Category Archives: Reception

by | November 14, 2024 · 6:00 am

Zitkala Ša, Dakota composer and activist

At the end of the 19th century, a series of narrative essays published in The Atlantic Monthly by Dakota composer and activist Gertrude Bonnin, better known by her self-chosen name Zitkala Ša, focused on the violence of compulsory U.S. boarding schools. Existing research on her activism, however, has overlooked the subversive role of music, dance, and sound in her literary and musical projects, which reveal Zitkala Ša’s sophisticated sonic politics.

The historical tension between the prohibition and appropriation of Indigenous sounds highlights how the boarding school press functioned as a powerful engine for assimilation projects. A close reading of Zitkala Ša’s essay, The Indian dance: A protest against its abolition, along with an examination of its reception, reveals her reverse-gaze strategy and demonstrates her effectiveness in challenging aggressive assimilationists. Similarly, her collaboration on The sun dance opera resulted in a project that defied neat categorization and withheld complete disclosure of the ceremony, establishing its own sonic politics of self-determination. Zitkala Ša wrote the libretto and the songs for the opera, while William F. Hanson, a professor of music at Brigham Young University, composed the score. The songs were inspired by a sacred ritual that was federally outlawed from 1904 to 1978. The opera was groundbreaking, allowing Zitkala Ša to bridge her worlds through music. It premiered in February 1913 at Orpheus Hall in Vernal, Utah, featuring performances by members of the Ute Nation residing on the Uintah-Ouray Reservation.

Zitkala Ša’s years on the Uintah-Ouray Reservation, often mischaracterized as a period of domesticity in her literary career, were marked by significant creative sonic productivity, representing an important phase in her evolving activism that bridged her earlier years of serial publication with the sophisticated vocal activism of her later work.

This according to “Tiny taps and noisy hacks: Listening to Zitkala Ša’s sonic politics” by Kristen Brown (Resonance: The journal of sound and culture 2/1 [spring 2021] 348–362; RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2021-7615).

Watch a short documentary on Zitkala Ša’s life in music and activism below.

https://www.pbs.org/video/zitkala-sa-american-indian-composer-author-activist-qqjsyq/

Related Bibliolore posts:

https://bibliolore.org/2022/11/03/national-native-american-heritage-month-an-annotated-bibliography/

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by | October 31, 2024 · 6:00 am

Vocality and the Frankenstein complex

A monster’s vocality and capacity for communication have been complicated themes since the earliest adaptations of the novel. The evolution of the monster’s speech, along with the dynamics of its silence, reveals how essential vocality is to forming a sympathetic portrayal of the character. Each new version highlights this relationship, demonstrating that even in adaptations where the monster’s voice is largely absent, vocality remains crucial to shaping audience empathy.

This dynamic mirrors what performance theorist Marvin Carlson describes as “ghosting”, a phenomenon where theater productions are infused with multiple layers of history. This creates interpretations linked to the audience’s memories of the written text, the performers, props, and even the performance space. In the case of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, these layers are even more complex and elusive, reflecting its extensive and varied influence over the two centuries since the novel’s publication.

Within this context, the monster is frequently depicted as dim-witted and inarticulate, if not entirely silent. Restoring the creature’s voice–along with the eloquence and insight it can convey–highlights an often-overlooked aspect of Shelley’s novel, particularly in relation to the pop culture narrative surrounding the “Frankenstein complex”, which influences how we interpret all Frankenstein texts, from film adaptations to staged dramas and the original novel. In this sense, the silencing of the monster significantly affects our capacity to empathize with them and shapes our understanding of their connection to our own humanity.

This according to “Listening to the monster: Eliding and restoring the creature’s voice in adaptations of Frankenstein” by Jude Wright (Journal of adaptation in film & performance 8/3 [2015] 249–266; RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2015-90335).

The scene below from the 1931 film Frankenstein (directed by James Whale), illustrates how vocality can shape character empathy.

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by | October 25, 2024 · 6:00 am

Utopian desire and ukulele music in Japan

Historical and contemporary Japanese attitudes toward the ukulele have framed both the instrument and Hawaii as objects of idealized longing and utopian desire. This yearning embodies what Christine Yano describes as a “plucked paradise”—a concept that combines music-making on a stringed instrument with the imagery of flowers being harvested for personal enjoyment. In this context, plucking a string creates a soft, fleeting sound, while plucking a flower represents a subtle act of aesthetic appropriation. Both evoke a paradise that is temporary, sensual, and aestheticized.

Cover of a Japanese book of ukulele sheet music.

These perspectives raise important questions about the meanings that participants ascribe to the ukulele and its music in Japan. How do infrastructural elements, particularly the influence of Japanese Americans, contribute to the growth of ukulele culture in Japan? For instance, Japanese Americans like Haida “Harry” Yukihiko, considered the “Father of Hawaiian music in Japan”, and his brother Katsuhiko brought their knowledge of and enthusiasm for the ukulele to Japan in the 1920s when they visited to repatriate the ashes of their father but stayed to study at a university. Their enthusiasm for Hawaiian music and in-between status, with direct access to both Hawaii and Japan, helped foster the first ukulele boom in Japan. By examining the various dimensions involved in creating this “plucked paradise,” we can uncover the tensions, conflicts, and creative forces that shape this cultural exchange.

This according to “Plucking paradise: Hawaiian ukulele performance in Japan” by Christine R. Yano (Japanese studies 35/3 [2015] 317–330; RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2015-82904).

Below, the Japanese duo Fukulele perform Clap your hands and sing with me, a song about world peace composed by Roy Sakuma. The group played the song at the 2022 Ukulele Festival Hawaii’s Global Play Along. The following video features the Japan Junior Ukulele Orchestra performing the same song.

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by | October 13, 2024 · 6:00 am

Sergio Mendes and Brasil ’66

Brazilian pianist and bandleader Sergio Mendes began studying piano at a young age, continuing his education under Carmelita Lago. However, drawn to jazz and popular music, he eventually departed from his classical training and embarked on a successful career in commercial pop music around 1960. Mendes participated in jam sessions at the Little Club in Rio de Janeiro and, in 1961, led the Brazilian Jazz Sextet at the Third South American Jazz Festival in Montevideo. Following the military coup d’état in Brazil in 1964, Mendes relocated to Los Angeles, where he restarted his career by auditioning at various local jazz clubs.

That same year, Mendes, along with bassist Tião Neto and drummer Edson Machado, formed the Sergio Mendes Trio, touring North and South America as well as Japan. In the United States, the trio recorded the groundbreaking LP The Swinger from Rio for the Atlantic label. Mendes also created another group called Brasil 65, which lasted for seven months and produced the LP Brasil 65. He later achieved international acclaim with his next ensemble, Brasil ’66. While in New York, Mendes collaborated with renowned musicians such as Art Farmer, Bud Shank, and Tom Jobim on new bossa nova recordings. For this new group, he secured a contract with Herb Alpert, the leader of Tijuana Brass and owner of A&M Records.

Alongside singers Lani Hall, Sílvia Vogel, and later Karen Phillips, Mendes recorded the album Sergio Mendes & Brazil ’66, which sold over a million copies. Their vibrant cover of Jorge Ben‘s song Mas que nada became a number one hit, with other tracks from the album also climbing into the top 40 charts. To align with U.S. market preferences, Mendes produced stylistic arrangements of Brazilian songs by composers like Chico Buarque, Edu Lobo, and Gilberto Gil. The following year, his group ranked as the third most popular act in U.S. pop music. Each decade brought updates to his ensemble’s name and style: Brasil ’77, Brasil ’86, Brasil ’88, and Brasil ’99. The stylistic evolution of these groups spanned from early bossa nova in the 1960s to more sophisticated interpretations of well-known songs, culminating in an experimental blend of jazz, funk, and modern Brazilian pop. Mendes won a Grammy Award in 1993 for the album Brasileiro, and in 1997, Down Beat magazine honored his album Ocean as the best album of the year in the “beyond jazz” category.

Sergio Mendes passed away on 5 September 2024 at the age of 83. Read more a out his life and career in MGG Online.

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by | September 28, 2024 · 6:00 am

Jazz in India

Arriving in India in the mid-1930s in search of performance opportunities and a better quality of life, African American jazz musicians significantly contributed to the growth of jazz and Western popular music in the country. In 1935, Bombay’s premier hotel, the Taj Mahal, hired the first all-African-American jazz band to play in India. The eight-member band, led by Leon Abbey, a violinist from Minnesota, included a host of experienced musicians who had performed alongside jazz legends. Their success and influence attracted local Anglo-Indian and Goan musicians, who began to perform jazz in the cosmopolitan centers of India. In Bombay, Goan musicians incorporated Western popular music into local cabaret performances and even into early film songs. In this context, African American musicians played a pivotal role in broadening the landscape of Western popular music in India, shaping early Bombay cabaret songs and the hybrid sounds of the emerging film industry.

Goan jazz musician Rudy Cotton.
Members of Duke Ellington’s orchestra in India with tabla player Chatur Lal.

The presence of jazz orchestras in Bombay during the 1940s and 1950s highlighted various historical connections. These orchestras supplied essential musical resources for creating cabaret scenes in Hindi-language films. African American jazz musicians residing in India inspired local musicians to join urban jazz orchestras, which led to the development of a vibrant jazz cabaret economy. This economy was centered around recording in film studios, collaborating with film music composers, performing as backdrop dance bands in movies, and engaging in ghost composing and arranging.

Furthermore, ragtime and jazz were performed in Calcutta’s hotels and clubs, which were vital to the social lives of the elite during colonial India. While the musicians were often European or American, especially when foreign bands were brought in for a season, some ensembles included Anglo-Indian members. These Anglo-Indian musicians served as intermediaries, transmitting theoretical knowledge of Western harmony and teaching the use of Western instruments to subsequent generations of musicians in post-independence India. They were also the first Indian musicians to perform jazz and blues standards in Calcutta and Bombay around World War II, playing a significant role in the spread of jazz and blues music throughout the country.

This according to “Orchestras and musical intersections with regimental bands, blackface minstrel troupes, and jazz in India, 1830s–1940s” by Bradley G. Shope, Global perspectives on orchestras: Collective creativity and social agency, ed. by Tina K. Ramnarine (New York City: Oxford University Press, 2017, 226–241; RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2017-33724), and “Jazz and race in colonial India: The role of Anglo-Indian musicians in the diffusion of jazz in Calcutta” by Stéphane Dorin (Jazz research journal 4/2 [November 2010] 123–140; RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2010-19314).

Also, visit the online exhibit Finding the groove: Pioneers of jazz in India 1930s-1960s. The exhibit is based on archival materials collected by Naresh Fernandes at the Archive and Research Center for Ethnomusicology (ARCE).

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by | May 21, 2024 · 6:00 am

Beethoven’s ninth in millennial culture

For nearly two centuries, Beethoven’s ninth symphony, which premiered on 7 May 1824 at the Theater am Kärntnertor in Vienna, has held musical audiences captive. Few other musical works hold such a prominent place in the collective imagination, and each subsequent generation has rediscovered the work for itself and made it its own. Understanding the significance of the symphony in contemporary culture requires a dialog between Beethoven’s world and ours, marked by the earth-shattering events of 1789 and of 1989.

What is special about the ninth in contemporary millennial culture is that the music is encoded not only as score but also as digital technology. We encounter Beethoven 9 flashmobs, digitally reconstructed concert halls, globally synchronized performances, and other time-bending procedures. The digital artwork 9 beet stretch by Leif Inge, for instance, presents the ninth at glacial speed over the span of 24 hours, challenging our understanding of the symphony and encouraging us to confront the temporal dimension of Beethoven’s music. In the digital age, the ninth emerges as a musical work that is recomposed and reshaped; robust enough to live up to such treatment, and continually adapting to a changing world with changing media.

A presentation of <9 beet stretch> by Leif Inge.

Learn more in Beethoven’s symphony no. 9 by Alexander Rehding (New York City: Oxford University Press, 2018). [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature 2018-4097]. In case you missed it, the 200th anniversary of the premiere of Beethoven’s ninth symphony was on 7 May 2024.

Below are three videos of Beethoven flash mobs in Hong Kong, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and the last in Azerbaijan.

Hong Kong
Minneapolis
Azerbaijan

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by | March 12, 2024 · 6:00 am

The emergence of “música popular brasileira” (MPB)

In practice, the term música popular brasileira, often referred to by the‎ acronym MPB, does not apply to a particular genre of Brazilian music. Although it came into widespread use around 1965, the term had been used since at least 1961, when it appeared in the liner notes of Carlos Lyra’s LP Bossa nova. Initially, the acronym MPB emerged around 1959 as a synonym for bossa nova, a genre inspired by jazz, carioca, samba de morro, and music of northeastern Brazil. The term was further popularized after the television show Jovem Guarda began featuring local pop and rock artists in 1966–many of the artists on the show, including Elis Regina, Wilson Simonal, pianist César Camargo Mariano, Caetano Veloso, and Gilberto Gil, became associated with the term. At this time, MPB came to designate Brazilian music that was not considered rock per se but had pop as well as rock influences. MPB also came to signify a new age of Brazilian music, associated with younger artists; the term was not applied to the so-called “old guard”, which included musicians such as Adoniran Barbosa and Clementina de Jesus or samba musicians like Martinho da Vila.

By 1981, MPB referred to all music made in Brazil—the term was so expansive that even rock bands who sang entirely in English were categorized under the term. Many Brazilian performers in genres as diverse as rock, soul, and funk, were promoted as MPB acts at the time, including Gal Costa, who was heavily inspired by Janis Joplin, and the band Barão Vermelho, a Brazilian version of the Rolling Stones (pictured above). In the city of São Paulo, radio broadcaster Musical FM started a trend by promoting itself as “Rádio MPB” in the 1990s with a format that featured “modern MPB”. The term música popular brasileira, although not a genre in itself, foregrounds the aesthetic choices made by Brazilian musicians since the 1960s, and debates over the use of the term in relation to national identity (or the notion of “Brazilianness”) along with issues of transculturalization and hybridity have taken place since its emergence.

Read the full entry on música popular brasileira in the Encyclopedia of Brazilian music: Erudite, folkloric, popular (2010) in RILM Music Encyclopedias, and “Só ponho bebop no meu samba…: Trocas culturais e formação de compositores na formulação da MPB nas décadas de 1960-70″ by Luiz Henrique Assis Garcia [El oído pensante (January 2017), 49–73] in RILM Abstracts of Music Literature with Full Text.

Below are some examples of artists who fall under the term música popular brasileira. The first is Elis Regina performing Águas de Março, followed by Barão Vermelho’s Bete Balanço, and finally, Gilberto Gil’s Palco.

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by | December 1, 2023 · 6:00 am

Sinéad O’Connor’s musical and political life

Irish singer Sinéad O’Connor’s expressive cover of the ballad Nothing compares 2 U, originally composed by Prince for his 1985 album The Family, turned into a worldwide hit in 1990. The song, which explored the pain of separation, received platinum and gold album awards in numerous countries and became O’Connor’s biggest hit. Her album I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got (featuring Nothing compares 2 U) was one of the world’s best selling albums of 1990 and was nominated for four Grammys. Sinéad spent parts of her youth in boarding schools and busking locally. At age 20, she moved to London and released her debut album The Lion and the Cobra, which went certified gold in the United States in 1987.

In 1992, she appeared on the popular U.S. sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live where famously she drew attention to sexual abuse in the Catholic Church by tearing up a picture of the Pope on live national television. Some of her songs explored her experiences with abuse as a child and denounced war. Sinéad also publicly campaigned for women’s rights and especially the right to abortion in Ireland. Together with musicians from the bands Coldplay, Led Zeppelin, One Direction, Queen, U2, and others, she took part in Bob Geldof’s Band Aid 30 project in 2014 to raise funds to combat the Ebola epidemic in West Africa. The documentary Nothing Compares, about her life and career, directed by Kathryn Ferguson, was released in 2022 and received two British Independent Film Awards (BIFA).

In Sinéad’s final interview in 2023, she discussed how in childhood she realized the power of music and her voice. As she described, “My first musical memory is my father singing to me [the folk ballad] Scarlet ribbons. I just remember being blown away . . . lying on my pillow and my dad singing this song to me. I was like, ‘Oh my God, the angels came in the window.’ My mother was a very violent woman, not a healthy woman; she was physically, verbally, psychologically, spiritually, and emotionally abusive. My mother was a beast. And I was able to soothe her with my voice. I was able to use my voice to make the devil fall asleep.”

Sinéad O’Connor passed away in London on 26 July 2023. Read her obituary in MGG Online and stay tuned for a full article.

Listen to Don’t give up, recording that features O’Connor with Willie Nelson below.

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by | June 5, 2023 · 6:00 am

If it’s Mozart, it’s a masterpiece!

mozart-shades

Since the mid–19th-century discovery of the sinfonia concertante for four winds sometimes labeled K.297b, the work has been considered authentic by some and dubious by others, and its reception has paralleled these critical vicissitudes.

In 1778 Mozart wrote to his father that he had just written a “sinfonie concertante” for four winds and orchestra that was scheduled for performance in Paris; but it was not performed after all, and the score was presumed lost until a work scored for similar forces—unattributed and not in Mozart’s own hand, but labeled concertante—surfaced in the collection of Mozart’s biographer Otto Jahn after Jahn’s death in 1869.

Despite some discrepancies between the Jahn MS and the composition Mozart had described, it was generally accepted as the missing work and published as such in 1886. For about the first 50 years of its public career it remained a peripheral work in the Mozart canon, seldom performed and little-known.

The work began to attract more attention in the 1920s, as eminent Mozart scholars described it as “magnificent” and praised its “brilliance, breadth, and expansiveness”. Experts agreed that it was an important work, a significant step in Mozart’s development as a composer, and a beautiful and worthwhile piece of music. Certified and buoyed by such enthusiasm, it was increasingly programmed and recorded from the 1940s through the 1960s.

The sinfonia concertante’s fall from grace began when it was dropped from the main body of the Köchel catalogue in 1964 with a terse remark that its arrangement could not have come from Mozart. Expert statements refuting the overall authenticity of the work on stylistic grounds soon followed, and efforts to reclaim it for Mozart failed to stem its fall from scholarly favor. Audience interest diminished accordingly, and the work appears to have been programmed less often since the mid-1970s.

An examination of 168 texts discussing this composition reveals—perhaps not surprisingly— that the authors’ reactions to the work are closely bound to their opinions on who wrote it.

For example, writers who believed that the work was by Mozart described it as strong, sturdy, and solid, while those that did not called it flimsy, arbitrary, illogical, and incomprehensible; those crediting Mozart rated the work highest level and a masterpiece, while those who considered it spurious rated it not first class; and the Mozart designators considered it delightful, celestial, and enchanting, while the non-Mozart camp described it as tasteless, inept, and cheap.

This according to “Musical attribution and critical judgment: The rise and fall of the sinfonia concertante for winds, K.297b” by John Spitzer (The journal of musicology V/3 [summer 1987] pp. 319–56; RILM Abstracts of Music Literature 1988-3046).

Below, we invite you to form your own opinion.

More articles about Mozart are here.

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by | March 30, 2023 · 6:00 am

Fayrūz and Lebanese identity

After her breakout performance at Lebanon’s 1957 Baalbeck International Festival (where organizers had initially worried that their sophisticated audience would find homegrown music distasteful) the music of Fayrūz went on to become a powerful emblem of Lebanese identity—a position that it holds to this day.

Fayrūz’s performance, which featured music by the Raḥbānī brothers, was the headline act of the Festival’s first Lebanese Nights series, and its resounding success ensured the continuation of the series, with the Fayrūz/Raḥbānī trio as its mainstay, until the Festival’s suspension at the beginning of the Civil War in 1975. During that time, the trio forged a music that both articulated Lebanon’s national character and aspired toward a future in which the country’s liminal position between the Arab world and the West would bring long-lasting peace and prosperity.

While this element of futurity was rhetorical and discursive, it was also profoundly sonic, manifested in the arrangement, instrumentation, and style of their work. The Fayrūz/Raḥbānī trio’s music was clearly positioned in relation to three major reference points that dominated nationalist discourse at the time: Arab nationalism, the West (conceived as European high culture), and Lebanese culture (conceived as local folklore).

While the style developed by the trio continues to shape understandings what it is to sound Lebanese today, Fayrūz’s voice has become symbolic of Lebanon itself. Notably, she did not sing there during the Civil War; she came back to perform in 1994, and returned to Baalbeck’s stage on the occasion of the Festival’s postwar resumption in 1998. Her wartime silence was publicly received as an act of resistance against violence on Lebanese soil and as a show of solidarity with the Lebanese people—further reinforcing the identification of her voice and persona with Lebanon as a country.

This according to “Hearing cosmopolitan nationalism in the work of Fairuz and the Rahbani Brothers” by Nour El Rayes (Yearbook for traditional music LIV/1 [2022] 49–72; RILM Abstracts of Music Literature 2022-16150).

Above, Fayrūz performing in 1971 (public domain). Below, the official music video for the Fayrūz/Raḥbānī song Lebnan el akhdar (لبنان الأخضر/Lebanon the verdant); the recording is the subject of a detailed analysis in El Rayes’s article.

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