Mark Slobin Research Articles

Music in Constructing Finnish American Identities in the Immigrant Novel by Martin Koskela

Abstract In the immigrant novel Welcome to Shadow Lake (1996) by the Finnish American author Martin Koskela, music is portrayed as a notable component of the ethnic heritage of Finnish American immigrants and their descendants in the US in the 1930s. This article analyzes the roles of music in characters’ identity formation with the help of the concept of transculturation, as developed by Mary Louise Pratt, and the theories of music in constructing and negotiating identity developed by Mark Slobin, Martin Stokes, Simon Frith, Georgina Born, and Ulrik Volgsten. Characters use their musical activities to maintain their Finnishness in the new country, but their Old Country music changes by acquiring new meanings and eventually by incorporating new traits of US and Finnish cultures. The discussion focuses on two aspects of music in Koskela's novel. First, live music and related activities such as dances, performed by ethnic Finnish bands as well as visiting musicians, function as shared markers of Finnish American ethnicity. The characters help build and maintain an ethnic community, but at the same time make their “little Finland” an integrated part of the United States. Second, recorded and radio broadcast music provides the characters with both a gateway to America and new symbols of Finnishness, thus enabling different generations of Finnish Americans to negotiate their identities in relation to the past and present, their Old Country heritage, and their sense of American identity. On the whole, the characters’ music reflects identities that are transcultural, both Finnish and American.

Motor City Music: A Detroiter Looks Back by Mark Slobin

Reviewed by: Motor City Music: A Detroiter Looks Back by Mark Slobin Peter La Chapelle (bio) Motor City Music: A Detroiter Looks Back. By Mark Slobin. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019. 248 pp. In this latest offering, Slobin, an ethnomusicologist who has authored more than ten books mostly on Jewish and Central Asian music, turns his focus to his hometown of Detroit and its musical history. But unlike the traditional urban musical history which divides a city's music into periods and genres, Motor City Music takes an unexpected and, in many ways, quite groundbreaking turn by making the story personal. This perhaps was a risky proposition, but one which the author handles with considerable skill. A reader might assume, based on the first forty pages or so, that this is more a memoir than it is a comprehensive glimpse at the music of the city. The first chapter explores Slobin's and his extended family's experiences with listening to music, music education, and musical performance, while the second explores the uneven and sometimes biased ways in which the Detroit school system churned out musicians, using Slobin's own experiences and those of friends and family and interviewees as means of assessing the city's musical education legacy. The advantage of this approach is that rather than a dry exploration of remaining news clippings about the role of the family and the school system, he fleshes out a more personal story that, though the focus is hyperlocalized, offers the readers gems about his own blended Ukrainian-Jewish-American family's musical repertoire, which ranged from early twentieth-century love songs to classical to Merle Travis' "Sixteen Tons" to the silly satirical Russian ditty "Vanka," as well as their efforts to learn instruments and acquire knowledge of the musical world. At times more context and analysis would further illuminate the meanings of individual songs and do more to explain why various musicians went in the directions they did, but he makes perhaps more important larger points about the eclectic ways that humans acquire a sense of musical taste and are acquainted with different types of music. He also sheds light on how attitudes about gender, race, and social class have shaped musical schooling and how remnants of musical cultures can stretch down through continents and generations. The next three chapters are less personal and more historical and try to answer questions about the larger musical history of the city. Slobin notes in his introduction that he wrote this book in part because histories of Detroit's musical world are "thin" and in part because the city's social order itself, with notable exceptions such as Thomas Sugrue's The Origins of the Urban Crisis (1997), has "hardly been studied and written about" (9). Chapter four examines the kinds of music brought to various neighborhoods by three groups: immigrant Europeans, especially [End Page 476] Polish-Americans; white Appalachian migrants; and Blacks. His short sketches of each of these geographical spaces and musical cultures offer important insights that should help those familiar with sources such as M. L. Leiber's edited collection of writings on music, Heaven was Detroit (2016), flesh out the earlier parts of the story. They also point scholars toward some important areas for future research. The next chapter, perhaps the strongest in the book, examines Jewish musical output. Throughout the book Slobin offers a rich portrait of how Jews adapted and made a musical life in a city that, though not completely unwelcoming, was home to influential antisemites such as Henry Ford and Father Charles Coughlin, especially in terms of balancing assimilation (the Christmas carols that Detroit's Jewish schoolchildren often sang) with acts of cultural and religious resistance (the community's embrace of the work of gay, Jewish left-wing composer Marc Blitzstein). The chapter gives readers a deeper understanding of important elements of cantorial tradition, classical European tradition, and Jewish strategies for reaching out to the gentile mainstream and finding ways of making a living as musicians and composers in a variety of worlds. Particularly compelling is the portrait he paints of Julius Chajes, a piano prodigy, conductor, and composer who infused his compositions with...

Klezmer: Music, History, and Memory by Walter Zev Feldman

Reviewed by: Klezmer: Music, History, and Memory by Walter Zev Feldman Hankus Netsky Walter Zev Feldman. Klezmer: Music, History, and Memory. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016. xxiv + 413 pp. doi:10.1017/S0364009419000333 As Jonathan Karp and Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett note in the introduction to their seminal 2008 volume, The Art of Being Jewish in Modern Times, "Much remains to be done if the arts are to figure more fully in Jewish studies and the Jewish experience more fully in the arts disciplines" (1). More specifically, within Jewish studies, Jewish music has recently been caught in the crossfire between the field's desire for scholarship compatible with its priorities (books and articles on contemporary American synagogue music or Israeli pop, for example) and the priorities of the many Jewish music scholars and activists who write about musical traditions that tend to resonate more outside the Jewish community. Throw in the landscape posed by the proliferation of such confusing buzzwords as "Ashkenormativity," and "postethnicity" (both regularly used in reference to east European Jewish culture), and those trying to figure out how to integrate the study of east European Jewish music into their curricula have been more likely to give up than to forge ahead through the increasingly foggy landscape. The recent publication of Walter Zev Feldman's Klezmer: Music, History and Memory gives those working in the field of Jewish studies an excellent opportunity to reassess their relationship with east European and other global Jewish ethnic musical traditions. Feldman, a multilingual scholar and virtuosic performer who spearheaded the reemergence of the tsimbl (the Jewish hammered dulcimer), is also profoundly respected for his work as a teacher of east European Jewish dance and universally acknowledged as originator of the English-language term "klezmer music" in the early 1980s, using it to specifically identify the virtuosic practice of east and central European professional folk instrumentalists who performed at Jewish celebrations. Feldman has long been considered the preeminent scholar in a field that has spawned numerous monographs in the era of klezmer's resurgence. Oddly, before Mark Slobin's pioneering work in the early 1980s, almost no English-language scholarship existed on the topic at all, despite the extraordinary musical accomplishments of its practitioners and klezmer music's ubiquitous position at Jewish celebrations for many hundreds of years in Europe and in the Americas in the first half of the twentieth century. Until this book's appearance, the available literature on klezmer had focused primarily on the music's American incarnation and on the sociological implications of the recent (now over forty-year-old) klezmer resurgence, mainly zeroing in on New York's downtown scene and the bustling klezmer world of contemporary Europe. By positioning klezmer music as a significant component of a tightly interconnected European Jewish system that includes the world of Jewish prayer, hasidic gesture, Yiddish folksong, Yiddish literature, Jewish dance, Jewishthemed visual arts, and coterritorial revelry, Feldman offers a compelling argument for a total reassessment of the value of the klezmer genre as a major conduit of nonverbal cultural memory for Ashkenazic Jews. Feldman devotes over two hundred pages of this volume to providing support for that argument, including chapters where we learn about talmudic [End Page 248] study gesture as dance gesture; read richly ethnographic descriptions of Jewish dancing and music making culled from Yiddish literature; and learn about how Jews and their coterritorial neighbors interacted in constructing a culture that is arguably the most uniquely "Jewish" of any that ever emerged in the Diaspora. We read about a Jewish society whose members were bound together by shared customs that easily traversed ideological lines. Indeed, as Feldman observes, "The gradual demise of the klezmer—and with him traditional Ashkenazic dance—is a barometer of the increased polarization of Jewish society into various secular and religious camps lacking any shared aesthetic vision" (56). Feldman's much-anticipated volume is the product of over forty-five years of serious research, and, in putting the book together, the author has gone to great pains to parse through virtually all of the available literature in Romanian, Russian, Turkish, German, Polish, Yiddish, English, and Hebrew, not to mention an exhaustive selection of music folios...

Motor City Music: A Detroiter Looks Back by Mark Slobin

164 The Michigan Historical Review present a larger narrative of art, architecture, and design underlying the story of building and rebuilding of Detroit. Using photographs of the sculptures and through careful research of underlying history, Morrison produces a catalog encompassing the immense history and high design value. Across various sculptors and their styles, Morrison underlines these sculptures as a “metaphor for the city” (p. 3), “a symbol of nationalism” (p. 73), “a representation of history and ideals” (p. 149), and “a marvel” (p. 241). In the process, however, Morrison fails to introduce or conclude regarding the possible storyline of integration of art, architecture, culture, and city building. He finds the perfect tool in his photographic skill—a passion and love—but does not allow it to provide a bigger picture. The book will be helpful for art and architecture students, researchers, and practitioners, especially those interested in the history of art and architecture in the region as well as to general citizens and city leaders interested in rich artistic traditions in Detroit. Through illustrative documentation of architectural sculptures from eight decades in Detroit’s history, the book offers a critical insight into the architectural scene in Detroit. It also argues for a much-needed case for documentation, preservation, and historic conservation in the city and the region to identify, protect, and celebrate its rich heritage in art and architecture. Anirban Adhya Lawrence Technological University Mark Slobin. Motor City Music: A Detroiter Looks Back. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019. Pp. 233. Bibliography. Illustrations. Index. Notes. Cloth: $29.95. In Motor City Music, ethnomusicologist Mark Slobin aims to combine concentrated studies of the cultural impact of different immigrant and migrant groups in early- to mid-twentieth century Detroit with his own memories of growing up in a rapidly decentralizing ethnic neighborhood. By focusing on the intermingling of what he terms musical “traffic” in a nod to the city’s automotive culture, Slobin uses these stories, combined with archival research and interviews with prominent local musicians, to argue that neighborhood boundaries were porous enough to allow classical, popular, and ethnic music to converge in ways distinct to Detroit’s urban structures. The result is an unusual and uneven, Book Reviews 165 sometimes frustrating but often fascinating, glimpse of the city’s musical history beyond the customary focus on Paradise Valley jazz and Motown. Slobin begins with an examination of his early years, growing up in Detroit’s Jewish neighborhood, in a family with close ties to Eastern Europe. There are moments when his personal recollections feel like slapdash footnotes to more traditional research sources—noting that his school concert band shared a program with a noted orchestral teacher, or that his parents were friends with several esteemed local musicians, for instance, do little to bring the narratives to life. But in the introduction, he elegantly shows how listening to old Yiddish folk tunes, Soviet political anthems, American pop ditties, and classical concertos could form a musical soundscape that encouraged outreach and experimentation. He carries this argument through an intriguing, if somewhat disjointed, chapter on how the musical styles of different immigrant and migrant groups shaped the city’s culture during the Depression and World War II, and into a more fully realized section on how Jewish Detroiters re-shaped the mainstream music scene to reflect their own backgrounds and struggles. While Slobin does an admirable job detailing the heretofore unexamined effect that Jewish residents had on the city’s culture, most of the other specific ethnic and regional profiles are too cursory to function as in-depth examinations of the music forms themselves. And yet they still provide an intriguing look at how new residents kept their traditions alive while simultaneously helping to create new, multi-layered “American” identities. Slobin’s efforts to explain the intersections among music and race relations, however, are not quite as effective. In a chapter devoted to the city’s high school music programs in the 1930s and ’40s, for instance, he nicely describes how students of diverse backgrounds were trained in classical music stylings, even as African-American graduates were denied access to the same positions that awaited their peers. The programs ended, he explains, when...

Guardians of Detroit: Architectural Sculpture in the Motor City by Jeff Morrison

Book Reviews 163 Jeff Morrison. Guardians of Detroit: Architectural Sculpture in the Motor City. Detroit: Painted Turtle/Wayne State University Press, 2019. Pp. 336. Appendices. Bibliography. Illustrations. Notes. Cloth: $39.99. Architecture, among many other things, is a means of communication. French architect Eugène Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc, during his twenty-five-year restoration of the Notre Dame in the mid1800s , propounded that the restoration of the gargoyles and other grotesques on the building were “means to re-establish [the church] to a finished state, which may in fact never have actually existed at any given time.” Jeff Morrison, an avid photographer and a self-proclaimed lover of “buildings with sculpted ornamentation” (p. xi), believes in the value of such architectural sculptures for its symbolism, meanings, and potential interactions with people. In his book Guardians of Detroit, Morrison presents a comprehensive and vivid documentation of architectural sculptures in buildings across Detroit and the metro area. These artistic pieces have been less studied and often neglected in spite of quantity, quality, diversity, and richness of “Detroit’s wealth of architectural wonders” (p. xi). Using page after page, building after building, photograph after photograph, and frame after frame, Morrison highlights such sculptures’ role and relevance in completing the architectural experience in the city and shaping Detroit’s built environment. Driven by a passion for art, sculpture, and architecture in the city, Morrison produces a “labor of love,” most importantly driven by “documentation” as “the most important aspect” of the book toward growing awareness of such architectural gems and their preservation (p. xiii). The illustrated work is a powerful and beautiful documentation of architectural sculptures in Detroit. At the same time, the monograph rarely goes beyond being a glorious documentation as a coffee-table book. Morrison illustrates twenty-nine cases of architectural sculptures integrated with buildings in different ways. The timeline ranges from 1855 until the 1920s, and the buildings vary in typology including churches, corporate offices, theaters, banks, residences, and stores. Each of the case studies epitomize rich symbolism and meanings as well as possible stories inherent in these sculptures. Morrison has diligently researched and presented details of the architects and sculptors wherever possible. These names, along with some historic background, provide hints of artistic dynamics, business decisions, and working relationships among these artists and designers. The book would have assumed a greater clarity and a higher level of documentation if Morrison had elaborated on some of these dynamic relationships. Here, Morrison misses an opportunity to 164 The Michigan Historical Review present a larger narrative of art, architecture, and design underlying the story of building and rebuilding of Detroit. Using photographs of the sculptures and through careful research of underlying history, Morrison produces a catalog encompassing the immense history and high design value. Across various sculptors and their styles, Morrison underlines these sculptures as a “metaphor for the city” (p. 3), “a symbol of nationalism” (p. 73), “a representation of history and ideals” (p. 149), and “a marvel” (p. 241). In the process, however, Morrison fails to introduce or conclude regarding the possible storyline of integration of art, architecture, culture, and city building. He finds the perfect tool in his photographic skill—a passion and love—but does not allow it to provide a bigger picture. The book will be helpful for art and architecture students, researchers, and practitioners, especially those interested in the history of art and architecture in the region as well as to general citizens and city leaders interested in rich artistic traditions in Detroit. Through illustrative documentation of architectural sculptures from eight decades in Detroit’s history, the book offers a critical insight into the architectural scene in Detroit. It also argues for a much-needed case for documentation, preservation, and historic conservation in the city and the region to identify, protect, and celebrate its rich heritage in art and architecture. Anirban Adhya Lawrence Technological University Mark Slobin. Motor City Music: A Detroiter Looks Back. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019. Pp. 233. Bibliography. Illustrations. Index. Notes. Cloth: $29.95. In Motor City Music, ethnomusicologist Mark Slobin aims to combine concentrated studies of the cultural impact of different immigrant and migrant groups in early- to mid-twentieth...

The Cambridge Companion to Jewish Music ed. by Joshua S. Walden

MUSICS OF THE WORLD The Cambridge Companion Music. Edited by Joshua S. Walden. (Cambridge Companions Music.) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. [xiii, 293 p. ISBN 9781107023451 (hardcover), $89.99; ISBN 9781107623750 (paperback), $29.99; ISBN 9781316434895 (e-book), $24.] Music examples, illustrations, bibliography, index.The Cambridge Companion edited by Peabody Conservatory professor Joshua S. Walden, seeks answer seemingly obvious question, What music? In course of this book, however, reader will learn that response not so clear-cut. Since Jews have lived in a multitude of countries, they have adopted and adapted numerous disparate musical styles their own ancient traditions, thereby creating a rich musical tapestry that continues evolve. Walden informs us that term Jewish comprises songs in multiple languages, dance music played by ensembles of instrumentalists, forms of religious music developed in synagogue and home in far-flung communities, methods of chanting text of Hebrew Bible, classical music written for concert hall, and commercial popular music . . . (p. 6). Indeed, Walden offers example of tune for Hatikvah in book's introduction as a means of demonstrating ubiquity of While most Jews (and some non-Jews) recognize this tune as Israeli national anthem, Walden explains that it shares a common folk song ancestor with Bedrich Smetana's Die Moldau, as well as Mozart's Ah! Vous dirai-je, maman (Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star), among several others (p. 2). In this way, he illustrates vast influences on music, explaining that what makes music its associations.This particular focus on ontology pervades book and separates it from other works on music that emphasize primarily (Abraham Z. Idelsohn's seminal tome, Music: Its Historical Development [New York: H. Holt, 1929; reprint, New York: Dover Publications, 1992]; Marsha Bryan Edelman, Discovering Music [Philadelphia: Publication Society, 2003]) or genre (for example, Mark Slobin, Fiddler on Move [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000]). Instead, Walden utilizes a gestalt approach, allowing for a very broad yet in-depth examination of topic. The book's back cover states that it is a key resource for students, scholars, and everyone with an interest in global of music. Due detailed examination of numerous topics, however, this author feels that book best suited for musically-knowledgeable readers seeking an overview of music, or perhaps a college course on topic. Therefore, The Cambridge Companion Music similar other books in Cambridge series, which offer indepth investigations into various genres, styles, composers, and instruments.Walden divides sixteen-chapter book into three sections. Part I, entitled Conceptions of Music, attempts pinpoint its essence. Chapter 1, Ontologies ofJewish by Philip Bohlman, informs us that there are five conditions of Jewishness in music: religion, language, embodiment (contextuality), geography, and identity, adding that these definitions continue evolve as music itself also evolves. He states that music often defined by what it not, noting, Jewish music comes into being when an original text or ritual process undergoes transformation that expands upon its meaning, enhancing them within multiplying contexts of culture and history (pp. 15-16).Edwin Seroussi addresses multiple meanings of diaspora in chapter 2, asserting that the mapping out of clusters of musical styles and repertoires by simple binaries such as Ashkenazic/ Sephardic obliterated countless nuances based on place and time (p. 30). Since term has now grown to describe every possible physical or imagined, voluntary or forced displacement of individuals or communities (p. …

:Global Soundtracks: Worlds of Film Music. Mark Slobin (ed.). Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press (distributed by University Press of New England), 2008. (Cloth US$85.00; Paper US$34.95)

:<i>Global Soundtracks: Worlds of Film Music</i>. Mark Slobin (ed.). Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press (distributed by University Press of New England), 2008. (Cloth US$85.00; Paper US$34.95)

Slobin, Greta N. Russians Abroad: Literary and Cultural Politics of Diaspora (1919–1939) (review)

SEER, 92, 3, JULY 2014 524 Slobin, Greta N. Russians Abroad: Literary and Cultural Politics of Diaspora (1919–1939). The Real Twentieth Century. Academic Studies Press, Boston, MA, 2013. 256 pp. Illustrations. Notes. Bio-bibliography. Bibliography. Index. $59.00. This monograph, regrettably left unfinished, was completed and edited by Katerina Clark, Nancy Condee, Dan Slobin and Mark Slobin, who discussed the project with Greta Slobin in detail prior to her untimely passing. The book contains a foreword by Galin Tihanov, an introduction, four parts and the author’s bio-bibliography. Slobin focuses mostly on the Russian diaspora of the interwar decades, although she concludes the epilogue chapters with references to the postwar reception of the First Wave and comments briefly on the ‘homecoming’ of émigré literature during the post-Soviet period. Framed by several critical models, including neocolonial, the book is rich in observations on the nexus between the national canon, exile and modernism. Slobin’s main interest lies with such authors as Remizov (a writer who was the subject of her earlier monograph and a series of other publications), Tsvetaeva, Khodasevich, Bunin and Nabokov, and the main research question she pursues is how Russian émigré literature contributed to articulating national identity. Presenting her book as a study of Russian nationalism, she highlights linguistic and cultural continuity as guiding principles of the diaspora, and proceeds to examine an alternative vision of the nation constructed in exile as opposed to the Soviet discourse and in conversation with the intellectual traditions of European host countries and transnational cultural networks more broadly. With the exception of Nabokov, who figures to some extent as a foil for more conservative members of Russia Abroad, Slobin chooses examples that illuminate the smooth transition between the ‘classical’ Russian canon to exile writing, and proceeds to discuss subsequent modifications. Before launching into several case studies showing how selected émigré writers adapted pre-Revolutionary modernism, Slobin proposes her own periodization of First Wave literature. Drawing on Gleb Struve’s chronology introduced in his pioneering history of Russian émigré literature (1919–24 — establishmentand1925–1939—self-definition),shesub-dividesthesecondstage into two distinct periods. She defines the years 1925–29 as a period of intense border crossings, cultural collaborations, competition and conflict, and the following decade (1930–39) as the time of self-affirmation and consolidation of the diaspora. One of the most engaging parts of the monograph is Slobin’s exploration of the role and semantics of memory in the context of exiles’ recollections of their native cities. In particular, she considers how bilocality and bilinguism shaped REVIEWS 525 the workings of visual memory and the representation of a place. Mapping imaginative topographies of the Western metropolis (in Khodasevich, Bunin, Teffi and Nabokov), Slobin demonstrates both the potential of the traditional literary mythologies of Russian cities for émigré writing and the experimental move in some texts beyond the national framework into interwar European modernism, where memory and the urban were among the central topoi. Passing on to the émigré reinterpretation of Russian canonical figures, Slobin selects Gogol´, Dostoevskii and Turgenev. She profitably juxtaposes Remizov’s and Belyi’s attempts to salvage Gogol´’s legacy from Belinskii’s recalcitrant realistic paradigm. Her references to the polemic sparked on both sides of the border by Meierkhol´d’s experimental 1926 production of The Inspector General is extremely well taken here, and one only regrets its brevity and the omission from consideration of Viacheslav Ivanov’s essay, ‘Revizor Gogolia i komediia Aristofana’ (1926), which was an important contribution to the debate from the ‘émigré camp’. Although Dostoevskii has been a locus classicus of émigré scholarship for decades, Slobin identifies an important and interesting angle, focusing less on the ‘influence’ of Dostoevskii on diaspora writing as on the evolution of the Dostoevskii myth. Nabokov-Sirin’s engagement with Dostoevskii naturally becomes her test case as she explores the cultural function of the myth of the writer and literary parody as an essential stage in the process of literary evolution. She adds another dimension by considering how the Western perception of Dostoevskii as the prophet of the Russian Revolution and the bearer of Russian mystical nationalism affected émigrés’ attitudes. As opposed to Dostoevskii and, indeed...

Book Review: Greta N. Slobin: Russians Abroad: Literary and Cultural Politics of Diaspora (1919–1939). Edited by Katerina Clark, Nancy Condee, Dan Slobin and Mark Slobin

Book Review: Greta N. Slobin: <i>Russians Abroad: Literary and Cultural Politics of Diaspora (1919–1939)</i>. Edited by Katerina Clark, Nancy Condee, Dan Slobin and Mark Slobin

Russians Abroad: Literary and Cultural Politics of Diaspora (1919–1939). By Greta N. Slobin. Ed. Katerina Clark, Nancy Condee, Dan Slobin, and Mark Slobin. Brighton, Mass.: Academic Studies Press, 2013. 255 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Photographs. $59.00, hard bound.

Russians Abroad: Literary and Cultural Politics of Diaspora (1919–1939). By Greta N. Slobin. Ed. Katerina Clark, Nancy Condee, Dan Slobin, and Mark Slobin. Brighton, Mass.: Academic Studies Press, 2013. 255 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Photographs. $59.00, hard bound. - Volume 73 Issue 2

Mark Slobin. Central Asian Film Music as a Subcultural System

Quelles sont les strategies employees par les realisateurs, a travers la construction de la musique d’un film, pour refleter une ou des inscription(s) identitaire(s) sovietique, nationale, locale et/ou regionale ? C’est la question posee et etudiee par Mark Slobin dans cet article. La qualification de la musique de film comme « subcultural system » renvoie a celle de « subcultural cinema », que Slobin a definit dans son recent livre (Mark Slobin, (ed.), Global Soundtracks: world of Film Music...

Emily's Songbook: Music in 1850s Albany. Ed. Mark Slobin, James Kimball, Katherine K. Preston, and Deane Root. Recent Researches in the Oral Traditions of Music, Vol. 9. Middleton, WI: A-R Editions, 2011.

Emily's Songbook: Music in 1850s Albany. Ed. Mark Slobin, James Kimball, Katherine K. Preston, and Deane Root. Recent Researches in the Oral Traditions of Music, Vol. 9. Middleton, WI: A-R Editions, 2011. - Volume 7 Issue 2

Contemporary World Music , and: Music Online (review)

Contemporary World Music. Alexander Street Press, 2009-. http://womu.alexanderstreet.com (Accessed March 2009 to September 2009). [Requires audio-enabled computer; Web browser and Internet connection of at least 56K bandwidth; Macromedia Flash Player version 7 and Windows Media Player version 10 (for Windows), Macromedia Flash Player version 7 (for Mac). Pricing: institutional subscription $896 to $4,496 per year depending on number of simultaneous users.] Online. Alexander Street Press, 2009-. http://muco.alexanderstreet.com (Accessed March 2009 to September 2009). Search engine for all Alexander Street Press databases. What is music and what is about the in Contemporary World that distinguishes it from others? Among the many naming possibilities considered by Alexander Street Press in the creation of the database (which included the very difficult-to-define Worldbeat) this probably the most appropriate, although it is not without problems. Ethnomusicologists with many years of fieldwork behind them could certainly be excused for casting a wary eye in 1987 on the adoption of the new genre, music, to be used in marketing records and CDs. It seemed paradoxically to seek a market for a that at once exotic, allowing listeners in the West to believe they were on an adventure, and at the same time familiar, the only way to guarantee that they would incorporate it into the formation of their own musical identities, and therefore buy the recordings. But this cynical view is eclipsed, I think, by a major shift in focus in the field of ethnomusicology itself through the 1970s and 1980s, one which moved from a view of expressing established and unchanging differences among the many cultures of the world to one of and culture continually being re-defined as people migrate and come into contact with each other. Mark Slobin observed this shift in 1993, noting that any essentialist analysis of will not hold and that interchange among small musics is rampant these days, and always was (Mark Slobin, Subcultural Sounds: Micromusics of the West [Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1993], x). Not only did the new genres that constituted this modern definition of music illustrate these interchanges, but the marketing itself formed a part of the process, as so many more subcultural musics went global. While Alexander Street Press's earlier collection, Smithsonian Global Sound (reviewed in Notes 62, no. 3 [March 2006]: 776-80) could be seen as a useful documentation of many established musical traditions of the world, it could be argued that it failed to reflect the many changes that these traditions had undergone since their first documentation. CWM can be seen as an attempt by Alexander Street Press to answer this need. Their publication literature stresses the contemporary social forces addressed by music: Music does more than entertain. It helps us connect on the feeling level with people and their conditions. The songs in Contemporary World address issues of racism, fair trade, and poverty . . . social injustice . . . and religious freedom. Instructors of world history, geography, contemporary events, and other disciplines will use the to expand teaching. (http://alexanderstreet.com/products/womu.htm) This review will be devoted primarily to Contemporary World Music-hereafter CWM-as a database of streamed audio recordings, evaluating it for content and for its search interface. In addition I will devote some space to the Alexander Street Press federated search engine, Online, with particular respect to how it serves Contemporary World and related databases. Content There are, as of this writing, over 25,000 tracks of from more than 1,860 albums in CWM. Their stated target is 50,000 tracks, and by my calculations they have added around 12,000 tracks in the past six months. …

Riverdance : Representing Irish Traditional Music

As the archetypal example of the globalization and commodification of Ireland and Irish culture, Riverdance can justly be described as one of the emblems for the now rapidly fading Celtic Tiger. The show also was arguably one of the primary catalysts in the transformation of Irish traditional music from a primarily geographically (and ethnically) situated music into what Mark Slobin has described as an “affinity interculture.” Now, participation in the music is governed by choice, and the possibility of “becoming Irish music” is open to all. This connection between the show and the tradition has been utilized and emphasized in a range of contexts, from tourist promotional literature5 to academic course descriptions and writing.6 The link with tradition has also been adverted to by its composer Bill Whelan himself.7 In the show’s promotional material, Sam Smyth’s description of Riverdance as a “two-hour celebration of traditionalmusic and dance” appears to conflate the two.8 In the same vein, Fintan O’Toole has noted that what “made Riverdance so exhilarating was the sense, not somuch of invention as of recognition,” a recognition that traditional music “defined the cultural space in which the whole show operated.

Music in the Afghan North, 1967–1972 (review)

Reviewed by: Music in the Afghan North, 1967–1972 Virginia Danielson Music in the Afghan North, 1967–1972. Authored by Mark Slobin. Developed by the Learning Objects Program, Wesleyan University. http://afghanistan.wesleyan.edu[Requires: Web browser, Internet connection, Flash player, Quicktime player, any standard MP3 player]. Music in the Afghan North, 1967–1972 offers a valuable resource, rich in information and clearly written and constructed. It should be useable for the general public, for students from high school through university, and for advanced scholars conducting research. While its title may seem arcane and restricted in scope, in fact the site immediately places the user in the midst of the richness of a music culture familiar in many parts of the Middle East and Central Asia. Available free of charge with minimal system requirements, this site could be appropriately featured in Web offerings of public and school libraries as well as in the universities that might seem to be its primary audience. The site is based on research conducted by Professor Mark Slobin in Northern Afghanistan that resulted in his book Music in the Culture of Northern Afghanistan (Tucson: Published for the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research by the University of Arizona Press, 1976), which proceeded from nearly ten years of research on music of the region. Slobin's book, which is included in full on the site, was ground-breaking at the time of its publication [End Page 908] and was well-received by the few reviewers who were invited to write about it (see reviews by Lois al-Faruqi in Ethnomusicology 21, no. 3 [1977]:506–8 and Gen'ichi Tsuge in Journal of the American Musicological Society 30, no. 3 [1977]:539– 41). (Afghani music was not a widespread topic of scholarly interest at the time, nor were there many English-speaking experts who could be approached for a review; and the products of ethnomusicological research were not as commonly used as they are now in related disciplines such as anthropology and history.) The reviews are worth recalling here, as both reviewers remarked on Slobin's skill as a music researcher. Tsuge wrote, "This is one of the rather few ethnographies done by a researcher equipped with adequate musical hearing and sufficient musical sensitivity ... it is remarkable that the musical behavior of each [of the numerous ethnolinguistic] group[s] is generally so well documented in terms of the shared vs. discrete aspects" (p. 540); similarly in al-Faruqi's view, "... Slobin is a thorough researcher, and he has a sharp eye for extracting the significance of the musical data" (p. 507). Thus Slobin's book embodies an important essence in ethnomusicological research and justifiably remains today a staple for anyone interested in the cultures of the Middle East and Central Asia. Slobin has added new text to the Web site that expands the scope of the book, bringing the narrative into the twenty-first century. While he carefully identifies the "ethnographic present" of the information as 1967–72, he adds that "Occasionally, the text switches focus, from present to past, to suit the narrative" (http://afghanistan.wesleyan.edu/intro/warning.html). The added context and these "switches" are extremely useful for younger generations of readers who probably will not remember Afghanistan as anything but the demonic state depicted in much present-day American public narrative. My favorite examples from his new text are the sections "Understanding the Book" and "The Fieldwork Project," in which Slobin contextualizes his work in a colorful description of his early academic life with its prevailing scholarly and political winds. I recommend that readers consult these pages early in their use of the site. Throughout the text, Slobin often links his own work to that of other scholars and there is a useful page of related links to other online resources. The site opens to a colorful page featuring a musician and a brief description of the contents of the site (oddly, presented in a box that seems to obscure part of the top page). A toolbar common to nearly all of the site's pages offers subsections entitled "Introduction," "Fieldwork," "Background," "Shared Music," "Ethnic Subcultures," "Instruments," "Archive," and "Resources." Clicking on...

Review: American Klezmer: Its Roots and Offshoots, edited by Mark Slobin

Review Article| April 01 2007 Review: American Klezmer: Its Roots and Offshoots, edited by Mark Slobin American Klezmer: Its Roots and Offshoots, edited by Mark Slobin. Berkeley and London: University of California Press, 2002. vii, 245 pp. JOEL E. RUBIN JOEL E. RUBIN Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Journal of the American Musicological Society (2007) 60 (1): 238–253. https://doi.org/10.1525/jams.2007.60.1.238 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation JOEL E. RUBIN; Review: American Klezmer: Its Roots and Offshoots, edited by Mark Slobin. Journal of the American Musicological Society 1 April 2007; 60 (1): 238–253. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/jams.2007.60.1.238 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentJournal of the American Musicological Society Search This content is only available via PDF. © 2007 by the American Musicological Society. All rights reserved.2007 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

The Chrysanthemum and the Song: Music, Memory, and Identity in the South American Japanese Diaspora (review)

Reviewed by: The Chrysanthemum and the Song: Music, Memory, and Identity in the South American Japanese Diaspora Ketty Wong Dale A. Olsen. The Chrysanthemum and the Song: Music, Memory, and Identity in the South American Japanese Diaspora. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2004. Xxvii, 342 pp., illustrations, tables, appendixes, glossary, bibliography, index. ISBN: 0813027640. The Chrysanthemum and the Song represents the findings of Dale Olsen's long-standing research of the South American Japanese diaspora between 1979 and 2001 in Peru, Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, and Bolivia. The author draws attention to the central role of music for the survival of Nikkei (people of Japanese descent living outside of Japan) culture. In his words, this book "is about how Nikkei South Americans perceive themselves, remember or learn about their heritage, negotiate their identities, and in effect culturally survive through music" (1). For this purpose, the author provides a comparative study of Nikkei musical practices based on reviews of literature, newspapers, archives, interviews, questionnaires, as well as his own performance of shakuhachi (vertical bamboo flute) and subjective impressions as participant-observer of musical events, which he refers to as "bimusical participatory reflections." An accompanying website of twenty audio examples, most of which were recorded by Olsen in ensembles with Nikkei performers, provides online sound illustrations of Japanese musical genres and instruments. Japanese immigration to South America started as early as 1899, when a group of Japanese contract laborers arrived in Peru to work in sugarcane plantations. Search for work, progress, and better living conditions have been the main motivations for subsequent displacements of Nikkei, [End Page 232] who are currently one of the most numerous immigrant groups in Brazil and Peru. Olsen argues that the Nikkei have been able to re-create and maintain a Japanese ethnic identity through the agency of cultural organizations that promote Japanese music, dance, and theater. Although the Nikkei have a strong demographic and cultural presence in several South American countries, Nikkei musical practices have received little scholarly attention within the field of Latin-American music studies. From this perspective, Olsen's research pioneers and fills a gap in an area that enlightens our understanding of diasporic identities in Latin America. Olsen borrows his book title from Ruth Benedict's study The Chrysanthemum and the Sword: Patterns of Japanese Culture (1946, reprinted in 1967). While Benedict uses the chrysanthemum as a symbol of the Emperor, Olsen adopts it as a metaphor for Japanese immigrants and their "hard work in their 'new world'" (3). In Benedict's study, the sword represents Japan's military power, but it is also a symbol of the samurai's virtue and spirit, two aspects that Olsen sees intrinsic in song. The song in the book title represents all forms of music making that have helped the Nikkei preserve their cultural heritage. The author distinguishes "active music making" (singing, dancing, and playing musical instruments) from "passive music making" (listening to music, watching music videos, or attending concerts) as two effective forms stimulating direct and indirect cultural transmission (3). The Chrysanthemum and the Song is divided into eleven chapters, including an introduction which lays a theoretical background for the study of memory and identity. The author draws mainly on Mark Slobin's (1993) concepts of "superculture" and "subculture," and Jan Assmann's (1995) notion of communicative and cultural memory. Chapter 2 provides a brief account of Japanese immigration to the Americas since the late nineteenth century and a brief overview of Japanese and Okinawan music and musical instruments based on Charles Dunn's model of Japanese class structure before the Meiji period (1868–1912). Chapters 3 through 7 examine each country's migration history, as well as Nikkei musical practices through a series of "mini biographies" of Nikkei musicians and detailed ethnographies of musical events, such as the celebration of the Emperor's birthday and the anniversary of Japanese immigration. Chapters 8 and 9 describe song contests and karaoke singing as vehicles for learning Japanese language and songs by the younger Nikkei generations. A work of such broad geographical scope lends itself to comparative study, which Olsen follows in Chapter 10. He introduces seven social variables for the study of Nikkei identity: ethnicity, social...

“Music is the Pen of the Soul”: Recent Works on Ḥasidic and Jewish Instrumental Klezmer Music

Despite the focus by the popular media on the revival of Jewish instrumental klezmer music during the past decades, surprisingly little of a scholarly nature has been written until recently about either the klezmer tradition or its revival. Since 1999 a relatively large number of new book publications of both a scholarly and a popular nature have appeared. Besides the four volumes under review here, they include books by Rita Ottens and Joel Rubin, Moshe Beregovski, Seth Rogovoy, Mark Slobin, Zinovij Stoljar, and Yale Strom. It is hoped that the publication of these four works (and the other recent works not reviewed here) will open a broader discussion of the complex of issues surrounding klezmer and ḥasidic music and stimulate further research in these areas.

Lomir ale singn: Die Musik der Juden Osteuropas (review)

Reviewed by: Lomir ale singn: Die Musik der Juden Osteuropas Rita Ottens Lomir ale singn: Die Musik der Juden Osteuropas, by François Lilienfeld. Zürich: Chronos, 2002. 178 pp., compact disc. fi29.90. In present-day Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, the discourse around the field of Yiddish music and Yiddish music research has become one of ethnicity and race. At a time when the role of Jews in Germany is marginalized—yet expected to be drawn upon [End Page 173] whenever needed as part of the constituting of the new German Self—it is “Jewish” music that fills the space. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, especially the music of the main targets of the German Endlösung, the Eastern European Jews, has been turned into a ritualistic remedy, and is celebrated in festivals and concert series throughout the country. It is the milieu of this, the “Music of the Jews of Eastern Europe,” that François Lilienfeld has set out to “describe more thoroughly.” His “greatest intention,” however, is “to show that synagogue music, Yiddish folksong and klezmer music represent three facets of one culture, three elements which are inseparably interconnected” (p. 7). The book contains sections on these three musical genres as well as chapters on hasidic music, the Yiddish language, Yiddish theater, and Yiddish film. In addition, it includes an annotated bibliography and discography, illustrations, and notated musical examples, as well as a compact disc. The book does not, however, as it proclaims, deliver a “more thorough” understanding of the colorful tapestry of Eastern European Jewish musical traditions. That topic is broader than any one volume could encompass thoroughly, as recent publications by Moshe Beregovski (2000 Moshe Beregovski (2001), Philip V. Bohlman and Otto Holzapfel (2001), Ellen Koskoff (2000), Rita Ottens and Joel Rubin (1999 Rita Ottens and Joel Rubin (2001), Kay Kaufman Shelemay (2001) and Mark Slobin (2000 and Mark Slobin (2002) have shown. Lilienfeld’s uncritical use of sources of varying approaches, reliability, and quality, as well as his inability to interpret and draw his own conclusions from these materials, leads to a confused depiction of the musical cultures that he set out to describe. What makes all of this even worse is the obvious attitude of the author that anything goes, as long as it fits into his world view. Especially after listening to the enclosed CD, one must come to the conclusion that the production was mainly undertaken for the purpose of self-promotion. The compact disc promises to give an “impression in sound of the described music” (cover text), but fails to do just that. Instead, the author offers the listener a cantillation in the German (not Eastern European) ritus—sung by himself shortly after his bar mitzvah—following on the heels of the voices of the famous early twentieth-century Eastern European cantors Rosenblatt, Sirota, and Pinkasowicz. Of the eighteen tracks on the CD, an additional five comprise interpretations by Lilienfeld himself, including two compositions in the German ritus by Louis Lewandowski, as well as a pseudo-hasidic piece with “ecstatic” oy-oy-oys written by the author himself. These illustrate acoustically Lilienfeld’s doubtful connection to Yiddish music, language, and culture, an impression which is also given by the text itself. For example, the complex, several-centuries-old modes of expression in Eastern European Jewish music are reduced to three, seven-tone “Jewish” scales (p. 142). What it is that makes this music “Jewish” or, more specifically, “Yiddish,” Lilienfeld is not able to explain. He fails to mention that all three scales are shared with surrounding ethnicities in Eastern Europe as well as those of the Middle East, and are of unknown provenance. Such reductionisms unfortunately [End Page 174] don’t give the reader any information on the typical melodic turns of phrase or ornamentation patterns associated with those scales—precisely the modal aspects which could be interpreted as “Yiddish.” In general, it can be said that Lilienfeld relies too heavily on outdated and second-hand general sources such as Abraham Zvi Idelsohn (1929/1992) and Aron Marko Rothmüller (1960), despite the relative plethora of writings on Eastern European Jewish music published in the past two...

Music in the Afghan North, 1967-1972. Field material and texts by Mark Slobin. URL: http://learningobjects.wesleyan.edu/afghanistan/

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