, repeated melody, and Indian practice of performance on a flute/drum) - Use of traditional instruments (flute/drum, rattles and gourds)
Way that urbanization was involved in transforming one Latin American musical genre - Nortec?
Nortec in the Mexican border city of Tijuana during the late 1990's arose as a response to the failures of urbanization -as a creative rethinking of an urban environment historically plagued by poverty, drugs, labor and tourism. - . Nordec has the ability to turn a negative set of stereotypes inside out, and offer an ironic but hopeful blend of symbols in the process. - Nordec offers a counter narrative (if not a solution) to the challenges of urbanization by being a dance genre that is all about the experience of living in a border region, an experience shared by those living in Tijuana - Nortec turns the negative stereotypes of the city and its border region into positive markers of space and place by blending samples with live instruments, creating a sound that juxtaposes rural and urban sounds and electronic and acoustic instruments.
Noh Theatre?
Oldest out of the 3 - Combining various folk dances, musical theatricals, and religious and courtly entertainment of medieval times noh was a serious Buddhist art - The chief actor moves slowly on stage wearing a mask, robe, white socks with controlled and restrained movements - Performed in major cities in special indoor theaters that are owned and operated by 5 traditional schools of noh performance - Music for noh consists of songs sung by the actors or chorus 2 types the sageuta (a type of song in lower vocal range used in Noh plays) and Ageuta (A type of song in higher vocal range used in Noh plays) o Instruments are a flute called nohkan and 3 drums of different sizes - Main actor shite, supporting actor waki KOTO plays main melody while shamisen and shakuhachi play an elaboration of the main nmelody
4 themes in to help think about norms across the Caribbean region?
Patterns of reception Questions of identity Class and cultural politics Travel and Tourism
3 musicians born and raised outside Jamaican culture using dance hall aesthetics in their performances?
Rihanna featuring Drake "Work" 2016 Jake Frost aka Beniton "Work(Remix)" So you think you can Dance (Canada) Justin Bieber
What issues does his concept of the soundscape raise?
Schafer is wondering what the relationship between man and the sounds of his environment are and what happens when those sounds change?
Schafer's concerns with soundscape?
Schafer says that the soundscape of the world is changing b/c man is beginning to inhabit a world with an acoustic environment unknown to everyone. Noise pollution meaning the soundscape has reached an apex of vulgarity and predicted universal deafness as the ultimate consequence it is resulting b/c man is not listening carefully, we must seek a way to make environmental acoustics a positive study program also says human voice is downed out by modernity
The juxtaposition of duple and triple meters in mariachi music is known as ___-
Sesquialtera
3 traditional Japanese instruments?
Shakuhachi, Koto, Shamisen
Sound signals?
Sounds you listen to in every day life
Aural space?
Space in which you can hear the reflected sounds of your own movement
The ensemble that replaced the tamboo bamboo on the streets of Trinidad after WWII is called the...
Steelband
_______ was the name of the indigenous peoples who populated the island of Jamaica before the arrival of Columbus and the Spanish empire.
Taino
In its traditional form, the musical style of cumbia, includes three different kinds of drums: ___, ____, ____ each of which has a unique rhythmic role
Tambora, Tambor Alegre, Tambor llamador
Bunkraku?
The puppet theater that can be seen in Psaka and in Tokyos national theater, emerged at same time as Kabuki and under same circumstances and patronage -primarily of bourgeoisie or chonin of Osaka, borrowed from and exerted influence on the Kabuki theatre - The bunkraku puppet is made of wood and moved by 3 puppeteers who manipulate its arms, fingers, legs, body, head, eyes, mouth and even eyebrows (very realistic) - The narration ensemble both sung and spoke, is provided by a narrator-chanter which is the same combination as the chobo ensemble in Kabuki - Gidayubushi is a major Japanese musical narrative style accompanied by the Shamisen including chants, heightened speech and lyrical songs
The term _____ refers to Jamaican deejays' practice of chanting rhythmically or talking over a dub or reggae beat in the decades before the emergence of dancehall music
Toasting
keynote sounds?
Underlying background
Drake using dancehall aesthetics?
Using aesthetics is it problematic or not Appropriates global blackness Accent : jamaican and british Connections to african diaspora, does he really have a claim Positionality : Jamaicans may be mad, majority white audience Ownership, authorship Audience he is releasing to? Jamaican audience (this is mine, mine) where as americans Potentially problematic Trading on other sounds to create his sound, folks dont have information
Music in Latin America, discourses of indigenous identity in both Mexico and the Andes. Indigenous identity employed to create forms of community solidarity?
Wayna Rap's Aymara: Community solidarity - Refers to genre of hiphop/rap music emerging among Aymara youth in El Alto, Bolivia and to specific performing group - Swinehart traces the relationship between Tupac shakur's namesake and the eventual impact of hip-hop and Tupac on music in indigenous youth communities living in El Alto - Relocates language in a new ways reflecting and producing local language practices - Aymara hip-hop is born from an explosive moment of struggle, a moment situated within a longer trajectory of historic struggles reaching back to the days of Tupac Katari - Wayna rap is celebrated by the community (they have produced a video against air pollution with the state run television station) - Contributes to the persistence, reproduction and even expansion of Aymara language, culture and historical memory
Soundmarks?
akin to landmarks
Kabuki?
is the main form of Japanese popular music theater, it is regularly performed in several venues in Tokyo and also held several times a year at the larger hall of the National theater - When it is time to start a man in a kimono comes on stage to discuss the kabuki theater so that people will understand and come again and again - First performance occurred in 1596 and was done entirely by women but then immediately after the govt. banned the female performance of Kabuki - Borrowed a lot from other theaters such as classical noh theater and puppet theater bunkraku such as gestures when the lecturer made vigorous gesture with him arms and legs it was an adaption from bunkraku theater, known as aragoto, meaning "rough business", he then walked in gliding steps, moving w/o any upper body motion which this gentle and refined movement came from noh theater - Dance is also very important as a Kabuki actor is primarily a dancer and dance is an essential movement toward a climatic static posture - Onstage musicians are degatari (2 kinds, chobo the storytellers and debayashi specializing in performing the "long song") and offstage musicians are geza - instrument: Hyoshigi (important, 2 rectangular woodblocks in his hand)
Ishawna"s song "equal rights?"
lyrics of a song can express an identity that transgresses particular social norms and provokes different kinds of reactions from audiences.
The Japanese theatre tradition including only drums, flute, and vocals (no string instrument) is called...
noh
Jack Frost aka Beniton "work" remix?
o Jamaican artist who has toured with several well-known dancehall and reggae artists creates an online persona (Jack Frost) who remixes existing songs by splicing his voice in alongside the original. o Excellent example of Jamaicans "talking back" to non-Jamaicans who draw inspiration from dancehall culture.
So you think you can dance (canada)?
o alongside modern, hip-hop, salsa, etc., dancehall is one of the movement styles contestants must choose from each week to compete for the title of this televised dance competition. By making it to this competition, dancehall demonstrates its legitimacy in Canadian popular culture—a legitimacy it has not yet appeared to gain in the US.
Spice's Rio Gala performance?
the body of a musical performer can index a specific class and cultural position within a society, and how that specific position can create friction when it enters spaces that have been cordoned off for other class and cultural positions
Hollywood films 1950's?
the liberal western took on the project of humanizing the Indian, example in Broken arrow and others of its kind portrayed the Indians as proud, intelligent, misunderstood and oppressed - Many western films would incorporate Indian culture but based on the writers imaginations, despite trying to remain authentic they were largely generic - Almost all Indians speaking parts were played by whites - Broken arrow is about a hero who slowly befriends a tribe considered by the whites to be savagely hostile and each hero learns the way of the tribe; each falls in love with an Indian woman and marries her. o Indians emerge as people with honor and white society is revealed in its boorish destructive ignorance - The Indians in these films represent actual Indians, communists and African Americans - Composers began to modal flutes and strings and use "real" Native American music in "real" narrative roles
How does Schafer define the term soundscape?
total field of sounds audible wherever the listener is situated and derived from landscape Landscape - environmental perceived (includes the total cultural/ecological/physical components of an area)
relations of power between each of these artists in dance hall aesthetics?
who can access North American recording studios and technologies, performance spaces, and other kinds of resources
