Ethnomusicology

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.

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.

The word archipelago [ἄρχι- -arkhi- ("chief")-and πέλαγος-pélagos ("sea")] was used in medieval Italy to refer to the Aegean Sea, and later referred to the Aegean islands. Currently, it refers to any island group or, in some instances, to a sea containing a large number of scattered islands. By considering archipelagic global spaces such as the Caribbean basin, the Mediterranean Sea, and the Pacific Ocean, "Sounding the Archipelago" is concerned with discursive and material networks of islands, oceans, and continents as they pertain to processes of music-making. Drawing from an interdisciplinary body of scholarship including texts in ethnomusicology, philosophy, geography, island studies, postcolonial studies, and comparative literature, this seminar examines the theoretical and thematic possibilities of an archipelagic framework of relation. Considering the material and theoretical tension between land and water, and between island and mainland (continental) relations, participants will investigate the types of connections that become visible and audible when island groups are regarded not exclusively as sites of cultural and musical production and circulation, but rather, as models. Specifically, what does it mean to think with a place instead of exclusively about it? How do we think and write about networks, connections, and mobility in ways that foreground in-between spaces and sounds alongside the discourses and epistemologies that constitute them? Where "sounding" refers to measuring the depth of a body of water, to preliminary steps before further action and, of course, to the presence of resonant sound, participants in "Sounding the Archipelago" will critically engage with the archipelagic as a new intellectual field and question its efficacy and suitability to the study of music.

This course’s goal is to introduce graduate students to the history, development and theoretical underpinnings of ethnomusicology as a research discipline. In our readings, therefore, we will focus our attention on key figures and institutions, especially from the late 19th century forward; on major issues and debates in and beyond ethnomusicology; on the relationships between ethnomusicology and other research disciplines; and on emergent emphases and concerns in ethnomusicological work.

This course has as its focus the varied social agents, discourses, processes and institutions that contribute to current and historical understandings of rock. Issues of musical style, questions of historiography, the technologies and techniques of audio recording, the structures of the recording industry, the status of so-called subcultures and mainstreams, and the politics of gender, race and sexuality are among the items which our readings, class discussions and assignments will explore. As such, the inculcation of an “appreciation” of rock, the transmission of a canon and the validation of individual musical tastes are projects that are antithetical to our inquiry. Students will also be encouraged, through select readings and listening assignments, to contextualize rock within a broad field of twentieth- and twenty-first century music-making and attendant social, political and economic processes.

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.

Ethnographic methods generally pertain to the principal qualitative research methods of participant observation, fieldnote writing, ethnographic interviewing, and the ethnographer's participation in music and dance as formal and informal processes for the study of musical actions and behaviors. This seminar examines these methods, while critically considering the central connections between methods and the ethics of fieldwork and ethnographic representation as related to ethnographic intent, researcher reflexivity, notions of power and privilege, authority, hearing and representing individual voices, and politics of positionality, which refers to the ethnographer's conduct throughout the research and writing process. Selected ethnomusicological and anthropological scholarship on ethnography and (recent) musical ethnographies highlight such ethical concerns and responsibilities while introducing fieldwork settings, analytical renderings, and theoretical framing. Focusing on ethnography as methodological practice, and as text, this seminar includes writing labs to practice processes of data analysis, interpretation, and the transformation of field data into written and other ethnographic representations. The seminar further introduces fieldwork technology, visual sociology/ethnography, filmmaking, and examples of virtual ethnographic presentation and dissemination. Focusing on how scholars represent musical experiences further exposes methods and theories of critical ethnography, auto-ethnography, and performance ethnography while highlighting examples of music-making that center not only on artistic activity but also on social interactions.