American Music Research Articles

Music Therapists’ Thoughts about their Future and the Direction of the Profession

This research examines the responses of music therapists in the United States to two open-ended statements regarding their future plans (795 responses) and the direction of the profession (782 responses), along with responses to 12 Likert-type statements focused on participants’ perceptions of the American Music Therapy Association. As part of a larger, multi-step survey, this mixed methods analysis provided a framework through which to investigate responses to each open-ended statement, which were further categorized by levels of work satisfaction (Meadows et al., 2022b) and then connected to response trends to the 12 Likert-type statements regarding the American Music Therapy Association. Analysis of these data suggest the vast majority of music therapists intend to stay in the field and undertake professional activities that support their growth and expanding their knowledge and work beyond music therapy. Future plans were, however, significantly impacted by the music therapist’s level of work satisfaction, suggesting some systemic issues in the profession. Responses related to the direction of the field were far more mixed, inextricably connected to work satisfaction levels, and reflected in responses related to the American Music Therapy Association. Taken together, these findings suggest that while the majority of music therapists are focused on growing professionally, they have mixed perceptions about the direction of the field and faith in the American Music Therapy Association.

Resting-state functional connectivity in an auditory network differs between aspiring professional and amateur musicians and correlates with performance

Auditory experience-dependent plasticity is often studied in the domain of musical expertise. Available evidence suggests that years of musical practice are associated with structural and functional changes in auditory cortex and related brain regions. Resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) can be used to investigate neural correlates of musical training and expertise beyond specific task influences. Here, we compared two groups of musicians with varying expertise: 24 aspiring professional musicians preparing for their entrance exam at Universities of Arts versus 17 amateur musicians without any such aspirations but who also performed music on a regular basis. We used an interval recognition task to define task-relevant brain regions and computed functional connectivity and graph-theoretical measures in this network on separately acquired resting-state data. Aspiring professionals performed significantly better on all behavioral indicators including interval recognition and also showed significantly greater network strength and global efficiency than amateur musicians. Critically, both average network strength and global efficiency were correlated with interval recognition task performance assessed in the scanner, and with an additional measure of interval identification ability. These findings demonstrate that task-informed resting-state fMRI can capture connectivity differences that correspond to expertise-related differences in behavior.

Music self-efficacy, self-esteem, and help-seeking orientation among amateur musicians who use online music tutorials.

Music self-efficacy, self-esteem, and help-seeking orientation among amateur musicians who use online music tutorials.

‘The practice of the twanged instruments’. Evaluating the amateur fretted instrument orchestra in British popular musical life, c.1890–c.1960

AbstractThe British amateur fretted instrument orchestra was a product of the late Victorian and Edwardian banjo and mandolin ‘crazes’. Lacking deep community roots, early organisations were numerous but mainly short-lived. However, reconstituted as more broadly based clubs, they enjoyed a substantial revival from the later 1920s and played a major role in the preservation of fretted instrumental culture at a time when it was losing purchase in wider popular musical life. Clubs and orchestras provided a significant outlet for the musical talents of lower-middle and working-class amateur musicians and, although always ultimately male-dominated, gave greater opportunity to women than was the norm within amateur instrumental music-making. The charitable concerts that featured so strongly in their work provided an impressive record of public service. However, their instrumentation and middle-of-the-road repertoire rendered them increasingly unfashionable in the changed popular musical climate of the 1950s and entirely marginal by the end of the 1960s.

“Why are there so many steps?”: Improving Access to Blind and Low Vision Music Learning through Personal Adaptations and Future Design Ideas

Music can be a catalyst for self-development, creative expression, and community building for blind or low vision (BLV) individuals. However, BLV music learners face complex obstacles in learning music. They are highly reliant on their learning environment and music teachers for accommodations and flexibility. Prior research identified the challenges faced by BLV musicians. Yet, limited research has addressed these challenges through the development of technology. Drawing upon the experience and suggestions of 40 BLV professional musicians, amateur musicians and music teachers (including sighted teachers with experience teaching blind students), we identified five themes: (1) Key Challenges of BLV Music Learning, (2) Personal Adaptations to Overcome Music Learning Challenges, (3) Perspectives on Current and Future Assistive Technologies, (4) Contention Between Braille Music and Auditory Learning, and (5) Role of Human Support for Music Learning. Together, these findings outline a path to make music learning more accessible to BLV people. To this end, we describe opportunities for enhanced audio cues for musical communication, recommend integrating vibrotactile feedback to aid music reading and design technology that supports independence and interdependence in music learning.

The K-POP Phenomenon: Analyzing Success Secrets of S.M. Entertainment in Global Fandom

Korean-pop (K-pop) lead a global phenomenon over the world, K-pop music, Korean TV dramas and Korean movies and other entertainment culture permeates every corner of our life. With the popularity of PSY's Gangnam Style on YouTube in 2012 and BTS attend American Music Awards as the first Korean idol group in 2017, bringing K-pop to more people and attracting more loyal fans. They see their idols as spiritual salvation, buying albums, attending concerts and vote for charts. Behind these loyal behaviors, the sophisticated marketing model of Korean entertainment companies is inseparable. This research will take S.M. Entertainment, one of South Korea's top four entertainment companies, as an example to explore the secrets of K-pop develop strong fandom in the worldwide. To be specific, this research will analyze the strategies of South Korean entertainment companies to build a strong fan empire from four perspectives: business model, social media marketing, cultural branding, and fandom community. By implementing a comprehensive marketing strategy, Korean idols have successfully driven the fan economy and made K-pop grow on the international stage.

Yusef Lateef, Islam, and jazz

ABSTRACT A notable characteristic of the jazz scene of 1940s–1960s North America was the large number of African American musicians who converted to Islam. Focusing on the case of the jazz saxophonist and scholar Yusef Lateef (1920–2013), alongside an extensive and newly created list of many other musician converts, this article explores some of the social, historical, and religious factors underlying this phenomenon. It is argued that Islamic conversion and the rise of Bebop should be understood in the context of the polemics of Black philosophers and leaders, such as W.E.B. Du Bois, Alain Locke, and Marcus Garvey—a point not adequately addressed in previous scholarship. The complexities and contradictions surrounding the conversion of jazz musicians are also explored. These include the negotiation of Islamic attitudes to music, and instances of the negation of Black identity, but also examples of deep commitment to the Islamic faith, spirituality, and proselytisation (da’wa). Lateef, in particular, is shown to have created an Islamic jazz amalgam that incorporated ‘Eastern’ elements into his ‘autophysiopsychic music’ (his preferred term for ‘jazz’).

Soundscapes of Liberation: African American Music in Postwar France

Soundscapes of Liberation: African American Music in Postwar France

The role of cultural diversity in creating value: a case study of South Korea’s pop band BTS

ABSTRACT Globalization has heightened the significance of cultural diversity. Embracing cultural diversity within an organization provides a number of benefits, such as enhanced creativity and a comprehensive understanding of customer information, which all contribute to effective decision making in response to market dynamics. This article examines a case study of BTS, a South Korean pop band, and its efforts to promote cultural diversity. BTS is the first Asian act to win the top honour at the American Music Awards. The band accumulated six No. 1s on the Billboard Hot 100 in just over a year, an accomplishment achieved only by The Beatles in the 1960s. On its path to success, BTS cultivated a committed fan following, the ARMY (Adorable Representative M.C. for Youth), which has expanded from its humble beginnings to an influential organization with members of various cultural backgrounds. The article focuses on how BTS and its culturally-diverse fan base have co-created value by generating content and distributing it to a broad network, augmenting the band’s awareness and its brand equity. The article provides implications for diversity as not only a good cause but also a practice that can improve an organization’s financial success by fostering a virtuous cycle of mutual benefit between the organization and its customers.

The Invention of Latin American Music: A Transnational History Pablo Palomino

<i>The Invention of Latin American Music: A Transnational History</i> Pablo Palomino

Psychophysical characterization of auditory temporal and frequency streaming capacities for listeners with different levels of musical expertise.

Temporal and frequency auditory streaming capacities were assessed for non-musician (NM), expert musician (EM), and amateur musician (AM) listeners using a local-global task and an interleaved melody recognition task, respectively. Data replicate differences previously observed between NM and EM, and reveal that while AM exhibits a local-over-global processing change comparable to EM, their performance for segregating a melody embedded in a stream remains as poor as NM. The observed group partitioning along the temporal-frequency auditory streaming capacity map suggests a sequential, two-step development model of musical learning, whose contributing factors are discussed.

Dispositional and performance-specific music performance anxiety in young amateur musicians.

Research on Music Performance Anxiety (MPA) among amateur musicians is of great interest due to inconsistent results in literature. In addition, amateur music represents an important part of musical culture in Germany. Accordingly, the performance experiences of young wind players represent a relevant issue for research and musical practice. In the present study, 67 young amateur musicians of a brass choir were examined. Using two different questionnaires, both the dispositional MPA (K-MPAI) and the performance-specific MPA during a joint concert (Performance-specific Questionnaire for Musicians, PQM) were assessed. The PQM measures the symptoms of MPA, functional coping with MPA and self-efficacy before, during and after a specific performance. The PQM was completed by the musicians via an app directly after the concert. Results showed that about 90% of the young amateur musicians had a low dispositional MPA, but about 10% showed high values. For the concrete performance, however, musicians with high dispositional MPA also experienced a very moderate to low MPA in the concert. On average, the musicians were quite nervous before the performance. After the performance, they showed low levels of MPA. Three types of MPA found in previous studies could be confirmed among the amateur musicians, with three quarters being assigned to the positive type, showing low levels of symptoms associated with consistently high levels of self-efficacy and positive functional coping. The results provide a differentiated picture of different expressions of MPA in young amateur musicians. They also raise further questions about the correlation between dispositional and performance-specific assessment of MPA in musicians in general.

The ‘Distant Music of Social Radicalism’: The Debate between Pelagius and Augustine of the 4th Century CE and its Relevance to Music Education

This paper focuses on the Pelagian Debate of the late 4th Century CE between Augustine of Hippo and the British cleric Pelagius, and its little known or understood relevance to music education practice and scholarship. A transdisciplinary review of theological, historical, pedagogical, and musicological texts suggests that Augustinian notions of sin, goodness, and human nature reflect assumptions embedded in traditional classical music education paradigms. As a contrast, Pelagius’ notions of the importance of the “laity,” and criticism of church hierarchy, later suppressed and deemed heretical, can be related to tensions between amateur and professional musicians in music and education contexts. This paper will explore this debate, and Augustine’s victory, as a means of questioning assumptions embedded in music education discourse concerning talent, discipline, and human capacity for music. In this way, the debate is made relevant not only as a means of enhancing understanding of historical conceptions but also as a lens through which contemporary music education might be interrogated.

The Invention of Latin American Music. A Transnational History

The Invention of Latin American Music. A Transnational History

Music performance anxiety: the role of early parenting experiences and cognitive schemas.

Music Performance Anxiety (MPA) is a common challenge for classical musicians, however its etiology has received minimal research, particularly in regards to caregiver experiences during childhood and adolescence. The aim of this research was to explore the impact of childhood experiences with parents along with patterns of dysfunctional cognitive schemas that develop through childhood ('Early Maladaptive Schemas'; EMSs) on the manifestation and severity of MPA in adulthood. Study 1 employed 100 adult professional, amateur, and tertiary student classical musicians from across Australia. Participants completed the Young Schema Questionnaire (YSQ) and the Kenny Music Performance Anxiety Inventory (K-MPAI). Study 2 included eight participants from Study 1, five of whom scored 1.5 standard deviations or more above the mean K-MPAI score and three of whom scored 1.5 standard deviations or more below the mean K-MPAI score. Participants were interviewed about experiences of parenting during childhood and adolescence, along with their experiences of MPA and musical training. Interpretative phenomenological analysis was used to explore themes in the interview data. Study 1 factor analysis revealed four higher-order EMS factors, F(4, 95) = 13.74, p < 0.001, one of which was a significant predictor of MPA, t(99) = 3.06, p = 0.003. This factor comprised themes of failure, catastrophising, and incompetence/dependence. Study 2 qualitative analysis revealed various key parenting themes experienced in childhood that differentiated low- and high-MPA scorers in adulthood. Findings from both studies are discussed in light of clinical applications and interventions, and implications for both parents and music educators.

Piano Sonatas I-IV by Allen Sapp (review)

Reviewed by: Piano Sonatas I-IV by Allen Sapp Edward Komara Allen Sapp. Piano Sonatas I-IV. Edited by Alan Green. Middleton, WI: A-R Editions, 2021. (Recent Researches in American Music, v. 90) [1 score (x, 88 p.) ISBN 9781987207651, $200] During his lifetime, Allen Sapp (1922–1999) was better known as an education administrator than as a composer. Yet he was thoroughly trained in music composition at Harvard University's music department in the 1940s, and subsequently he composed over 140 works. The scores appearing in print during his lifetime were reproductions of his holographs. The Music Library Association encouraged the initial research and recovery of his music by awarding the 1991 Walter Gerboth Award to Alan Green. Published by A-R Editions a year before the centennial of the composer, Green's edition of the first four of Sapp's ten piano sonatas (1941–1989) sets the standard for the future of his score publications. Green's curation of the Sapp legacy has resulted in his thesis "Allen Sapp: Composer, Teacher and Administrator" (MA thesis, SUNY Buffalo, 1994), the book Allen Sapp: A Bio-Bibliography (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996), the placement of Sapp manuscripts at SUNY Buffalo upon the composer's death in 1999, and his biographical entry in Grove Music Online. The first important secondary study was Howard Pollack's chapter on Sapp and Robert Middleton in Harvard Composers: Walter Piston and His Students, from Elliott Carter to Frederic Rzewski (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1992; henceforth Pollack). Two important dissertations followed. David Curtin's "The Piano Music of Allen Dwight Sapp: A Performer's Guide to the Complete Miscellaneous Works" (DMA diss., University of Cincinnati, College-Conservatory of Music, 1997) presents the piano music other than the sonatas. Charles Hogan's "The Piano Sonatas of Allen Sapp: A Study of Style and Language" (DMA diss., University of Cincinnati, College-Conservatory of Music, 2010) is a probing study into dodecaphony, [End Page 655] texture, harmony, and form. Finally, there are Sapp's brief summaries of Sonatas II, III and IV in the notes accompanying Lambis Vassiliadis's recording of those works (Koch Discover International DICD 920535 [1999], CD). The task of this review is threefold: to evaluate Sapp's first four sonatas; to recognize the editorial work of Alan Green in editing the compositions from manuscripts; and to use A-R Editions' newly-published edition towards clarifying the various published comments from Sapp, Green, Hogan, and Pollack. As Hogan shows (pp. 3–4), Sapp composed his piano sonatas in groups of three; each of them may be associated with a particular time in his life. Sonatas II, III and IV ("the Roman sonatas") were composed in Rome, Italy in 1957 during a rest leave away from his grueling teaching post at Harvard. Sonatas V, VI, and VII came in 1980 after time-consuming administrative positions at SUNY Buffalo (1961–1975), Florida State University (1976–1978), and the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music (1978–1980) and upon his return to teaching at the last institution in 1980. The final completed trilogy (VIII [1986], IX and X [both from 1989]) came shortly before he was elected to faculty leadership positions in 1989 and 1990. Sonatas XI and XII were begun (Green, Bio-Bibliography, 49) but found unfinished after his 1999 death (Hogan, 4). His first sonata (1941) is something of a lone wolf that lacks companion sonatas, as Sapp admitted to Hogan (p. 7): "That was One; that was isolated. I didn't do anything more with that because of the war and the army involvement." Implicit in nearly every sonata is the composer's wife Norma Bertolami Sapp (1921–1995). They met as students in 1941 and married in 1943. As a pianist in the 1940s, she performed in Harvard's concerts of new music. Later, she gave the premieres of Sapp's Sonatas II (revised), IV, V, VI, and VIII, with accomplished performances of III in the 1970s and '80s. According to Green (Bio-Bibliography, 48), she never recorded commercially, and one opportunity to record the Roman sonatas in 1993 was cancelled due to her arthritis and anemia. This is regrettable, partly for her...

:Soundscapes of Liberation: African American Music in Postwar France

:<i>Soundscapes of Liberation: African American Music in Postwar France</i>

Aesthetic expression an das Clavier: performing character in the keyboard music of C. P. E. Bach

Abstract The expression and interpretation of music in the North German Enlightenment was a primary concern of amateur musicians. Around the mid 18th century, influenced by the nascent discipline of aesthetics, literature on the arts and music exhibited a shift towards a psychological approach to expression rather than a rhetorical one. This article examines the notion of ‘character’ as used in aesthetics, music theory and compositions of the period, showing how it was closely linked to the moral function of art. Moving away from a rhetorical or semiotic approach that identifies a fixed character in specific genres or musical features, I argue that musical performance involved an interaction between the music’s implied character and the moral character of the musician. Case studies of two representative keyboard works by C. P. E. Bach, the Rondo I in C major (Wq.56.1/h.260) and the Fantasia in F♯ minor (Wq.67/h.300), explore ways to recover the psychological experience of character as delineated in these compositions, and discuss how an approach to expressing character could be employed by present-day performers.

Soundscapes of Liberation: African American Music in Postwar France. By Celeste Day Moore

In Soundscapes of Liberation, Celeste Day Moore has woven together a compelling book that sheds new light on the Black (American) experience in twentieth century France. Her critical intervention is to show that although the circulation and reception of Black music in postwar France seemed emancipatory, the reality was more complex. Moore outlines the tensions between an idealized rhetoric of racial freedom in France and the real erasures and stereotyping that characterized the transmission and reception of music of the African diaspora. She uses approaches from social and cultural history, popular culture studies, sound studies, and French colonial and postcolonial studies. Moore’s nuanced account of the emancipatory and constraining effects of soundscapes is central to understanding the complexity of “race” and racialization in France. She focuses on the time period after the Second World War although, as she points out, these characteristics are typical of earlier periods and continue to this day.

Future Development Direction of Chinese Musical Film-By Comparing with the American Musical Film

With the emergence of musical films in mainland China in recent years, the narrative logic, story, song and dance of musical films cannot attract audiences. This paper is to discuss the future development trend of Chinese musical film. This research compares the advantages and disadvantages of the Chinese musical film The Day We Lit Up The Sky and the American classic musical film Chicago via case studies and literature review. Aiming at the aesthetic analysis of these two musical films, this paper discusses the content, theme, song and dance, awards, box office, audience analysis and so on. The research results show that the development of Chinese film industry is later than the United States and Europe, so there is still a lot of room for progress. This paper only analyzes two musical films with different area styles. Chinese musical films should break out of the conventional plot and use a lot of star cameos to attract audiences. The use of truly high standards of music, high quality dance, high level of art and unique film content to produce Chinese song and dance film, but also need to integrate its unique Chinese characteristics, culture and thought. The development trend of Chinese musical films in the future is to walk out of a road belonging to Chinese characteristics and find a positioning and direction that belongs to China, so as to make them different from Hollywood musical films and Bollywood.