Category Archives: Pedagogy

by | July 19, 2024 · 6:00 am

Instant Classics: RILM’s Top 13 Reviewed Texts, 2022–23

Amidst a summer break flying by all too quickly, RILM presents another installment of its Instant Classics series—posts comprising annotated bibliographies of books, indexed in RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, that have received the most reviews in academic literature across a given time span. The content of these books exemplifies RILM’s commitment to disseminating publications that are truly international in scope, with coverage that embraces a diversity of languages, nations, subject matter, and approaches to music research. This 2022—23 list contains a little something for everyone, and we hope it will inspire some welcomed additions to your summer reading list.

As always, this collection should be approached with a critical eye. As reviews continue to be written, the order of the books included here will continuously be in flux and, over time, some could be replaced by others. Further, access to resources, familiarity with conventions of proposal writing that are attractive to publishers, and innumerable other factors vary considerably across music research communities around the world. Indeed, closing the gap in such disparities, particularly regarding publications coming from the Global South, is an essential component of RILM’s mission. Despite the inherent limitations, collecting these texts in this way is valuable, as it generates an archive of the topics, methodologies, and perspectives that earned the attention of music scholars, writers, and journalists during a brief period in time. We can appreciate these texts’ contributions to musical knowledge while simultaneously being aware of the powers held and challenges faced by the publishing firms and university presses that sell them. As we zoom out, patterns may emerge that provide insight into the topical trends that have contributed to music discourse in the early decades of the 21st century.

And finally, do keep in mind that RILM can only disseminate the writings on music to which it has access. You are invited to help make RILM Abstracts be as complete as it can be by visiting our submissions page, making sure records of your publications appear there, and adding abstracts and reviews to them as necessary. We thank you in advance and wish you a happy summer of reading!

P.S.: Sympathies to Arnold Schoenberg, the book on whom, either predictably, eerily, coincidentally, or uncannily, placed at number 13, the one number he avoided more than any other while he was alive.

– Written, compiled, and edited by Michael Lupo, Assistant Editor/Marketing & Media, RILM

________________________________

#13. Sachs, Harvey. Schoenberg: Why he matters (New York: Liveright, 2023). [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2023-4761]

Abstract: In his time, Arnold Schoenberg (1874–1951) was an international icon. His twelve-tone system was considered the future of music itself. Today, however, leading orchestras rarely play his works, and his name is met with apathy, if not antipathy. Within the context of this interpretative account, Schoenberg’s reputation is restored to his rightful place in the canon, revealing him as one of the 20th century’s most influential composers and teachers. Schoenberg, a thorny character who composed thorny works, raged against the “Procrustean bed” of tradition. Defying his critics—among them the Nazis, who described his music as “degenerate”—he constantly battled the antisemitism that eventually precipitated his flight from Europe to Los Angeles. Yet Schoenberg, synthesizing Wagnerian excess with Brahmsian restraint, created a shock wave that never quite subsided, and his compositions must be confronted by anyone interested in the past, present, or future of Western music.

#12. Broad, Leah. Quartet: How four women changed the musical world (London: Faber & Faber, 2023). [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2023-1400]

Abstract: A group biography of four women composers who changed the modern musical landscape: Ethel Smyth (1858–1944), famous for her operas, was a trailblazing queer Victorian composer and a larger-than-life socialite, intrepid traveller, and committed Suffragette. Rebecca Clarke (1886–1979) was a talented violist and Pre-Raphaelite beauty, and one of the first women ever hired by a professional orchestra, later celebrated for her modernist experimentation. Dorothy Howell (1898–1982) was a prodigy who shot to fame at the 1919 Proms. She earned a reputation as the “English Strauss”, and after retiring she tended Elgar’s grave alone. Doreen Carwithen (1922–2003) was one of Britain’s first woman film composers, who scored Elizabeth II’s coronation film; her success hid a 20-year affair with her married composition tutor. In their time, these women were celebrities. They composed some of the century’s most popular music and pioneered creative careers; but today, they are ghostly presences, surviving only as muses and footnotes to male contemporaries like Elgar, Vaughan Williams, and Britten.

#11. Proksch, Bryan. The golden age of American bands: A document history (1835–1935) (Chicago: GIA Publications, 2022). [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2022-10133]

Abstract: The story of the American wind band, told chronologically by those who experienced it in real time from 1835 to 1935. The volume explores how bands became bands, how they rose in popularity, and which figures had insights and specific impacts on the development of the genre. Through source documents and articles, the volume surveys the ensemble’s history from the time of the first brass bands in the 1830s, through the Civil War and the golden ages of Patrick S. Gilmore and John Philip Sousa, to the cusp of the wind ensemble just before World War II. Musicians such as Frederick Fennell, Allessandro Liberati, Karl L. King, Patrick Conway, Fredrick Neil Innes, Jules Levy, Alan Dodworth, and Herbert L. Clarke are included. Numerous rare and unknown illustrations show the places where band history happened. Documents include rare periodical excerpts, handwritten letters, and other writings taken from archives throughout the United States.

#10. Bonnette-Bailey, Lakeyta Moninque and Adolphus G. Belk, Jr., eds. For the culture: Hip-hop and the fight for social justice. Music and social justice (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2022). [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2022-4800]

Abstract: Documents and analyzes the ways in which hip hop music, artists, scholars, and activists have discussed, promoted, and supported social justice challenges worldwide. Drawing from diverse approaches and methods, the contributors in this volume demonstrate that rap music can positively influence political behavior and fight to change social injustices, and then zoom in on artists whose work has accomplished these ends. The volume explores topics including education and pedagogy; the Black Lives Matter movement; the politics of crime, punishment, and mass incarceration; electoral politics; gender and sexuality; and the global struggle for social justice. Ultimately, the book argues that hip hop is much more than a musical genre or cultural form: hip hop is a resistance mechanism.

#9. Vera Aguilera, Alejandro and David Andrés Fernández. Los cantorales de la Catedral de Lima: Estudio, reconstrucción, catálogo (Madrid: Sociedad Española de Musicología, 2022). [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2022-1557]

Resumen: Los cantorales de la Catedral de Lima estudia, por primera vez, la colección de libros de coro de la Catedral Metropolitana de Lima, que está formada por cuarenta volúmenes manuscritos copiados en su mayor parte en el siglo XVII. En el estudio inicial, se aborda su historia, confección y escribas responsables. Seguidamente, se indaga sobre su forma de interpretación en la época colonial a través de la reconstrucción de un servicio litúrgico de suma importancia en su contexto. Finalmente, se ofrece un catálogo crítico de la colección que incluye sus contenidos íntegros en forma de índices analíticos y alfabéticos que facilitan su localización. En suma, este trabajo constituye un estudio integral sobre una colección de libros de canto llano conservada en Sudamérica. Además, representa una útil herramienta de investigación en la que se exhuman numerosos documentos históricos y se presentan transcripciones de repertorio tanto monódico como polifónico, razón por la que será de interés para musicólogos, historiadores e intérpretes, entre otros.

Abstract: Studies, for the first time, the collection of choir books of the Catedral Metropolitana de Lima, which consists of 40 manuscript volumes copied mostly in the 17th century. The history, physical features, and scribes who worked on the manuscripts are discussed. The way this collection was used in colonial times is examined through the reconstruction of a liturgical service from its context. An annotated catalogue of the collection is offered, which includes its complete contents in the form of analytical and alphabetical indexes that facilitate its location.

#8. Marissen, Michael. Bach against modernity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2023). [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2023-3999]

Abstract: Many scholars and music lovers hold that Bach is a modern figure, as his music seems to speak directly to the aesthetic, spiritual, or emotional concerns of today’s listeners. But, by 18th-century standards, Bach and his music in fact reflected and forcefully promoted a premodern world and life view. A new look at Bach is presented that considers problems of inattentiveness to historical considerations in academic and popular writing about Bach’s relation to the present. Also put forward are interpretive reassessments of key individual works by Bach, examining problems in modern comprehension of the partly archaic German texts that Bach set to music. Lastly, Bach’s music is explored in relation to premodern versus enlightened attitudes toward Jews and Judaism, and the theological character of Bach’s secular instrumental music is examined. Overlooked or misunderstood evidence is provided of Bach’s private engagement with religious and social issues that he also addressed in his public vocal compositions. While we are free to make use of Bach and his music in whatever ways we find fitting, we ought also to guard against miscasting Bach in our own ideological image and proclaiming the authenticity of that image, and therefore its prestige value, in support of our own agendas.

#7. Goodman, Karen D., ed. Developing issues in world music therapy education and training: A plurality of views (Springfield: Charles C. Thomas, 2023). [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2023-7332]

Abstract: Reflects on current or necessary changes in music therapy training that come about because of history, society, economy, generational shifts, and the workplace. The subject matter questions the nature of music therapy itself; examines challenges to education and training; suggests critical thinking (vs. repetition or repackaging of information) for students, educators, clinicians, researchers and supervisors in the field of music therapy; respects the past but looks to the future; and offers perspectives from others in the field through such vehicles as surveys, interviews, and reviews of literature.

#6. Mathew, Nicholas. The Haydn economy: Music, aesthetics, and commerce in the late eighteenth century. New material histories of music (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2022). [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2022-10831]

Abstract: Reimagines the world of Joseph Haydn and his contemporaries, with its catastrophic upheavals and thrilling sense of potential. Critical questions are addressed, such as how we tell the history of the European Enlightenment and Romanticism; the relation of late 18th-century culture to incipient capitalism and European colonialism; and how the modern market and modern aesthetic values were—and remain—inextricably entwined. The study weaves a vibrant material history of Haydn’s career, extending from the sphere of the ancient Esterházy court to his frenetic years as an entrepreneur plying between London and Vienna to his final decade as a venerable musical celebrity, during which he witnessed the transformation of his legacy by a new generation of students and acolytes, Beethoven foremost among them. Ultimately, Haydn’s historical trajectory compels us to ask what we might retain from the cultural and political practices of European modernity—whether we can extract and preserve its moral promise from its moral failures. And it demands that we confront the deep histories of capitalism that continue to shape our beliefs about music, sound, and material culture.

#5. Dylan, Bob. The philosophy of modern song (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2022). [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2022-9712]

Abstract: Comprises over 60 essays written by the Pulitzer Prize winning songwriter, focusing on songs by other artists spanning from Stephen Foster to Elvis Costello, from Hank Williams to Nina Simone. Among many other subjects, the trap of easy rhymes is analyzed, breaking down how the addition of a single syllable can diminish a song, while also explaining how bluegrass relates to heavy metal. Over 100 photos are included, as well as a series of dream-like riffs that, taken together, resemble an epic poem—characteristic of the author’s own work in the field of songwriting—adding to the work’s transcendence.

#4. Denk, Jeremy. Every good boy does fine: A love story, in music lessons (New York: Random House, 2022). [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2022-954]

Abstract: Pianist Jeremy Denk traces an implausible journey. His life is already a little tough as a precocious, temperamental six-year-old piano prodigy in New Jersey, and then a family meltdown forces a move to New Mexico. There, Denk must please a new taskmaster, an embittered but devoted professor, while navigating junior high school. At 16 he escapes to college in Ohio, only to encounter a bewildering new cast of music teachers, both kind and cruel. After many humiliations and a few triumphs, he ultimately finds his way as a world-touring pianist, a MacArthur genius, and a frequent performer at Carnegie Hall. But under all this struggle is a love letter to the act of teaching. Denk dives deeply into the pieces and composers that have shaped him—Bach, Mozart, and Brahms, among others—and offers lessons on melody, harmony, and rhythm. How do melodies work? Why is harmony such a mystery to most people? Why are teachers so obsessed with the metronome? Denk shares the most meaningful lessons of his life, and tries to repay a debt to his teachers. He also reminds us that we must never stop asking questions about music and its purposes: consolation, an armor against disillusionment, pure pleasure, a diversion, a refuge, and a vehicle for empathy.

#3. Cypess, Rebecca. Women and musical salons in the Enlightenment (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2022). [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2022-4905]

Abstract: A broad overview of musical salons between 1760 and 1800, placing the figure of the salonnière at its center. The author presents a series of in-depth case studies that meet the salonnière on her own terms. Women such as Anne-Louise Brillon de Jouy in Paris, Marianne von Martínez in Vienna, Sara Levy in Berlin, Angelica Kauffman in Rome, and Elizabeth Graeme in Philadelphia come to life in multidimensional ways. Crucially, the author uses performance as a tool for research, and her interpretations draw on her experience with the instruments and performance practices used in 18th-century salons. The book explores women’s agency and authorship, reason and sentiment, and the roles of performing, collecting, listening, and conversing in the formation of 18th-century musical life.

#2. Vela González, Marta. La jota, aragonesa y cosmopolita: De San Petersburgo a Nueva York (Zaragoza: Pregunta, 2022). [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2022-14921]

Resumen: En este libro, la pianista, escritora y docente Marta Vela nos lleva tras los pasos de renombrados compositores (Liszt, Mahler, Debussy, Ravel, Satie?) que, a lo largo del siglo XIX, visitaron España, descubrieron la jota aragonesa y, fascinados, la integraron en sus obras, desde óperas hasta sinfonías, pasando por ballets y música de salón. Un libro lleno de curiosidades, erudición, anécdotas y hallazgos inéditos, narrado de forma amena y precisa.

Abstract: In this book, the pianist, writer, and teacher Marta Vela takes us in the footsteps of renowned composers (Liszt, Mahler, Debussy, Ravel, Satie?) who, throughout the 19th century, visited Spain, discovered the Aragonese jota and, fascinated, integrated it into their works, from operas to symphonies, including ballets and salon music. A book full of curiosities, erudition, anecdotes, and unpublished discoveries, narrated in a pleasant and precise way.

#1. Simon, Andrew. Media of the masses: Cassette culture in modern Egypt. Studies in Middle Eastern and Islamic societies and cultures (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2022). [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2022-3929]

Abstract: Investigates the social life of an everyday technology—the cassette tape—to offer a multisensory history of modern Egypt. Over the 1970s and 1980s, cassettes became a ubiquitous presence in Egyptian homes and stores. Audiocassette technology gave an opening to ordinary individuals, from singers to smugglers, to challenge state-controlled Egyptian media. Enabling an unprecedented number of people to participate in the creation of culture and circulation of content, cassette players and tapes soon informed broader cultural, political, and economic developments and defined modern Egyptian households. Drawing on a wide array of audio, visual, and textual sources that exist outside the Egyptian national archives, it provides a new entry point into understanding everyday life and culture. Cassettes and cassette players did not simply join other 20th century mass media, like records and radio; they were the media of the masses. Comprised of little more than magnetic reels in plastic cases, cassettes empowered cultural consumers to become cultural producers long before the advent of the Internet. Positioned at the productive crossroads of social history, cultural anthropology, and media and sound studies, it ultimately shows how the most ordinary things may yield the most surprising insights.

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by | September 21, 2023 · 6:00 am

Peacebuilding, music, and ethnography

In many cases, procedural connections exist between musical experiences and ethnographic research methods to processes of peacebuilding–for example, conflict transformation. In such instances, there is usually an explicit attempt to demonstrate a mutual form of understanding. In ethnographic research, this has taken the form of written and verbal accounts and interactions, although increasingly, visual and gestural information also is considered. Aural information may not be considered as data itself but rather something to be written down and discussed. Conversely, music can be wordless and even if words are used in the form of song texts, the musical experience itself is shared and demonstrated through sound and the associated meanings of sound. A successful musical interaction is one where the participants understand and demonstrate the appropriate musical responses at the most meaningful temporal occasions.

Expanding on the combined use of musical interaction and ethnographic research, musical ethnography can provide practical insight into the field of peacebuilding and peace education given that a primary prerequisite for successful peacebuilding is to obtain and demonstrate a mutual cultural understanding and acceptance. Music is already often mentioned in literature on peacebuilding as one of the cultural and artistic expressions that are relevant in peace education–such literature, however, often lacks musical expertise or clear methods of application. In music, one may find strategies and approaches to reduce intergroup prejudices and conflict while increasing peaceful relations. In order to most effectively approach this topic, conflict transformation should be explored as as a peacebuilding strategy enabling the unpacking of the social interactions surrounding a conflict dynamic.

Celebrate the International Day of Peace today (September 21st) by reading Craig Robertson’s article “Musicological ethnography and peacebuilding” in the Journal of peace education (XIII/3, 2016). Find it in RILM Abstracts.

Watch Sudanese musician John Kuol talk about his efforts at peacebuilding through music below.

Read related Bibliolore post:

Solti and world peace

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by | July 28, 2023 · 6:00 am

The brain, age, and music education

Music teachers often deal with clients that are children or young adults. Researchers from the field of neuroscience and the aging brain have, however, demonstrated that music education benefits the brain and cognition throughout a person’s lifespan. They also have noticed the existence of patterns of decline from early adulthood in processing speed and accelerating declines in memory and reasoning. The development and refinement of neuroimaging techniques within the last twenty years or so has allowed for exploration of how the behavior and neurophysiology of musicians may differ (if at all) from non-musicians. Music training affects a wide range of cognitive abilities associated with brain enhancement including verbal processing, intelligence, reading, auditory processing, decision-making, and so on. Researchers have also found enhancements in cognitive flexibility, working memory, and verbal fluency in musicians.

Music training also may induce neuroplastic changes and enhancements. Firstly, brain volume (gray matter and white matter) increases with musical training. Playing a musical instrument has been associated with increased white matter thickness in motor, premotor, and supplementary motor, prefrontal and parietal cortices–in other words, brain volume increases occur with musical training. Secondly, musical training changes connectivity and functional connectivity in the brain. Research has found that changes in the auditory-motor network for young adults over 18 beginning music training suggest that music training can influence brain plasticity even after brain maturation is almost complete.

In some cases, older adults with at least 10 years of musical experience displayed better performance in far-transfer tasks such as nonverbal memory, naming, and executive functioning tests than non-musicians or musicians with less than 10 years of musical experience. Other benefits include reduced age-related decline of fluid intelligence in older musicians, increased inhibition, and increased executive functioning. Overall, current research suggests that lifelong engagement in musical training maintains the brain in a younger state and enhances neural functioning.

Read more in “Music education and the aging brain” by Patricia Izbicki and Christina L. Svec (Contributions to music education 47 [2022], RILM Abstracts of Music Literature 2022-6592.

The above image is a mapping of human brain connectivity featuring dorsal and lateral views.

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by | November 3, 2022 · 6:00 am

National Native American Heritage Month: An annotated bibliography

Grand Canyon Native American Heritage Day: NPS photo by Erin Whittaker

November marks National Native American Heritage Month in the United States, honoring the first Americans’ contributions to the establishment and growth of the country. Exhibits and collections, song and dance recordings, visual art and imagery, poetry and storytelling, and teaching materials dedicated to National Native American Heritage are available through the portal https://nativeamericanheritagemonth.gov/.

This bibliography reflects the diverse musical expressions and musical life of Native Americans over nearly three centuries, ranging from engagement with Christianity to cope with Colonial-era displacement, to Navajo heavy metal and Indigenous sound studies in the present. It comprises a wide range of document types, including monographs, collections, journal articles, and sound recordings. 

Native Americans are both active and represented in traditional, popular, and classical music; music education; radio; and record production. The ways in which Native American music has been colonized and appropriated may be contrasted with the way in which it has been used by its practitioners as a means of cultural and spiritual agency and survival. Finally, although this bibliography centers on indigeneity in the United States, many of its ideas, traditions, and struggles find parallels in the experiences of Indigenous communities worldwide, and it is hoped that the research below may resonate with the musical-cultural experiences of those groups as well.

Introduction by Lori Rothstein, Editor, RILM. Written and compiled by Rothstein and Beatriz Goubert, Editor, RILM

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  • Cahill, Cathleen D. “Urban Indians, Native networks, and the creation of modern regional identity in the American Southwest”, American Indian culture and research journal XLII/3 (2018) 71–92. [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2018-95806]

Abstract: The careers and political activism of Native opera singers in the Southwest of the 1920s are explored. A number of talented Native artists recognized that engaging their audiences directly in live performances provided opportunities for public education in addition to their economic benefits. Partnering with regional boosters, they built careers performing in multiple pageants and events sponsored by municipalities across the Southwest. Live performance with its direct access to audiences also facilitated their political agendas of publicizing Indigenous histories. Their careers highlight the mobility of Indigenous people, demonstrating how they helped create modern urban spaces across the American Southwest.

  • Diamond, Beverley. “Affect, ontology, and indigenous protocol: Encounters in Canada”, Ethnomusicology matters: Influencing social and political realities, ed. by Ursula Hemetek, Hande Sağlam, and Marko Kölbl (Wien: Böhlau Verlag, 2019) 117–134. [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2019-12878]

Abstract: Ethnomusicologists have, thus far, written extensively about Indigenous ontologies but less about the ways divergent ontologies shape intercultural diplomacy. This article attempts to think through several such spaces of intercultural encounter. It considers how Indigenous protocol plays a role in promoting respectful relations. But it also reflects on situations where a failure to consider the affect of protocol-related performances may be disrespectful and counter-productive. There is a need, then, for intercultural dialogue about the clashes of perspectives, and the affect of performances that surround difficult moments of meetings, when one way of being in the world (i.e., ontology, simply defined) meets another and seems utterly incomprehensible. Sometimes such incommensurability is rooted in language: that song or story are “law” for many Indigenous groups in North America (and elsewhere), for instance, is often a confusing notion for Euroamericans. This formulation is already stimulating action-oriented discussions about access to archives, and appropriations of Indigenous song. At other times, forms of relationality are at stake. For instance, many Indigenous expressive cultures assume kinship with non-humans, spirits, and other life-forms in a broad ecological system that differs fundamentally from, e.g., those who see the earth’s resources as economic investments, or those promoting “creative city” initiatives that see the arts as a vehicle for prosperity while disregarding human relations with other life forms. The affect of performances that assert presence and sovereignty on the one hand or guesthood on another is an important consideration when divergent viewpoints are at issue. In some cases, a focus on “affect” may help to reduce misunderstanding, while in other cases it may encourage respect for the performers who assert their values, understandings, and sovereign rights.

  • Fox, Aaron A. “Repatriation as reanimation through reciprocity”, The Cambridge history of world music, ed. by Philip V. Bohlman and Martin Stokes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013) 522–554. [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2013-17019]

Abstract: Describes the process by which the Laura Boulton Collection of Traditional and Liturgical Music came to be housed at Columbia University, a process that began in 1962. The Boulton Collection’s history includes disputes between the collector and various institutions, and among and within those institutions as well, about the extent and nature of its contents. The collection is an assemblage of sound recordings made or acquired by the mid–20th-century music collector Laura Boulton (1899–1980) in a series of expeditions to dozens of countries over nearly 40 years. This essay examines her work as a particularly vivid example of the ironies inherent in ethnomusicology’s broader racist and colonialist legacy, a legacy embedded in the structure of the broader archive-building mindset upon which the discipline was constructed. Doing so allows us to think critically about that legacy and about how to address it and heal its lingering and still caustic effects on our discipline and its relations with its publics and constituents. Recovering, through repatriation, the cultural and scholarly value of archives like Boulton’s suggests ways to move ethnomusicology forward as an ethical as well as scholarly enterprise, by confronting the moral obligations the discipline has incurred, but not always honored, in the past.

  • Garrett-Davis, Josh. “American Indian Soundchiefs: Cutting records in Indigenous sonic networks”, Resonance: The journal of sound and culture I/4 (winter 2020) 394–411. [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2020-54119]
Album released by American Indian Soundchiefs

Abstract: American Indian Soundchiefs, an independent record label founded by the Rev. Linn Pauahty (Kiowa) in the 1940s, developed a remarkable model of Indigenous sound media that combined home recording, dubbing, and small-scale mass production. Alongside other Native American media producers of the same era, Soundchiefs built on earlier engagements with ethnographic and commercial recording to produce Native citizens’ media a generation prior to the Red Power era of the 1960s and 1970s. This soundwork provided Native music to Native listeners first, while also seeking to preserve a “rich store of folk-lore” sometimes in danger of being lost under ongoing colonial pressures. Pauahty’s label found ways to market commercial recordings while operating within what music and legal scholar Trevor Reed (Hopi) calls Indigenous sonic networks, fields of obligation and responsibility.

  • Goodman, Glenda. “Joseph Johnson’s lost gamuts: Native hymnody, materials of exchange, and the colonialist archive”, Journal of the Society for American Music XIII/4 (November 2019) 482–507. [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2019-11405]

Abstract: In the winter of 1772–73, Joseph Johnson (Mohegan/Brothertown) copied musical notation into eight books for Christian Native Americans in Farmington, Connecticut, a town established by English settler colonists on the land known as Tunxis Sepus. Johnson did so because, as he wrote in his diary, “The indians are all desireous of haveing Gamuts”. Johnson’s gamuts have not survived, but their erstwhile existence reveals hymnody’s important role within the Native community in Farmington as well as cross-culturally with the English settler colonists. In order to reconstruct the missing music books and assess their sociocultural significance, a surrogate bibliography is proposed, gathering a constellation of sources among which Johnson’s books would have circulated and gained meaning for Native American Christians and English colonists (including other printed and manuscript music, wampum, and legal documents pertaining to land transfer). By bringing together this multi-modal network of materials, redress is sought for the material and epistemological effects of a colonialist archive. On one level, this case study focuses on a short period of time in order to document the impact on sacred music of conversion, literacy, shifting intercultural relations, and a drive to preserve sovereignty. On another, a methodological intervention is presented for dealing with lost materials and colonialist archives without recourse to discourses of recovery or discovery, the latter of which is considered through the framework of archival orientalism.

  • _____. “Sounds heard, meaning deferred: Music transcription as imperial technology”, Eighteenth-century studies LII/1 (fall 2018) 39–45. [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2018-95884]
Image from A voyage around the world; but more particularly to the north-west coast of America (1789)

Abstract: How notations of the traditional musics of Indigenous peoples by colonists in the 18th century came to be regarded as evidence in the mapping of global trade are examined, focusing on the example of a transcription by William Beresford, published in A voyage round the world; but more particularly to the north-west coast of America (London: Geo. Goulding, 1789). The book, an account of the fur trading voyage of the ship Queen Charlotte in 1786–88 consists almost entirely of material written by Beresford, the ship’s supercargo. Beresford’s transcription of an Indigenous (likely Tlingit) song from Norfolk Sound (now Sitka Sound, Alaska) included a description of the customary pre-trade ceremonies as a guide for future traders. The transcription itself reflects multiple performances, by different groups, as Beresford re-encountered this ceremonial song along the coast; it should be viewed as an invention as much as a documentation.

  • Gray, Robin. “Repatriation and decolonization: Thoughts on ownership, access, and control”, The Oxford handbook of musical repatriation, ed. by Frank D. Gunderson, Robert C. Lancefield, and Bret D. Woods. Oxford handbooks (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018) 723–737. [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2018-11972]

Abstract: Focuses on the efforts of Ts’msyen from Lax Kw’alaams to repatriate songs and associated knowledge products from the Laura Boulton Collection of Traditional and Liturgical Music. It provides an overview of the sociopolitical context that created the conditions for the songs to be taken from the community, including an analysis of the contributing role of Western property frameworks in the dispossession of Ts’msyen knowledge, heritage, and rights. Based on a community-based participatory action research project with, by, and for Ts’msyen, this chapter offers decolonial considerations on the topics of ownership, access, and control from the vantage of Ts’msyen laws, ethics, and protocols.

  • Hauptman, Laurence M. “The musical odyssey of Cleo Hewitt, Cattaraugus Seneca, 1889–1987”, New York history C/2 (winter 1999) 246–268. [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2019-32487]

Abstract: Caroline Glennora Cleopatra (Cleo) Hewitt (1889–1987), a Hodinöhsö:ni’ elder, was for four decades a music teacher at the Thomas Indian School and other schools for Native Americans in western New York State, as well as a piano teacher. Hewitt was also a violinist, but was blocked from a performing career due to her race. While Hewitt faced formidable obstacles as a Native American and a woman, her life story both confirms and contradicts the assimilationist narrative of Native boarding schools.

  • Levine, Victoria Lindsay and Dylan Robinson, eds. Music and modernity among First Peoples of North America. Music/culture (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 2019). [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2019-2103]

Abstract: A collaboration between Indigenous and settler scholars from Canada and the U.S., exploring the intersections between music, modernity, and indigeneity in essays addressing topics that range from hip hop to powwow, and television soundtracks of Native Classical and experimental music. Working from the shared premise that multiple modernities exist for Indigenous peoples, the authors seek to understand contemporary musical expression from Native perspectives and to decolonize the study of Native American/First Nations music. The essays coalesce around four main themes: innovative technology, identity formation and self-representation, political activism, and translocal musical exchange. Closely related topics include cosmopolitanism, hybridity, alliance studies, code-switching, and ontologies of sound.

  • Moling, Martin. “’Anarchy on the Rez’: The blues, popular culture, and survival in Sherman Alexie’s Reservation blues“, American Indian culture and research journal XL/3 (2016) 1–22. [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2016-56019]

Abstract: The ingenious ways in which Sherman Alexie appropriates the blues as a vessel for Native Americans to creatively express their predicament and a subversive instrument in their struggle to resist colonial cooption are explored. In Reservation blues (1995), Alexie’s writing itself creates a Native American version of the blues that appropriates such blues staples as the AAB stanza, improvisation, and syncopation. The multiple references in the novel to mainstream popular culture are in contrast to the role of the blues, which arguably serves as the music of choice for Alexie’s principal project: the survival of Native America.

  • Moylan, Katie and Sheila Nanaeto. “‘Indigenous for days’: Indigenous internationalism in Native American music radio”, The global South, XV/2 (spring 2022) 176–192. [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2022-7727].

Abstract: Community building in Indigenous music radio is identified and explored, drawing on music programming examples and practitioner insights from two Indigenous radio stations: KPRI FM (Rez Radio) and KSUT FM. Multifaceted music programming across the two stations embodies the concept of grounded normativity (Coulthard and Betasamosake Simpson) and expands capacities for tribal community building on-air, in turn reinforcing a cultural Indigenous internationalism. In particular, Rez dub reggae and Songs of the Southwest at KPRI and the Tribal radio morning show at KSUT enable and encourage Indigenous community building through place-based practices of music radio production which in turn embody possibilities for Indigenous resurgence (Corntassel).

  • Perea, John-Carlos. Intertribal Native American music in the United States: Experiencing music, expressing culture. Global music (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013). [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2013-52557]

Abstract: Over time many Native American tribes have developed a shared musical culture that is prominently audible on local, national, and international stages. Northern and Southern Plains pow wow practices represent a singular performance encompassing disparate stories and sounds. Traditional sounds, such as pow-wow and Native American flute songs, have developed in tandem with increasingly recognizable forms like Native jazz and rock.

  • Peters, Gretchen. “Unlocking the songs: Marcie Rendon’s indigenous critique of Frances Densmore’s Native music collecting”, American Indian culture and research journal XXXIX/4 (2015) 79–92. [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2015-89340]

Abstract: Criticisms of the work of Frances Densmore in Marcie Rendon’s play SongCatcher are identified and contextualized within Densmore’s own writings. The integration of physical and spiritual realities, as well as contemporary and historic settings, denies the common assertion that Densmore preserved large repertoires. Numerous musical performances remain intact within their broader context and call into question the value of the isolated and distorted recordings and transcriptions by Densmore. While Densmore’s analytical working method marginalized the Native individual experience and perspective, SongCatcher examines Densmore’s work through its impact on Native individuals and communities in the past and present.

  • Poirier, Lisa. “Makes me feel glad that I’m not dead: Jim Pepper and music of the Native American Church”, Journal of religion and popular culture XXX/2 (summer 2018) 120–130. [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2018-95883]
Witchi tai to (1974)

Abstract: Jim Pepper’s 1971 jazz hit Witchi tai to is a contact zone in which cultures (Native and non-Native) collide. In the song, Native powwow culture and Native identities are reclaimed and reinterpreted within a jazz idiom. While Native supratribal identities are celebrated within this popular culture artefact, the song retains an opacity that resists absorption and cooptation by non-Natives. Witchi tai to is a song of Native religious reorientation within a context of modernity, and its legacy reverberates in at least two genres of contemporary Native popular music: Native American Church songs and Native American electronic dance music.

  • Prest, Anita and J. Scott Goble. “Language, music, and revitalizing indigeneity: Effecting cultural restoration and ecological balance via music education”, Philosophy of music education review XXIX/1 (spring 2021) 24–46. [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2021-98113]

Abstract: Challenges are explored in conveying the culturally constructed meanings of local Indigenous musics and the worldviews they manifest to students in K–12 school music classes, when foundational aspects of the English language, historical and current discourse, and English language habits function to thwart the transmission of those meanings. In settler colonial societies in North America, speakers of the dominant English language have historically misrepresented, discredited, and obscured cultural meanings that inhere in local Indigenous musics. Three ways in which the use of English has distorted the cultural meanings of those musics are examined. How historical discourses in English have intentionally undervalued or discredited the values intrinsic to those musics are explained, also describing how some current music education discourse in English might work against the embedding of Indigenous meanings in school music education settings. Additional factors distinguishing Indigenous languages from European languages (especially English) are considered to show how a people’s language habits influence their perception of and thus their relationship with their natural environment. The role of music education in revitalizing local Indigenous languages and musics and advancing the cultural values of their originating communities is considered.

  • Przybylski, Liz. “Indigenizing the mainstream: Music festivals and indigenous popular music authors”, IASPM@Journal XI/2 (2021) 5–21. [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2021-13635]

Abstract: First Nations, Métis, and Inuit music and dance practices have enacted Indigenous survivance since colonization began. Contemporary Indigenous performers within and beyond present-day Canadian borders continue this performative intervention through popular music, building sonic sovereignty. Rooted in dialogue with Indigenous music industry professionals and musicians, this article draws on ethnographic work with Indigenous music festivals, especially the sākihiwēfestival in Winnipeg, Canada where musicians from many Nations share stages. In response to music industry barriers, Indigenous media professionals created performance spaces for First Nations, Métis, Inuit, and international Indigenous musicians. With the imposition of performance restrictions due to COVID, musicians faced new limitations. On the heels of ongoing political changes, Indigenous music professionals navigated multilayered challenges for the 2020 festival season. As uncertainty continues around music festivals in the future, how decolonial possibilities are shifting around cultural and political change through music festival performance is addressed.

  • Reed, Trevor. “Sonic sovereignty: Performing Hopi authority in Öngtupqa”, Journal of the Society for American Music XIII/4 (November 2019) 508–530. [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2019-11407]

Abstract: Explores the ways in which territorial authority or sovereignty emerges from within a particular mode of indigenous creativity—the creation and performance of Hopi taatawi (traditional songs)—despite the appropriation of Hopi traditional lands by the American settler-state. Hopi territories within Öngtupqa (Grand Canyon) are just a sample of the many places where indigenous authority, as expressed through sound-based performances, continues to resonate despite the imposition of settler-colonial structures that have either silenced Indigenous performances of authority or severed these places from Indigenous territories. Hopi musical composition and performance are deeply intertwined with Hopi political philosophy and governance, resulting in a form of sovereignty that is inherently sonic rather than strictly literary or textual in nature. Recognizing that this interconnection between territorial authority and sound production is common across many indigenous communities, listening to contemporary indigenous creativity should be considered both as an aesthetic form, and more importantly, as a source of sonic sovereignty.

  • Robinson, Dylan. Hungry listening: Resonant theory for Indigenous sound studies. Indigenous Americas (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2020). [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2020-4582]

Abstract: Listening is considered from both Indigenous and settler colonial perspectives. In a critical response to what has been called the “whiteness of sound studies”, how decolonial practices of listening emerge from increasing awareness of our listening positionality are evaluated. This involves identifying habits of settler colonial perception and contending with settler colonialism’s “tin ear” that renders silent the epistemic foundations of Indigenous song as history, law, and medicine. With case studies on Indigenous participation in classical music, musicals, and popular music, structures of inclusion that reinforce Western musical values are examined. Alongside this inquiry on the unmarked terms of inclusion in performing arts organizations and compositional practice, examples of “doing sovereignty” in Indigenous performance art, museum exhibitions, and gatherings that support an Indigenous listening resurgence are offered. It is shown how decolonial and resurgent forms of listening might be affirmed by writing otherwise about musical experience. Through event scores, dialogic improvisation, and forms of poetic response and refusal, a reorientation is demanded toward the act of reading as a way of listening. Indigenous relationships to the life of song are sustained in writing that finds resonance in the intersubjective experience between listener, sound, and space.

  • Samuels, David W. Putting a song on top of it: Expression and identity on the San Carlos Apache Reservation (Tuscon: University of Arizona Press, 2004). [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2004-16236]
Apacheria – San Carlos, From Nantes Rim: Triplets Peak, Yellowjacket area and Mount Turnbull, San Carlos Apache Reservation (2008)

Abstract: As in many Native American communities, people on the San Carlos Apache reservation in southeastern Arizona have for centuries been exposed to contradictory pressures. One set of expectations is about conversion and modernization—spiritual, linguistic, cultural, technological. Another is about steadfast perseverance in the face of this cultural onslaught. Within this contradictory context lies the question of what validates a sense of Apache identity. For many people on the San Carlos reservation, both the traditional calls of the Mountain Spirits and the hard edge of a country, rock, or reggae song can evoke the feeling of being Apache. Using insights gained from both linguistic and musical practices in the community—as well as from his own experience playing in an Apache country band—the author explores the complex expressive lives of these people to offer new ways of thinking about cultural identity. He analyzes how people on the reservation make productive use of popular culture forms to create and transform contemporary expressions of Apache cultural identity. Some popular songs—such as those by Bob Marley—are reminiscent of history and bring about an alignment of past and present for the Apache listener. Thinking about Geronimo, for instance, might mean one thing, but “putting a song on top of it” results in a richer meaning. He also proposes that the concept of the pun, as both a cultural practice and a means of analysis, helps us understand the ways in which San Carlos Apaches are able to make cultural symbols point in multiple directions at once. Through these punning, layered expressions, people on the reservation express identities that resonate with the complicated social and political history of the Apache community. This richly detailed study challenges essentialist notions of Native American tribal and ethnic identity by revealing the turbulent complexity of everyday life on the reservation. It is a multifaceted exploration of the complexities of sound, of language, and of the process of constructing and articulating identity in the 21st century.

  • Soltani Stone, Ashkan. Rez metal. DVD (Leomark Studios, 2022). [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2022-7725]

Abstract: The remarkable journey of Kyle Felter and the Navajo heavy metal band I Dont Konform is traced, from the band’s early days to the recording of their debut album Sagebrush rejects with Flemming Rasmussen, the Grammy-award winning producer of Metallica, while telling the story of the thriving heavy metal scene on the Navajo reservations. A companion monograph is abstracted as RILM 2020-69069.

  • Soltani Stone, Ashkan and Natale A. Zappia. Rez metal: Inside the Navajo Nation heavy metal scene (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2020). [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2020-69069]

Abstract: Bridging communities from disparate corners of Indian Country and across generations, heavy metal has touched a collective nerve on the Navajo Reservation in Arizona in particular. Many cultural leaders—including former Navajo president Russell Begaye—have begun to recognize heavy metal’s ability to inspire Navajo communities facing chronic challenges such as poverty, depression, and addiction. Heavy metal music speaks to the frustrations, fears, trials, and hopes of living in Indian Country. A seminal moment in Indigenous heavy metal occurred when Kyle Felter, lead singer of the Navajo heavy metal band I Dont Konform, sent a demo tape to Flemming Rasmussen, the Grammy Award–winning producer of several Metallica albums. A few months later, Rasmussen, captivated by the music, flew from Denmark to Window Rock, Arizona, to meet the band. Through a series of vivid images and interviews focused on the venues, bands, and fans of the Navajo Nation metal scene, a window is provided into this fascinating world. A companion documentary film is abstracted as RILM 2022-7725.

  • Veerbeek, Vincent. “A dissonant education: Marching bands and Indigenous musical traditions at Sherman Institute, 1901–1940”, American Indian culture and research journal XLIV/4 (2020) 41–58. [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2020-69045]

Abstract: At the end of the 19th century, the U.S. government established a system of off-reservation boarding schools in an effort to assimilate Indigenous youth into the American nation-state. Music emerged as one of the most enduring strategies that these schools employed to reshape the cultural sensibilities of young Native Americans. A lively music culture could be found, for instance, at Sherman Institute in Riverside, California, which was home to a marching band and dozens of other music groups throughout its history. Although school officials created these institutions for the purposes of assimilation and cultural genocide, this music program often had a more ambiguous place in the lives of students. To understand the role of music within Sherman Institute during the early 20th century, the school’s marching band and the place of Indigenous cultural expression are examined. While the school had students march to the beat of civilization, young Native Americans found various strategies to combat assimilation using the same instruments. At the same time, they also used the cultures of their communities to navigate life in an environment that the government created to destroy those very cultures.

  • Wheeler, Rachel and Sarah Eyerly. “Singing Box 331: Re-sounding eighteenth-century Mohican hymns from the Moravian Archives”, William and Mary quarterly LXXVI/4 (October 2019) 649–696. [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2019-32488]

Abstract: A single Mohican-language hymn verse, Jesu paschgon kia, from the Moravian Mission collection at the Moravian Archives in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, is the focus of a collaboration between a historian, a musicologist, members of Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohican Indians, a scholar in linguistics, recording professionals, and students, as well as with the professional Mohican musician Bill Miller and the composer Brent Michael Davids. Applying what might be called a nanohistorical approach to the verse’s four lines of text, the history of the creation of Mohican-language hymns is traced at a number of different communities affiliated with the Moravian Church in New York and Pennsylvania in the mid-18th century. Building upon this historical research, Jesu paschgon kia is rendered as a living, multidimensional sounded text by creating three recordings, each of which highlights very different aspects of the collaborative work. These musical renderings of the verse stand as aural shorthand for the diverse meanings and interpretations of historical sources generated by varied relationships with and perspectives on those sources, speaking to recent calls for methodological innovation in the fields of history, musicology, and Native American and Indigenous studies.

  • Wigginton, Caroline. “Hymncraft: Joseph Johnson, Thomas Commuck, and the composition of song and community from the Native North American Northeast to Brothertown”, NAIS: Journal of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association VIII/1 (spring 2021) 19–55. [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2021-10146]

Abstract: Hymncraft is the composition of a material text with songs of praise and veneration for the sacred relationships between communities, place, and beings, human and nonhuman. For Mohegan Joseph Johnson in the 1770s and Brothertown Narragansett Thomas Commuck in the 1840s, hymncraft was an instrument for choreographing new visions of community in order to counter colonization’s destructive fragmentation of their peoples and homelands in the North American Northeast. Their intergenerational tale begins with Johnson’s creation of now-lost manuscript music instruction books he called gamuts and continues with Commuck’s publication of his tunebook Indian melodies 70 years later. Their hymncraft extends and adapts their region’s multicentury custom whereby craft combines with sacred song to forge, arrange, and maintain relations among peoples. Rebinding communities first through scribal publication and then through print, they produced objects with diplomatic valences that enfold ancient and new technologies to serve their people’s pasts, presents, and futures.

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by | September 14, 2022 · 6:00 am

Instant Classics: RILM’s Top 8 Most Reviewed Music Pedagogy Texts, 2016-19

“Rejoice in what you learn, and spray it.” – Tim Minchin

The multifarious methods used to communicate, transmit, and preserve musical knowledge reflect the diversity of this knowledge and the assumptions that lie behind what constitutes it. Students around the world learn about music in a wide range of settings—on stage, in the classroom, one-on-one with a specialist, and through personal reflection and rehearsing, to name only some examples. Music pedagogy, whether practiced within or outside of formalized institutions of learning, is a vibrant and important field of study. Those who teach pass on traditions, provide opportunities for economic advancement, exercise neurological pathways, and even instill ethical values on communities large and small. With music teachers and students in mind, and in recognition of the value of book reviews, this installment of our Instant Classics series highlights RILM’s eight most reviewed music pedagogy texts from 2016 to 2019. Although merely a snapshot of a moment in a dynamic publication environment, it is one worth taking.

And as always, an important reminder: We need your help! RILM always welcomes your reviews or reviews of your publications. Notice an omission? Help us fill in our gaps by submitting your review.

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#8. Campbell, Patricia Shehan. Music, education, and diversity: Bridging cultures and communities. Multicultural education series (New York: Teachers College Press, 2018). [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2018-685]

Abstract: Music is a powerful means for educating citizens in a multicultural society and meeting many challenges shared by teachers across all subjects and grade levels. By celebrating heritage and promoting intercultural understandings, music can break down barriers among various ethnic, racial, cultural, and language groups within elementary and secondary schools. This book provides important insights for educators in music, the arts, and other subjects on the role that music can play in the curriculum as a powerful bridge to cultural understanding. The author documents key ideas and practices that have influenced current music education, particularly through efforts of ethnomusicologists in collaboration with educators, and examines some of the promises and pitfalls in shaping multicultural education through music. The text highlights World Music Pedagogy as a gateway to studying other cultures as well as the importance of including local music and musicians in the classroom. It chronicles the historical movements and contemporary issues that relate to music education, ethnomusicology, and cultural diversity; offers recommendations for the integration of music into specific classes, as well as throughout school culture; examines performance, composition, and listening analysis of art (folk/traditional and popular) as avenues for understanding local and global communities; and documents music’s potential to advance dimensions of multicultural education, such as the knowledge-construction process, prejudice reduction, and an equity pedagogy.

#7. Abrahams, Frank and Paul D. Head, eds. The Oxford handbook of choral pedagogy. Oxford handbooks (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017). [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2017-925]

Abstract: Explores varied perspectives on teaching, learning, and performing choral music. Authors are academic scholars and researchers as well as active choral conductors. Topics include music programming and the selection of repertoire; the exploration of singer and conductor identity; choral traditions in North America, Western Europe, South America, and Africa; and the challenges conductors meet as they work with varied populations of singers. Chapters consider children’s choirs, world music choirs, adult community choirs, gospel choirs, jazz choirs, professional choruses, collegiate glee clubs, and choirs that meet the needs of marginalized singers. Those who contributed chapters discuss a variety of theoretical frameworks including critical pedagogy, constructivism, singer and conductor agency and identity, and the influences of popular media on the choral art. The text is not a how-to book. While it may be appropriate in various academic courses, the intention is not to explain how to conduct or to organize a choral program. While there is specific information about vocal development and vocal health, it is not a text on voice science. Instead, the editors and contributing authors intend that the collection serve as a resource to inform, provoke, and evoke discourse and dialogue concerning the complexity of pedagogy in the domain of the choral art.

#6. Ódena Caballol, Óscar. Musical creativity revisited: Educational foundations, practices and research. SEMPRE studies in the psychology of music (Abingdon: Routledge, 2018). [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2018-4287]

Abstract: How is creativity understood and facilitated across music education settings? What is the power of creativity in enhancing individual and group learning? How is musical creativity used as a tool for cross-community integration? How can we research the interactions of those engaged in musical activities aimed at creative development? These are just some of the questions addressed in this book, which includes insights from theory, practice-based research, and methodological analyses. Its chapters celebrate the diversity of the many different ways in which young and adult learners develop musical creativity. Following on from the volume cited as RILM 2012-8068, the author offers novel examples from practice and precise suggestions on how to research it. Chapters are organized into three sections: Foundations, Practices, and Research. They include examples from in-depth studies focused on a secondary school in England, higher music education in Spain, and out-of-school settings in Northern Ireland.

#5. Kertz-Welzel, Alexandra. Globalizing music education: A framework. Counterpoints: Music and education (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2018). [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2018-2953]

Abstract: How do globalization and internationalization impact music education around the world? By acknowledging different cultural values and priorities, the author’s vision challenges the current state of international music education and higher education, which has been dominated by English-language scholarship. Her framework uses an interdisciplinary approach and emphasizes the need for developing a pluralistic mode of thinking, while underlining shared foundations and goals. She explores issues of educational transfer, differences in academic discourses worldwide, and the concept of the global mindset to help facilitate much-needed transformations in global music education. This thinking and research, she argues, provides a means for better understanding global transfers of knowledge and ways to avoid culturally and linguistically hegemonic standards.

#4. Downing, Sonja Lynn. Gamelan girls: Gender, childhood, and politics in Balinese music ensembles. New perspectives on gender in music (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2019). [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2019-10637]

Abstract: In recent years, girls’ and mixed-gender ensembles have challenged the tradition of male-dominated gamelan performance. The change heralds a fundamental shift in how Balinese think about gender roles and the gender behavior taught in children’s music education. It also makes visible a national reorganization of the arts taking place within debates over issues like women’s rights and cultural preservation. The author draws on over a decade of immersive ethnographic work to analyze the ways Balinese musical practices have influenced the processes behind these dramatic changes. Girls and young women assert their agency within the gamelan learning process to challenge entrenched notions of performance and gender. One dramatic result is the creation of new combinations of femininity, musicality, and Balinese identity that resist messages about gendered behavior from the Indonesian nation-state and beyond. Such experimentation expands the accepted gender aesthetics of gamelan performance but also sparks new understanding of the role children can and do play in ongoing debates about identity and power.

#3. Wallbaum, Christopher, ed. Comparing international music lessons on video. Hochschule für Musik und Theater “Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy” Leipzig: Schriften 14 (Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 2018). [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2018-58022]

Abstract: Video-recorded music lessons (on multi-angle DVDs) were used to inspire and improve understanding among experts from different cultures and discourses of music education. To make the process manageable and focused, we developed the Analytical Short Film (2–3 minutes) to address particular areas of interest and starting points for debate. We asked selected music teachers from seven nation-states to allow a typical and (in their opinion) good lesson to be recorded. We also asked the students and their parents for permission. At a symposium, held at Leipzig’s Hochschule für Musik und Theater Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy in September 2014, national experts and researchers presented views on their lessons through Analytical Short Films. Discussion followed which included implicit and explicit comparisons. Each presenter also used a lesson from one of the other countries to stimulate discussion about assumptions in and challenges to their own views. We documented all comparisons made and compared these to derive cross-cultural categories. These categories should be relevant for understanding what makes a music lesson “good”. The different perspectives and discussions offered by the authors in this book—together with ten DVDs, interviews with the teachers and students, and associated research—provide rich and diverse material for researchers, teachers, and teacher educators. A related article is abstracted as RILM 2015-83222.

#2. Cook, Nicholas. Music as creative practice. Studies in musical performance as creative practice 5 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018) [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2018-2373]

Abstract: Until recently, ideas of creativity in music revolved around composers in garrets and the lone genius. But the last decade has witnessed a sea change: musical creativity is now overwhelmingly thought of in terms of collaboration and real-time performance. This book synthesizes both perspectives. It begins by developing the idea that creativity arises out of social interaction—of which making music together is perhaps the clearest possible illustration—and then shows how the same thinking can be applied to the ostensibly solitary practices of composition. The book also emphasizes the contextual dimensions of musical creativity, ranging from the prodigy phenomenon, long-term collaborative relationships within and beyond the family, and creative learning, to the copyright system that is supposed to incentivize creativity. This book encompasses the classical tradition, jazz, and popular music, and music emerges as an arena in which changing concepts of creativity—from the old myths about genius to present-day sociocultural theory—can be traced with particular clarity. The perspective of creativity tells us much about music, but the reverse is also true, and this book offers an approach to musical creativity that is attuned to the practices of both music and everyday life.

#1. Allsup, Randall Everett. Remixing the classroom: Toward an open philosophy of music education. Counterpoints: Music and education (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2016). [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2016-3531]

Abstract: Provides alternatives for the traditional master-apprentice teaching model that has characterized music education. By providing examples across the arts and humanities, the author promotes a vision of education that is open, changing, and adventurous at heart. He contends that the imperative of growth at the core of all teaching and learning relationships is made richer, though less certain, when it is fused with a student’s self-initiated quest. In this way, the formal study of music turns from an education in teacher-directed craft and moves into much larger and more complicated fields of exploration. The author advocates for an open, quest-driven teaching model that has repercussions for music education and the humanities more generally.

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by | January 22, 2022 · 6:00 am

Lilliput in Greece

In 1975, during the transition in Greece from military dictatorship to democracy, the composer Manos Chatzidakis was appointed director of the Third Program of Ellīnikī Radiofonīa and asked the choreographer and director Reggina Kapetanaki to help him create an educational radio show for small children.

The result of this collaboration was Edō Lilipoupolī (“Here is Lilliput”), set in an imaginary world loosely based on Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s travels. The show’s locations and characters could often be identified by older listeners as satirical references to Greek places and people, and songs composed for it became popular vehicles of political commentary. Sometimes the satire bit too deeply for the government, which accused the creators of producing Communist propaganda, but Chatzidakis, thanks to his personal prestige, was generally able to protect them. The program ran until 1980.

This according to “Children’s songs as socio-political comment in the Greek radio show Edō Lilipoupoli” by Aikaterinī Giampoura, an essay included in Radio art and music: Culture, aesthetics, politics (Lanham: Lexington Books 2020, 235–54).

Below, an album compiled from various episodes.

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by | July 16, 2021 · 6:00 am

Journal of the Association for Technology in Music Instruction

Launched by the University of Tennessee Libraries in 2020, the Journal of the Association for Technology in Music Instruction is the official journal of the Association for Technology in Music Instruction.

The journal primarily publishes full-length and brief reports of original research, but also publishes methodological, review, and theoretical articles at all levels and across genres such as education, theory/composition, musicology, performance and music production, and music technology and music industry.

Peer-reviewed, it welcomes contributions from educators, researchers, and practitioners who are working with technologies in primary, secondary, and tertiary music education settings as well as unique learning populations. The research it publishes follows academically sanctioned methodology: experimental, case study, ethnographic, or historical.

Below, an instructional video by Robert Willey, who contributed to the inaugural issue with an article on teaching electronic music technology.

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by | July 13, 2020 · 6:00 am

Anna Halprin and the RSVP cycles

 

For Anna Halprin, the RSVP cycles are a touchstone for realizing her mission to have everyone dance, regardless of dance training, age, or ability.

The inclusion of as many people as possible in the world of dance had always been an essential aspect for Halprin, who saw engagement with difference as a way of enriching her own personal landscape as well, through across-the-board work without cultural, historical, or geographical boundaries.

To make this dynamic inclusive, she sought a methodology for creating collective works based on a common language that would make it possible to transcend the ideas and preconceptions of gender, social, and cultural categories including age, artistic technique, race, and educational background. The RSVP cycles are the instrument and the outcome of this quest.

This according to “Anna e Lawrence Halprin: Il ciclo RSVP” by Laura Colomban (Danza e ricerca IX [dicembre 2017] 173–87).

Today is Anna Halprin’s 100th birthday! Above and below, the choreographer in 2010.

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by | January 9, 2020 · 6:00 am

International journal of music in early childhood

 

In 2019 Intellect launched the International journal of music in early childhood (ISSN 2516-1989; EISSN 2516-1997), an interdisciplinary forum directed at the empirical study of music in early childhood, or pre-birth to age 8.

The journal welcomes research-based contributions from fields such as music education, music therapy, community music, psychology, ethnomusicology, anthropology, sociology, history, philosophy, childhood studies, and social work that are concerned with diverse aspects relating to music in the lives of young children.

IJMEC publishes original research reports, best practice papers, case studies of specific programs, critical literature reviews, and book/media reviews. Areas covered will include young children’s development in and through music, pedagogical theories and tools for practitioners and researchers, early childhood music education policy, and music therapy for infants and young children, exploring music in settings such as daycares, preschools, and other educational spaces, as well as within families, peer groups, and the community. The journal is published in partnership with the Early Childhood Music & Movement Association.

Below, a short film about the Suzuki method, the subject of an article in the journal’s inaugural issue.

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by | June 14, 2018 · 6:00 am

Journal of popular music education

In 2017 Intellect launched Journal of popular music education (ISSN 2397-6721; EISSN 2397-673X).

One of the main aims of this journal, especially initially, is iteratively to define the parameters of the field and disciplines of its readership and contributors (especially with regard to other journals in popular music, and music education), this being an emerging field of scholarship and practice.

The other principal aim is to disseminate excellent critique and other forms of scholarship (e.g., phenomenological) in and related to the field. The journal aims to have an inclusive, global reach. Education and popular music are terms that the editors are glad to see stretched and problematized through rigorous examination from multiple international perspectives.

Below, 我和你 (You and me), a song discussed in the inaugural issue.

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Filed under New periodicals, Pedagogy, Popular music