Ethnomusicology

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://digital.lib.washington.edu/handle/1773/4919

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Black women performers of women-identified music: "they cut off my voice, I grew two voices"
(1999) Hayes, Eileen M
Black women have played a critical role in women-identified music ("wim"), which is, demographically speaking, an intense but small world. The music industry term, "woman-identified music" (or "women's music"), refers to a performance, recording, and distribution network spawned by U.S. lesbian-feminist musician/activists in the early to mid-1970s. The genre, comprised of a myriad of musical styles, is generally defined as music that is "for, by and about women." Performances take place at women's music festivals---venues open to women only.This study examines the overlapping subjectivities of black performers and wim listeners/audience members as they collectively and individually negotiate their identities in a predominantly white, lesbian-feminist social field. Traditional ethnomusicological concerns are complemented by some of the more suggestive features of cultural studies. Most significant is an examination of blackness from the perspectives of wim musicians. Black women musicians critique notions that blackness is more authentically correlated with male, heterosexual identities than with black lesbian identities. At the core of this study is that the identities of the performers matter to audience members, black and white---often in contrasting ways. One musician's sense of parody or irony may be lost on an audience member who brings a contrasting framework of interpretation to the performance. Sometimes these interpretations collide.Musicians address notions that instruments, including the voice, are markers of sexual and/or racial identity. White consumers particularly reference certain criteria in appraising the performances of black musicians including the body, (e.g., skin color, size, vocal timbre) and musical style. Amongst wim fans, the circulation of myths about certain vaudeville blues singers of the 1920s influences their reception of performances by black musicians.While women-identified music consumers affirm the significance of black women musicians to this sphere, discussions with audience members reveal racialized definitions of women's music that often exclude the music of black artists. This study examines a complex of contradictions that emerge as consumers and performers consider the dimensions of race, gender, sexuality and musical style in the process of coalescing around a musical genre.
The invention of traditional Korean opera and the problem of the traditionesque: chʾanggûk and its relation to pʾansori narratives
(1998) Killick, Andrew P
The musical story-telling form p'ansori is prized in the Republic of Korea as chont'ong yesul or 'traditional art'. Throughout the twentieth century, attempts have been made to develop the repertoire and singing style of p'ansori into a uniquely Korean form of opera, now known as ch'angguk. Though not recognized as chont'ong yesul, ch'angguk is sometimes described as chont'ong-jogin yesul, a phrase that suggests 'art with an air of tradition about it' rather than 'art with a long tradition behind it'. I see this distinction in usage as reflecting the separate existence in Korea of a second category, the 'traditionesque', related to the 'traditional' in basing its appeal on a valued past, but distinguished from it (and also from 'invented traditions') by the absence of a commitment to protection from change. The 'traditional' category appears to admit only those art forms that are believed to have arisen within Korea, or been taken there from Korea's acknowledged cultural source, China, and reached a stable form before the fall of the last Korean dynasty to Japan in 1910. Ch'angguk does not meet these criteria since it was initially modeled on Japanese shimpa ('new-school') drama and has always been eclectic and changeable in its performance conventions. Hence, the 'traditional' category in Korea does not include a form of musical theatre that Koreans are willing to hold up before the world as their equivalent of kabuki or Peking opera, and this has been felt as a regrettable deficiency. The drive to 'invent' such a tradition of Korean opera by making ch'angguk more 'traditional' has included the government sponsorship of a National Ch'angguk Troupe and the promulgation of an 'origin myth' claiming a Chinese rather than a Japanese influence; but it remains inconclusive because of a local definition of the 'traditional' that relegates ch'angguk to the continuing instability of the 'traditionesque'.
State patronage of Burmese traditional music
(2001) Douglas, Gavin Duncan
In the past decade the ruling junta of the Union of Myanmar has begun several large-scale projects aimed at preserving cultural heritage and forging national unity. These include; the formation of the University of Culture (offering degrees in music, theatre, and sculpture), the genesis of an annual performing arts competition, and the implementation of a standardization project designed to unify and notate a five hundred year old oral tradition. Each project enjoys ample government funding and significant attention in the state press at a time when Burma (Myanmar) is suffering great economic hardship.This dissertation examines these cultural projects in light of the present dictatorship's quest for legitimacy. It will be shown that this state patronage is used to further certain national and international political ends and only partially for support of the tradition and its musicians. Multiple and contradictory perspectives of professional musicians, some of whom benefit from the above projects and some of whom are marginalized, will be addressed revealing a patronage system that is radically changing the traditional music of the country.
Making beats: the art of sample-based hip hop
(2000) Schloss, Joseph Glenn
Since its birth two decades ago in New York's African-American and Latino communities, hip-hop music (also known as "rap") has become the most popular musical genre in the United States. Structurally, hip-hop blends two relatively discrete endeavors: rhythmic poetry ("rapping"), and musical accompaniments in which brief segments of found sound (or "samples") are arranged into larger musical collages (known as "beats"). While much has been written about rapping, the "beats"---and the tightly knit community that produces them---have often been overlooked. Based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork, Making Beats explores the ways in which the non-vocal elements of recorded hip-hop are conceived by producers, and how these conceptualizations are informed by a variety of social, practical, and artistic concerns.After a brief historical overview of the development of hip-hop music in general and sampling in particular, I proceed to the social and aesthetic issues that concern hip-hop producers. These issues include why a musician would choose to use digital sampling rather than live instrumentation, the social significance of collecting rare records to sample, and the so-called "producer's ethics" which monitor the ways in which sampling may be used. Finally, I address the actual process of creating sample-based music, including the aesthetic that drives it, how technology facilitates the continued existence of this aesthetic, how legal and moral issues are resolved, and the practical steps that must be taken to produce a finished product.

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