Search Results for: black studies

Dagomba dance-drumming

Created by the ethnomusicologist David Locke, Dagomba dance-drumming presents sound recordings, staff notation, and text materials on the dance drumming of the Dagomba people of northern Ghana. The recordings and historical narratives—including a personal narrative of training in drumming—were collected … Continue reading

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Filed under Africa, Dance, Resources

Asian American music teachers’ experiences

Asian Americans hold distinct positions across various professions, experiencing both significant underrepresentation in some fields and notable overrepresentation in others. The Asian population in the United States has grown substantially–an 88% increase over the last two decades. Despite this growth, … Continue reading

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Filed under Music education, North America, Pedagogy, Politics, Theory

William Grant Still sounds African American life in the early 20th century

The U.S. composer and conductor William Grant Still, whose maternal grandmother had been a slave on a plantation in Georgia, attended Wilberforce University in Ohio from 1911 to 1915 after attending high school in Little Rock, Arkansas, where his mother … Continue reading

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Filed under 20th- and 21st-century music, Black studies, Film music, Performers, Politics

Katherine Dunham’s African diasporic dance aesthetics

African American dancer, choreographer, and anthropologist Katherine Dunham used ballet and African diasporic movement traditions to develop a dance methodology that subverted the white patriarchal gaze and forever changed the aesthetics of the Broadway stage. Early in her career as … Continue reading

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Filed under Africa, Black studies, Dance, North America

Anna Moffo, the versatile soprano

Born in Wayne, Pennsylvania to an Italian American couple in 1932, the opera singer Anna Moffo began her formal music studies at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia in 1951. Initially intending to pursue a piano course, she found that the … Continue reading

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Filed under Opera, Performers, Voice

Labor’s troubadour

The musician and union educator Joe Glazer, known as “labor’s troubadour”, made significant contributions to work and union songs through his composition, performance, study, and recording from the 1940s to the 2000s. Although not as widely recognized outside labor circles … Continue reading

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Filed under Labor, Performers, Politics, Popular music

Helen Myers and East Indian music in Trinidad

Throughout her life, ethnomusicologist Helen Myers dedicated herself to exploring the connections between local East Indian music genres in Trinidad and their counterparts in northern India. Her research produced invaluable documentation of traditional songs and shed light on the rich … Continue reading

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Filed under Asia, Ethnomusicology, Literature, Migrations, Popular music, Religion, West Indies, World music

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 … Continue reading

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Filed under 20th- and 21st-century music, Africa, Baroque era, Musicology, North America, Pedagogy, Popular music, Romantic era, South America, Therapy

Musical expressions of the Harlem Renaissance: An annotated bibliography

Emerging from a New York neighborhood in the early 20th century, the Harlem Renaissance was a period of vibrant intellectual and artistic development in the African American community. Considered a turning point in Black history, the Harlem Renaissance offered African … Continue reading

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Filed under Black studies, Jazz and blues, Literature, North America, Performers, Politics, Popular music

Public Enemy brings the noise

Formed in Long Island, New York, the U.S. hip hop group Public Enemy emerged from a DJ sound system called Spectrum City DJs, founded by Hank Shocklee in 1975. Although the sound system originally consisted only of Shocklee and his … Continue reading

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Filed under Black studies, Popular music