Popular Style Research Articles

How to name it?, and: Nothing but wind (review)

Reviewed by: How to Name It?, and: Nothing but Wind Katherine Butler Brown (bio) Ilaiyaraaja . How to Name It?Oriental Records, New York, ORI/AAMS CD 115, 275Rs, n.d. Ilaiyaraaja with Hariprasad Chaurasia . Nothing but Wind. Oriental Records, New York, ORI CD 121, 275Rs, n.d. Ilaiyaraaja is a prolific South Indian film composer (5000 songs and more than 840 films), who, according to his website, was also the "first" Asian to compose a symphony with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, London. These two albums repre sent the pinnacle so far of his attempts to create a dialogue between Carnatic and Western classical musics. The results are interesting, although sometimes unsuccessful, and it is clear from the occasional track deriving its impetus from a filmi aesthetic that Ilaiyaraaja must be a film composer of considerable talent, a master of Western popular styles, and clearly deserving of the film-related awards heaped upon him by various Indian institutions. Perhaps, however, he should stick with the milieu he knows best. Ilaiyaraaja is clearly a devoted fan of Bach, Mozart, and the baroque and classical styles in general, with titles like "I Met Bach In My House" and "Mozart I [End Page 153] Love You" clearly indicating the highly specific directions of his inspiration. Of the two albums, How to Name It? is the more accomplished and consistent. The title track superimposes Indian solo instruments (violin, sitar) playing Carnatic ragams over baroque harmonies and structure played by a string orchestra with occasional Carnatic percussion, a combination that produces an often effective synthesis of baroque and Carnatic styles, and which is repre sentative of most tracks on the album. A few tracks have a more obviously filmi quality such as "Chamber Welcomes Thiagaraja" and "Mad Mod Mood Fugue," which is not, in fact, an Indian-inflected baroque fugue, but combines Carnatic violin with funk in a style reminiscent of the highly successful fusion achieved on the 2004 film soundtrack Morning Raga. Perhaps the best track on the album is "(I Met Bach in My House) And We Had a Talk" in which a violinist playing a Carnatic ragam (beginning with a stunning alapanam) duets with another violinist playing the famous Prelude from the Bach E Major Partita, a dialogue one could imagine might even have occurred had those two great composers, Bach and Thyagaraja, ever met. Nothing but Wind is an altogether patchier affair. It seems to be held together stylistically by little more than the fact that the flautist Hariprasad Chaurasia plays on all the tracks. The first two tracks, "Singing Self" and "Mozart I Love You," both non-ironic homages to baroque and classical style, are almost impossible to review objectively. If one judges them according to the standards of Western art music, at their most coherent, they roughly achieve the level of an undergraduate composition exercise, and elsewhere are marred by basic errors in harmonization and clunky transitions between sections. If, however, one judges them as an attempt by a cultural outsider to master a foreign tradition, place his original stamp on it, and synthesize it with his own, "Singing Self " and "Mozart I Love You" are considerably more sophisticated and convincing than many Western composers' and artists' attempts in reverse. Unfortunately, Ilaiyaraaja's efforts here are sullied by some truly bad orchestral string playing: out of tune, rhythmically inaccurate, with poor ensemble, and a fuzzy, muffled tone-quality that may be due to poor-quality instruments. The absolute low point of the album, the third track "Song of Soul," is Indian restaurant muzak of the worst possible kind, complete with ghastly passages of synthesized male falsetto, hurling the listener unwillingly into a world of flock wallpaper, plastic plants, and synthetic-red chicken tikka masala with chips. "Composers Breath" is an improvement, with some accomplished and melodic solo work by Chaurasia, but it nonetheless only occasionally rises above the kind of New Age blandness that should be banished to alternative bookshops. The best one can say of the fi nal track, "Nothing but Wind," an unintentionally hilarious collage of electronic noises and synthesized Bach pastiche, is that unlike the rest of the album, it is at least stylistically consistent with "Song...

Agreements, Allusions, and Constructive Misunderstandings

Agreements, Allusions, and Constructive Misunderstandings

Teaching popular music in Finland: what's up, what's ahead?

This article describes the history and current situation of popular music pedagogy in Finland. While popular music is widely accepted in the curriculum, there are differences in its application in the comprehensive schools and music institutions. Popular styles were first introduced into Finnish music education by secondary school music teachers; however, today the most rapid development in the field appears to be taking place in the professional schools of music. Some aspects and future possibilities of popular music education are examined, with a suggestion that there is more work ahead in the field of general music education. For instance, the didactic implications of different learning cultures of popular music and the musical understandings and practices prevalent in ‘urban’ and ‘electronic’ styles present new challenges for traditionally trained music educators, even those with a popular music background.

Wonderful Town (review)

Reviewed by: Wonderful Town Brian Cockburn Leonard Bernstein. Wonderful Town. DVD. Berliner Philharmoniker /Simon Rattle. With Kim Criswell, Audra McDonald, and Thomas Hampson. [Germany]: EuroArts Music International, 2005. 2052299. $24.99. It can be argued that Leonard Bernstein helped change the face of Broadway. At a time when musical theater was at a crossroads, he and his various collaborators explored new directions and forms, integrated multiple styles of music and dance, and imbued the music, songs, and dance with dramatic life rarely seen. In Wonderful Town (1953), we see Bernstein and his collaborators, Betty Comden and Adolph Green for a second time celebrating Bern-stein's adopted city, New York; the first [End Page 790] time was the successful On the Town (1944). In Wonderful Town, Bernstein infuses a rather traditional musical entertainment with his trademark eclecticism that reaches maturity in West Side Story (1957) and Candide (1956). Wonderful Town is based on the book My Sister Eileen by Ruth McKenney, and subsequently dramatized by Joseph Fields and Jerome Chodorov. Designed as a vehicle for the talented Rosalind Russell, the collaborators create a humorous portrayal of the inhabitants of Greenwich Village. The show follows two Ohio transplants, Eileen and Ruth, as they struggle to make it in the Big Apple as singer and writer, respectively. On their way to success, they encounter a not-so-bright ex-football star, and a hard-nosed magazine editor and a host of unique characters inhabiting Christopher Street. Wonderful Town was revived in 2003 and subsequently closed January 2005 after playing almost the same number of performances as the original opening when it won a Tony award as Best Musical of 1952–3. The EuroArts DVD performance is not staged but retains the exuberance of a Broadway show. Everyone, from the orchestra members to the Rascher Saxophone Quartet, from European Voices (the chorus) to the principal singers, seems to be having a grand time under the direction of an ebullient and often laughing Simon Rattle. Concert venues everywhere could take a cue from the lighting design which becomes an expressive component of the performance. While the video was excellent —the camera shots were well-timed, varied, and tasteful—the producers could have exploited the possibilities of surround sound more fully. Certainly during the musical performance, we hope we are sonically placed in the best seat in the house, which we were. However, the expected spatial separation was minimal and was rarely reflective of the visual element. The principal singers, Kim Criswell (Ruth Sherwood / Violet), Audra McDonald (Eileen Sherwood), Thomas Hampson (Robert Baker), and Brent Barrett (Wreck / Guide / First Editor / Frank Lippincott), successfully walk that fine line between Broadway and opera vocal production which is so often missing in concert performances of light American music theater. European Voices and the soloists from that group are up to the task, including some New Jersey accents! You know when the members of the Berliner Philharmoniker begin to grin, there is magic in the air. The Rascher Saxophone Quartet, added to the pit, assist with that "Big Band" sound. And Simon Rattle is clearly in his element, handling the popular styles with appropriate vigor and finesse. When Rattle encourages the entire Berliner Philharmonie (performers and audience alike) to sing and dance the "Conga" around the theater one is reminded of Bernstein's relationship to his own audiences. I think he would have been pleased! Brian Cockburn James Madison University Copyright © 2006 the Music Library Association, Inc.

Un demi-siècle d'activités lyriques en région toulousaine (1760-1810): Diffusion et appropriation

Lyrical activities in the Toulouse area between 1760 and 1810 are closely related to the historical contemporary events which so deeply transformed French society. They also illustrate the aesthetical tendencies of the time. While the French traditions of baroque tragedie lyrique and opera-ballet still appear important, the more realistic, popular and sentimental style of opera-comique progressively develops. Those different musical tastes can be heard in two precise kinds of places: castles' and palaces' private halls vs. urban public theaters of major cities (Toulouse, of course, but also smaller ones, such as Albi and Cahors). In both cases, the ways in which the region appropriates repertoires mostly imported from Paris lead one to reconsider some preconceptions about Parisian musical supremacy in 19th-century France.

Anglican ‘Establishment’ Reactions to ‘POP’ Church Music in England, 1956–C.1990

The use of popular styles of music in the Church has often proved contentious, and perhaps particularly so in the later twentieth century. Anecdotal evidence abounds of the debate provoked in churches by the introduction of new ‘happy-clappy’ pop-influenced styles, and the supposed wholesale discarding of a glorious heritage of hymnody. In addition, a great deal of literature has appeared elaborating on the inappropriateness of such music. Welcoming a historical study of hymnody in 1996, John Habgood lamented the displacement of traditional hymn singing by ‘trivial and repetitive choruses’. Lionel Dakers, retired Director of the Royal School of Church Music, also saw choruses and worship songs as ‘in many instances little more than trite phrases repeated ad nauseam, often with accompanying body movements’. This paper investigates the reactions of the musical and ecclesiastical establishments to the use of popular music in public worship in the Church of England from 1956 to c. 1990. The period began with a new wave of experimentation epitomized by Geoffrey Beaumont’s Folk Mass and the controversy surrounding it, and ended in the early 1990s, by which time the pop-influenced worship music of the renewal movement had become firmly established in some sections of the Church, with its own figure-heads and momentum.

Music and Mediated Religious Identity: "Jesus Freak"

Contemporary Christian Music (CCM) is a genre that uses popular styles to express religious ideas. "Jesus Freak" (McKeehan & Heimermann, 1995), an enormously successful CCM song, is approached from the perspective of constitutive rhetorical theory. Both lyrics and music are critiqued to determine how the song invites its teen audience to develop shared definitions of Self and Other. Lyrically the song creates a Freak subject position for young Christians that meets mainstream secular judgment with pride and defiant indifference. Musically, a fusion of grunge and rap styles is combined with harmonic and rhythmic composition techniques, such as direct allusions to hit songs by Nirvana and the appropriation of historically non-Christian perfect discords, to demonstrate how being a Christian can be rebellious and cool. Close textual–musical analyses can move us beyond traditional theories of influence derived from linguistic persuasion and into conceptions of mediated and presentational "proof" that more fully account for how contemporary media do ideological work.

Engaging With Adolescent Musicians: Lessons In Song Writing, Cooperation And The Power of Original Music

This article reports a research project that explored the links between original music making, cooperative learning and sociomusical relationships. Our focus in this article is the cooperative learning strategies that emerged from the study and attendant issues such as power sharing, relationships, identity construction and cooperative musical processes. In particular we highlight the role that positive interdependence, the development of a sub cultural identity and original music making have in the formation of a personal musical aesthetic. The participants were twenty-one students from Year Eight to Year Twelve from a rural government secondary college who formed a self-titled group called Jungle Express. This group of 13 to 18 year-olds composed and performed their own fusion of contemporary and popular styles, producing a particular, context driven and immediate sound. The students identified closely with each other in a musical and social sense, as well as with the three staff members who were associated with the group. Through written narratives, interviews and rehearsal recordings the students explored their notions of cooperative learning, power sharing, relationships, identity construction and song writing. Jungle Express provided insight into the possibilities of cooperative music making which honours the experiences of the individual while contributing to the development of a long-term identity. The musical product whilst reflective of both the group membership and the environment, was ultimately concerned with the meaning-making journey of the individual. The findings of this study provide a reflection point on current practice in secondary music classrooms and performing ensembles.

Reproductive Management with Ultrasound Scanner-monitoring System for a High-yielding Commercial Dairy Herd Reared under Stanchion Management Style

The weekly ultrasound scanner (US) observations of reproductive organs in a commercial dairy herd with the popular stanchion style management were conducted for over 26 months. Based on reproductive records, the following were evaluated: 1) the effect of postpartum period commencement of US monitoring on herd reproductive efficacy, and 2) the effectiveness of a US monitoring-based diagnosis and subsequent treatments of reproductive disorders on postpartum reproductive efficiency. The reproductive parameters of cows, which were subjected to US monitoring between Days 30-40 (Day 0 = day of parturition), Days 41-50, Days 51-60, and above Day 61, were compared. The reproductive parameters of cows diagnosed as having reproductive disorders (RD) with US monitoring before or after the first artificial insemination (AI) were also compared. It was found that the day of commencement of US monitoring in cows diagnosed with and without RD significantly affected the period towards the first AI and the open period. In particular, cystic follicles and anoestrus detected either before or after the first AI significantly affected herd reproductive efficiency. The implementation of US monitoring improved reproductive efficiency by reducing the open period and increasing the number of milking cows in the herd. The results of this field trial indicate that the postpartum reproductive management of dairy cows with the use of the US monitoring system is one strategy to improve reproductive efficiency, especially in a high-yielding dairy herd reared stanchion management style. (Asian-Aust. J. Anim. Sci. 2005. Vol 18, No. 7 : 949-956)

Josef Albo (um 1380-1444): Judische Philosophie und christliche Kontroverstheologie in der fruhen Neuzeit (review)

Reviewed by: Josef Albo (um 1380–1444): J¨dische Philosophie und christliche Kontroverstheologie in der frühen Neuzeit George Kohler Sina Rauschenbach . Josef Albo (um 1380–1444): Jüdische Philosophie und christliche Kontroverstheologie in der frühen Neuzeit. Studies in European Judaism 3. Leiden: Brill, 2002. Pp. xvii + 312. There are always only a few possible reasons why a book on a certain subject has not yet been written: no one had the idea so far, no one felt able to handle the subject, or perhaps the subject is simply not interesting enough for a monograph. Sina Rauschenbach claims to have published the first-ever monograph on the last great Jewish philosopher of the Middle Ages, Rabbi Joseph Albo. Albo is known for his participation in the disputation of Tortosa, but it was especially his Sefer ha-iqqarim (Book of Principles), written a decade after this event, which made him one of the most widely read Jewish philosophers of all times. Rauschenbach wants to demonstrate that the success of the Sefer ha-iqqarim was due not only to its popular style but also to the content of Albo's thought. But the overwhelming majority of the historians of Jewish thought have been unable to find much originality in Albo's writings. For instance, Julius Guttmann's classic1 attributes Albo's theory of the three principles (iqqarim) of Judaism to Shimon ben Zemach Duran, and the rest of his system either to Maimonides or to Albo's teacher Hasdai Crescas. And, as if this were not enough, Albo's three iqqarim never found the same acceptance in the Jewish nation as Maimonides' thirteen principles, although they were systematized by Albo with the very intention of replacing the Maimonidean list. In general, Jewish authorities remained opposed to any attempt at establishing dogmas, a fact that Moses Mendelssohn emphasized in 1783 in his Jerusalem, commenting that at least nobody yet seriously denounced (verketzert) Albo for what he wrote in the Sefer ha-iqqarim.2 At this point we might almost answer the opening supposition of this review by choosing the last option—but on a closer look the book turns out to be informative and even innovative. The second part of the subtitle surely raises some interest because Christian theology of the early modern times is not usually connected with research into medieval Jewish philosophy. [End Page 724] Actually, the book consists of three parts: (1) a description of what happened in Tortosa; (2) a paraphrase of the main ideas of the Sefer ha-iqqarim; and (3) the history of the reception of Sefer ha-iqqarim by Christian theologians in early modern times—certainly the most interesting chapter. Rauschenbach is aware of the claim that Albo's system lacks originality, at least are we informed of this in a footnote (p. 6, n. 20). But her own position regarding this reproach remains unclear. In the second chapter, she does not even attempt to trace Albo's doctrines back to their origin. With the exception of the mention of a few all-too-obvious parallels with Maimondes' Guide, the chapter simply concerns itself with the content of the Sefer ha-iqqarim as it is. The reason for proceeding thus becomes obvious once the reader finally reaches the third and most important chapter: here Rauschenbach wants to make claims as to how Christian theologians made use of Albo's theories, approvingly or not. Now she can refer back to the second chapter, which she does at length. But, methodologically, the procedure seems risky. So, for example, Rauschenbach believes that the anti-trinitarian author Matthias Vehe-Glirius, writing in the sixteenth century, adopted exactly Albo's definitions of apostasy and heresy as laid down in the Sefer ha-iqqarim (p. 210). Those definitions, however, are by no means Albo's, for he himself had borrowed them with no alteration from Maimonides' Hilkhot teshuva, 3.9. Even more obvious is the case of the Catholic theologian Joseph de Voisin, who is said by Rauschenbach to have borrowed "Albo's observation" (p. 230) that the authenticity of the Torah is based on the presence of a whole people during the revelation at Mount Sinai, a thought as...

Hearing Kaleidoscopes: Embedded Grouping Dissonance in Electronic Dance Music

The rhythmic and metrical qualities of electronic dance music (EDM) are clearly among its most prominent and appreciated features. Yet scholarship on rhythm, as well as popular discourse surrounding EDM, often frames the pervasively duple metres that characterize popular dance-based styles as simplistic and limited in capacity. Given the allure of EDM’s temporal qualities, how do musicians devise creative solutions to the constraints of its duple metrical organization? This article addresses this question through a consideration of embedded grouping dissonance, one of several distinctive rhythmic phenomena found in EDM. In theorizing embedded grouping dissonance, the article both builds upon and expands recent music-theoretical formulations of ‘metrical dissonance’, which describe similar occurrences without addressing this specific phenomenon. It then situates embedded grouping dissonance in relation to EDM’s technologically mediated means of production, arguing that this rhythmic technique exemplifies recurring principles of design that shape and reflect the aesthetics of electronic dance music on a broad scale.

The Reconstruction of a Political Icon: Shi Lu’s Painting Fighting in Northern Shaanxi

As an instance of semiotic interpretation of political art, this article rereads a painting created during the 1950s by Shi Lu that depicts the Chinese Communist leader, Mao Zedong. The author identifies the artist’s visual references to traditional Chinese landscape painting and the embodied traditional values, differentiates the work from the popular revolutionary art style of the same age, and argues that this act of referencing problematizes the dominant ideology in a politically highly charged historical context by reconstructing the commonly depicted political icon Mao through dislocated style and scale. The interpretation demonstrates how signifiers both in the forms of text and memory can interfere with current cultural drive and rename the signified through subtle variations.

We All Came Out Of Africa Singing And Dancing And We Have Been Doing It Ever Since

All humans originally came out of Africa “singing and dancing”. And while in many cultures singing and dancing have continued to be co-equal in performance, social, political, economic and environmental factors have conspired to produce a myriad of vocal styles and performance practices across the planet. The indigenous people of North America, especially those of the Pacific Northwest, the shepherd singers of Tuva in Mongolia, the Inuit `throat singers' of northern Canada, the Maori haka performances, the Korean p'ansori, the traditions of western art music and the popular music styles of the contemporary entertainment media illustrate the enormous variety of vocal postures of which the human vocal tract and breathing system are capable. This importance of specific environment, sociopolitical and religious belief systems on the development and maintenance of performance practices is described and explained, covering the range of singing styles listed above.

Alienation Incorporated: ‘F*** the Mainstream Music’ in the Mainstream

This article is about one of the most popular and profitable music styles in the United States and internationally, one that gives a loud, hostile and otherwise alienated ‘finger’ to the ‘mainstream’. Drawing on four years of concert fieldwork and extensive music media analysis, the author illustrates how self-labeled ‘white trash’, ‘rejects’, ‘failures’ and ‘freaks’ delineate their alienation experiences in lyrics and stage performances, and how anti-commercialistic youth, seeking something ‘different’ and/or ‘real’ in a society of the spectacle, consume alienation as authenticity. The ultimate critique of this article is that alienation incorporated - or the commodification of alienated artists and their alienation experiences, and the assimilation of potentially troublesome and estranged anti-commercialistic consumer youth - not only transforms alienation (at both points of production and consumption) into a source of profit, but also forestalls more conscious, directed and pragmatic avenues of rebellion. This article extends and elaborates work on spectacle, consumer society, the ‘globalization of nothing’ and the ‘commodification of dissent’.

The Pan Am Terminal at Idlewild/Kennedy Airport and the Transition from Jet Age to Space Age

The aircraft’s “indictment” of architecture continues to the present day, its warping of perceptual space and time having altered our conceptions of global, urban, and architectural environments. Architects, while inspired by the scale and technological intensity of the aircraft, rarely have risen to its challenge, and it is uncommon to find an air terminal that enhances, rather than diminishes, the experience of travel.1 Yet terminal buildings continue to be seen by airlines as opportunities for positioning and branding, since they are the only permanent fixtures on the airport skyline—along with hangars at the edge of an airport—to which their logos are affixed. There is a long history of “flagship” terminal buildings that attempt to crystallize the imagery and experience of a particular airline, and to celebrate the technology and speed of its aircraft. Terminal buildings thus are convenient sources of cultural archeology because the mode of their obsolescence gives us glimpses of the relationships between corporate and popular culture, technology and style, and our vehicles and the cities they inhabit or transgress. Nowhere is this palimpsest of aviation and architecture more suggestive than at New York’s Kennedy Airport, where an “encyclopedic” collection of terminal structures was built between 1955 and 1975. While often successful in achieving a measure of popular acclaim, all of the original terminals have either undergone major reconstruction as the requirements of air travel have changed, or been demolished to make way for a more contemporary intervention. The earliest of these radical transformations occurred at the Pan American terminal, built from 1957–1960, and modified only eight years later from 1968–1973. The original terminal, an elliptical concrete parasol with a crystalline set of passenger spaces beneath, had been an icon of jet-age travel, and was the centerpiece of a larger campaign by the airline to present itself as the most sophisticated and technologically progressive travel company in the world. Yet the changing exigencies of airline operations in the “jumbo jet” era forced Pan Am to replace the terminal with a labyrinthine complex of 1 See, for example, Norman Foster’s paean to the 747 in Ruth Rosenthal and Maggie Toy, Building Sights (London: Academy Editions, 1995).

Arkansas Listings in the National Register of Historic Places

The Courthouses of Architect Clyde A. Ferrell ARKANSAS HAS BEEN BLESSED with more than its fair share of gifted architects. A. O. Clarke, E. Fay Jones, and Charles Thompson are just a few of the more widely known. But other less celebrated, yet extremely talented, architects have also had a great impact on Arkansas's built environment. Clyde A. Ferrell is of them. Ferrell was bom March 10, 1879, in Augusta, As a child he moved to Little Rock, where he entered the public school system and graduated from Peabody High School in June 1897. In his application to the Arkansas State Board of Architects, Ferrell left the higher education section blank, indicating that he never received formal training as an architect. However, his work experience provided him with more than sufficient instruction. Before opening his own practice, Ferrell worked for thirteen years as a draftsman for prominent Little Rock architect Frank Gibb. Gibb designed ten of Arkansas's county courthouses and a multitude of other buildings, including the Joseph Taylor Robinson House in Little Rock. Working for Gibb certainly allowed Ferrell to participate in projects far exceeding the scope of anything in which he would have been involved as a student. The largest body of Ferrell's documented work consists of various types of public buildings. Ferrell seems to have specialized in the design of school buildings. Seven of them have been documented by the Arkansas Historic Preservation Program, and three were subsequently listed on the National Register of Historic Places, including the Arkansas City High School (listed October 10, 1984), Portia School (listed December 13, 1978), and Washington High School (listed June 20, 1972). While Ferrell's buildings are some of the most attractive historic school facilities in the state and are exemplary models of school design, they typically follow a standardized plan. Most Ferrell schools are easily distinguished by a projecting central bay topped with a classically inspired pediment. Other common features include brick quoins at the building's corners and diamond-shaped limestone inlays dividing the first-story and second-story windows. Unquestionably, though, the most significant structures Ferrell designed are three county courthouses, each of which is unique in the state. In 1911, Cleburne County chose plans prepared by Ferrell for the design of its new courthouse in Heber Springs. Construction was not yet underway when the quorum court reversed itself and halted the project. Construction remained on hold until late 1913, when the court levied a special one-mill tax to pay for the building. The county moved the existing wood-frame courthouse to a nearby lot in order to build the new on the already established square and, in 1914, hired Ferrell to supervise construction. Completed in 1915, the courthouse cost nearly $65,000. Ferrell had produced a beautiful example of the Colonial Revival style that was and remains the architectural gem of the county. The brick-constructed building is covered with a flat roof featuring an octagonal dome that is the courthouse's most distinguishing feature. The building's symmetrical facade is dominated by a two-story portico that extends from a recessed center bay and is supported by four massive Doric columns. The rear of the building is identical in design to the front, with the building's side elevations being much more restrained. Ferrell did an excellent job with his first courthouse commission. The building continues to serve as Cleburne County's courthouse and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on June 12, 1976, with the nomination calling it one of the more architecturally significant courthouses in Arkansas. In 1922, Ferrell received his next commission to build a courthouse, this time in Mountain View. Ferrell chose the Craftsman style for the Stone County Courthouse. Although Craftsman was probably the most commonly used style for residential buildings designed during the 1920s, the Stone County Courthouse holds the distinction of being the only of Arkansas's more than seventy historic courthouses to feature the popular style. …

Developing a Guitar-Based Approach in Nordoff-Robbins Music Therapy

ABSTRACT: This article addresses the use of guitar in Nordoff-Robbins music therapy. Nordoff-Robbins has long been identified as an exclusively piano-based model and, as such, the extant literature has not closely examined the use of guitar within the approach. A two-year course of music therapy at the New York Nordoff-Robbins Center with a young boy diagnosed with Pervasive Developmental Disorder will be followed with the therapist utilizing guitar as the primary instrument. Interventions influenced by the guitar's unique characteristics will be illustrated as will the integration of styles often associated with guitar such as rock, funk, country, and folk. The client's clinical process and the therapist's musical choices and rationales will be discussed in the context of key principles of Nordoff-Robbins music therapy. As only the third person to focus on guitar as my primary instrument during the certification training program at the New York Nordoff-Robbins Center, I felt as if I needed to integrate 40-plus years of Nordoff-Robbins history with my identity as a musician. Piano was firmly established as the definitive instrument of Nordoff-Robbins music therapy while I was a guitarist/singer with stylistic roots primarily in rock, folk, and blues. The extraordinary command (both technically and clinically) in Paul Nordoff's classically influenced piano approach seemed to establish a legacy so formidable as to appear practically impossible for a primary therapist to play another instrument and still call it Nordoff-Robbins music therapy. The acceptance of guitar in Nordoff-Robbins was notably influenced by the work of New York Center co-directors, Alan Turry and Kenneth Aigen, documented in Aigen's (2001, 2002) publications examining the clinical application of popular styles such as rock, jazz, blues, and country. These included examples of work with guitar and bass guitar, offering important insights into the use of these instruments and contemporary American idioms in Nordoff-Robbins. Aigen (2001) noted that a major principle underlying the Nordoff-Robbins approach to music therapy is the belief that a musical style, rhythm, scale, harmony, mode, or idiom can, in and of itself, be a clinical intervention. He wrote: It is not as if there is an inherently non-musical experience which one is conveying through a particular musical form; rather, the musical form itself is the intervention (p. 16). Surely, this key concept was not exclusive to the piano. Like the piano keyboard, which moves horizontally (left to right or vice versa), the guitar can produce a chromatic scale upon any of one of its six strings. However, the guitar includes a vertical element, as well. In standard tuning, the vertical intervals of the open strings move in perfect fourths from the sixth to the third string. The interval from the third to the second string is a major third and a perfect fourth appears, once again, from the second to the first string. This three-dimensional matrix, as jazz guitarist Pat Martino (personal communication, May 15, 2004), has depicted the guitar fingerboard, produces its characteristic geometric chord shapes and multi-string melodic patterns. The guitar's distinctive timbre, produced by the direct action of fingers or guitar pick on the strings, responds to light touches, as well as a vibrant, percussive approach which can generate complex rhythms. Its strumming, finger picking, and single-string approaches may incorporate expressive techniques unique to string instruments such as vibrato, rapid picking tremolo effects, bending of notes, the use of harmonics, and altering tone quality by the style of picking. A guitarist can also utilize various alternate tunings which produce rich, modal harmonies. Finally, the guitar's portable size allows for freedom of movement and, often, closer proximity to the client than the piano. These qualities of guitar can lead to vastly different musical and clinical decisions than the piano. …

From the Erotic to the Demonic: On Critical Musicology (review)

Reviewed by: From the Erotic to the Demonic: On Critical Musicology Nasser Al-Taee From the Erotic to the Demonic: On Critical Musicology. By Derek B. Scott , Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. [ 258 p. ISBN 0-19-515195-X. $65 (hbk.); 0-19-515196-8. $35 (pbk.).] Music examples, illustrations, index. It does not seem all that long ago that Susan McClary said "when cultural-studies methods first appeared in musicology fifteen years ago, they triggered a storm of polemics that sometimes overshadowed the important issues being raised. As the canon wars recede, however, scholars are finding it possible to focus on the concerns that led them to cultural criticism in the first place: the study of music and its political meanings" (Western Music and Its Others: Difference, Representation, and Appropriation in Music, ed. Georgina Born and David Hesmondhalgh [Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000], back cover). In her forward to the volumes in the Routledge series Critical and Cultural Musicology, Martha Feldman claimed that "Musicology has undergone a sea change in recent years." Indeed, Derek Scott's book can be seen as a continuation of a growing body of critical musicology dedicated to examining issues that have been marginalized by musicologists such as ideology, identity, gender, and racial representation in Western music. To this end, Scott asserts that musicology is no longer an autonomous field of academic inquiry, but has entered a phase of "postdisciplinarity" (p. 4), and a vibrant intellectual movement in the interdisciplinary field of the arts, sciences, and humanities. Scott embraces the notion that the rise of critical musicology was advanced by the collapse of the binary divide between classical and popular, which broadened the scope of musicological inquiry to topics such as gender, race, identity, sexuality, and narrative. In doing so, Scott is committed to social semiotics advanced by Richard Leppert, Susan McClary, and Lawrence Kramer and puts forth a series of exemplary essays articulated in a rich, engaging, and provocative interdisciplinary style. The book is divided into four parts, each with two chapters. Part 1 concerns gender, sexuality, and musical style rooted in social practices. The first chapter deals with erotic representation from Monteverdi to Mae West. Building on McClary's work on seventeenth-century narrative, Scott analyzes "Pur ti miro" from Monteverdi's L'incoronazione di Poppea (1642) as a representation of the mutual arousal thought necessary for sexual reproduction in the seventeenth century, to the stereotypes dominating American erotic songs of the 1920s and 1930s in what he refers to as the "predator," Mae West, the "innocent," Helen Kane, and the "prim and proper" Ann Suter (pp. 27-29). The second chapter examines eroticism in the Victorian era. Scott argues for disjunctions in representation rather than universals or constants that can be traced through "evolution" or "progress." The author contends that music can be negotiated, building on conventions rooted in style codes and social practices. Part 2 concerns the working of ideology in relation to popular music. Scott examines representation of the American Indian in popular styles of Western music from the eighteenth century to the present. He thus moves from sexuality to ethnicity in order to show how cultural difference is represented and how shifting perceptions of the Native American can be related to changes [End Page 140] in attitude to the "civilized" and the natural world. Scott traces the appropriation of the Native American from Rameau's harpsichord piece Les sauvages (1725) to J. P. Richardson's pop song "Running Bear" (1960). Here we are confronted with a host of signifiers delineating the "enemy" as alien and whisky drinking or courageous and wise, reflecting shifting political and cultural changes. Scott claims that even films that attempt to depict Native Americans in a more positive image, such as Dances with Wolves (1990), are no less dehumanizing and have a tendency to imply that Native Americans are unable to cope with the grim practicalities of modern life. Throughout the chapter, Scott emphasizes the fact that the construction of the Native American in Western history informs the way white Americans and Europeans build their own sense of identity and reveals little or nothing about the people who are supposedly the subject of those...

Front and Back Covers. Volume 20, Number 4. August 2004

Front and back cover caption, volume 20 issue 4Second‐hand clothing.A master tailor, his son (on the right) and two relatives, all making women's office wear and chitenge (printed cloth) outfits, Kamwala shopping centre, Lusaka, Zambia. This photo illustrates Karen Tranberg Hansen's article on second‐hand clothing in this issue (pp. 3‐9).Zambians from all walks of life like to dress well, and this results in a thriving clothing industry in all sectors, from imported new and second‐hand clothing and locally manufactured items to bespoke garments made by small‐scale tailors. Such tailors play an important role in fulfilling clothing needs and desires that are not met by new and second‐hand ready‐made clothing. Male and female tailors ply their trade in public markets, shop corridors, and from private homes in cities and small towns across the country. Many of them have engaged actively with the challenge posed by the import of second‐hand clothing, 'beating' it, in the words of one master tailor, through speciality production.Diversifying his production into popular styles of women's wear, the master tailor in this photo trained his son and two younger relatives. They are kept busy with the changes each season in fashions in women's two‐piece 'office wear' and chitenge wear (which has become very popular in recent years thanks to the ready availablity, in an open economy, of good‐quality and attractive printed cloth imported from South and Southeast Asia and from the Far East). 'Office wear' sees changes in the length and style of shirts and tops, and in the detailing of decorative trim, while fashions in chitenge wear show varying skirt styles and lengths, fitted or loose tops, elaborate trim, and highly constructed sleeves. Zambia's example demonstrates that the much maligned second‐hand clothing import trade can coexist comfortably with local initiatives in clothing production.

Bartolomé Cairasco de Figueroa y el auto sacramental: <i>La Comedia del Alma</i>

In spite of its title, Comedia del Alma , by Bartolome Cairasco de Figueroa, is an allegorical religious play. This literary work not only is an inusual testimony of this gender in Canarian Islands; it's also one of the best allegorical religious plays of the Spanish Renaissance. Comedia del Alma alternates between humor and seriousness, abstract ideas and humanization, learned and popular style, verse and prose. However, its principal characteristic concerns the allusions which the characters make to the reality close to the audience and the fierce attack launder on the Canarian society.