Musical Categories Research Articles

Front Porch

Front Porch Harry L. Watson, Editor Click for larger view View full resolution In our Upbeat Down South, Vincent Joos tells how Jimmy Anderson grew up in fife-and-drum hotspot Natchez, Mississippi, and Dick Waterman’s amazing photo essay includes a classic image of Otha Turner, thought to be the last fife musician of his generation. An Appalachian fifer and friend, c. 1914, courtesy of the Collections of the Library of Congress. [End Page 1] This edition of Southern Cultures’s music issue deals with “roots” music, a label that grew especially well known and popular after the Coen brothers’ remarkable movie, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, appeared in 2000. America’s diverse cultures have inspired an immense variety of musical forms and styles, nowhere more than in the South, and “roots” tries to capture that variety at the deepest level among families and communities, before the process of commercialization and homogenization begins. Our inspiration came from the North Carolina Humanities Council, which throughout 2010 is sponsoring a traveling exhibition from the Smithsonian Institution entitled “New Harmonies: Celebrating American Roots Music.” Southern Cultures is pleased to offer our support for “New Harmonies,” and you can visit www.SouthernCultures.org for more information on the tour. As we started to consider this issue, we looked for some help in defining just what “roots” music really is. We decided to ask an expert, our dear friend and southern music authority Chaz Joyner of Coastal Carolina University, to give us a list of the ten best southern “folk” singers, an older but still useful musical category that could tie contemporary ideas of “roots” to something earlier. Chaz then sent us two lists, one devoted to “traditional” folk singers, whom he defined as those who learned their songs from the oral traditions of their families and communities, and the other naming “singers of folk songs” who sang for a living (or still do) and mostly learned their repertoire from recordings. The division didn’t surprise me; distinguishing between “real” folk and their imitators comes naturally to almost everyone who explores folk or “roots” culture, however they decide to define it. I also didn’t recognize a lot of the “traditional” names, but that didn’t surprise me either. After all, being obscure and commercially undiscovered is a cardinal test of “traditional” authenticity, and unlike Chaz, I hadn’t spent a lifetime exploring the South’s best music. Like lots of other half-educated consumers, I love what I hear but my life goes on in different directions. But when I read the list of professional “imitators,” I was dumbfounded, because right there in first place was North Carolina’s own “Doc” Watson. Let me say right away that Arthel Lane Watson and I are not related, except of course in my dreams. But how could anybody put the sublime Doc Watson in a category of professional singers who acquired their material from the channels of mass culture? Sure, Doc has recorded a bazillion albums, won three Grammys, and made a worldwide name for himself, but how could anybody who taught himself to play the guitar while growing up blind in Deep Gap, North Carolina, be anything but traditional ? Chaz, say it ain’t so! You’re breaking my heart here. Still disbelieving, I dragged myself to my unimpeachable fountain of folk wisdom, Wikipedia. And sure enough, right there in black and white pixels, it says that “the first song Doc ever learned to play was ‘When Roses Bloom in Dixieland,’” which he must have learned from a Carter Family recording of the 1920s. [End Page 2] At least a dozen other sites have the exact same language—so it must be true. And it goes on to say that Doc’s early street performances covered popular hits by the Delmar, Louvin, and Monroe Brothers. I was crushed. If Doc Watson isn’t traditional, how can anyone be? I applied various restoratives, and when I came to I began thinking about these opposing categories of “traditional” and “professional.” The power of authentic “tradition” is unarguable. Without its riches, the popularizers would be nowhere. But does true roots music come only exclusively from these sources...

Digital multimedia jukebox

A musical jukebox (10) is disclosed which provides for: fast archiving of songs; a flexible user interface; easy and convenient entry of, access to and/or display (22) of data relating to songs archived by the jukebox (10); easy and convenient search and locate capabilities for locating, reviewing, retrieving and/or playing songs stored in the jukebox; and low cost relative to the functionality, features, conveniences and user-friendliness provided by the jukebox (10). Fast of flush archiving of songs (as well as other data and signals) is accomplished by first saving sets of data without compression, which allows the data to be entered quickly, and then, compressing later at an appropriate time. An unique MP3 bit allocation encoding scheme is used to compress data. An unique memory allocation supports fast data archiving. The user interface employs two-way communication (24) between a remote control (28) and the jukebox (10). A searchable song database is structured to enable very fast searching by music category, and also by title and artist. The jukebox (10) is provided with an on-board song track database to automatically identify new songs input to the jukebox (10).

The responses of preschoolers with cochlear implants to musical activities: a multiple case study

The purpose of this study was to investigate the musical experiences of preschool cochlear implant users. Research objectives were to examine: (1) musical, social and emotional responses to activities; and (2) whether length of experience with the implant influenced responses. Participants were three prelingually deafened children, age 4, attending a Deaf school in the Northeastern USA. Cochlear implant experience of Child A, Child B and Child C was three years, one year and one month, respectively. Qualitative data including lesson and video transcripts and researcher field notes were coded into musical, social and emotional response categories. Data analyses revealed participants’ ample musical responses and that cochlear implant experience had an impact upon participants’ singing. Music educators must consider the individual differences of the prelingually deafened child modifying lesson design and content to meet their various needs.

Cinematic success criteria and their predictors: The art and business of the film industry

AbstractThe author reviewed the empirical research on the factors underlying the success of feature‐length narrative films. After specifying some methodological caveats, the review examined the three main criteria by which a film's success can be evaluated: critical evaluations (both early and post‐theatrical run), financial performance (including first weekend and gross), and movie awards (including dramatic, visual, technical, and music categories). To what extent do these criteria represent distinct aesthetic and economic assessments? The review then turned to the various predictors of these success criteria. How is success connected with the film's production and distribution characteristics? To what extent do the predictors converge and diverge across alternative criteria? The article then closes with a discussion of some psychological issues raised by the reviewed findings. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

The effect of musical experience on describing sounds with everyday words.

Musicians often use non‐technical words such as “warm,” “sharp,” or “sweet” to describe sound quality. Commonplace experience indicates that the descriptions of a sound by a diverse group of musicians may vary, suggesting that musical background may influence one’s interpretation of a sound. A research study was carried out targeting 844 subjects of varying musical backgrounds where each subject had the chance to match various words to sound samples. Each subject was assigned to one or more musical categories (strings, woodwinds, electronic, percussion, brass) based on previous musical experience, and the results were compared across categories. Statistical measures were employed to determine if a correlation existed between musical background and survey responses. After analyzing the results from all sound‐word combinations, it was determined that the musical background had no effect on the selection of words. Because of the nature of statistical hypothesis testing, the expected rate of false positives was greater than the proportion of statistically significant sound‐word combinations. From the data collected in this user study, it is reasonable to suggest that the description of musical sounds is an innate skill that is not influenced by musical background and training.

Artistic Competitions at Greek Olympia Games in the 19th Century

The purpose of this study is to examine ideas concerning artistic competitions and the competition content at Greek national Olympia Games in the nineteenth century. The following conclusions were reached: The first Greek national Olympia Games in 1859 had athletic competitions and an industrial exposition. Some artistic products were found among the industrial products and prizes were awarded for some artistic works. In 1870, vice president of Olympia Committee suggested that artistic and intellectual competitions should be included in the Olympia program to unite body, intelligence and industry for the development of culture and society with worship of the Muses. Artistic competitions were staged as an element of industrial products competitions in the second and the third Greek national Olympia Games. These artistic competitions were in the architecture, painting, sculpture, literature and music categories. Artistic and intellectual competitions were staged at the fourth Olympia Games in 1888. It can be said that the artistic competitions were derived from the industrial products competitions and they developed widely. Greek people who lived in foreign countries supported these artistic competitions and they also supported the first international Olympic Games. During the first international Olympic Games in 1896, a music competition was announced and many kinds of artistic events were held by the Greek Organizing Committee. They became part of the Olympic legacy of the national Olympia Games. The revival of the Olympia Games by the Greek people was not limited to athletic competition but also included artistic competition. The principles of these artistic competitions sought a merger of the body and the mind.

Bill Finegan's Gershwin Arrangements and the American Concept of Hybridity

AbstractBill Finegan's arrangements of George Gershwin'sRhapsody in Bluefor the Glenn Miller Orchestra in 1942 and ofConcerto in Ffor the Sauter-Finegan Orchestra in 1952 provide a basis for interpreting Gershwin's compositions. Finegan's treatments suggest that techniques central to popular forms were foundational to Gershwin's style in these pieces. Furthermore, Gershwin's and Finegan's works shed light on the concept of hybridity in the United States, especially as it concerns the label of “symphonic jazz” or “concert jazz” and ideas about race. Hybrid terms such as “symphonic jazz” manage to challenge musical and social categories while simultaneously reinforcing them.

Dynamical hierarchical self‐organization of harmonic and motivic musical categories

We introduce a generic model of emergence of musical categories during the listening process. The model is based on a preprocessing and a categorization module. Preprocessing results in a perceptually plausible representation of music events extracted from symbolic input. The categorization module lets a taxonomy of musical entities emerge according to a cognitively plausible online learning paradigm. We show the advantages of using a conceptual clustering method in the musical domain. The system extracts multilevel hierarchies and can be tuned to clustering at various resolutions. The potential of the model is exemplified by exposing it to two different datasets resulting in music harmonic and motivic categorization consistent with music theory.

'Black, Brown and Beige' and the politics of Signifyin(g)

Duke Ellington has attracted critical attention from across the whole cultural spectrum and yet he is in many ways a problematic figure who remains misunderstood. This paper draws on Michel Foucault’s consideration of polemics to illuminate critical strategies that have been directed towards Ellington. It explores how we might move beyond polemics and reinterpret Ellington as an artist ‘beyond category’ by considering his most controversial and ambitious work, Black, Brown and Beige, as a Signfyin(g) text. Ellington’s unique working practices, the special sound world of his band, his declared tendency to ‘say things without saying them’ and his view of himself as a black bandleader-composer of ‘Negro folk music’ all help inform a reassessment of the work in light of recent developments in African-American critical thinking and to establish the political legacy of Ellington’s cultural positioning as a trickster figure critiquing polemics by slipping between, about or around musical categories.

Acoustic Cues to Beat Induction: A Machine Learning Perspective

This article brings forward the question of which acoustic features are the most adequate for identifying beats computationally in acoustic music pieces. We consider many different features computed on consecutive short portions of acoustic signal, among which those currently promoted in the literature on beat induction from acoustic signals and several original features, unmentioned in this literature. Evaluation of feature sets regarding their ability to provide reliable cues to the localization of beats is based on a machine learning methodology with a large corpus of beat-annotated music pieces, in audio format, covering distinctive music categories. Confirming common knowledge, energy is shown to be a very relevant cue to beat induction (especially the temporal variation of energy in various frequency bands, with the special relevance of frequency bands below 500 Hz and above 5 kHz). Some of the new features proposed in this paper are shown to outperform features currently promoted in the literature on beat induction from acoustic signals.We finally hypothesize that modeling beat induction may involve many different, complementary acoustic features and that the process of selecting relevant features should partly depend on acoustic properties of the very signal under consideration.

Music Received

Introduction This column presents a comprehensive list of new music publications that have been sent recently by publishers and distributors for possible review in Notes. Self-published music is listed when a source of acquisition is provided. The primary aim of this column is to provide brief listings of a broad range of new editions of music, thereby assisting in selection and ordering for libraries or personal collections. After the listing is prepared, the publications are sent selectively to Darwin Scott, the "Music Reviews" column editor. All Web sites accessed 31 May 2006. Organization and Scope Notes Scholarly & Historical Editions: Primarily volumes of collected editions and monumental series. Extensive critical apparatus is generally assumed and therefore not noted in the entries. Facsimile Editions: Limited to publications presenting a reproduction of an item that emphasizes its nature as a primary source rather than its simple intellectual content. Orchestral Music: Works for full and chamber orchestra, and chamber groups of more than nine players. Full scores of concertos are included, but reductions for solo instrument(s) with keyboard are listed in the appropriate chamber music category. Band Music: Brass and wind ensemble music intended for more than one player to a part, and wind chamber groups of more than nine players. Choral Music: Includes all types of nondramatic choral works, in full scores or vocal scores. Dramatic Music: Operas, musicals, and ballets, in full or vocal scores. Chamber Music with Strings; Chamber Music without Strings: Duets through nonets other than one instrument with keyboard. "Strings" includes harp and guitar, but excludes keyboard instruments. String Instrument with Keyboard; Woodwind Instrument with Keyboard; Brass Instrument with Keyboard: Includes reductions for one solo instrument with keyboard (including organ). Music for more than one instrument with keyboard is listed as Chamber Music. Music for solo instrument with basso continuo is listed here, however, since the bass part is often presented as optional or for a choice of instruments. Solos for Bowed or Plucked Strings, Unaccompanied; Solos for Wind Instruments, Unaccompanied: Music for single solo instrument. Studies are included here unless they are technical exercises, orchestral studies, or methods. Music for Organ: Solo organ music, duets, arrangements, and reductions. Music for Piano or Harpsichord: For any keyboard instrument other than organ. Includes solo music and like-instrument ensembles such as 4-hand piano and 2-piano duets, keyboard reductions of piano concertos, and larger keyboard ensembles. Music for Percussion: Includes percussion solos (with or without keyboard accompaniment) and ensembles. Chamber music with other instruments is listed in the appropriate category above. Music for Voice: Music for one or more solo voices (one singer per part) with any accompaniment, including chamber ensemble. Opera excerpts, such as collections of arias, are included, but complete opera vocal scores are listed under Dramatic [End Page 208] Music. Other works for solo voices with chorus are listed under Choral Music. Methods and Studies: Includes method books, technical exercises, and orchestral studies; studies that might be used in performance are listed above as solo music. Music for Children: Materials designed for study and performance by children of pre-school or elementary school age. Miscellaneous: For music which truly defies inclusion in the categories above. Citation Style Citations include publishers' numbers or plate numbers, ISBN, and ISMN, where available. In order to keep the citations brief, description of introductory notes, critical reports, etc., is not included unless the material is considered unusual for the type of publication, or an indication of languages is warranted. Abbreviations for publishers are listed at the end of the column with complete imprints, U.S. distributors, and Web sites. Some well-known collected works series titles are abbreviated according to usage in works lists of The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2d ed. Most other abbreviations follow The Chicago Manual of Style, 15th ed., and the Notes Style Sheet (http://www.areditions.com/mla/ notes/stylesheet.html). Scholarly & Historical Editions Bach, Johann Sebastian. Frühfassungen zur H-Moll-Messe BWV 232. Kritischer Bericht zu BA 5293 von Uwe Wolf. (NBA II/1a.) Bärenreiter, 2005. ISMN...

Ecclesiology and church music: Towards a possible relationship

The relationship between church music and ecclesiology seems to be only rarely discussed. This is the more remarkable since the interdependence between liturgy and ecclesiology is increasingly being noted and church music referred to in discussion on communication ecclesiology. This article contains some snapshots – no more – hinting at possibilities for the fruitful study of church music from the ecclesiological angle. Several levels may be detected in such study, for, implicitly or explicitly, church music has been referred to in constructive ecclesiologies, though not in a developed way. Moreover it is possible to detect in church music, its organization and performance, both operative ecclesiologies and meta-ecclesiological features. The examples presented here deal with edification and with communion/koinonia as musical and ecclesiological categories. Connections between catholicity and church music also raise questions about church music's effect on the unity and disunity of the Church. Lastly a rather fragmented ecclesiology in the German Reformation and Baroque periods is related to structures in church music at those times. The purpose of this article is to highlight the possibility of acquiring new knowledge by bringing ecclesiology and musicology together.

Louisiana Hayride: Radio and Roots Music Along the Red River (review)

Louisiana Hayride: Radio and Roots Music Along Red River. By Tracey E. W. Laird. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. (American Musicspheres Series.) [x, 208 p. ISBN 0-19-516751-1. $29.95.] Maps, photos, bibliography, discography, filmography, index. With this book, Tracey E. W. Laird returns to her hometown of Shreveport to examine forces that shaped distinctive culture and music of northwest Louisiana and created one of most significant radio barn dance shows in American music history, Louisiana Hayride. Using Hayride and its host radio station KWKH as centerpiece, Laird questions how intersecting forces of geography, history, demography, and economics shaped character of region and set stage for this unique radio program of singular influence. Shreveport's history of musical dynamism between blacks and whites, with relatively equal numbers of each living in close proximity, results in inevitable musical exchange. This blurred racial boundary points to central issue of book: that neat and tidy black-and-white musical categories handed down through commercial and academic discourse are a distorted exaggeration of realities of musical life in early part of century. Laird's detailed focus on one influential locale offers strong support for a reassessment while at same time providing a detailed description of how one corner of American music impacted whole. The book proceeds in three major sections, each given two chapters. Section 1 presents a historical background of area focusing on founding of Shreveport as a commercial river in 1830s. The area is portrayed as a frontier region caught between two identities: the burgeoning commercial center and lawless hedonic port (p. 23). Musical life along waterway of Red River straddles these identities with a wide variety of contexts and styles including showboats, brass bands, tent shows, house parties, and entertainment venues amidst legalized prostitution of Fannin Street district. Laird uses genre-crossing repertoire and style of Leadbelly (Huddie Ledbetter), who lived and worked around Fannin Street, to illuminate her portrait. His career attests to a broad range of musical experiences, most of which predate era of commercial records and his songs fall under a variety of genre headings: ragtime, blues, country ballads, folk songs, children's songs, and Tin Pan Alley. Laird asks: how much did formulaic thinking and myopia of commercial profit shape recorded output of black and white rural musicians alike? How often by late 1920s and early 1930s were artists encouraged to fit their repertoire and performance styles to whichever audience record company wished to target (p. 36)? Although most often historicized as a blues artist, Leadbelly's songs and his performance style fit 1920s-1930s 'country' criteria more completely, pointing to a richer dynamic within southern roots music than artifacts of phonograph records (and many early histories) portray. This musical fluidity across racial and cultural borders emerges from day-to-day realities of life in Shreveport and lays foundation for unique qualities of Hayride. While this first section may be driest and least original part of Laird's book, it is, nonetheless, central to her argument and important for those readers not familiar with early foundations of blues and country music in United States. Though geography is stated to be central to her thesis, Laird concerns herself minimally with issues of space and migration-career moves to Grand Ole Opry notwithstanding. With exception of one large-scale, minimally detailed, map of Red River, there is little in book to give reader a sense of locale or human geography. A map of city of Shreveport (Fannin Street and Bossier City) would have helped in presentation of this early history. …

World music and the search for difference

World music has been immersed in a series of complex ethical, political and aesthetic debates since its emergence as a new musical category in the 1980s. These debates have been fuelled by competing perspectives that portray world music as either an exemplar of progressive cosmopolitan politics that foster cultural hybridity or as reinforcing fixed and unitary conceptions of difference through an essentializing representation of cultures. By utilizing interviews with key people involved in the organization of world music in Britain, this article centralizes this tension by examining the role of difference in world music. Bourdieu’s concept of cultural intermediary is used here as a descriptive label for the work of those involved in this research and as an explanatory tool to highlight how difference defines the interaction between the substantive and symbolic processes within the British world music scene. This article argues that the work of cultural intermediaries demonstrates the ambivalent cultural processes within the performance, management and consumption of world music. This is evident in the series of recursive shifts within world music that employ a model of difference that draws on both the binary logic of traditional meanings of race/ethnicity and hybridity. In so doing, this article also examines how world music affinity and consumption, which takes people across arbitrarily ascribed boundaries, challenges the idea that normative racialized identities are meant to provide a fixed set of cultural values, musical tastes and social attitudes.

Music Received

Introduction This column presents a comprehensive list of new music publications that have been sent recently by publishers and distributors for possible review in Notes. Self-published music is listed when a source of acquisition is provided. The primary aim of this column is to provide brief listings of a broad range of new editions of music, thereby assisting in selection and ordering for libraries or personal collections. After the listing is prepared, the publications are sent selectively to Darwin F. Scott, the "Music Reviews" editor. All Web sites accessed 25 May 2005. Organization and Scope Notes Scholarly & Historical Editions: Primarily volumes of collected editions and monumental series. Extensive critical apparatus is generally assumed and therefore not noted in the entries. Facsimile Editions: Limited to publications presenting a reproduction of an item that emphasizes its nature as a primary source rather than its simple intellectual content. Orchestral Music: Works for full and chamber orchestra, and chamber groups of more than nine players. Full scores of concertos are included, but reductions for solo instrument(s) with keyboard are listed in the appropriate chamber music category. Band Music: Brass and wind ensemble music intended for more than one player to a part, and wind chamber groups of more than nine players. Choral Music: Includes all types of nondramatic choral works, in full scores or vocal scores. Dramatic Music: Includes operas, musicals, and ballets, in full or vocal scores. Chamber Music with Strings; Chamber Music without Strings: Duets through nonets other than one instrument with keyboard. "Strings" includes harp and guitar, but excludes keyboard instruments. String Instrument with Keyboard; Woodwind Instrument with Keyboard; Brass Instrument with Keyboard: Includes reductions for one solo instrument with keyboard (including organ). Music for more than one instrument with keyboard is listed as Chamber Music. Music for solo instrument with basso continuo is listed here, however, since the bass part is often presented as optional or for a choice of instruments. Solos for Bowed or Plucked Strings, Unaccompanied; Solos for Wind Instruments, Unaccompanied: Music for single solo instrument. Studies are included here unless they are technical exercises, orchestral studies, or methods. Music for Organ: Solo organ music, duets, arrangements, and reductions. Music for Piano or Harpsichord: For any keyboard instrument other than organ. Includes solo music and like-instrument ensembles such as 4-hand piano and 2-piano duets, keyboard reductions of piano concertos, and larger keyboard ensembles. Music for Percussion: Includes percussion solos (with or without keyboard accompaniment) and ensembles. Chamber music with other instruments is listed in the appropriate category above. Music for Voice: Music for one or more solo voices (one singer per part) with any accompaniment, including chamber ensemble. Opera excerpts, such as collections of arias, are included, but complete opera vocal scores are listed under Dramatic Music. Other works for solo voices with chorus are listed under Choral Music. [End Page 203] Methods and Studies: Includes method books, technical exercises, and orchestral studies; studies that might be used in performance are listed above as solo music. Music for Children: Materials designed for study and performance by children of pre-school or elementary school age. Miscellaneous: For music which truly defies inclusion in the categories above. Citation Style Citations include publishers' numbers or plate numbers, ISBN, and ISMN, where available. Paper bindings unless otherwise noted. In order to keep the citations brief, description of introductory notes, critical reports, etc., are not included unless the material is considered unusual for the type of publication, or an indication of languages is warranted. Abbreviations for publishers are listed with complete imprints and U.S. distributors at the end of the column. Some well-known collected works series titles are abbreviated according to usage in works lists of The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2d ed. Most other abbreviations follow The Chicago Manual of Style, 15th ed., and the Notes Style Sheet. Scholarly & Historical Editions Cannabich, Christian. Ballet Music Arranged for Chamber Ensemble. Ed. by Paul Corneilson. (Recent Reseaches in the Music of the Classical Era, 73.) A-R, 2004. ISBN 0-89579...

Real Country: Music and Language in Working-Class Culture (review)

Real Country: Music and Language in Working-Class Culture. By Aaron A. Fox. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004. [xv, 363 p. ISBN 0-8223-3348-1. $22.95.] Illustrations, index, bibliography. As a relatively young field of academic inquiry, country music benefits from a wide range of scholarly paradigms and passions, and from the refreshing sense that its agendas have yet to be fully articulated. Indeed, the parameters of its study are in constant flux, and it is little wonder. Country music contains multitudes: it invites us to examine a music born at the intersection of folk and commercial practices with a history of navigating back and forth across both. It points to a dialectic interplay of class and identity, as music projecting working-class ethos while simultaneously appealing to a much broader cross-section of society. It demands a consideration of race, particularly the implied and lived implications of our society's segregated commercial musical categories, and how country music's stamp of whiteness refracts the past and future relationship of blacks and whites in the southern United States. It speaks to aspects of gender identity, trends toward and away from political conservatism, and inter sections of religion with contemporary mass culture. And it begs for an interdisciplinary approach like that brought by Aaron Fox to his exploration of commercial country music as a viable source of meaning in a working-class South Texas community. Fox spent several years in regular association with a group of people in the small town of Lockhart, playing music, drinking beer, and, in the local vernacular, talkin' shit. As an ethnographer, Fox approached his topic simultaneously as both insider (fellow American, Texas resident, musician fluid and knowledgeable about country music styles) and outsider (native of the northeastern United States, self-professed liberal, product of an economically stable, middle-class, urban, academic family). Fox describes the challenges of navigating this dual status early in the book, reflecting both his own humanity and that of the people he writes about; thus, establishing the boundaries-and, to his credit, exposing the limits-of his own ethnographic authority. Fox's main point is that the human voice is the locus of cultural meaning in working class Texas culture. In this community, which places high value on oral communication, both singers and speakers strive for the artful use of words and of verbal expression's non-referential (and often more significant) aspects like repetition, intonation, and intensity. The mastery of these verbal arts celebrated in country music's iconic stars (George Jones, Hank Williams, or Johnny Cash, for example) is the same mastery that makes local figures like Randy Meyer, Larry Hoppy Hopkins, and Big Judy Laughlin crucial representatives of continuity and musical identity in a community centered around a Lockhart beer joint called Ann's Other Place during the early 1990s. The centrality of verbal exchange marks both song and speech in this country musicoriented culture. It confers upon some non-musicians, for example, heightened status as good conversationalists or as people gifted at defusing tense social moments; its absence accounts for the shaky social standing of others, individuals whose presence is seen as socially disruptive (foolish, in Fox's word), or otherwise unwelcome. But in working-class Texas culture as Fox presents it, speech and song blend into one another constantly-speech is a more mundane yet vital resource for song, while song is a special denaturalized expression whose authenticity is measured by how effectively it crystallizes the ordinary sense of everyday speech. The fluctuation between these two ends of a verbal spectrum finds its apotheosis in the figure of a celebrated local musician in Lockhart, whose verbal skill and vocal artistry generate powerful personal charisma both onstage and off. …

Right to rock: the Black Rock Coalition and the cultural politics of race

Right to Rock: The Black Rock Coalition and Cultural Politics of Race. By Maureen McMahon. Durham NC: Duke University Press, 2004. Bibliography, index. Black has long seemed an impossibility. Anthropologist Maureen McMahon's new study explores as political and cultural and, importantly, as an intervention into industrial conventions and constraints that sunder two words that comprise it. During 1992 and 1992 McMahon undertook fieldwork within Black Rock Coalition (BRC), an organization with major branches in New York City and Los Angeles (not inconsequently industry capitals of country). McMahon was an observer as well as participant in the BRC's production of (21), having been recruited as secretary of organization's New York City branch after her propensity for note taking was observed by other members. With this disclosure McMahon outs herself as fan as well as scholar of scene, refreshing admission in popular scholarship. Her involvement with and belief in organization does not detract from astute analysis of her project; if anything, it enhances it. The book is in chapter form but divides roughly into two parts. Chapters 1 through 5 explore BRC's tactics, aesthetics, and its own scene and intersections with New York club scene in general. The second part, chapters 6 through 10, explores BRC and rock's interactions with institutions of cultural, political, and social power, especially industry. McMahon's observations and explorations of BRC's tactics, theoretical and class underpinnings, and mission in first half of book are fascinating and provocative. The rigor of her analysis of musical scene and its tactics provides model for similar work on other organizations or individuals working against commonsense grain of popular and its institutions. The second half of book is equally well observed and analyzed but suffers in places from lack of complication of certain beliefs reiterated in her study, especially but not solely about vexed intersection of gender and rock. The first two chapters provide theoretical and material background of McMahon's study, clearly introducing themes both of her book and of BRC. McMahon explains how BRC members consciously chose term black rock upon formation of organization in mid-1980s because they saw it as a flexible musical category that could embrace totality of musical production. Moreover, it was political and statement, crafted in part to write blackness back into rock, genre from which performers and audiences had been, for all intents and purposes, expelled by early 1980s, especially from point of view of industry and, consequently, audiences. McMahon perceives as defined by BRC as critical intervention into what was for musicians an impossible situation (8). As McMahon and BRC members see it, had been turned into an oxymoron by industry, audiences, and notions of what constituted authenticity in context. That is, codes of authenticity required that blacks neither listen to nor play music. Part of BRC's goal was to reclaim right of its members to play and, by extension, to participate in any type of cultural and material production they desired rather than confining themselves to artistic categories and prohibitions not of their own making. BRC members, as well as author, were members of what McMahon refers to as post-liberated generation of middle-class Americans who had attended integrated schools, were not part of underclass featured so prominently in (white) media representations, and, importantly for this project, were deep into music (59), especially music. The BRC was therefore much more than an affinity group of like-minded musicians (although it served that purpose); it was crucial site of identity and cultural politics. …

“Race records” and “hillbilly music”: institutional origins of racial categories in the American commercial recording industry

The relationship between artistic boundaries and social boundaries is examined through the construction of the musical categories of “race records” and “hillbilly music” in commercial music. Evidence shows that these categories were less a part of a larger racial project than the institutional and business practices of the early recording industry, though once established they became self-perpetuating.

Perceptions of Lyrics based on Music Category and Perceiver's Race

Perceptions of Lyrics based on Music Category and Perceiver's Race

The Metaphor of Musical Space

Pitch space and Riemannian space offer divergent perspectives on tonal space in general. This article suggests that cognitive metaphor theory offers a means of understanding Riemannian space as a metaphorical mapping from pitch space; as an extension from a “deontic” to an “epistemic” musical category. My approach differs from other theorists of musical metaphor in considering mappings not between musical structure and extra-musical “real” space, but rather mappings between musical categories themselves. I illustrate this claim by reviewing recent writings both on pitch-space and Neo-Riemannian theory, and an analytical example by Chopin.