Musical Encounters Research Articles

A ‘New Social Virtuosity’; A Dissonant Manifest(o)

ABSTRACTThis paper examines the intersection of music, creativity, and society through the lens of a critical and self‐critical appraisal of the here.here concert series; ongoing research‐led collaboration focusing on transdisciplinary approaches to experimental music with a focus on the socio‐politico‐environmental dynamics at play between all involved in a musical encounter. The authors, both academics and composers, contend that experimental music, in its super‐local, interpersonal connections, can challenge the conventional and institutional, serving as an alternative to the homogeneity and self‐centred individualism fostered by capitalist systems. We propose the concept of a ‘new social virtuosity (“social virtuosity” in a music context was coined by Maggie Nicols in the 1970s to describe Feminist Improvising Group and their challenge of the “technological or instrumental elitism”; often dismissed by male musicians. (We came across it through the PhD research of one of our students Maureen Wolloshin),’ viewing the music landscape as a vast terrain where various musical, artistic, and creative directions intersect and converge, transcending presumed binaries. The paper foregrounds the significance of curatorial practice in bridging these differences and harnessing social dissonance, particularly in the context of the capitalist systems which enable these concerts. The authors argue that curation, despite its necessary interplay with these systems, can act as a tool to disrupt and question them. They explore how the act of curation influences social and political dynamics, examining its potential to create new ways of interaction and empowerment. This approach serves as a contrast to those systems that often cause disconnection and isolation. The authors reflect upon three case studies from the last two seasons of the here.here concert series that explicitly focused on the concepts of ‘ventriloquy’ and ‘social virtuosity’ as forms of creative agency: entering into critical dialogue with and giving voice to seminal works (Cage 4′33, Alexander J. Ellis (1814–1890)) for the former and three contemporary pioneers of ‘social virtuosity’—Eva‐Maria Houben—Maggie Nicols and Eddie Prevost for the latter. The concept of ‘social dissonance’ is examined, illustrating how it can be used as a catalyst for creative dialogue and solidarity, while also encouraging a deeper understanding of our shared societal dynamics. Finally, the paper introduces the concept of ‘a new social virtuosity’, emphasising the importance of listening, collaboration, and collective intention in creating a shared musical experience that expands beyond the stage to include the audience. It concludes by examining the performance of 4′33 within this context and underscores the power of dissonance as a tool for creative and critical thinking.

Entering Into a Sonic Intra-Active Quantum Relation with Plant Life

Abstract In the speculative research of plant bioacoustics, one enters into a sonic intra-active relation, by humans with non-human beings (plant life), activated through acoustic wave signals emitted by plants to create electronic patterns of sounds composed by humans and emitted by machines. Plants emit sound waves at relatively low frequencies of 50–120 Hz. Experimenting with patching and modulation by tracking these sonic lines of data can indeed lead to unique sonic experiences that tap into the universe’s musicology. It is fascinating how we can interact with sounds on such a deep level to create acoustic energy. We are and have always been attached to the universe in a relational processual way. We are all interconnected with plant life vibrating at different internal frequencies. This article focuses on a symbiotic relation between humans and plant life as an acoustic shimmering ecology – to communicate a posthuman, symbiotic understanding of vegetal matter as a morphological force that (re)shapes, (re)affirms our sonic intra-relations to the natural world. This proposition is molecular and metaphysical, as sound matter is of a qualitative multiplicity in the quantum field of listening. By acknowledging ontologically that cosmopolitics brings into relation different practices, practitioners, and the non-human (they assemble in a field of forces and intensities), I argue that there is no sovereign power under which all modes of existence can be organized, and there is no meta-language through which one can master the diversity of all discursive or material practices; but there are intra-relations in which one can get lost in a quantum field of sonic matter by moving into the cracks of the sensorium and the plant biosphere, which includes Indigenous voices. The alterity of plant life is daunting from an eco-feminist materialist position in that relationships are the default state of existence and sonic experiences uncover alternative or additional explanations in a (post)phenomenological world – which is embedded in the stuff of acoustics in the many ways humans hear the world. Thus, to communicate a posthuman, symbiotic understanding of vegetal matter necessitates understanding how sound matter intra-performs through a sonic language – where intra-relations with plant life have complex boundaries for humans. As a creative practitioner, how does one define the mutually beneficial engagement in plant communication with creative musical encounters? Entanglement is messy and a becoming with the universe as a philosophical sonic meditation and worlding. This entails expanding on plants as cosmogonic beings, world builders, and we, perhaps, are the by-products of the lives of our vegetal others.

Piano na Mangueira : A Brazilian Story about Music and Essentialism

Abstract: In 1992, the samba school Mangueira honors Tom Jobim in its carnival parade. Two different musical expressions emerge from this: a samba-enredo by the school and the song “Piano na Mangueira” by Jobim and Chico Buarque. Although both represent musical encounters and mutual homage, their character is directly affected by sound and material systems that we recognize as “music theories,” in a broad sense. The challenge of representing a piano in the samba school, as well as the encounters and disagreements in this context, lead to a historical, social, and musical-analytic investigation that goes beyond images of music and seeks musical aspects of interaction. Thus, we are faced with the role of essentialism in Brazilian music, which not only determines it, but also constitutes an obstacle to what interfaces between musical systems could be, as we present in our conclusion.

The Plane of Cicadas: On the Possibility of Making Kin through Musicking

This autoethnographic exposition details a short series of musicking encounters aimed at making kin in a rainforest-covered mountain on unceded Djiru Country on the east coast of Australia. Each encounter consisted of a short hike and a discrete musical encounter with local subjectivities. The inquiry considers the place of the walking in the musicking, and my joint response-ability with my saxophone (or the ways in which we apprehend and respond to other subjectivities) in each encounter. I argue that the hiking and discrete sonic encounters became entangled processes, in which my epistemological capacity and music-making practice were challenged and the possibility of kinship resides.

유아음악교육에서 물질적 상상력의 의미 고찰

Objectives The purpose of this study is to review Bachelard's material imagination, analyze how material imagination is expressed in musical encounters of young children, and examine the meaning of material imagination in early childhood music education.
 Methods After examining the historical flow of the concept and value of imagination and the distinctive characteristics of Bachelard's theory of imagination through literature research, examples were extracted from previous studies on the researcher's invented notations. How material imagination is expressed was analyzed in their invented notations.
 Results Bachelard's theory of imagination overcomes the limitations of opticocentrism, and establishes the dynamic status of imagination by reorganizing the concept of motion of matter of objects. In material imagination, the essence in the depths of the object moves and approaches the subject, and the subject also recognizes the movement of the object with feelings of joy and wonder. The motility of matter possessed by the object gives the object initiative and gives it a status equal to that of the subject. In addition, the ontological qualification of the object is given due to continuous creation, which has the significance of enabling the subject to become an object.
 Conclusions In the children's invented notations, the children sensed the motility of the musical characteristics of the song and created a new mental image by intertwining their experiences and environments. It can be seen that this is a creation that leads to ‘children - song of ‘everyone jump’ - invented notation - becoming’ through the manifestation of the material imagination of young children.

Seeger Lecture, Society for Ethnomusicology Virtual Meeting 2021

Seeger Lecture, Society for Ethnomusicology Virtual Meeting 2021

Ya Lalla: Jewish Saharans Singing to Birth (https://yalalla.org.uk/) and Past and Present Musical Encounters Across the Strait of Gibraltar: Ya Lalla: A Sonic & Visual Spotlight on Women’s Resistance and Celebrations of Transmission(https://www.musicalencounters.co.uk/vanessa-exhibit). Website and online exhibit curated by Vanessa Paloma Elbaz.

<b><i>Ya Lalla: Jewish Saharans Singing to Birth</i> (https://yalalla.org.uk/) and <i>Past and Present Musical Encounters Across the Strait of Gibraltar: Ya Lalla: A Sonic &amp; Visual Spotlight on Women’s Resistance and Celebrations of Transmission</i></b><b>(https://www.musicalencounters.co.uk/vanessa-exhibit)</b>. Website and online exhibit curated by Vanessa Paloma Elbaz.

Between Estrangement at Home and Marginalization by the Host: Tracing Senses of Belonging through Music

This article discusses the twofold role of music as a means to manifest border-induced (cultural) difference and simultaneously foster alternative modes of belonging. The author draws on her ethnographic research, consisting of participant observation, desktop research, and interviews, and reflects on her auto-ethnographic recordings of engaging with refugee musicians. The discussion unfolds around vignettes that exemplify moments of musical encounters among refugees and between refugees and people from the host society. The vignettes are narrated from the refugee interlocutors’ point of view, who are engaged in the musicking instances as listeners and musicians. The article discusses how they devise music to cope with their estrangement from home and to articulate narratives of belonging. It illuminates how refugees challenge stereotyped representations of themselves, reinforcing the terms under which they can become “visible” and “audible.” Finally, the article argues that refugees’ narratives suggest understandings of reality as a continuum in ways that challenge the linear reifications produced by nation-state bordering practices and displacement-induced ruptures These understandings are embedded in music’s mobilities and their intersections with human movement, informal networks, and the cultural industry.

The Life and Legacy of Danijela Kulezic-Wilson

The Life and Legacy of Danijela Kulezic-Wilson

Music and Encounter at the Mediterranean Crossroads: A Sea of Voices Ruth F Davis and Brian Oberlander

Music and Encounter at the Mediterranean Crossroads: A Sea of Voices is a timely and welcome contribution to scholarship on the many musics that characterize the diverse and contested geographical and cultural space of the Mediterranean. The volume emerged from the International Council for Traditional Music’s conference on Mediterranean music held in Essaouira, Morocco in June 2018, titled ‘Music and Sound at the Mediterranean Crossroads’. From the diversity of papers presented at the conference, Davis and Oberlander have settled on eight contributions from the conference, adding four invited authors. The result is a rich and diverse selection of case studies, covering a wide range of genres, geographies, communities, and ethnicities across the Mediterranean region. Engendering an important interplay between historical and ethnographic methodologies, all the chapters in the book are sensitive to the complex and divergent socio-cultural dynamics that characterize musical encounters in this region. It is here that the editors describe the Mediterranean as ‘a sea of voices in order to recognize it as a crowded, often contested space resounding with multitudinous claims, interests, and histories that variously coexist, overlap, and intersect’ (p. 2).

Exotic Toys, Musical Centralities and Power Reversals: The Early Reception of European Keyboard Music and Instruments in East Asia 20

Western music first achieved a sustained presence in East Asia during the sixteenth century, brought to this ‘distant’ region by European traders and missionaries. However, its dissemination remained limited for some three centuries to specific locales such as the area of southern Japan around Nagasaki and the Chinese imperial court in Beijing. Even so, investigation of the early phases of this cross [1]cultural encounter helps to illuminate the process by which Asian listeners gradually assimilated the alien quality of Europe’s musical sounds as transmitted especially by its keyboard instruments, to such a degree that these came to function as a native language of sorts. The present article will discuss the following aspects: the exotic fascination with the technological complexity of the foreigners’ musical devices, taking precedence over any aesthetic engagement with the music; the initial clash and then shift in musical centralities in the sense formulated by Bruno Nettl, that is, the selective emphasis of parameters (e.g. polyphony, timbre) that define musical creation, listening and thought; the applicability to the history of Sino-Western exchange of Emily Dolan’s notion of ‘keyboardisation’, an idiosyncratic reconceptualisation of musical content that would eventually acquire normative force; questions of colonisation and reverse colonisation in understanding the complex power dynamics that shaped this global musical encounter.

Jazzing: New York City's Unseen Scene

Jazzing: New York City's Unseen Scene

From tourism to solidarity: transnational feminism and world music in the UK

Transnational feminism has become a prevalent paradigm in feminist theory, but its connection with creative practices such as music remains unclear. This article addresses the relationship between music, culture and feminism and considers the extent to which world music creates spaces for transnational feminist praxis. Applying Chandra Mohanty’s ‘tourism’, ‘exploration’ and ‘solidarity’ models for internationalising feminism, I question whose feminism is performed and negotiated at WOMAD, one of the most influential international music festivals in Europe. I argue that world music encounters have the potential to both help and hinder the cause of feminism across borders as music can reinforce and resist power inequalities between women from different places and cultures and intercultural music encounters can create the conditions for locating transnational feminist discourse within specific struggles and working through the mutualities and tensions between different feminisms. In doing so, I seek to show the value of bridging feminist geography and musicology, as the former can be used to critically analyse the plurality of feminisms at play in musical contexts, while the latter can illustrate how transnational feminist work is being undertaken outside the explicitly political realm and how expressive means of communication may disrupt assumptions about empowering/disempowering feminisms and exemplify the complex intersections between feminism, place and culture.

“Between Respect and Impertinence”: Cross-Cultural Engagement with Sardinian Cantu A Tenore

Here we outline several ways that power and identity are asserted and reconfigured through cross-cultural musical encounters, often distancing the "musical explorer" from complex or uncomfortable interactions with members of the communities they source. We take as a case study the founding and formative experiences of the Tenores de Aterue, a US-based quartet devoted to the study and performance of Sardinian cantu a tenore, in particular their interactions with Sardinian musicians and musical connoisseurs, both via YouTube and in their travels to Sardinia. In Part I we propose that a "musical explorer" can refine their practices of cross-cultural engagement by noting the number and range of culture brokers involved in a music's circulation. Part II addresses the possibilities and limitations of audacity (considered a hallmark characteristic of a tenore singers) as enacted by the Tenores de Aterue—outsiders to Sardinian culture and newcomers to cantu a tenore. Part III animates these issues in an extended narrative, recounting a period of heightened discomfort and disorientation in the group's travels. Through this case study, we move beyond determinations of whether appropriation took place in a musical encounter to consider how specific decisions shift power among a range of social actors.

Afro-Sampas

Afro-Sampas is part of a 5 year research project, coordinated by the film’s directors, called ‘Being/Becoming African in Brazil: African musics and heritages’. This project is funded by São Paulo Research Foundation, and is part of a larger academic project entitled ‘Local Musicking: new pathways for ethnomusicology’. The project’s objective is to analyse the creative African diaspora in Brazil. In this film, we promote musical encounters between African musicians with whom we have been working since 2016 and Brazilian musicians who live in São Paulo. They share sounds, memories and creativity, exploring both musical and social issues in their encounters.

Audiencing in China: Foreign Rock Musicians’ Perceptions of Difference and Sameness

ABSTRACT This article reports on perceptions of audiencing – the active roles of witnessing and validating involving physical expressivity – raised by a selection of foreign musicians in relation to their experiences of performing rock and related genres in China. It highlights the connections between embodied dimensions of face-to-face musical experiences and the lenses of national difference and sameness bound up in debates over the colonial implications of “intercultural” musical encounters.

1:1 CONCERTS for a pandemic: Learnings from intimate musical encounters

1:1 CONCERTS is a performance initiative where a listener and a musician share a ten-minute, non-verbal musical encounter in a non-traditional performance space. The authors conducted a survey and focus groups with musicians, listeners and ‘hosts’ (facilitators) of 1:1 CONCERTS in Australia, seeking perspectives on their experiences of the Concerts during the COVID-19 pandemic. David Camlin’s three dimensions of music – aesthetic/presentational, praxial/participatory and social – served as a framework for data analysis. The intimate locational and musical aspects of the encounter generated feelings of connection, privilege and pleasure for many participants; for some, COVID-19 lockdowns, social distancing and live-arts deprivation heightened those feelings. We argue that while 1:1 CONCERTS retain presentational features typical of western classical music concerts, the model emphasizes the praxial and social dimensions of music-making, prioritizing process as well as product in ways relevant for music and music-making as a social resource, well beyond the pandemic.

Post-Tarab: Music and Affective Politics in the US SWANA Diaspora

Abstract In this article, I answer Anne K. Rasmussen's call for a “migration of ethnomusicology toward the ‘Diasporic Domestic’” (2019) through an ethnographic study of post-tarab, a postmigrant aesthetic practice among musicians and participants in the Southwest Asian and North African diaspora in the United States. In documenting how this emergent musical vernacular promotes a sense of “diasporic affect” among participants through intersubjective musical encounters, I propose a concentric model that accounts for post-tarab's metacognitive, liminal, and experiential dimensions. Ultimately, I argue that an attention to affective politics presents productive challenges to predominant ethnomusicological models of “culture.”

From the Editor

Greetings! This issue begins with a superb and timely piece by Deonte L. Harris entitled “On Race, Value, and the Need to Reimagine Ethnomusicology for the Future.” Drawing from several years of fieldwork in London's carnival arts scene, Harris develops an approach that he calls “value from below,” which illustrates how racial oppression often directly affects how members of BIPOC communities assign value, meaning, and significance to particular things, spaces, places, and actions. He uses this approach to consider the impacts of systemic racism on BIPOC scholars in ethnomusicology, arguing that the growing call for the making of an anti-racist and decolonized ethnomusicology is indicative of the continued struggle over value in the field and the larger world. Michael A. Figueroa's contribution to this issue, “Post-Tarab: Music and Affective Politics in the US SWANA Diaspora,” answers former SEM President Anne K. Rasmussen's call for a “migration of ethnomusicology toward the ‘Diaspora Domestic’” through an ethnographic study of post-tarab, a postmigrant aesthetic practice among musicians and participants in the Southwest Asian and North African diaspora in the United States. In documenting how this emergent musical vernacular promotes a sense of “diasporic affect” among participants through intersubjective musical encounters, Figueroa proposes a concentric model that accounts for post-tarab's metacognitive, liminal, and experiential dimensions, ultimately argueing that an attention to affective politics presents productive challenges to predominant ethnomusicological models of “culture.” Katie Young's fascinating contribution, “Hindi Film Songs in the Home: Gendered Experiences of Singing Popular Songs in Tamale, Northern Ghana,” discusses how Dagbamba and Hausa women in 1950s Tamale listened to Hindi film songs in their homes, via gramophone records and through state-run women's radio programs. Hindi film songs were soon integrated into existing domestic singing practices. Through an analysis of oral history interviews as well as recorded performances of Hindi film songs sung by women, men, and youth in Tamale, Young shows how everyday performances of Hindi film songs reveal gendered and intergenerational experiences of domestic space, labor, and social life in Tamale. Morgan James Luker offers “Matrix Listening; or, What and How We Can Learn from Historical Sound Recordings.” Luker discusses the phenomenon of matrix numbers - alphanumeric codes that are inscribed into the run-out area of commercially recorded gramophone discs - and argues that orienting our scholarly listening around what he calls “matrix listening”—can help us reframe our engagement with historical sound recordings as primary sources and thereby lend valuable insights into any number of scholarly questions. It can also help us revisit the issue of materiality in recorded sound specifically and music in general, approaching sound recordings not only as container technologies for “music” as a purified domain but as complexly agentive material things. And Althea SullyCole offers “Listening to Kora in New York City: Constructing Africa and Blackness in the U.S.,” where she draws upon ethnographic fieldwork with New York City-based kora musicians. This article observes how the kora, a twenty-one stringed harp from the Mandé region of West Africa, has become integrated into black cultural expression in the U.S. It highlights the disjunctures between migrant West African kora players and black musicians and audiences in the U.S. that result from particular modes of listening. How these conflicts are manifest in the performance context, the author argues, reveals both who and what means, historically, have been authorized to organize a social imaginary around the idea of “Africa” and its traditions.Special thanks, as always, are due to a core group of people for their hard work, guidance, and assistance in making this Journal the publishing benchmark in our discipline. SEM Executive Director Stephen Stuempfle and SEM President Tomie Hahn continue to assist with encouragement and support. Our current Book Review co-editors (Kate Brucher and Andrew Mall) continue to do fantastic work. As you know, Kate Brucher will be leaving this post in order to serve as the general editor of this Journal. Our Film, Video and Multimedia Review editor, Ben Harbert, is also finishing his service with this issue. Ben will begin working shortly on a new SEM publication (together with myself), as co-editor in-chief of the Journal for Audiovisual Ethnomusicology. And our Recording Review editor Donna Lee Kwon continues her thoughtful editing work with style and grace. Abby Rehard, our Journal's assistant editor, serves with considerable distinction, insight, humor, and aplomb. Kate Kemball, Journal Productions Editor at University of Illinois Press, provides professional insight as always. And thanks are always especially due to the hard-working members of the Journal Editorial Board as well as the SEM Publications Committee for their counsel and insights on various issues that come up in this work.

Studies on a Global History of Music: A Balzan Musicology Project

Studies on a Global History of Music: A Balzan Musicology Project