This issue begins with an unusual narrative piece by Sean Williams, “Poetry Writing as Transgressive Ethnography.” As she discusses, writing poetry is a useful and effective tool in managing the challenging experiences of fieldwork, performing, writing, and teaching. Writing poetry transgresses the sense that legitimate ethnographic work must be rendered as prose. Instead, poetry serves as a powerful tool for understanding the self and one's experiences in context, particularly as part of the exploratory stage between experience and publication. Poetry writing also complicates the idea that one's fieldwork (or teaching) is linear, objective, sequential, and falls neatly into a specific format when we try to render it in writing. Dave Wilson, in “Sonic Space Making on the Margins of Power: Electronic Music, Agency, and Alternative Belonging in the Republic of Macedonia,” examines the space-making practices of an electronic music scene in Skopje, Macedonia between 2011 and 2014. He argues that such practices can make spaces for “alternative belonging,” enabling individuals and groups to diverge from the powerful without open resistance. The article builds on ethnomusicological literature on how space is mediated by music and sound in ways that are generative and transformative, suggesting that understanding agency as distributed across numerous positionalities assists in thinking beyond dichotomous dominance-resistance frameworks. Heather MacLachlan, in “Music and Incitement to Violence: Anti-Muslim Hate Music in Burma/Myanmar,” examines a corpus of Burmese language anti-Muslim hate songs that have been archived on Youtube.com. Burma/Myanmar is the site of recent genocidal violence perpetrated against Muslims, and these songs are part of the hate speech campaign which undergirds this violence. Using the definition of incitement articulated by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, the author shows that the lyrics of these songs constitute incitement to violence. Further, the comments written by Youtube listeners provide evidence that the songs provoke additional dehumanizing speech. The authors Bernardo Ciro-Gómez and Juan Francisco Sans, in “Chimichagua and the Musical Ecosystem of the Tambora in the Depresión Momposina,” discuss a traditional celebration known as tambora, found across a vast area along the Magdalena river basin in northern Colombia. Few studies about this celebration have been conducted, and none have devoted particular attention to the tambora of the town of Chimichagua. They reveal that its musical and choreographic specificities make it possible to speak of a complex musical ecosystem in the region. Anna Morcom, in “Following the People, Refracting Hindustani Music, and Critiquing Genre-Based Research,” points out that ethnomusicologists and Indian musicologists have overwhelmingly studied Hindustani music as classical music, focusing on khyal, dhrupad and instrumental solo and its transmission in lineages. Morcom, rather than focusing on genre, follows people, a ground-up method that equates to basic principles of practice theory. Focusing on the extended family of the Rampur-Sahaswan gharana, known for khyal, the author looked for musicians regardless of the kind of music they were doing. This brought numerous “hidden musicians” (Finnegan 1989) and genres into view as an integral part of a “classical” lineage: singers of ghazal, qawwali, fusion, or commercial music. The greatest musicians of the past were in fact not “classical” ones, but versatile or chaumukhi artistes who sang “all genres.” Morcom maps Hindustani music not just in the famous centers where classical music flourishes today, but smaller cities and towns. Inspired in particular by Erik Wolf's history of capitalism which revealed cultures and societies as interrelated and unbounded (1982), the author explores the shifts in and connections of centers and peripheries of Hindustani music, for example, the key role played by semi-classical and light genres in sustaining classical music. Ruth Opara and Benedict Agbo, in “Music, Seduction, and New Beginnings: The Ikorodo Maiden Dance of Nsukka,” ask several questions pertaining to the Ikorodo dance of Nsukka, Nigeria. Why are conversations about seduction, the female body, and choosing partners central at a funeral during the Ikorodo music performance? How does Ikorodo enact the act of seduction? How has the act of seduction and Ikorodo performance practice evolved? How do Ikorodo performances express the indigenous conceptions of seductions? Drawing from indigenous conceptions of seduction, histories, practitioners and audiences’ narratives, archival materials, existing scholarship, and Ikorodu performance practice as experienced and collected during fieldwork, the authors explore how Ikorodo dance maintains its primary function of providing a space where maiden dancers utilize music to find life partners even when performed at a funeral. Further, their emphasis on the male gaze interrogates the dominant idea that music gives African women agency.Special thanks, as always, are due to a core group of people for their hard work, guidance, and assistance in making this Journal the intellectual benchmark in our discipline. SEM Executive Director Stephen Stuempfle and SEM President Tomie Hahn continue to assist with encouragement, counsel, and support. Our current Book Review co-editors (Andrew Mall, and the newly-appointed Melvin Butler) are performing difficult but important service for the Journal. Our new Film, Video and Multimedia Review editor, Jennie Gubner, brings a wealth of film-related experience to this editing position. Heartiest of welcomes, Melvin and Jennie! And our Recording Review editor Donna Lee Kwon continues with her intrepid editing work with style. Abby Rehard, our Journal's assistant editor, continues to serve with considerable distinction, insight, and humor. Kate Kemball, Journal Productions Editor at University of Illinois Press, provides professional insight as always. And thanks are always due to the hard-working members of the Journal Editorial Board as well as the SEM Publications Committee for their insights on various issues that emerge.Lastly, I should mention that this is my last EM Journal issue as editor. It has been a great pleasure performing this service for our society for the past four years. I have learned so much! And I am especially pleased to know that the Journal is in the most capable hands going forward, those of Kate Brucher.
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Feb 7, 2024
Ferdinand Mbirigi + 1
Open Access