by | March 11, 2011 · 1:00 am

Kumbaya: A song’s evolution

Having served as a beloved anthem during the folk music revival of the 1950s and 1960s, Kumbaya now serves as an easy punch line in jokes about naïve idealism. Various theories regarding its provenance have circulated, including a report that it was collected by missionaries in Angola and a claim by Marvin V. Frey that he composed it in 1939.

Archival documents at the American Folklife Center illuminate the real story. The earliest known evidence of the song is in a manuscript sent by Julian Parks Boyd to the Archive’s founder, Robert W. Gordon, in 1927; Boyd had noted it from a former student the previous year (transcription above; click to enlarge). The song’s structure matches that of Kumbaya, and its refrain is “Lord, come by here”. Further archival evidence demonstrates that the song was well known among African Americans by the 1940s, and that dialect performances gradually transformed “come by here” to “kum ba ya”.

This according to “The world’s first Kumbaya moment: New evidence about an old song” by Stephen Winick (Folklife Center news XXII/3–4, pp. 3–10). Below, Joan Baez performs Kumbaya in France in 1980.

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by | March 9, 2011 · 1:00 am

Take six: Early folk song manuscripts

Sponsored by the English Folk Dance and Song Society, Take six is a searchable online database of the manuscript archives of seven of the U.K.’s most prominent folk song collectors— Janet Blunt (1859–1950), George Gardiner (1852–1910), Anne Gilchrist (1863–1954), Henry Hammond (1866–1910, Sabine Baring-Gould (1834–1924), Francis Collinson (1898–1984), and George Butterworth (1885–1916).

Each of the archives has been completely catalogued and digitized. Most of the documents are songs and tunes, but other manuscript items, such as dances or correspondence, are also included. Many thanks to Tim Radford for bringing this resource to our attention!

Related post: An early Gaelic manuscript

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by | March 6, 2011 · 1:00 am

Sexual attraction by genre

 

In an experiment, male and female college undergraduates made and viewed videotaped presentations that included stating a preference for classical music, country music, soft rock, or heavy metal. These preferences were found to influence heterosexual attraction in specific ways.

Devotion to classical music and to heavy metal proved to be gender specific: A love of heavy metal greatly enhanced the appeal of men, but it proved detrimental to that of women, while a preference for classical music produced the opposite reactions. A love of country music was found to diminish attraction in both genders.

This according to “Effects of associating with musical genres on heterosexual attraction” by Dolf Zillmann and Azra Bhatia (Communication research XVI/2 [April 1989], pp. 263–288).

Below, Chuck Berry discusses genre preferences with some friends..

Related article: Air guitar and gender

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by | March 4, 2011 · 1:00 am

Hellenic journal of music, education, and culture

Launched in 2010 by the Ένωση Εκπαιδευτικών Μουσικής Αγωγής Πρωτοβάθμιας Εκπαίδευσης (Enōsī Ekpaideutiōn Mousikīs Agōgīs Protovathmias Ekpaideusīs/Greek Association of Primary Music Education), Hellenic journal of music, education, and culture (ISSN 1792-2518) is an international, open-access, peer-reviewed journal that aims to reflect a wide variety of perspectives from disciplines within the fields of music education and musicology. Issues include articles, case studies, and book reviews; articles in Greek or English are accepted.

The journal is devoted to the dissemination of ideas relating to theoretical developments, and welcomes interdisciplinary contributions. The inaugural issue’s table of contents is here.

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by | March 1, 2011 · 1:00 am

J.C. Bach goes to law

The youngest and most versatile of J.S. Bach’s sons, Johann Christian Bach (1735–1782) is well known among musicologists for the influence of his forward-looking works on the musical life of his adopted home, London, and on the young Mozart. Less known is his decisive influence on English copyright law.

In 1773 Bach filed a lawsuit against the music publishers John Longman and Charles Lukey. At that time a copyright act from 1710 protected legal rights for “books and other writings” for up to 28 years, but music was often excluded from coverage. Common law allegedly protected publications beyond the 28 years, but there was a great deal of disagreement as to common law’s scope and validity. Royal privilege was also hotly debated, and provided little assurance to composers trying to protect their musical property.

The suit involved a work that Bach identified as “a new Lesson for the Harpsichord or Piano Forte”. Longman and Lukey contested the case and repeatedly requested more time, delaying the settlement for three years. In 1777 the case was decided by the renowned William Murray, 1st Earl of Mansfield, Lord Chief Justice of the King’s Bench, who unequivocally placed music under the copyright act of 1710. Bach’s case served as a benchmark in English musical copyright law for the next 60 years.

This according to “J.C. Bach goes to law” by John Small (The musical times CXXVI/1711 [September 1985] pp. 526–529). Many thanks to Joseph T. Orchard for his help with this post!

Below, Emile Naoumoff performs J.C.Bach’s keyboard sonata in G Major, op. 17, in Paris in 2010.

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by | February 27, 2011 · 1:00 am

Southern African & Zimbabwean music connection

Created by Daniel Gritzer in 2000, Southern African & Zimbabwean music connection provides annotated and unannotated bibliographic listings for writings on music from Angola, Botswana, Madagascar, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Zambia, and Zimbabwe, as well as links to Internet resources for most of these countries.

This post is part of our series of celebrating Black History Month. Throughout February we will be posting about resources and landmark writings in black studies. Click here or on the Black studies category on the right to see a continuously updated page of links to all of our posts in this category.

Below, a demonstration of the mbira of Zimbabwe.

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by | February 24, 2011 · 1:00 am

J.H.K. Nketia, Ghanaian ethnomusicologist

Ever since the publication of his African Music in Ghana (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1963), Joseph Hanson Kwabena Nketia (b.1921) has been reknowned among ethnomusicologists. His distinguished career has included many fine publications on music in Africa and its diaspora. The first volume of his collected papers, Ethnomusicology and African music: Modes of inquiry and interpretation, was issued by Afram Publications in 2005.

Nketia’s extensive background in musicology gave him the tools to revolutionize the analysis of African drumming, and since the 1980s he has produced landmark articles on more general aspects of ethnomusicological theory. He is also a composer—he studied with Henry Cowell in the late 1950s—who has written works for both Western and African instruments.

This post is part of our series celebrating Black History Month. Throughout February we will be posting about resources and landmark writings in Black studies. Click here or on the Black studies category on the right to see a continuously updated page of links to all of our posts in this category.

Below, a performance of Nketia’s Monna n’ase (1942).

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by | February 21, 2011 · 1:00 am

South African audio archive

Established by Flat International in September 2010, South African audio archive is a not-for-profit visual archive of rare and sometimes unusual South African audio documents. The project aims to provide a resource for those researching South African audio history.

The database is searchable by artist, label, company, and genre, and the website includes a bibliography and a chronology of sound recording in South Africa. High-quality reproductions of album covers or record labels are provided for each entry, along with full discographic notes and annotations.

This post is part of our series celebrating Black History Month. Throughout February we will be posting about resources and landmark writings in black studies. Click here or on the Black studies category on the right to see a continuously updated page of links to all of our posts in this category.

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by | February 18, 2011 · 1:00 am

Tropicália and Bahia

 

The tropicália movement of the 1960s, which coincided with a period of intense cultural and political unrest in Brazil, emphasized the country’s multiethnic identity by incorporating the entire spectrum of Brazilian music. Although the movement had an ostensibly political framework of national scope, many of its products had deep roots in the traditional music of Bahia, the most important reservoir of Afro-Brazilian culture.

Among tropicália’s most important figures were Afro-Brazilian singer-songwriters such as Gilberto Gil and Tom Zé; several other artists connected with the movement hailed from Bahia. An overview of song texts and musical features of tropicália shows that the influence of Bahia’s traditional music and culture remained a strong factor behind even the most avant-garde experiments of the various artists who converge under that rubric. The website Tropicália is an extensive resource for exploring tropicalismo, the aesthetic of tropicália.

This post is part of our series celebrating Black History Month. Throughout February we will be posting about resources and landmark writings in black studies. Click here or on the Black studies category on the right to see a continuously updated page of links to all of our posts in this category.

Below, Gil speaks about Bahia, tropicália, and political suppression. Many thanks to James Melo for his help with this post!

Related article: Macunaíma and brasilidade

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by | February 15, 2011 · 1:00 am

African American women composers

From spirituals to symphonies: African American women composers and their music by Helen Walker-Hill (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2007) challenges the assumption that black women’s only significant musical contributions have been in the worlds of blues, jazz, pop, and traditional music.

The book includes detailed discussions of the lives and works of Undine Smith Moore (left), Julia Perry, Margaret Bonds, Irene Britton Smith, Dorothy Rudd Moore, Valerie Capers, Mary Watkins, and Regina Harris Baiocchi, all of whom have combined the techniques of Western art music with their own cultural traditions and individual gifts.

This post is part of our series celebrating Black History Month. Throughout February we will be posting about resources and landmark writings in black studies. Click here or on the Black studies category on the right to see a continuously updated page of links to all of our posts in this category.

Below, Tichina Vaughn performs Dream variations, Bonds’s setting of the poem by Langston Hughes.

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