Ethnomusicology

The course explores some of the music traditions that hail from South Asia—a region defined by the countries of India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan, Afghanistan, Maldives, and their diasporas. The course will study music and some of its inextricably linked forms of dance and theatre through the lens of ethnomusicology, where music is considered in its social and cultural contexts. Students will develop tools to listen, analyze, watch, and participate in South Asian forms of music-making, using case-study based inquiries as guides along the way.

This course provides an introduction to ethnomusicology and related disciplines with an emphasis on the methods and contemporary practice of social and cultural analysis. The course reviews a broad selection of writing on non-Western, popular, vernacular, and "world-music" genres from a historical and theoretical perspective, clarifying key analytical terms (i.e., "culture," "subculture," "style," "ritual," "globalization") and methods (i.e., ethnography, semiotics, psychoanalysis, Marxism). In the last part of the course, students learn and develop component skills of fieldwork documentation and ethnographic writing.

This course is a selected survey of classical, popular, and folk music traditions from around the world. The goals are not only to expand our skills as listeners but also to redefine what we consider music to be and, in the process, stimulate a fresh approach to our own diverse musical traditions. In addition, the role of music as ritual, aesthetic experience, mode of communication, and artistic expression is explored.

This course is a selected survey of classical, popular, and folk music traditions from around the world. The goals are not only to expand our skills as listeners but also to redefine what we consider music to be and, in the process, stimulate a fresh approach to our own diverse musical traditions. In addition, the role of music as ritual, aesthetic experience, mode of communication, and artistic expression is explored.

This course is a selected survey of classical, popular, and folk music traditions from around the world. The goals are not only to expand our skills as listeners but also to redefine what we consider music to be and, in the process, stimulate a fresh approach to our own diverse musical traditions. In addition, the role of music as ritual, aesthetic experience, mode of communication, and artistic expression is explored.

This course is a selected survey of classical, popular, and folk music traditions from around the world. The goals are not only to expand our skills as listeners but also to redefine what we consider music to be and, in the process, stimulate a fresh approach to our own diverse musical traditions. In addition, the role of music as ritual, aesthetic experience, mode of communication, and artistic expression is explored.

This course is a selective introduction to anthropology and related, influential strands of high/critical theory, on one hand, and the changing relation of both to the study of music and the field of ethnomusicology, on the other. After an opening situating the course's origin and content in university and broader intellectual currents, we will proceed through a series of modules focused on particular issues and approaches: culture; society; research paradigms and theory; ethnography; intellectual crises and questions; the emergent field known as sound studies; and, finally, anthropological studies of art and music. Rather than providing a comprehensive survey, then, this course presents students with a series of paths they might fruitfully explore further, a set of tools for navigating the heterogeneous, distributed nature of fields with ever-proliferating sub-fields and research/writing paradigms.

Historically one of the most complex and contested regions in the world, Israel/Palestine has a music culture that bears witness to processes of connection and separation. The politics of music in Israel/Palestine grow from conflicted beliefs about authenticity and ownership, the sounds of difference and sameness. The sacred and the secular intersect, and boundaries of practice and genre both divide and unite. Local practices have never been independent of global movement, be it in diaspora, pilgrimage, or the distant residence of refugees. The musical landscape of the region, therefore, has shifted throughout history, accessible primarily through the archaeology of music scholarship. In this proseminar we shall look at specific moments when the musics of Israel/Palestine converged, responding to and shaping historical change and conflict. We shall explore musical repertories and practices of all kinds, whether sacred or secular, vernacular or élite.

This course provides an introduction to ethnomusicology and related disciplines with an emphasis on the methods and contemporary practice of social and cultural analysis. The course reviews a broad selection of writing on non-Western, popular, vernacular, and "world-music" genres from a historical and theoretical perspective, clarifying key analytical terms (i.e., "culture," "subculture," "style," "ritual," "globalization") and methods (i.e., ethnography, semiotics, psychoanalysis, Marxism). In the last part of the course, students learn and develop component skills of fieldwork documentation and ethnographic writing.