Vernacular Styles Research Articles

Kajian Arsitektur Neo Vernakular pada Museum Negeri di Kota Bengkulu

Currently, the development of knowledge and technology is advancing rapidly, resulting in civilizations and historical legacies being less regarded and appearing outdated. A permanent establishment that engages in the collection, conservation, and research of tangible objects for the purposes of study and tourism is called a museum. One of the famous museums in Bengkulu is the Bengkulu State Museum, which falls under the category of a historical museum. Historical museums typically reflect the culture of the region, which can be observed through the details, forms, and architectural styles present in the Bengkulu State Museum. These details, forms, and styles are studied using a neo-vernacular architectural approach, which adopts elements and principles from traditional vernacular styles but with contemporary interpretations. The findings and discussions from this study can be adapted and applied to other cultural buildings in the city of Bengkulu, thereby creating a harmonious unity among cultural structures. Qualitative data is used in this research, gathered through methods such as observation, interviews, and literature studies.

Thresholds of Architectural Morphology of Yoruba Buildings in Southwest Nigeria till the Millenia

The literary materials on Yoruba architecture that are more common are descriptive. They dwell mostly on the massing of units, individual configurations within buildings and cultural patterns in ornamentation. The direct links between the living spaces and their socio-cultural implications are emphasized to explain the origin of the forms. The morphological chronology in the building patterns is regarded as vernacularisation processes especially from the traditional patterns to the vernacular traditions. There are hardly any publications of Yoruba architectural buildings beyond the later vernacular patterns like the Afro-Brazilian style. While these volumes of literature are mostly limited to the traditional and vernacular styles, the ethno-acculturation of more contemporary and foreign building patterns like the "international" and the "postmodern" styles into the body of indigenous architectural building patterns of the Yoruba of Southwest Nigeria are not being investigated and published. The culture of a people is preserved in their architecture. If the culture of the Yoruba is preserved in their buildings, the cross-pollination of the Yoruba culture with different inputs from foreign cultures should be evident in the new indigenous buildings that are evolving up till the end of the twentieth century. This chapter material has organized the different lines of thought in the morphology of indigenous architectural building patterns of the Yoruba into a continuum that extends beyond the limits of the current body of literature on the topic. It attempts to decipher the new forms and elements of the buildings of later Yoruba indigenous architecture up till the turn of the twentieth century. The emphasis is on the definition of newer building patterns that can be termed as "indigenous" to the Yoruba culture in Southwest Nigeria. Having increased the ambit of the Yoruba architecture concerning the building patterns beyond the exposition of the previous publications, the current surcease on the morphology of Yoruba architecture in print can be broken to open up more research and publications on contemporary thresholds of the indigenous Yoruba architecture. The chapter is concluded with a guide on the identity of buildings of indigenous architecture of the Yoruba even within the morass of foreign building patterns that crowd the Yoruba towns in Southwest Nigeria.

Jazz Places: How Performance Spaces Shape Jazz History

Jazz Places: How Performance Spaces Shape Jazz History

Dancing Revolution: Bodies, Space and Sound in American Cultural History, by Christopher J. Smith

<i>Dancing Revolution: Bodies, Space and Sound in American Cultural History</i>, by Christopher J. Smith

Beyond the ‘Futureless Future’: Edward O. Bland, Afro-Modernism and The Cry of Jazz

The Cry of Jazz, a “thesis film” from 1959 directed by Edward O. Bland, is a long-neglected landmark in black independent cinema recognized today not for its theories about jazz but for its contentious racial politics. Bland, however, was a composer and music arranger, not a professional filmmaker, and the astringency of his film’s racial claims emerges from a particular theoretical approach to the formal structures of jazz music and their historical evolution. This article explores the relationship between musical form and racial identity as presented in The Cry of Jazz. Emphatically insisting on the music as an African American mode of expression, the film develops a critical musicology of jazz that effectively transposes Frankfurt School-like social claims about capitalist dehumanization to American conditions of racial domination. In doing so, however, Bland also argues that any further advance of African American musical culture depends on a sharp break with jazz traditions as well as the destruction of the ghetto. The result is not only a more uncompromising contribution to 1960s-era black cultural radicalism than is typically recognized but also a distinctive reformulation of the Afro-modernist aesthetic. By linking racial change in Jim Crow America to an aesthetic fusion of avant-garde classical and African American vernacular styles, The Cry of Jazz puts forward a high-modernist, composer-centered conception of black art music as cultural emancipation.

A Documentation Review of Yoruba Indigenous Architectural Morphology

The indigenous architecture of the Yoruba which is the summation of the traditional, the vernacular and the contemporary ethno-acculturation of contemporary styles has not received a robust level of reporting from recent publications. This study was carried out with the sole aim of organizing the various lines of thought into a continuum for defining the evolution of the Yoruba architecture in the simplest way. A search was conducted in the Social Science Citations Index and Google Scholar to sift out the publications with “Yoruba Architecture” and “Southwest Nigeria Architecture” as search words. Thirty relevant publications of the sixty-seven publications that related to the topic among others were selected for further scrutiny. It was discovered that most of the publications were descriptive and eclectic in their analysis. They sought to explain the architecture basically as a spatial product of the socio-cultural demands of the society. The traditional and vernacular styles are well documented and easily explained by this approach. There was however very little attempt to decipher the current threshold of the indigenous architecture in the face of the overwhelming influence of the postmodern and contemporary building styles that are common in Yoruba towns of recent. Keywords: International style, post vernacular architecture, postmodern architecture, traditional architecture, vernacular architecture, thresholds. DOI: 10.7176/JAAS/66-05 Publication date: July 31 st 2020

Review: Architecture and Urbanism in the French Atlantic Empire: State, Church, and Society, 1604–1830, by Gauvin Alexander Bailey

Gauvin Alexander Bailey Architecture and Urbanism in the French Atlantic Empire: State, Church, and Society, 1604–1830 Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 640 pp., 7 maps, 287 color illus. $75 (cloth), ISBN 9780773553149 My reading of Gauvin Alexander Bailey's hefty and beautifully illustrated tome on French colonial architecture was interrupted by my participation in a conference in one of France's former colonial capitals, Saint-Louis, Senegal. Given that the title of the conference was Colonial Cities in Global Perspective, I expected to see some synergy with Bailey's book, but I also assumed there would be little obvious overlap.1 Only a couple of the papers delivered at the conference touched on architecture, and none with the range or depth of Bailey's discussions of ideology, buildings, and labor. However, I was struck by the ways that the physical landscape of Saint-Louis evoked the critical gaps that Bailey describes between French ideals, imagination, and reality. While the history of Saint-Louis continues to be touted for the sake of tourism and research, the city is also a resolutely Senegalese one where colonial architectural forms can be obscured by the practices of everyday life. One of Bailey's main goals is to trace the disjuncture between French attempts to glorify state and church through architecture on one hand and the violent realities of colonialism on the other. His first couple of chapters outline French ideologies about urbanism and architecture. Chapters 3–7 then examine the history of builders, contractors, and artisans, including Amerindians, Africans, and enslaved and free people of color, as well as French civilian and royal architects.2 Chapters 8–11 focus on urbanism and planned cities. In the final section of the book (chapters 12–16), Bailey looks closely at changing secular and ecclesiastical architecture in the French colonial context, including the development of vernacular styles such as the open gallery or veranda that assumed particular cultural meaning and significance in France's Atlantic empire. On several occasions during the conference in Senegal, certain buildings in the city immediately reminded …

Fighting words? Joning as conflict talk and identity performance among African American preadolescents

This study examines how preadolescent African American students in Washington, D.C., used a linguistic practice called ‘joning,’ a style of verbal play similar to ritual insults, in peer interactions. Sociolinguists have focused on how children socialize each other into vernacular styles appropriate for peer group use but often assume that they disalign with social and linguistic norms for classroom behavior. Drawing from a nine‐month ethnographic study that the author conducted in an after‐school program, this article analyzes the structure and function of joning as a vernacular style of African American Vernacular English and its uses in constructing classroom identities. Joning often facilitated student learning, but it was perceived as a socially and physically risky linguistic practice because of its uses as conflict talk in the local community. Focusing on preadolescence as a key stage of language socialization, this article shows how minority students modify peer‐learned linguistic practices to pursue academic success on their own terms.

The fifty-two hand blocks re-framed: the rehabilitation of a vernacular martial art

From the late 1980s, a cluster of related African-American vernacular fighting styles became a focus of contention among martial artists. Over the next twenty years, evidence drawn from popular culture, social science, and sport validated the existence of vernacular styles such as Jailhouse Rock and the 52s. This paper examines the recent ‘re-framing’ of the 52s as a heritage art, a uniquely African-American expression for cultivating health, fitness, and ethnic pride, as well as the development of a structured, culturally-based curriculum which began in order to ensure its embodied preservation.

The durability of building materials under a changing climate

Weathering of materials leads to degradation of the fabric of buildings which if left unchecked will lead to an increase in the rate, and possibly severity, of degradation. Adjustments to maintenance regimes could accommodate marginal changes to degradation rate. However, for significant increases in degradation rate, adaptations may be required. Globally, any new deterioration mechanisms are unlikely. However, in the future previously insignificant problems may start to become significant at a local level, for which there is a lack of local knowledge or experience. Adaptation in the context of existing buildings is a means to further protect the existing fabric, to consolidate performance and control the rate of deterioration. This adaptation goes beyond the scope of enhanced maintenance. For historic buildings, there will be tension between the need to conserve the building and simultaneously adapt in the face of increased climate change driven weathering. Impact studies are needed to identify priorities for adaptation by identifying the scale and impact of degradation‐related defects for the future building stock. Such studies need to be integrated with authoritative information on projected future climate. Adaptation of building design is needed to ensure new buildings consider performance in both current and future climates. A whole‐life approach to building design is needed. To achieve this building standards, building codes need to be developed which consider future climate design. Traditional vernacular styles may offer an opportunity for learning design lessons and adapting design practices that could help facilitate appropriate climate protection. WIREs Clim Change 2016, 7:590–599. doi: 10.1002/wcc.398This article is categorized under: Assessing Impacts of Climate Change &gt; Evaluating Future Impacts of Climate Change

The Role of Decorative Features in the Endurance of Vernacular Architecture in Kinnaur, Himachal Pradesh, India

The remote Himalayan region of Kinnaur in northwestern India is known for its carved wooden homes with decorative features. Relatively recent environmental policies have prompted limitations on wood collection. This, coupled with an increase in access to modern building materials, has resulted in dramatic changes in vernacular housing styles. Landscape analysis and interviews reveal that house form, building methods, and construction materials are all changing. However, decorative features are among the last remaining characteristics of the traditional house. This paper argues that small‐scale architectural features are a significant part of an enduring vernacular landscape and allow a region to preserve traditional styles and identity, while also moving forward as a modernizing society.

The Asian American Writing Movement and Black Radicalism

This article reconsiders the genesis and formation of Asian American literature by focusing less on the Chin-Kingston debate and more on the impact of Black radicalism and the genre of antiracist anthologies. I explore Aiiieeeee! An Anthology of Asian-American Writers and Yardbird Reader 3 to examine the centrality of Black cultural revolution for the rise of Asian American literature, and the works of multiethnic anthologies within cultural nationalisms and emergent multiethnic movements. During the post–civil rights era of racial realignment, Black radical thought is the counterpoint to forced Asian ethnic assimilation; this Asian-Black sensibility had challenged an uncritical complicity with white supremacy, which had suppressed Black revolution and modeled Asian America. In Aiiieeeee!, the editors use the vernacular languages, performance styles, and oppositional consciousness of Black masculinity as a means to expose the contradictions of post–civil rights racial formations that disunite Asian and Black communities. In Yardbird Reader 3, the institutional and homosocial bonds between Ishmael Reed and Frank Chin became a crucial relationship to solidify the Asian American Writing Movement and multiethnic collaborations through Afro-Asian connections. Both works carved a niche in U.S. national culture by conceptualizing new models of multiethnicity and subsequently birthed a germinal literary sensibility.

Bernard Herrmann

Introducing a special issue of Popular Music History honoring, on his centenary, the great American film composer Bernard Herrmann, this essay explores the complex and conflicted relation Herrmann had to the world of ‘popular’ music—his great interest in its history, yet the distance he kept from contemporary popular styles. Among matters discussed are: his partnership with Alfred Hitchcock and its breakup over Hitchcock’s insistence on the inclusion of a ‘pop song’ for the 1966 film Torn Curtain; the scores to The Wrong Man and North by Northwest; and Herrmann’s attempts to write Broadway musicals. In the process, comparison is made to music by Henry Mancini and Max Steiner—among others. The essay suggests that Eli Siegel’s philosophy of Aesthetic Realism can shed crucial light on both the music and life of Herrmann; in particular it can make sense of the anguish Herrmann had on the question of whether his artistic self-expression could include contemporary vernacular styles of music, or needed to exclude them. The essay concludes with a brief discussion of the term ‘classic’, and also of current methodology in the field of ‘popular music studies’.

Social relationships and shifting languages in Northern Thailand1

This paper explores how speakers’ understandings of the conduct of social relationships mediate changing and socially distinctive syncretic language practices in a Northern Thai community. Although a shift away from vernacular (Kam Muang) speech styles to Standard Thai was emblematically tied to young and urban speakers in nostalgic discourses, syncretic speech styles and metalinguistic discourses also reflected local and socially positioned understandings of institutional roles and social relationships. I argue that scholars of language change and shift should foreground the mediating role of social relationships in speakers’ uses and understandings of their communicative repertoires across multiple timescales.

The Adoption of Brick in Urban Staffordshire: The Experience of Newcastle-under-Lyme, 1665–1760

The study considers those practical factors which may have affected personal and community decisions to build in brick in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It is generally considered that provincial brick production before 1760 was traditional in operation, hindered by transport costs and serving a market which was too small to act as a spur to capital investment. How did would-be builders therefore obtain bricks in communities which did not possess a resident brickmaker? A unique response by the authorities of Newcastle-under-Lyme was the financing of a municipal brick kiln. Paradoxically, this civic enterprise, together with the corporation's policy of restrictive housing leases and the lack of investment by the town's other major landowner, Lord Gower, proved disincentives to the employment of brick and coincided to restrict fashionable brick buildings to a small minority of independent townsfolk. In Newcastle therefore the transformation from timber-framed vernacular styles to the more uniform, brick-built, classically inspired style which nationally characterises so much urban building in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was a slow and hesitant process.

Official and Vernacular Public History: Historical Anniversaries and Commemorations in Newcastle, NSW

The city of Newcastle commemorated two bicentenaries within the space of seven years. In 2004, the city marked 200 years since the permanent establishment of the settlement on 30 March 1804. But 2004 was not the city’s first bicentennial. In 1997, Newcastle celebrated the 1797 journey of Lieutenant John Shortland, who named and sketched the Hunter River and brought back samples of coal to Sydney. These anniversaries, and earlier ones such as Newcastle’s centennial in 1897 and its sesqui-centennial in 1947, were crucial moments of history making in the public sphere. History was evoked to celebrate progress, encourage civic loyalty and, more recently, to emphasise the city’s transition into a post-industrial era.&#x0D; &#x0D; This article will explore the way in which commemorative dates in Newcastle’s history were interpreted, utilised and presented to the general public. It will examine how history, heritage, politics and policy come together to use the past in a public way. Utilising US historian John Bodnar’s terms, the shift in the themes and tenor of public history in Newcastle over this period has been from an ‘official’ to a more ‘vernacular’ style. Official public history emphasised unitary notions of progress while vernacular styles presented more diverse and occasionally more critical versions of public history. By the time of the 2004 commemorative events there was more scope for active popular participation. Newcastle public history was being nourished by community groups often with conflicting notions of public history, generating a multivalent, multilayered sense of the past, though older themes persisted with remarkable durability.&#x0D; &#x0D; In a city where ‘history’ has such an ambivalent position, large-scale historical commemorations make for intriguing analysis. After a review of the principal themes in the Newcastle commemorations of 1897, 1947, and 1997, I consider the 2004 ‘Newcastle 200’ programme. In particular, I will be considering my own movement from an apparently objective historical analyst of the earlier commemorative events to a participant in the history-making process in the 2004 program.

Voices of the Civil Rights Movement: Black American Freedom Songs, 1960-1966 (review)

music recor· Reviewed by GavinJames Campbell, MusicEditor Roscoe Holcomb, The High Lonesome Sound Smithsonian Folkways, 1998 cd 40104, $14 This cd highlights material from three previously released recordings ofRoscoe Holcomb (19 1 1—198 1 ), a native of Daisy, Perry County, Kentucky. Brought together and put into context byJohn Cohen, the material reflects Holcomb's talents as both instrumentalist and singer. Holcomb merged elements ofcommercial blues, Old Regular Baptist singing, and traditional eastern Kentucky vernacular styles to create what Cohen describes as a "high lonesome sound." One listen to this cd will underscore the aptness of Cohen's label. The soaring, haunting vocals , whether a cappella or accompanied by banjo or guitar, starde the listener into attention, and Holcomb never lets go. Particularly noteworthy is a stunning rendition of"Willow Tree": "It's ifI were some litde sparrow / had litde wings, and I could fly / It's I would light by the side of my own true lover / and there I'd sit till the day I die." A delightful banjo piece, "little Gray Mule," and a version of "House of the Rising Sun" make this a wonderful recording. Voices of the Civil Rights Movement: Black American Freedom Songs, 1960-1966 Smithsonian Folkways, 1997 cd 40084, $21 Reviews ? 1 1 When Lyndon Johnson wanted to signal both Congress and the nation that he was determined to pass civil rights legislation, he declared, "we shall overcome." Quoting a well-known "freedom song," Johnson demonstrated how powerfully these songs worked on the national conscience. The re-release of Voices ofthe Civil Rights Movement reminds us anew of how central music was to the movement's success. This two-disc set is a wide-ranging selection ofrecordings made at mass meetings, as well as some made by more formal vocal ensembles. Bernice Johnson Reagon's extensive liner notes explain how black vernacular traditions melded with the struggle's demands to create a unique body of song. Her selections amply display the movement's creative breadth, encompassing both the spoken and the sungword. Thus, we hear not only songs, but chants and sermons as well. Simply reading about how music enlivened and emboldened the movement's participants is not enough. This set fully recaptures the power and righteousness of those "marching on to freedom land." Don Rigsby, A Vision Sugar Hill, 1998 cd 3873,115 Sugar Hill Records, based in Durham, North Carolina, is approaching its twentieth anniversary, and Don Rigsby's inaugural solo album is cause to celebrate the label's longevity. This bluegrass gospel album brisdes witii talent. Rigsby's considerable abilities as a singer and on mandolin are supplemented by standouts like Ricky Skaggs, The Isaacs, and Ralph Stanley. Indeed, Stanley fans will find much to appreciate in Rigsby's album, which not only includes three classic Stanley Brothers tunes, but also features Ralph Stanley on lead vocals for two songs, including "Rose Among the Thorns." A native of Isonville, Kentucky, Rigsby honors his Primitive Baptist faith through a cappella renditions of "Higher Than I" and "Vision of a Golden Crown," which begins with the words of Rigsby's preacher. The album ranges from hard-driving to contemplative and is a promising start for an artist we can hope to hear much more from. 112 Reviews ...

Composers steven mackey and rand steiger: An appreciation

Rock and other vernacular styles are part of a broad technical palette used by composers Steven Mackey and Rand Steiger. Originally trained as rock and jazz musicians, they have purposefully maintained their links with popular music, allowing it to influence their work in various ways — rhythmic, harmonic, textural, and structural — without degenerating into cliche. This article examines Mackey's Indigenous Instruments and On All Fours, and Steiger's Trio in Memoriam and Double Concerto, to provide an introduction to their styles and compositional methods.

Planning and the Myth of the English Countryside, in the Interwar Period

A landscape is never so valuable as when it is under threat, and the English rural countryside has been the subject of alarm for centuries. Raymond Williams identified an ‘escalator’ on which literary representation continually looked back upon a past golden age of rural virtue, ensuring that the idea of a ‘true’ rural England has persisted into the twentieth century with extraordinary power Thus Howard Newby can write of the ‘stereotypes and myths which surround the popular image of the rural world’, while, at the same time, he claims this fallacious perception is ‘one of the major protecting illusions of our time’. This illusion has been reinforced by the nature of English society. Sir Lewis Narnier believed English society to be ‘amphibious’ in the eighteenth century, with no sharp divide between town and country among the interests of the ruling classes. By the end of the nineteenth century the countryside, under the influence of Romanticism and a changing class structure, had become the preserve of an upper-class society increasingly separated from industrialism and the great towns. Yet this upper class was cemented by the public schools and the universities to include not only landowners, but an array of occupations, including many intellectuals. Until the First World War, despite increasing mechanisation and specialisation in the countryside, the land presented a rural face largely unspoiled by the intrusion of industrial and urban uses. Land was held in large estates, farmed by tenants in a world of mostly irregular fields, lanes and hedgerows, with buildings that preserved vernacular styles.

The Heritage of Country Furniture: A Study in the Survival of Formal and Vernacular Styles from the United States, Britain, and Europe Found in Upper Canada, 1780-1900. Howard Pain

<i>The Heritage of Country Furniture: A Study in the Survival of Formal and Vernacular Styles from the United States, Britain, and Europe Found in Upper Canada, 1780-1900</i>. Howard Pain