by | July 16, 2018 · 6:00 am

Asian-European music research e-journal

In summer 2018 the Asia-Europe Music Research Center at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music launched Asian-European music research e-journal, a peer-reviewed open-access journal that publishes scholarship on traditional and popular musics and fieldwork research, and on recent issues and debates in Asian and European communities. The journal places a specific emphasis on interconnectivity in time and space between Asian and European cultures, as well as within Asia and Europe.

The journal provides a forum to explore the impacts of post-colonial and globalizing movements and processes on these musics, the musicians involved, sound-producing industries, and resulting developments in today’s music practices. It adopts an open-minded perspective on diverse musics and musical knowledge cultures.

Below, a silent film shot in Bali in 1928—part of Bali 1928, a repatriation project discussed in the inaugural issue.

More posts about Bali are here.

Comments Off on Asian-European music research e-journal

Filed under Ethnomusicology, New periodicals

Tagged as

by | July 12, 2018 · 6:00 am

Coltrane’s saxophonic scream

 

The critical reception of John Coltrane’s saxophonic scream—an incredibly high-pitched, raw, and intense explosion of timbre—demonstrates how our precognitive reaction to sonic timbres can invoke tropes of masculinity and race.

A perceptual/cognitive approach that focuses on the degree to which the listener identifies with the sound, citing recent research on the neurophysiology of audition, locates a biological reason for the phenomenon of musical empathy—the perception that in listening to a sound we also participate in it. Our participation, however, is culturally conditioned.

Coltrane’s saxophonic scream was variously interpreted by music critics as the sound of black masculine violence and rage or as a sign of the jazz icon’s spirituality, a transcendent sound. Music critics’ visceral, embodied interpretations of Coltrane’s saxophonic scream turned on their reactions to the birth of free jazz in the context of the U.S. civil rights movement.

This according to “Theorizing the saxophonic scream in free jazz improvisation” by Zachary Wallmark, an essay included in Negotiated moments: Improvisation, sound, and subjectivity (Durham: Duke University Press, 2016, pp. 233–44).

Below, Coltrane’s performance at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1966.

Comments Off on Coltrane’s saxophonic scream

Filed under Curiosities, Jazz and blues, Performers, Reception

Tagged as , , , ,

by | July 10, 2018 · 6:00 am

Béla Fleck’s Africa Project

In early 2005 Béla Fleck traveled to Tanzania, Uganda, Gambia, and Mali to meet, jam, and record with an impressive array of musicians, bringing along a recording engineer, a film crew, and enough gear to ensure that no encounter would go unrecorded. He accompanied the player of a massive marimba in Uganda, played with kalimba masters and harpists in Tanzania, and encountered a possible banjo ancestor—the akonting—in Gambia.

In an interview, Fleck explained that his aggressive travel agenda was part of a strategy to circumvent his inner control freak. “By putting myself in a situation where I couldn’t really be completely prepared, I was forced to dig deep into things that I do that I can’t tell you where they come from. I have been pegged as a complicated guy, and so it’s funny that I feel freer not being complicated in this setting.”

This according to “Béla Fleck’s Africa Project” by Banning Eyre (Guitar player August 2009).

Today is Fleck’s 60th birthday! Above and below, excerpts from his award-winning film Throw down your heart.

Comments Off on Béla Fleck’s Africa Project

Filed under Africa, Instruments, Performers

Tagged as , ,

by | July 8, 2018 · 6:00 am

Louis Jordan and “Caldonia”

In an interview, Louis Jordan recalled the background of his 1945 hit Caldonia:

“Caldonia started a long time before I came to New York. There used to be a long, lean, lanky girl in Memphis, Tennessee, where Jim Cannon used to have a gambling place where people used to come to shoot a bale of cotton because they didn’t have too much money to gamble.”

“This long, lean, lanky gal used to hang out in this place and she wouldn’t do anything you asked her to do. That’s why they said ‘Your head was so hard,’ and…Hot Lips Page was very young then and I met him and he said ‘You should make a tune out of that, just a plain old blues.’”

Quoted in Let the good times roll: The story of Louis Jordan and his music by John Chilton (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, p. 112).

Today is Jordan’s 110th birthday! Below, a 1946 performance of the song.

Comments Off on Louis Jordan and “Caldonia”

Filed under Performers, Popular music

Tagged as ,

by | July 2, 2018 · 6:00 am

Karinding Attack’s heavy metal bamboo

Karinding Attack is a group from Bandung, West Java, that performs original songs, covers international death metal hits, and engages in collaborations with musicians who specialize in other genres—all to the accompaniment of Sundanese bamboo musical instruments that were virtually extinct only 20 years ago.

After the Sundanese people’s embrace of a hegemonic modernity in the 20th century relegated these instruments to obscurity, their efflorescence represents an alternative modernity in which, instead of adopting disdain for their own past as the primitive Other against which European hegemonic modernity is constructed, Sundanese people construct their own history against which to articulate a coherent Sundanese modernity.

This according to “Heavy metal bamboo: How archaic bamboo instruments became modern in Bandung, Indonesia” by Henry Spiller, an essay included in Studies on a global history of music: A Balzan musicology project (Abingdon: Routledge, 2018, pp. 241–55).

Below, Karinding Attack covers Sepultura’s Refuse/Resist.

Comments Off on Karinding Attack’s heavy metal bamboo

Filed under Asia, Curiosities, Instruments, Popular music

Tagged as ,

by | June 30, 2018 · 6:00 am

Jheronimus Vinders: Collected works

Issued by A-R editions in 2018, Jheronimus Vinders: Collected works, part I is devoted to the composer’s motets and secular works.

Jheronimus Vinders is best known as one of the three composers who wrote a lament on the death of Josquin des Prez. This limited reputation does not do justice to Vinders, whose works bear comparison with those of his more famous contemporaries.

As one of the rather small group of Flemish composers that links the Josquin generation with that of Clemens non Papa and Thomas Crecquillon, Vinders blended old and new compositional approaches, with some works paying respect to earlier traditions and others falling more in line with the musical developments that led to the pervasive imitation of the 1530s and beyond.

Below, one of the works included in the edition.

Comments Off on Jheronimus Vinders: Collected works

Filed under New editions, Renaissance

Tagged as ,

by | June 26, 2018 · 6:00 am

Rubén Blades and tango

During his service from 2004 to 2009 as the Minister of Tourism for his native Panama, the singer-songwriter, actor, and political activist Rubén Blades largely refrained from his many pursuits in the entertainment world.

But before diving headlong back into his salsa career, Blades finished a project several years in the making: a collection of 11 of his original salsa compositions re-imagined as tangos. Carlos Franzetti, a Grammy-winning pianist from Argentina, arranged and produced Tangos, which was recorded in Buenos Aires using the veteran tango musicians of Leopoldo Federico’s orchestra.

This according to “Rubén Blades: Tango storyteller” by Thomas Staudter (DownBeat LXXXI/9 [September 2014] p. 16).

Today is Blades’s 70th birthday! Above, performing at the 2014 Latin Grammy Awards, where Tangos won the award for Best Tango Album; below, an excerpt from the record.

Comments Off on Rubén Blades and tango

Filed under Performers, Popular music

Tagged as , ,

by | June 21, 2018 · 6:00 am

Eubie Blake and the florid cry

Writing in 1945, Willis Laurence James recalled giving a lecture demonstration attended by Eubie Blake:

I sang a florid Negro cry. Eubie Blake leaped halfway from his seat and yelled “Oh, professor, professor, you hit me, you hit me!”

He placed both hands over his heart and continued with great emotion: “You make me think of my dear mother. She always sang like that. I can hear her now. Thaťs the stuff I was raised on.” He sat down quietly, except for a deep sigh that had no audible competition from anyone.

Blake was a living testimony to the influences that had made him musically unique even without formal training (which he did not acquire until he was old and famous and did not really need it). He knew all along that it was the cry that had guided him.

Quoted from “Cries in speech and song” by Willis Laurence James (Black sacred music IX/1–2 [1995] pp. 16–34).

Above, an undated photograph of Blake from the Maryland Historical Society; below, James demonstrates two florid cries.

2 Comments

Filed under Uncategorized

Tagged as , ,

by | June 18, 2018 · 6:00 am

Danse électro and Tecktonik

Danse électro originated in France at the beginning of the 2000s. Inspired by other European dance movements, danse électro went on to become a global phenomenon.

Tecktonik, registered as a trademark in France in 2002, played an important role in the spread of the movement. The Tecktonik trademark branded nightclubs, compilation albums, and various tie-in products, including clothes (above) and alcoholic and energy drinks.

While danse électro was one of several movements involving dancing to electronic music, it maintained its identity through brand placement, the involvement of pre-teenagers, and information technologies, particularly Web 2.0 applications.

This according to “Tecktonik and danses électro: Subculture, media processes, and Web 2.0” by Anne Petiau, an essay included in Made in France: Studies in popular music (New York: Routledge, 2018, pp. 203–15).

Below, Alive by Mondotek, a danse électro hit from 2007.

Comments Off on Danse électro and Tecktonik

Filed under Dance, Popular music

Tagged as , ,

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.

Comments Off on Journal of popular music education

Filed under New periodicals, Pedagogy, Popular music