Musical Writings Research Articles

Tradition of Notation in the History of Turkish Music

Notation which is expressing of writing musical tones by using some type of special signs has changed into the many phases up to now which is widely used. Although different knowledge placed at the different sources about when and where the musical writings were came into existence. Notation in the tradition of Ottoman music era had become widespread from the beginning of 19th century. Within the traditional musical understanding as a method of education and transference, Notation was used mostly in the edvar books especially for explaining of theory of music. In opposition to implementation of traditional educational method (meşk), the books written for saving repertoire are the most important historical music resources from centuries they belong. It has a vital necessity for the musical observations and researches on recognizing and learning of different notations used in the history and reading the most important notation heritage of Turkish Music.

Review of music: Forgotten musical magazine of inter-war Belgrade

The monthly magazine Review of Music was published six times in Belgrade from January to June 1940. Each edition comprised thirty-two pages, half of which were devoted to a sheet-music supplement, popular compositions of the time for voice and piano. Review of Music published 222 articles and scores in total. The aim of the magazine was to popularise classical music, but it also encompassed jazz, films and film music, theatre, literature, fashion, and even sport. Review of Music was different from all other Serbian inter-war music magazines, not only because of its wide range of topics, but also because it published anonymous articles, probably taken from other sources, but it is not known from where. This study analyses the articles about classical music in Review of Music. In several short chapters the author presents the concept of the magazine, its genre structure, themes addressed, and the style of its music writers. Selected examples show that article authors tended to exploit elements of narrative (with an emphasis on impressive details), humour, and moral teaching. The authors also especially emphasized the neutral attitude of Review of Music towards contemporary music, although the magazine published different views of contemporary composers concerning the aesthetics of modern music. Review of Music started four months after Germany invaded Poland. However, in the journal references to social and political events are non-existant. The journal seems to have been interested only in culture and the arts. However, the author of this study presents examples in which the political circumstances of the time can be perceived. One of these examples is the visit of the Frankfurt Opera House to Belgrade in 1940. That extraordinary cultural event was attended by Prince Paul Karadjordjevic and Princess Olga, the Yugoslav Prime Minister, and almost all other government ministers. In this news, any authority on the political situation of the time could see that the Yugoslav government and the political elite took care of delicate relations with Germany at that time. This is the first study to analyse the concept and content of classical music in Review of Music. This magazine is certainly an interesting source, not only for the history of Serbian music periodicals, but also for cultural history.

Reviews: Johannes Tinctoris: Complete Theoretical Works

Johannes Tinctoris: Complete Theoretical Works . Ronald Woodley, Director. URL: http://earlymusictheory.org/Tinctoris/ Johannes Tinctoris (ca. 1435–1511) is today widely recognized as one of the most articulate music writers of his generation and as a perceptive observer of the musical practices of his time. The sizeable body of musical tracts and treatises that he authored early in his career easily amounts to the most comprehensive summa of the aesthetics and pedagogy of music from the decades around 1500 that has come down to us. Not surprisingly, then, modern scholars often turn to Tinctoris when seeking to piece together a “native” perspective on both technical issues (such as mode and counterpoint) and broader aspects of musical culture (such as the listening experience and the evolution of musical style). Tinctoris's observation, around 1473, that the musical works older than forty years were no longer fashionable in his days continues to inform the historiographic debate on the origin of the musical “Renaissance.” Tinctoris penned his twelve extant musical treatises during the 1470s in Naples, where he was in the service of the court of King Ferrante of Aragon as chaplain, legal advisor, and—until 1476—music tutor of Ferrante's daughter Beatrice. The chronology of his musical writings is a matter of some debate. According to Ronald Woodley and Rob Wegman, most of Tinctoris's treatises date to the period immediately after his arrival in Naples (ca. 1472–75).1 These include the Expositio manus , on the gamut and solmization; the Proportionale musices , on proportions and their application to musical notation; the Complexus effectuum musices , on the benefits of music and its effects on the soul;2 the first compilation of the Terminorum musicae diffinitorium , one of the earliest dictionaries of musical terms and the only finished treatise that Tinctoris gave to the press, and the group of several small tracts dealing with mensural notation, such as …

Robert L. Campbell's essay, “An End to Over and Against”

This essay replies to a review essay written by Robert L. Campbell, “An End to Over and Against” ( The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies 13, no. 1), which discussed recent biographical and historical studies of Ayn Rand by Jennifer Burns ( Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right ) and Anne C. Heller ( Ayn Rand and the World She Made ). The main point of discussion is the way in which Ayn Rand and Nathaniel Branden engaged the ideas and practices of modern psychology.

Sismogramas do choque: considerações sobre o choque em "Teoria da vanguarda", de Peter Bürger, e em "Filosofia da nova música", de Theodor W. Adorno

Em "Teoria da vanguarda", de Peter Bürger, o choque é compreendido como o artifício intencional dos movimentos de vanguarda contra a autonomia do esteticismo modernista, a fim de devolver a arte à práxis vital. Adotando uma perspectiva distinta, o choque, para Adorno, expõe antes a crise da experiência da formalização do tempo decorrente da incongruência entre as forças produtivas e as relações de produção na sociedade industrial, sendo que dois caminhos artísticos distintos derivam da inflexão histórica da crise da experiência. Em Schoenberg, na esteira do que Bürger classificaria como esteticismo, o choque seria amortizado pela expansão da linguagem musical, mediante seu registro. Em Stravinsky, o procedimento mecânico de golpes rítmicos e de montagem, em consonância com a profusão de vivências do choque, surge como elemento regressivo. Os choques não seriam dispositivos críticos, mas sismogramas de reações às mudanças da consciência subjetiva do tempo na modernidade. O artigo procura enfatizar as premissas conflitantes entre Bürger e Adorno quanto à posição do conceito de choque, assim como as críticas de Bürger ao modernismo adorniano.

Two views on the Yugoslav ideology in Serbian music periodicals between the two world wars

This study explores the relationship between the Yugoslav ideology as exhibited in Serbian music magazines published between the two world wars. These are the following journals: Music (1928-1929), Bulletin of the Music Society ?Stankovic? (1928-1934, 1938-1941; in January 1931 it was renamed The Musical Gazette), The Sound (1932-1936), Herald of the South Slavic Choral Union (1935-1936, 1938), Slavic music (1939-1941) and Review of Music (1940). I have excluded the magazine Musical Gazette (1922) from consideration because I have already discussed its ideological aspects in an earlier article (2009). Yugoslav topics in interwar music periodicals are addressed in an ecstatic tone by the music writers and editors (particularly immediately after the foundation of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes); one also observes open dissent and criticism of undesirable, wasted tendencies. Signs of profound differences with respect to the fundamental aspect of Yugoslav ideology - i.e. on the question of the nature and degree of the unity of nations under the auspices of the ideology, appeared relatively early in these journals. I argue that three elements: open enthusiasm, criticism/polemic and fundamental differences, constituted a framework within which the Yugoslav ideology was expressed in the Serbian musical periodicals. The third aspect has proved to be crucial. One could observe two different and even opposing views on the Yugoslav ideology. While some musicians strongly advocated integral Yugoslavism, others wanted the preservation of distinctive national features within this ideology. This division is illustrated by the writings of Croatian composer and ethnomusicologist Bozidar Sirola and Serbian composer and music critic Milenko Zivkovic. The division in question culminated in the case of the South Slavic Choral Union, which Croatian Choral Union refused to join. Hence, Serbian music periodicals provide an insight into the fundamental ideological and political problem of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia.

A Civilizing Mission? Music and the Cosmopolitan in Edward Said

Though Edward Said’s passionate interest in Western classical music is a well-known aspect of his biography, scholars have largely treated Said’s musical writings and activities as peripheral to his intellectual legacy. Through an examination of his extensive writings on music and his intense engagement with the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, an explicitly political/musical project intended to promote Arab-Israeli collaboration in the context of Western classical performance, this article examines how Said deployed Western classical music as a discursive space on which he could inscribe and celebrate the political and cultural values of his mobile, cosmopolitan upbringing in interwar Cairo. Said’s insistence on the universality and political applicability of Western musical forms thus came to represent a mode of relocating a lost form of elite cosmopolitanism as a central aspect of Arab identity and rejecting what he saw as the intolerant, philistine parochialism of the post-war Arab political landscape.

Weber on Music: Approaching Music as a Dynamic Domain of Action and Experience

Max Weber’s music writings (including his unfinished ‘Music Study’) have always mesmerized readers but their importance for analysing music as a cultural domain has only started to be acknowledged. This paper focuses on Weber’s approach to the inner ‘developmental momentum’ of the music domain through his study of the particular tension that pervaded Western harmonic music. By showing how composers, performers, instrument manufacturers, art recipients and the instruments themselves had to grapple with such tension, Weber was able to give an account of the inward connection to an art sphere and its structuring effects, whilst also bringing social, economic and technological factors to bear. In the current debate on the desirable ways for a renewed sociology of culture to develop, Weber’s music writings present us with a path at once precarious and bold, an account of inner connections and outer relations, which, against Weber himself, also provides bases for aesthetic judgement.

THE RADICAL POTENTIAL OF BECOMING-WOMAN AND INTRA-ACTION IN THE MUSIC OF ANNE BOYD

Anne Boyd (b. 1946) is recognised in the public domain as one of Australia's distinguished composers. Her work belongs in the Western art music tradition and emerges out of her entanglements with the Australian landscape and the music of South-East Asia. This article considers what some of these entanglements have produced and, in so doing, shifts the emphasis from questions of reflection and representation—in which Boyd's music might be understood to reflect in a representationalist mode those aspects of her identity that are bound with the Australian landscape—to exploring in a performative manner how her music offers glimpses into different aspects of the creative process in action. I consider Boyd's selected musical works and critique various biographical writings on Boyd, drawing on the work of Deleuze which I entangle with Barad's concept of intra-action. My aim is to offer a different model for thinking about the network of mutual engagements that are coimplicated in the music's becoming. I view Boyd's music as a becoming-woman, an animate flow and a dynamic process of intra-activity.

Cool Beats and Timely Accents

Cool Beats and Timely Accents

The southern journey of Alan Lomax: words, photographs, and music

More than fifty years ago, on a trip dubbed Southern Journey, Alan Lomax visited Virginia, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Kentucky, and Tennessee, uncovering the little-known southern backcountry and blues music that we now consider uniquely American. Lomax's camera was a constant companion, and his images of both legendary and anonymous folk musicians complement his famous field recordings. These photographs-largely unpublished-show musicians making music with family and friends at home, with fellow worshippers at church, and alongside workers and prisoners in the fields. Discussions of Lomax's life and career by his disciple and lauded folklorist William Ferris, and a lyrical look at Lomax's photographs by novelist and Grammy Award-winning music writer Tom Piazza, enrich this valuable collection.

Living and Labouring as a Music Writer

Like many other creative endeavours, music writing is a proto-professional practice built on the back of amateur enthusiasm, unpaid labour and informal networks of referrals and recruiting. Drawing on interviews with Australian music critics and journalists at different stages of their careers, this article examines the highly specific configurations of cultural, social and economic capital at work within this field. The authors begin by exploring the diverse career pathways of writers, before considering how writers locate themselves within industrial and creative networks. As amateur intermediaries engaged in the mediation of the cultural productions of others, music writers maintain particular notions of value that do not always align easily with creative labour models premised on artistic fulfilment or economic exploitation.

An unintended dialogue between “materialists” and “idealists”. The essays on west European art music in the "Zvuk" magazine (1932-1936)

The Zvuk magazine, one of the best Serbian and Yugoslav music reviews, was published in Belgrade from 1932 to 1936. It was founded and edited by a pianist, music historian and music critic Stana Ribnikar (1908-1986). Her closest collaborators in the magazine were leftist musicians. Nevertheless, the editorial board was open for collaboration with writers who had different ideas on the relationship between art and society. This article deals with numerous essays on the nineteenth-century West European art music in the Zvuk magazine. Their topics are very diverse: some of the essays deal with individual composers, historical issues, various problems of writing music, and related subjects. Others tend to provide information and present art music in a popular manner. A significant feature of the Zvuk magazine was the parallel presence of essays written by Marxist musicians and those written by other music writers, who did not believe in the social function of art, even though these two groups of authors did not engage in polemics. Pavao Markovac, a musicologist from Zagreb, was very critical towards Richard Wagner`s views on art and society. The Belgrade musicologist Vojislav Vuckovic shared his point of view. In his essays on the historical significance of baroque music, Vuckovic opposed the idea of absolute autonomy of art. Both Markovac and Vuckovic believed that art and society were inseparable and they evaluated music accordingly. Other prominent Serbian music writers, such as Miloje Milojevic, also voiced their opinions on the pages of the Zvuk magazine. Milojevic published essays on Johannes Brahms and Richard Strauss. He was also in favour of evaluating music within the given social context, but he advocated the ideas of Hyppolyte Taine. Zvuk remains the only Serbian music magazine that published articles on ancient Greek music. Milos Djuric, a classical philologist, philosopher and literary translator, wrote on music in ancient Boeotia and Lesbos. This subject has remained untackled in Serbian musicology to this very day. In order to address the wider audience, the Zvuk magazine also featured contributions concerning the boundary areas between music and other disciplines. As many as three articles on Friedrich Nietzsche's attitude towards music were published by Yuri Arbatsky and Matija Bravnicar. Notwithstanding its professional profi le, this magazine was also open for popular articles for wider intellectual audience. The essays on West European art music in the Zvuk magazine contributed to widening the scope of knowledge and public interest. The policy of the editorial board was to bring together writers of different ideological standpoints, by publishing their essays side by side. In this way, the public was presented with different ideas and beliefs, but also with professional information. It was clear that one-sidedness was not the policy of this magazine. On the contrary, the editors proved that it was possible for writers who thought differently to engage in a dialogue, even if they had no prior intention of doing so.

Rocktimism?: Pop Music Writing in the Age of Rock Criticism

Rocktimism?: Pop Music Writing in the Age of Rock Criticism

Music, Magic, and Humanism in Late Sixteenth-Century Venice: Fabio Paolini and the Heritage of Ficino, Vicentino, and Zarlino

This paper examines the musical chapters in the Hebdomades (1589), an encyclopedic commentary by the humanist Fabio Paolini on a single line of Vergil (Aeneid VI.646: ‘Obloquitur numeris septem discrimina vocum’). This book, originally given as a series of lectures before the Accademia degli Uranici in Venice, shows that Paolini, though not a professional musician, had read a variety of musical writers, such as Boethius, Vanneo, Vicentino, and his friend Zarlino, as well as the philosopher Marsilio Ficino, whose works also include discussions of musical matters. As a professional Hellenist, Paolini was better acquainted with the surviving Greek musical writings than most music theorists, and he gives valuable information about Greek manuscripts owned by Zarlino. However, the Hebdomades also show that Paolini’s practical understanding of music theory was a little shaky. Furthermore, his comments betray a distinct humanist disdain for the music of his own time. Paolini’s work thus gives a good indication of...

Crowe on the Banjo: The Music Life of J. D. Crowe (review)

Reviewed by: Crowe on the Banjo: The Music Life of J. D. Crowe Kevin Kehrberg (bio) Crowe on the Banjo: The Music Life of J. D. Crowe. By Marty Godbey. (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2011. Pp. 232. $19.95 paper) Since its publication of Robert Cantwell’s Bluegrass Breakdown (1984) and Neil V. Rosenberg’s Bluegrass: A History (1985), the University of Illinois Press has established itself as the leading publisher [End Page 193] of Bluegrass music historiography. Among the dozens of country and folk music monographs in its impressive Music in American Life series, at least eleven deal directly with Bluegrass. Along with most books on the topic, these titles focus on the originators and “first generation” of artists, particularly Bill Monroe. There is a dearth of literature covering the innovations and developments of the genre since the early 1970s. Marty Godbey’s Crowe on the Banjo addresses this deficiency with a profile of J. D. Crowe (b. 1937), the influential banjoist, band leader, and Kentucky native who has served an integral role in the evolution of Bluegrass music over the last fifty years. Godbey’s first chapter chronicles Crowe’s birth and childhood in the Lexington area. His father and mother were natives of Montgomery and Jessamine Counties, respectively. As a youngster, Crowe idolized the country stars he heard on the Grand Ole Opry and became determined to learn the electric guitar. In 1949, he saw banjo pioneer Earl Scruggs at the Kentucky Mountain Barn Dance, the Lexington Saturday-night country-music variety show at the time, and promptly switched his musical aspirations to the instrument. Scruggs’s band based itself in central Kentucky for over a year, and Crowe studied his performances at every opportunity. Chapter two begins in 1951, when Crowe began playing professionally with prominent local artists in and around Lexington. In 1956, he joined Jimmy Martin and the Sunny Mountain Boys, staying until 1960 and establishing himself as one of the the top young exponents of the banjo. In chapters three and four, Godbey provides a detailed account of Crowe’s time with Martin, an important collaboration that produced some of the most classic Bluegrass recordings in history. While chapters one through four clarify Crowe’s biography and his early career with important new information, the remaining chapters (five through ten) embody the most significant contribution of the book. They present a vivid record of his musical achievements after he left Martin and settled back in Lexington. Finally, the legendary stories about Crowe’s glory days at Martin’s Place, the Limehouse, and the Holiday Inn’s Red Slipper Lounge come to life (or prove false) in the words of the musicians themselves. Godbey also tracks the [End Page 194] genesis of Crowe’s most enduring band, the New South, including the leader’s mentorship of such future Bluegrass luminaries as Jerry Douglas, Tony Rice, Ricky Skaggs, and Keith Whitley. Comments by these and other band members expose the narrative behind their successful incorporation of country and rock ingredients that forever changed the musical landscape of Bluegrass. The book follows Crowe’s musical journey all the way into the new millennium, taking the mystery out of his hiatus in the late 1980s and early 1990s and tracking each incarnation of the New South through 2010. Godbey also includes a helpful discography of select recordings and an “Additional Reading” section as well. The late Marty Godbey was a respected and prolific music writer who contributed numerous articles to such trade publications as Blue-grass Unlimited and Banjo Newsletter as well as the liner notes for many Bluegrass albums. As a result, readers hoping for a more scholarly treatment may be disappointed (there is no formal bibliography). Her research is almost exclusively based on interviews, and at times the book reads like a collection of lively anecdotes rather than linear biography. Structurally, the prose favors the use of direct quotations, a penchant that sometimes clutters the direction and clarity of the writing. Despite these aspects of methodology and style, Crowe on the Banjo represents a crucial addition to Bluegrass literature that, along with other recent biographies of Butch Robins (What I Know ‘Bout What I...

Reading Mahler: German Culture and Jewish Identity in Fin-de-Siècle Vienna

Reviewed by: Reading Mahler: German Culture and Jewish Identity in Fin-de-Siècle Vienna James L. Zychowicz Reading Mahler: German Culture and Jewish Identity in Fin-de-Siècle Vienna. By Carl Niekerk. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2010. x + 312 pages. $75.00. A century after the composer's death in 1911, Gustav Mahler has become an iconic figure in modern culture through his influential work as an innovative conductor and his enduring legacy of songs and symphonies. Modern approaches to Mahler often derive from the groundbreaking study by Theodor Adorno, Mahler. Eine musikalische Physiognomik (1960), which departs from the conventional life-and-works approach (predictably divided into early, middle, and late), to pursue instead a topical investigation that focuses on themes in the composer's oeuvre, such as narrative, fanfares, and other elements that convey musico-semiotic interpretations. While such a thematic approach is behind Reading Mahler by Carl Niekerk with its stated focus on Mahler's "interest in and use of literature, philosophy, and the visual arts" (1), the present study is problematic because of the idiosyncratic stances expressed throughout. Yet that does not detract from the need for a study focused on both the texts that inspired Mahler's vocal music, and also the literature the composer actively read. The composer's songs are based on three primary sources: the early nineteenth-century anthology Des Knaben Wunderhorn, selected verse by Friedrich Rückert, and the Chinese-inspired poetry of Hans Bethge; with Mahler's symphonic music including the setting of a text from Nietzsche's Also sprach Zarathustra (in the Third Symphony) and, in the Eighth Symphony, the Latin hymn text "Veni, creator spiritus" along with the final scene from the second part of Goethe's Faust. Mahler's music is not limited to those literary models, but involves references to Jean Paul through the designation of the First Symphony as "Titan" and to E.T.A. Hoffmann, whose musical writings fascinated the composer and which inspired connections in Mahler's music with his audiences. From this perspective, a survey of the literary aspects of Mahler's music may parallel an overview of nineteenth-century literature. Mahler's reading also emerges in the documented conversations with his confidante Natalie Bauer-Lechner, his widow Alma Mahler, and in other reminiscences. As such, Mahler study would be served well by a literary companion to supplement studies focused on music, as Niekerk promises later in his introduction. At some point, though, the present study goes beyond such a literary companion to include, as stated in the subtitle, "German Culture and Jewish Identity in Fin-de-Siècle Vienna," the latter limiting the scope of the investigation to a locus that was Mahler's home during the decade he led the Vienna Hofoper. (Such a companion would work well, especially if organized encyclopedically.) Rather, the volume contains a series of specialized essays. Niekerk specifically discusses Mahler's music in six chapters, which are divided into two sections. The first section, entitled "The Crisis of German Culture," contains three essays, "Titan: Symphony of an Anti-Hero," "Des Knaben Wunderhorn: Rediscovering the 'Volk'," and "Nietzsche and the Crisis of German Culture." In these three essays, the author essentially reviews Mahler's works through his Fourth Symphony. The second section is entitled "German Culture and Its Others," with chapters concerning "Rembrandt and the Margins of German Culture," "Goethe against German Culture" and "The Two Faces of German Orientalism." The second part mainly concerns the Seventh and Eighth Symphonies, along with the symphonic song cycle Das Lied von der Erde, with references to other works throughout. [End Page 140] Mahler's artistic legacy is primarily musical, and while an investigation with a literary focus is important, it is difficult to account for Niekerk taking issue in his introduction with the idea that "[t]he assumption, implicit or explicit, is often that Mahler's interest in literature and culture merely mirrors his musical preferences" (1). This statement is sufficiently intriguing to merit explication by either citing the composer's statements about personal musical choices or the evidence for this that could be inferred from the repertoire he conducted, the latter qualified by an understanding of...

For the Records: How African American Consumers and Music Retailers Created Commercial Public Space in the 1960s and 1970s South

For the RecordsHow African American Consumers and Music Retailers Created Commercial Public Space in the 1960s and 1970s South Joshua Clark Davis (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution In the postwar United States, record stores like Curt’s (here) in Greensboro, North Carolina, were perhaps the place where consumers most commonly interacted with people who made their living from popular culture. Conservative estimates suggest that at least 400 to 500 black-owned record stores—and probably closer to one thousand—were in operation throughout the region during this period. Photograph courtesy of Curt Moore (here), owner of Curt’s. [End Page 71] Records is a market that can be used to brighten the future of lots of black people with jobs and higher prestige all over the country,” Jimmy Liggins announced in 1976 to the readers of the Carolina Times, Durham, North Carolina’s most prominent African American newspaper. Liggins, a minor rhythm and blues star of the 1950s, was publicizing his Duplex National Black Gold Record Pool, headquartered in Durham, which sought to “help and assist black people to own and sell the music and talent blacks produce.” With the aid of this “self helping program,” aspiring hit-makers could record and release music that Black Gold sold through mail order and at Liggins’s shop, Snoopy’s Records, in downtown Durham.1 Kenny Mann vividly recalls his frequent trips to Snoopy’s as a teenager in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Liggins “was like a god” to Mann and other young customers who patronized the store. “Everybody knew” Liggins and his two business partners, Henry Bates and Paul Truitt. “These guys, I was listening to them talk about bringing Tyrone Davis and Johnny Taylor and Al Green to town . . . It was fun to go [to their store] because it felt like the place to be; there were girls in there, and I was twelve, thirteen years old.” Not only that, but Mann “never felt the pressure to buy something” like he did in stores in his hometown of Chapel Hill, where white shopkeepers frequently followed young African American shoppers around their businesses, suspecting they might shoplift. “They had a double standard,” Mann remembers. Chapel Hill “really was set up as if they didn’t want to do business with us black people.” In sharp contrast, Liggins envisioned Snoopy’s as “our mall”—a “hang out” where black consumers could buy black music in a record store owned and operated by African Americans. Black-owned record stores like Snoopy’s represented a crucial nexus where African American enterprise, consumer culture, community, and of course, music all met. And by the early 1970s, Liggins was booking and promoting shows for Mann’s band, which eventually became Liquid Pleasure, the popular Chapel Hill-based funk and soul outfit still active today. In the postwar United States, record stores were perhaps the place where consumers most commonly interacted with individuals who made their living from popular culture. Yet, while music writers and scholars have devoted much attention to black-oriented radio stations and record labels, we still know very little about the retail businesses from which African Americans purchased music, especially in the South. Conservative estimates would suggest that at least 400 to 500 black-owned record stores—and probably closer to one thousand—were in operation throughout the region during this period. An examination of the black-owned record stores in one southern state, North Carolina, not only reveals valuable insights about the southern marketplace for African American music, but also much about the broader role consumer culture played in southern black communities during these transitional decades. While desegregation measures were beginning to significantly alter the racial make-up of some areas of southern society, such as public schools, many [End Page 72] African American record retailers and consumers hesitated to assimilate into white-dominated pop-music marketplaces. Black merchandisers envisioned the record trade as an arena in which African Americans could pursue a broader strategy of bolstering economic self-sufficiency and sustaining black public life. And by seeking out music from black-owned record stores, African American consumers partook in a vibrant form of commercial public...

Post Impressions: Music Writing as Bent Travelogue

The wind is our universal musician and has been recognized as such for millennia. If the wind can play a fence as an aeolian harp, then a violinist armed with a bow could also cause these gigantic structures to sing. Thus, an American woman and an Australian man set out to explore and perform on the giant musical instruments covering the continent of Australia: fences. This presentation excerpts highlights from the voyage, illuminating the range of sounds to be drawn out of a five-wire fence. Playing fences reveals a sound world that is embedded in the physical reality and the psyche of the culture. In pursuit of their instruments, including the Rabbit-Proof Fence and the 5300-kilometre–long Dingo Fence, the duo travels 40,000 kilometres, engaging with a singing dingo, an auctioneer, an Aboriginal gumleaf virtuoso, bush musicians, the first (now ruined) piano in Central Australia, and the School of the Air’s distorted, modulating, phasing white and pink electronic noise.
 
 PLEASE NOTE: there are four supplementary files that accompany this contribution. Click on the tab 'Supplementary Files' on the right hand side of the screen when accessing the pdf of the article.

Adorno's Praxis of individuation Through Music Listening

Theodor W. Adorno's Anweisungen zum Hören neuer Musik (Guidelines for Listening to Modern Music) contain instructions not only for how to listen but also for how to have experience in general. The psycological, perceptual, and cognitive structures involved are existential structures, i.e. guidelines as to how to be as a modernist or post-modern self. Since listening involves abandoning oneself to the immanent logic of musical works, it is these works that provide the model for how to be. Adorno's work also shows, in contradistinction to some views of Adorno, his commitment to the unity of theory and practice and demonstrates that his musical writing is a completely independent and novel strand of critical theory because of is attempt to articulate the ineffable. However, Adorno's explicit theory of listening ("structural listening") is itself inadequate to Adorno's implicit theory of listening as contained in the practice of his actual musical writings.