Early Song Research Articles

北宋初期 詞의 침체원인 분석

北宋初期 詞의 침체원인 분석

The multiple functions of male song within the humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) mating system: review, evaluation, and synthesis.

Humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) are seasonal breeders, annually migrating from high-latitude summer feeding grounds to low-latitude winter breeding grounds. The social matrix on the winter grounds is a loose network of interacting individuals and groups and notably includes lone males that produce long bouts of complex song that collectively yield an asynchronous chorus. Occasionally, a male will sing while accompanying other whales. Despite a wealth of knowledge about the social matrix, the full characterization of the mating system remains unresolved, without any firm consensus, as does the function of song within that system. Here, I consider and critically analyse three proposed functions of song that have received the most attention in the literature: female attraction to individual singers, determining or facilitating male-male interactions, and attracting females to a male aggregation within the context of a lekking system. Female attraction suggests that humpback song is an advertisement and invitation to females, but field observations and song playback studies reveal that female visits to individual singers are virtually absent. Other observations suggest instead that females might convey their presence to singers (or to other males) through the percussive sounds of flipper or tail slapping or possibly through vocalizations. There is some evidence for male-male interactions, both dominance and affiliative: visits to singers are almost always other lone males not singing at that time. The joiner may be seeking a coalition with the singer to engage cooperatively in attempts to obtain females, or may be seeking to disrupt the song or to affirm his dominance. Some observations support one or the other intent. However, other observations, in part based on the brevity of most pairings, suggest that the joiner is prospecting, seeking to determine whether the singer is accompanying a female, and if not soon departs. In the lekking hypothesis, the aggregation of vocalizing males on a winter ground and the visits there by non-maternal females apparently for mating meet the fundamental definition of a lekking system and its role though communal display in attracting females to the aggregation, although not to an individual singer. Communal singing is viewed as a form of by-product mutualism in which individuals benefit one another as incidental consequences of their own selfish actions. Possibly, communal singing may also act to stimulate female receptivity. Thus, there are both limitations and merit in all three proposals. Full consideration of song as serving multiple functions is therefore necessary to understand its role in the mating system and the forces acting on the evolution of song. I suggest that song may be the prime vector recruiting colonists to new winter grounds pioneered by vagrant males as population pressures increase or as former winter grounds become unavailable or undesirable, with such instances documented relatively recently. Speculatively, song may have evolved historically as an aggregating call during the dynamic ocean conditions and resulting habitat uncertainties in the late Miocene-early Pliocene epochs when Megaptera began to proliferate. Early song may have been comprised of simpler precursor sounds that through natural selection and ritualization evolved into complex song.

Jaufre Rudel, Contrarian

The poems of troubadour Jaufre Rudel (fl. 1120-1147) took exception to the earlier songs of Guilhem IX; they burlesqued the commonplace associations of springtime and love and of love with joy; they took issue with monks; they even critiqued themselves. In short, as this article argues, Jaufre - or, at least, the persona invoked by his poems - was a contrarian, disposed to refute, deny, and oppose his elders and his contemporaries. But he did so subtly, ambiguously, often using the very vocabulary of those from whom he dissented.

Review of Ruth I. DeFord,Tactus, Mensuration, and Rhythm in Renaissance Music(Cambridge University Press, 2015)

[1] Though the changing nature of pitch organization in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries has been the subject of significant scholarly debate, few studies address analogous changes in rhythmic organization in this period.(1) Two recent books, Ruth I. DeFord's Tactus, Mensuration, and Rhythm in Renaissance Music (2015) and Roger Matthew Grant's Beating Time and Measuring Music in the Early Modern Era (2014) have begun to fill this void. Both studies explore how hierarchy accrues in mensural structures, providing a compelling link to our understanding of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century meter (i.e. Lerdahl and Jackendoff 1983, Hasty 1997, London 2004). For his part, Grant synthesizes the intellectual foundations of theories of musical time from the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries and documents technologies (including the tactus, the timepiece, and the metronome) that correspond with changing articulation of musical time. In his discussion of mensural music, Grant draws on an Aristotelian notion of time to argue that tactus articulates a mensural hierarchy.(2) DeFord similarly focuses on tactus and takes a more practical approach, examining in detail the theory and practice of temporal organization in Renaissance music.(3) DeFord provides a compelling account of the nuances of mensuration, illuminating the unique contributions of mensural organization to fifteenth- and sixteenth-century music and revealing the vibrant hierarchical patterns that mensural theory and practice encourage.[2] DeFord begins her study by debunking the false binary between meter and mensuration:The term "mensural music" (musica mensurabilis) means simply "measured music." In the period under consideration, it was the opposite of "plainchant" (musica plana). Modern scholars sometimes treat it as the opposite of "metrical music." This is a false dichotomy based on an oversimplified view of the difference between "Renaissance rhythm," in which the system of measurement is sometimes alleged to have no relation to rhythmic structure, and later styles, in which time signatures and barlines are sometimes assumed to prescribe structures in a straightforward manner. This reductive opposition does not do justice to the music of either era. (2)The book demonstrates this point exquisitely, illustrating the analytical potential of mensural structure and emphasizing critical commonalities between so-called mensural and metrical music. DeFord defines rhythm as "a more complex concept than mensuration or tactus. It includes all aspects of the perceptible organization of musical time, especially on the relatively small scales in which durations can be directly compared in memory. Since all musical events take place in time, all of them contribute to rhythm" (3). Her book aims "to shed light on the theory and practice of rhythm in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries by examining them in relation to each other" (1). She undertakes this project in two parts: chapters 1-7 consist of close readings of over 100 theoretical sources, and chapters 8-14 provide seven case studies ranging from the early songs of Du Fay through the virtuosic L'homme arme masses of Ockeghem, Busnoys, and Josquin to the popular songs that flourished through the second half of the sixteenth century. DeFord's exploration of disparate sources reveals a rich tapestry of rhythmic practices that affect details ranging from large-scale organization of a mass movement to nuances of text setting at the level of the single word.[3] Building on the groundwork of Berger 1993, DeFord untangles the often contradictory details of theoretical writing on mensuration, ranging from the mid-fourteenth century Ars practica mensurabilis cantus of Johannes de Muris through Michael Praetorius's Syntagma musicum (1618-19). She argues that "the functional mensural structure of a piece depends on regularities in the audible rhythmic structure, not on the notated mensuration" (50). …

A Gift to Goethe: The Aesthetics of the Intermediate Dominant in Schubert’s Music and Early Nineteenth-Century Theoretical Thought

Schubert is famous for his remote modulations, especially his third relations. He therefore has a reputation for harbouring an aversion to the dominant, both in terms of its function as a harmonic preparation for new keys and as a structural pole to the tonic home key. I turn to the history of theory to reveal a more nuanced history of Schubert’s attitude towards the dominant. In a revision of ‘Geistes-Gruß’ (D. 142), a song he sent to Goethe in 1816, Schubert added a brief dominant-seventh chord to soften an abrupt modulation to a remote key. Such an insertion between remote keys was coined an ‘intermediate dominant’ by Schubert’s contemporary Anton Reicha and was understood to be a sufficient preparation for a new remote key. In four subsequent versions of ‘Geistes-Gruß’, Schubert strengthened, rather than weakened, this intermediate dominant – only to remove it altogether in the final published version. I scrutinize Schubert’s use of intermediate dominants that, together with other techniques such as the use of silence, act as a harmonic cushion between abrupt third relations in a range of early multi-sectional songs and in the medial caesura-fill in the Unfinished and Great Symphonies. I compare Schubert’s compositional strategies with the theories of modulation and harmonic juxtaposition by his contemporary music theorists Anton Reicha and Gottfried Weber, and I argue that they share a strikingly similar aesthetic of the power of the intermediate dominant.

Bakhtin Attends the Theater: Kama Ginkas's Chekhov Trilogy

In the late nineties and early 2000s, Kama Ginkas, one of the most celebrated theater directors working in Russia today, staged three Chekhov stories: “Lady with the Lapdog,” “The Black Monk,” and “Rothschild's Fiddle. The actors give voice to virtually every word of the literary texts, even in the form of spoken stage remarks such as “he said” and “she said.” While the shows are performed independently, Ginkas views them as a trilogy which he has titled Life is Beautiful. According to Ginkas, the central narrative thrust of all three shows, and of Chekhov's work in general, is man's desire and failure to live life fully. He highlights the Chekhovian tension between the beauty of life and the tragedy of how it is lived. Drawing on Bakhtinian concepts, this article examines how Ginkas's trilogy reveals but does not resolve this terribly beautiful nature of life. By placing Chekhov's narration into the mouths of his actors, Ginkas actualizes the character zones found in Chekhov's authorial prose. This does not result in a flattening of the voices, as Bakhtin had feared; instead, Ginkas actively dialogizes the voices through the use of interruptions, repetitions and incongruities between word and action. Ginkas further activates Chekhov's language by inserting excerpts from an early Chekhov feuilleton, folk songs, and opera into the performances. Through this reaccentuation of the prosaic text and the heteroglossic interpolation of additional texts, Ginkas repeatedly and unexpectedly shifts between the tragic and the comic, the terrible and the beautiful, highlighting the unfinalizability of his performed prose.

Reconsidering the Role of Mazu under the Early Hongwu Reign

The worship of Mazu, the Chinese Goddess of Sailors, began in Fujian, under the early Song. Migrants from that province gradually spread this cult to other coastal regions and among the overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia. The present article investigates one particular episode in the history of the Mazu cult. Its stage is Guangzhou and the period dealt with is the beginning of the Hongwu reign. In 1368, Liao Yongzhong’s troops moved to that city, putting it under control of Zhu Yuanzhang, the first Ming emperor. Local chronicles pertaining to Guangdong and certain other sources briefly refer to this event. They report that Liao promoted the worship of Mazu in that region and they indicate that Mazu received an official title in 1368, by imperial order. TheTianfei xiansheng lu, one of the key texts for the Mazu cult, provides different details: It associates the title granted by the imperial court with the year 1372, and not with the context of Central Guangdong. Furthermore, the attributes which form part of the title vary from one text to the next. The paper discusses these and other points, arguing there could be two different narrative traditions surrounding Mazu’s role in 1368/72: the Guangdong version and the “conventional” view, similar to the one found inTianfei xiansheng lu. Although there is no definite solution for this dilemma, the article tries to expose the general background into which one may embed these observations.

Brahms among Friends: Listening, Performance, and the Rhetoric of Allusion by Paul Berry (review)

COMPOSERS Brahms among Friends: Listening, Performance, and the Rhetoric of Allusion. By Paul Berry. (AMS Studies in Music.) New York: Oxford University Press, 2014. [ix, 389 p. ISBN 9780199982646 (hardcover), $47.95; (e-book), various.] Music examples, tables, bibliography, index.Paul Berry's book puts forward two enticing propositions relating to works by Johannes Brahms. Firstly, that certain of Brahms's compositions were directed towards individuals within his social circle, carrying meanings they were uniquely situated to perceive, and secondly, that through musicological inquiry we might excavate these meanings today and imaginatively reconstruct the ways in which Brahms's intended audience experienced his music. Such propositions highlight the importance of Brahms's private social sphere to his compositional activity, something that has largely been overshadowed by the public reception of his music. Berry's ambitious project is to guide his readers towards historically informed understandings of selected lieder, piano and chamber works, compositions that span the duration of Brahms's creative life. To do this he engages an array of primary sources, offers analyses of musical pieces and poetry, and reflects on the physical and aural experiences of playing and hearing Brahms's music.Part I centers on three short works: two lullabies written in the 1860s, and the lied Es liebt sich so lieblich im Lenze dating from 1877. The composition of each of these pieces was triggered by events in the lives of couples close to Brahms. In the cases of the Geistliches Wiegenlied op. 91, no. 2, and the Wiegenlied op. 49, no. 4, this was the birth of children in the families of Amalie and Joseph Joachim and Bertha and Arthur Faber. Es liebt sich so lieblich im Lenze op. 71, no. 1, served as a gift for Clara and Julius Stockhausen on the occasion of the baptism of their third son. Berry examines each work and provides an engaging description of the friendship that occasioned it. The goal of these separate case studies is to deliver interpretative accounts of the individual pieces, showing how poetic texts, borrowed musical materials, and even the required performing forces might have been affectively charged for the works' recipients.In Part II Berry surveys a wider range of Brahms's music, but focuses on a single friendship, that which Brahms shared with the composer Heinrich von Herzogenberg and his wife Elisabeth. Herzogenberg paid homage to his more famous contemporary in his op. 23 piano variations: the work uses an early song by Brahms as its theme and invites comparison with Brahms's variations of the same opus number. Interestingly, Berry suggests that Brahms also occasionally wrote pieces alluding to Herzogenberg's works. In the finale of the String Quintet op. 88 he finds a reference to material from one of Herzogenberg's string trios, while the variation movement within Brahms's op. 87 piano trio takes up the same theme that Herzogenberg had used some years earlier. Brahms's allusions, how- ever, come across as deliberate demonstrations of his more sophisticated compositional technique, and it is perhaps unsurprising that the Brahms-Herzogenberg relationship was put under strain through these musical exchanges. We see here how musical works served as agents of reconciliation and rupture within one of Brahms's most important friendships.Part III sheds new light on Brahms's much-studied relationship with Clara Schumann by considering her reception of a cluster of musical works written in the 1870s. Berry offers detailed interpretations of Brahms's songs Meine Liebe ist grun and Alte Liebe, published respectively in the collections opp. 63 and 72. He argues that both works would have had heighted significance for Clara because of allusions Brahms makes in them to music by himself and her husband Robert-allusions that only she was likely to appreciate. The final chapter of Part III presents a hermeneutic account of the op. …

The Influence of Clara Schumann’s Lieder on Declamation in Robert Schumann’s Late Songs

In his late songs (from 1849-52), Robert Schumann’s vocal rhythm strays much farther than in his earlier songs from the poetic rhythm. His late style of declamation may have been influenced by Clara Schumann’s Lieder of the 1840s. His late songs exhibit the following characteristics, which are also found in her songs: 1) the vocal rhythms are based on the poetic rhythm at least occasionally, so that listeners have a foil against which they can perceive declamatory irregularities; 2) there are numerous deviations from consistent coordination of stresses with strong beats, and of four-bar hypermeasures with poetic units; 3) rests are often employed in an unpredictable manner; and 4) there are text-expressive motivations for declamatory irregularities.

Using History to Defend Buddhism's Place in the Socio-Political Order

This article investigates the historical arguments found in the Da Song sengshilüe, an important work on the history of Buddhism in China by the vinaya monk Zanning. Throughout a life that spanned the turmoil of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period as well as the imperial consolidation of the early Song, Zanning proved adept at developing close relationships with important political figures and prominent literati. He was widely praised for his literary skills, and he established a reputation as an erudite scholar of both Buddhist and Confucian learning. His fame attracted the attention of Emperor Taizong, and in the late tenth century, Zanning was ordered to write a text on the history of Buddhism in China, which he called the Da Song sengshilüe. In this work, Zanning described the institutional relationships that developed between Buddhism and the state as well as the manner in which these changed over time. His historical analysis revealed that Buddhism needed to maintain a relationship with the government and that this relationship should ideally be one of mutual assistance and support. In addition, Zanning used the Da Song sengshilüe to advance a polemical argument on the proper stance that the state should adopt towards Buddhism, Daoism and Confucianism. Based on an historical analysis of the causes underlying the vicissitudes in the political fortunes of the Three Teachings, he contended that Buddhism, Daoism and Confucianism should be treated equally, and that the holders of political power should refrain from establishing policies advocating either favoritism or persecution towards them.

An exploration of the relationship between melodic originality and fame in early 20th-century American popular music

The current study examined the relationship between fame and melodic originality among the refrains of over 500 early American popular songs. The main goals were to attempt to replicate results detailed by Simonton (1994), to compare different measures of melodic originality in the context of information theory, and to utilize hierarchical linear modeling in the analyses. The following hypotheses were tested: (1) melodic originality varies across historical time; (2) melodic originality is a positive function of composer age; and (3) fame is a curvilinear function of melodic originality. Results showed that melodic originality increased from 1916 to 1960—the period covered by the current corpus—which is consistent with hypothesis 1. Hypothesis 2 was not confirmed, as results showed a negative relationship between originality and age. The test of hypothesis 3 showed that a significant amount of the variation in fame could be attributed to a non-linear relationship with originality, but that the fame–originality relationship is moderated by genre (instrumental v. vocal). Implications for further studies of the psychomusical contributions to fame are discussed.

The Mid-Tang Scholar-Monk Shenqing and His Beishan lu

This article investigates the thought of the mid-Tang scholar monk Shenqing through an examination of his Beishan lu. In this work, Shenqing launched a fervent attack against Southern Chan, while pressing for the harmonization of the Three Teachings. His critique of Southern Chan reflects his Theravadin tendency, as he expressed negative views about Southern Chan's violation of traditional Buddhist teachings. He specifically attacked its de-emphasis on the vinaya, and the fabrication of the 28-Patriarchs theory of transmission. In an effort to establish the orthodoxy of Southern Chan in early Northern Song, Chan clerics found it necessary to respond to Shenqing's critique, as clearly reflected in the writings of the monk Qisong. Beishan lu is a valuable source for a study of Shenqing's thought, and the unfolding of the harmonization of the Three Teachings. It also allows us to trace the historical unfolding of the Southern Chan movement from a different perspective.

The Measure of the World: Scenes from a Journey to Kaesŏng

In 1757, the scholar Kang Se-hwang (1713-91) documented his trip to Kaesong (formerly known as Songdo) in an album that has since become one of the most celebrated groups of paintings in the history of late Choson art. Known as Journey to Kaesong, the album has been particularly recognized for its incorporation of linear perspective and other techniques associated with Western-style oil painting. Yet even more significant was how Kang treated scale, defined in this context the deliberate calibration of objects according to size. The vast majority of Choson paintings used scale primarily as a means to make visible abstract ideas such as infinity and vastness, often taking as a standard the kinds of relational frameworks used in inkbrush painting since the early Song Dynasty. In Journey to Kaesong, however, both the physical scale determined by the album format and the pictorial scale internal to the depiction are used to generate viewing experiencies that induce in audiences a sense of immediacy, one that enabled the possibility of imaginig the world beyond the geographic, aesthetic, political and social hierarchies prevalent at the time the work was first made and shown.

Three Songs for Les Illuminations by Benjamin Britten, and: Six Early Songs (1929–31) for medium voice and piano by Benjamin Britten, and: Two Pieces for violin, viola and piano (1929) by Benjamin Britten, and: Two Psalms: Out of the deep, Praise ye the Lord, for SATB chorus and orchestra by Benjamin Britten, and: Variations for piano (1965) by Benjamin Britten

NEWLY PUBLISHED MUSIC BY BENJAMIN BRITTENBenjamin Britten. Three Songs for Les Illuminations. Orchestration for high voice & strings by Colin Matthews. Words by Arthur Rimbaud. Full score. London: Boosey & Hawkes, 2012. [Pref. in Eng., Fr., and Ger.; texts in Fr., Eng., and Ger.; score, p. 1-22. ISMN 979-0-060-12030-5; ISBN 978-0-85162-767-0; pub. plate no. 15072. $26.95.]Benjamin Britten. Six Early Songs (1929-31) for medium voice and pi- ano. London: Faber Music, 2013. [Texts in Eng.; pref. in Eng.; score, p. 2-14. ISBN10 0-571-51190-2; EAN13 978-0-571-51190-7. £10.99.]Benjamin Britten. Two Pieces for violin, viola and piano (1929). London: Faber Music, 2013. [Introd. in Eng.; editorial notes in Eng.; score, p. 1-25 and 2 parts (violin and viola). ISBN10 0-571-52361-7; EAN13 978- 0-571-52361-0. £24.99.]Benjamin Britten. Two Psalms: Out of the deep, Praise ye the Lord, for SATB chorus and orchestra. Full score. London: Chester Music, 2012. [Score, p. 1-67. Pub. no. CH79750. £21.95.]Benjamin Britten. Variations for piano (1965). London: Faber Music, 2013. [Introd., editorial note, and performance note in Eng.; 1 facsimile; score, p. 1-7; appendices. ISBN10 0-571-52057-X; EAN13 978-0-571- 52057-2. £9.99]Since Britten's death in 1976, and in particular since the opening to researchers a few years later of the extraordinarily comprehensive archival collections of the Britten-Pears Library at his home in the Suffolk town of Aldeburgh, keen interest has constantly been aroused by the steady stream of posthumous publications of unknown works which, for various reasons, he had kept firmly under wraps during his lifetime. While all such publications, no matter how slight, will inevitably be of con- siderable interest to scholars and die-hard Britten enthusiasts-and it might be ar- gued that this alone is a compelling reason for their public dissemination-it is rather less certain whether every morsel of this rediscovered music deserves a strong foothold in the concert hall; and, at times, some listeners have feared that the com- poser's reputation might become a shade tarnished by the realization that he did not always attain his customary level of genius. Nevertheless, the level-headed can always find consolation in the equally important realization that he himself, unlike some other prodigiously prolific writers, well knew which of his pieces warranted a place in his official canon, and which didn't. Whatever one's personal view, Britten en- thusiasts owe an enormous and ongoing debt of gratitude to Colin Matthews, chair of The Britten Estate, who has for several decades overseen the preparation and pub- lication of projects of this kind in a skillful and sensitive way.Britten's posthumous publications fall into three broad categories, each well rep- resented by the batch of five new scores re- viewed here (all of which appeared in the run-up to, and during, the composer's cen- tenary year in 2013). Arguably the most im- portant category, and one in which indis- putably impressive compositional standards are virtually assured, is the small but fasci- nating body of mature songs that Britten wrote for his well-known song cycles, but chose not to include in their definitive for- mats. Just how brilliant some of this dis- carded music could be was first demon- strated in 1983 by the performance of two songs jettisoned from Winter Words (1953), and even more spectacularly in 1987 by the discovery of the haunting Tennyson setting Now sleeps the crimson petal, which had been composed for inclusion in the Serenade for tenor, horn, and strings (1943). Self-evidently, then, Britten some- times consigned pieces to his bottom drawer not because they were substandard, but simply because he had too many of them for his specific needs. The second, and largest, category is the huge body of ju- venilia composed by Britten when he was a precociously gifted schoolboy, which is in- evitably of variable quality, though the best of it is truly astonishing in its technical as- surance. …

A Comparative Study of Formal Characteristics on the “Three-Poem-Style” in the Early Song Dynasty

A Comparative Study of Formal Characteristics on the “Three-Poem-Style” in the Early Song Dynasty

The Distorted Ode: On Horace, Carm. 4.8

If emendated carefully Carm. 4.8 is fully worthy of Horace and indeed an exquisite example of his art. Its metapoetic (programmatic) outlook on the panegyric subgenre is one of the crucial factors for a positive appreciation. The poet's master hand shows in integrating the themes in the Pindaric manner. The ode is no exception to Meineke's Law, a claim safely to be deduced from Horace's metrical practice. Textual challenges are above all raised by the lines 13–24. Rejecting 14–17 (NB! not 18–19a), the author discusses Calabrae Pierides (20) as a reference to Ennius’ praise of Scipio Africanus; eo ipso Scipio is safeguarded against excision. The second Roman hero, Romulus (22b–24), should be seen both in relation to Ennius and in the light of early heroic song in Rome. Illi (dat.) is conjectured instead of eius (18) and attached to line 13. In his introduction, Horace makes Pindar's First Isthmian, typical of Pindar's kind of praise, applicable to the occasion. As to the partly Romanized Greek heroes (25–34), each example has its own stamp. Finally, a new version of the text is presented.

Icelandic Nationalism, Difference Feminism, and Björk’s Maternal Aesthetic

Since the late 1980s, when her band the Sugarcubes became known internationally, singer-songwriter Bjork, the most famous Icelander since Leif Eriksson, has been met with both praise and criticism, almost always directed at her difference from Westerners, pop musicians, adults, and even humans. Biographer Mark Pytlik recalls the press around her 1993 album Debut: Nearly every new story paraded her otherness, lionized her differences, and positioned her as an outsider operating as a slave to her ever-changing emotional state. (1) This persona was not entirely a figment of non-Icelandic journalists' imaginations: Bjork had circulated select facets of Iceland's nationalist image/tourist imagery to contextualize her innovative blend of punk, pop, avant-garde, and electronic dance music with its themes of nature, sensuality, emotional intensity, and quirky curiosity. However, journalists turned her creative inspirations into essentialist metaphors, describing her emotions as volcanic and her appearance as elfish and including ice among her Viking compositional tools. (2) Against her intentions, Bjork was set up as the ultimate other--nonhuman, childish, hysterical, and someone even men wanted to mother. (3) Bjork is indeed one of the most imaginative and unusual popular musicians of her time, but labeling her as an outsider and her music as fancifully but meaninglessly quirky misses one of her tantalizing projects: Bjork musically defamiliarizes Western cultural archetypes from within. She compels listeners to experience the whimsical performativity or infuriating constructedness of roles and situations that we may take for granted. In a famous early song, she plays a (seemingly child, alien, or animal) who studies behavior, singing, If you ever get close to a human and human behavior ... be ready to get confused (my emphasis). (4) Journalist Alex Ross explains the irony of the song: It was a career-defining move: Bjork positioned herself as a figure outside convention--as a member of another species, even--while using the second person to implicate the listener in the conspiracy. (5) By involving listeners in the critique, she invites her audience to identify with her denaturalizing performances rather than see her artistic persona(e) as other. Understanding this aesthetic helps contextualize her gender performances, which resist normative sexualized feminine stereotypes yet also thoughtfully embody select female archetypes, playing on feminist perspectives ranging from equality to difference and occasionally even essentialism. Femininity and motherhood have proven awkward territory for academic feminism and queer theory, which have focused (for at least the last thirty years) on the social construction and performance of gender and sex, centering on antinormativity. Contemporary theorists typically critique mainstream depictions of motherhood for essentialism, heteronormativity, and biased assumptions that motherhood and particularly pregnancy are central to all women's identities. However, as feminist literary scholar Susan Fraiman argues, queer theories that reject femininity and motherhood outright while prizing masculinity and androgyny as cool and progressive replicate centuries-old sexism. (6) Bjork's alien anthropologist interpretations of femininity and motherhood provide productive working examples of critically navigating these issues personally, artistically, and politically. This article addresses the interconnections between Bjork's explorations of both essentialism and identity performance as she conveyed Icelandic nationalism and then later invoked its icons in metaphors of world unity and peace; (7) simultaneously represented female sensuality and motherly nurturing, thus challenging the Western asexual mother stereotype; and combined these interests in feminist critique of the patriarchal culture of by examining terrorism and the war on terror through frames of motherhood. …

Augmenting Japan’s Bodies and Futures: The Politics of Human-Technology Encounters in Japanese Idol Pop

Augmenting Japan’s Bodies and Futures: The Politics of Human-Technology Encounters in Japanese Idol Pop

Daughter of the Mediterranean, docile European: Dalida in the 1950s

In the nineteenth century, as colonial expansion abroad paralleled industrialization at home, West Europeans developed the conception of the foreign Other as ‘uncivilized’, a seductive yet simplified object, fit for the gaze of the powerful. In western art, literature and photography, a romantic conception of the ‘Mediterranean’ solidified, whereby those living in the countries bordering the Mediterranean Sea were represented as ‘natural’, childlike and untamed. The same essentialist and reductive approach to a ‘Mediterranean’ identity is identifiable in the early songs and performance of Dalida (1933–1987), an Egyptian-born, Italian female singer who became France’s most commercially successful female artist of the second half of the twentieth century. This article contextualizes the early success of Dalida in France, between 1956 and 1961, demonstrating that the singer’s ‘Mediterranean’ image was carefully engineered by male professionals who selected her song lyrics, music and performance. Because Dalida’s early success in France coincided with the Algerian War, the singer’s oriental provenance was strictly ignored, and her ‘Mediterranean’ identity instead remapped onto the northern shores of the Mediterranean Sea. Analysing Dalida’s early career allows us to examine the evolution of ‘Mediterranean’ imaginings in French popular culture, and observe the politics of racial and gendered representation in the field of popular music at the tail end of the colonial era

PETER LORGE, editor. Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms.

Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms is an edited volume that brings together seven essays on a little-studied period of Chinese history. In Chinese and Western historiography, the term stands for the period of division separating the larger empires of the Tang (618–907) and Song (960–1276) dynasties. The essays cover a longer span of time and extend into the first three reigns of the Song monarchs. This coverage of the entirety of the tenth century is no accident. Editor Peter Lorge presents the collection as an effort to rethink the position of the period in the longue durée transformation of Chinese society between the seventh and the thirteenth centuries. This transformation, now conventionally referred to as “the Tang-Song transition,” stands for the fragmentation of aristocratic power, the numerical growth of the literate elite whose education was shaped by civil service examinations, the expansion of this elite's participation in local as well as central government affairs, economic growth, and urbanization. In these and other areas, the tenth century should be seen as a period of significant continuity both with the late Tang world characterized by political fragmentation and militarization and with the early Song emphasis on centralization and institution building. Lorge concludes, seemingly in agreement with those who have either implicitly or explicitly treated the period as a break and an anomaly in post-Qin history, that the Five Dynasties and the Ten Kingdoms period is “not-Tang and not-Song” (p. 7), but he asks how and why tenth-century developments diverged from late Tang patterns and how and why tenth-century developments were both distinct from and related to the Song Empire that emerged in the eleventh century.