by | August 5, 2013 · 1:00 am

Bluegrass jamming etiquette

bluegrass

A number of people attend U.S. bluegrass festivals not for the stage show, but for the informal jam sessions in the campgrounds or parking lot.

The interactional etiquette that jammers follow is manifested both in the conventions that help strangers to come together and in choices made during group playing of bluegrass standards. Ethics and aesthetics are fused as jammers negotiate interactional guidelines to reach a heightened musical and social communion.

This according to “A special kind of courtesy: Action at a bluegrass festival jam session” by Michelle Kisliuk (TDR: The drama review XXXII/3 [fall 1988] pp. 141–155). Above and below, festival attendees jamming with that special courtesy.

Related articles are here.

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by | August 2, 2013 · 1:00 am

Music + practice

Music + practice

Launched in 2013 by the Norges Musikkhøgskole/Norwegian Academy of Music, Music + practice is a peer-reviewed online journal dedicated to the study of practices in music, featuring articles and presentations written by academics and practitioners. The journal also engages with artistic research and performance studies.

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by | July 31, 2013 · 1:00 am

Fanny Elssler and desire

fanny elssler

When Fanny Elssler (1810–84) left the Paris Opéra to tour the U.S. between 1840 and 1842, adoring critics there were faced—apparently for the first time—with the dilemma of writing approvingly about a woman making herself an object of desire.

Recurring descriptions of her being a divinity or an enchantress evince the process of assuaging guilt over this desire, and assumptions that male dancers were homosexuals enabled the suspension of jealousy over her dancing partners.

This according to “The personification of desire: Fanny Elssler and American audiences” by Maureen Needham Costonis (Dance chronicle XII/1 [1990] pp. 47–67).

Above, an image used for her U.S. tour of Elssler performing her signature La cachucha; below, a recreation performed by Carla Fracci.

Related article: The postmodern ballerina

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by | July 29, 2013 · 1:00 am

America’s most famous bugler

 

For 15 seconds a year, Steve Buttleman is the most famous man in America.

On the first Saturday of every May, wearing his famous red jacket and black cap, he marches from the white pagoda behind the Churchill Downs Winner’s Circle, lifts a bugle to his lips, and plays Call to post, cuing the jockeys to lead their horses to the starting gate.

Buttleman plays for the spring and fall meets as well as the Kentucky Derby, often performing Call to post as many as eleven times a day.

This according to “America’s most famous bugler” by Patrick Wensink (The Oxford American 1 May 2013; the article is here). Below, Mr. Buttleman’s 15 seconds of fame.

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by | July 26, 2013 · 1:00 am

Musicking

 

We cannot understand the nature of music and its role in human life by conceiving of it as a thing; we must see it as an event in a context, replacing the noun music with the verb musicking.

The nature of musicking may then be addressed by asking whose ideal relationships are being celebrated, what the nature of those relationships is, and how they are represented in the performance.

This according to “Musicking: A ritual in social space” by Christopher Small, an essay included in Aflame with music: 100 years of music at the University of Melbourne (Melbourne: Centre for Studies in Australian Music, 1996 pp. 521–533).

Below, an example of musicking that involves minimal precomposition.

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by | July 24, 2013 · 1:00 am

Ted Shawn and Native American dance

ted shawn

Ted Shawn was the first choreographer to introduce carefully researched interpretations of Native American dance to audiences in North America, Europe, and Asia.

Beginning in the 1910s, when prominent dance critics were utterly dismissive of Native American dance, Shawn formed a high opinion of it—a view that was confirmed when he witnessed a complete Hopi ceremony in 1924.

This according to “The American Indian imagery of Ted Shawn” by Jane Sherman (Dance chronicle XII/3 [1989] pp. 366–382). Below, archival footage of some of Shawn’s work.

Related post: St. Denis and Radha

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by | July 19, 2013 · 1:00 am

Blues and theomusicology

 

The designation of blues as “devil’s music”—a notion that has been largely unquestioned since the publication of Paul Oliver’s Blues fell this morning (1960)—imposes Christianity’s dualistic views on the holistic cosmology of an African-derived culture.

The supposed atheism of blues is simply a polemical means of opposing oppression, a stance that does not contradict blues’s fundamentally religious nature. White blues scholars have misrepresented blues by reducing its meaning to the language of ethnomusicology, a theoretical methodology that is not indigenous to the culture of blues; theomusicology, an indigenous approach, offers a deeper understanding of the people who created blues.

This according to “Blues and evil: Theomusicology and Afrocentricity” by Jon Michael Spencer, an essay included in Saints and sinners: Religion, blues and (d)evil in African-American music and literature (Liège: Société Liégeoise de Musicologie, 1996 pp. 37–51).

Above, Reverend Gary Davis, photographed by Bill Smith; below, Blind Willie Johnson’s Jesus make up my dying bed.

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by | July 17, 2013 · 1:00 am

The postmodern ballerina

Ballerina

Alternately stiff and pliable, the ballerina demonstrates that which is desired, while her partner embodies the forces that pursue, guide, and manipulate the desired object.

An understanding of the ballerina-as-phallus may allow her to reconfigure her power, so that she can sustain her charisma even as she begins to determine her own fate; it may also reclaim for ballet a sensual and even sexual potency.

This according to “The ballerina’s phallic pointe” by Susan Leigh Foster, an essay included in Corporealities: Dancing knowledge, culture, and power (London: Routledge, 1996 pp. 1–24). You can see her inimitable performance of the paper here.

Below, a day in the life of a ballerina.

Related article: Ballerinas and honeybees

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by | July 15, 2013 · 1:00 am

Julian Bream, autodidact

As a child, Bream first learned to play the guitar along with his father from “an extraordinary little book, and that was great fun.”

When he was around 11 Boris Perrot, the president of the Philharmonic Society of Guitarists, heard him and, duly impressed, offered to teach him. The boy was honored, but soon found that he disliked the outmoded technique that Perrot insisted on.

Bream stopped the lessons and never took another one; instead, “I watched how Segovia did it and made up my technique as I went along.”

“Actually, I think I must have been quite a little horror because I was very instinctive about things. I only did what I wanted to do. I didn’t care a damn what other people wanted me to do.”

This according to “Julian Bream at 60: An interview” by Gareth Walters (Guitar review 96 [winter 1994] pp. 2–15).

Today is Julian Bream’s 80th birthday! Above, the guitarist in 1947; below, his arrangement of Danza del molinero from Manuel de Falla’s El sombrero de tres picos.

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by | July 13, 2013 · 6:54 am

Bibliolore reaches 100!

 

Bibliolore now has 100 followers! Many thanks to all who have helped the RILM blog to get the word out on timely and interesting publications about music. Kool & the Gang have something to say about that:

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