SEMSCC 2007
UC Riverside
Abstracts

Saturday, Feb. 24th

Saturday, 9:30 a.m.

Coffee and Rolls, Registration Opens

Saturday, Session 1A - 10:00 - 11:30

Ritual, Mysticism, and the Sacred

Rob Hodges, Chair (University of California, Santa Barbara)

“Music and Rituals in San Mateo del Mar,”

Veronica Pacheco (University of California, Los Angeles)

San Mateo del Mar is one of the Ikoots (Huave) communities located along the Pacific coast of southern Oaxaca, Mexico, between the Inferior and Superior lagoons of the Tehuantepec Gulf. The sea, the littoral lakes, the water cycles, and the winds, are all being represented in a complex symbolic system as revealed through the rituals the Ikoots people perpetuate, and the mythological oral traditions still maintained within the community. Many of these rituals serve to preserve the harmony between the water, wind, and the inhabitants of San Mateo del Mar, and in which music plays a central role. This presentation will illustrate that by approaching these musical performances within their ritual context, many facets of the Ikoots society can be unveiled. Thus, these performances become referents of syncretism, oral traditions, indigenous identity (inside and outside the community), and the confrontation of the different generations of this society with the modern world.

“Rethinking Añá: Challenging the Exclusive Status of an Afro-Cuban Drum Deity,”

Kevin Delgado (San Diego State University)

In Cuba, followers the Afro-Cuban religion known as Santería serve oricha (òrìsà), deified spiritual beings of West African origin brought to the island during the transatlantic slave trade. Objects charged with the partial essence of the oricha are often referred to by the Spanish word fundamento (literally “foundation” or “basis”), identifying them as essential, consecrated, living objects instilled with spiritual energy. Consecrated drums used in Santería ceremonies house similar living objects and are also referred to as fundamento, distinguishing them from less efficacious unconsecrated drums. In Cuba, consecrated double-headed batá drums are known both as fundamento in Spanish and as ilú Aña in Lucumí (a Cuban lexicon derived from the Yorùbá language), literally “drum of Añá” (Àyàn). Añá is a term restricted to the fundamento object/deity within consecrated batá drums. However, my research on a rare set of sacred Iyesá drums in the city of Matanzas reveals a contested claim to the exclusive use of the term Añá. Using ethnographic research, historical sources, and contemporary scholarship on Cuban and Nigerian sacred drums, I propose reconsidering the exclusive status of Añá and critically explore the case for referring to Iyesá drums as Aña drums.

“Quaker Mysticism and Music-Making,”

Brigita Sebald (University of California, Los Angeles)

Mysticism lies at the heart of the religious experience of the members of the Society of Friends, otherwise known as Quakers.  Friends seek a union with the Divine – the Inward Light – by turning to its spark within themselves.  The revelation of the Inward Light is expressed through spontaneous testimony in meetings.  Silence is thus necessary both to hear and to communicate the words of the Divine.  Early Quakers were suspicious of the place of singing in worship, as it is rarely an unpracticed display.  Today, music is frowned upon in Quaker meetings.  Many contemporary Friends, however, participate in musical performances as an alternative way to express their spirituality. In Maryland, Virginia, and Pennsylvania, a historical stronghold for the Society of Friends, an unusually large number of Quakers sing Sacred Harp, a four-part polyphonic choral genre. The majority of events are held at Quaker meetinghouses and Sacred Harpers occasionally give demonstrations after meetings as well.  Although Sacred Harp has religious texts, it is considered to be secular.  This paper, based on eighteen months’ fieldwork, takes Quaker meetings as an example of inwardly-directed mysticism.  Musical performance is a more visible expression of these same inclinations.  Quakers choose Sacred Harp in particular because its social structure is similar to the egalitarianism of their meetings, its simplicity meshes well with the Quaker aesthetic of plainness, and it allows for religious pluralism, another common feature of meetings.  Sacred Harp allows Quakers to express mysticism outside the guidelines of their meetings.

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Saturday, Session 1B - 10:00 - 11:30

Music in “Other” Media

Dr. Ellen B. Weller, Chair (Palomar College)

“Sonically Targeting Consumers:  Music and Race in Alcohol Advertising,”

Kara Attrep (University of California, Santa Barbara)

Corporations and advertisers have long sought to target specific groups and demographics in seeking new consumers for their products.  However, little attention has been paid to how music has been used to target consumers. The alcohol industry has been particularly persistent in their attempts to use music to reach minority groups.  In this paper I explore how alcohol companies utilize music and popular culture references to attract minority--specifically African American--audiences.  In particular, I draw upon archival material from the Seagrams corporation to build a contextual understanding of the integral role that music plays in racialized marketing.  In order to highlight this complex relationship, I analyze two examples in the history of alcohol advertising.  The first example focuses on advertising for alcohol and the rise of African American radio.  The second case looks at the connection of hip hop culture and the advertising of beer.  Both examples will be analyzed within the context of historical notions of identity and race within the United States.  Based on research conducted between March and July of 2006 at the Hagley Museum and Library in Wilmington, Delaware, this paper is part of my dissertation which focuses on music, history, and race in advertising.

“The Borat Effect: Musical Conflation and Dislocation in Borat: Cultural Learnings for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan,”

Megan Rancier (University of California, Los Angeles)

Far from any attempt at a compilation of actual music from Kazakhstan, the soundtrack to the hit 2006 comedy Borat: Cultural Learnings for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan instead assembles together works by artists from the Balkans, Turkey, and Romania in an effort to musically complement the visual comic antics of the film's main character, the fake Kazakh news reporter Borat. Although the album features numerous widely known and respected artists such as Esma Redzepova and Goran Bregovi_, it presents listeners with an impression of these artists and their home countries that is problematic in many respects. In the same way that the film itself conflates many Western stereotypes of people from Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union in its portrayal of Borat and his Kazakhstan (of which the only accurate element is the Kazakhstani flag), the soundtrack conflates many musical styles and genres (none of them Kazakh) into a collection that is both dislocated from its various sources and entirely unrepresentative of the nation it purports to represent (albeit in jest). The soundtrack, as a comic device, therefore reinforces stereotypical and dismissive attitudes toward the featured music and its performers—a phenomenon that is antithetical to the work of ethnomusicologists. My paper will contextualize the "Borat effect" with other examples of traditional music in mass media, and how such inclusions may ultimately further or hinder public attitudes that nurture the meaningful study of the world and its music.

“Singing in Color: Music in the Work of African American Graduate Student Artists,”

Lara D. Rann (University of California, Los Angeles)

Music is vital in the careers of many artists who perform in genres other than music.  “Singing in Color” will explore the incorporation of music into the artistic projects of two African American graduate students at UCLA.  This paper is written in response to the dearth of research on music in performance-oriented disciplines besides music.  Further, the paper examines the experiences of African American student artists at UCLA using two case studies.  UCLA’s recent controversial admission of only ninety-seven African American students in the freshman class of 2006 makes dialogue about African American students’ creative products more telling.  On a campus where minority presence is dwindling, graduate students become models for undergraduates and use their artistic media to explore experiences of Blackness.
     In Spring 2006, I acted as a participant observer in Directing major Kimberly Townes’ film production and in theatre major Lovensky Jean-Baptiste’s Acting Fundamentals class.  Both of these graduate students, hailing from different parts of the African Diaspora, majored in disciplines outside the arts for their undergraduate degrees and subsequently used graduate school to delve fully into their artistic pursuits.  Both use music in their performative genres to express the experiences that have shaped their identities.  This paper will examine the role of music using such theoretical frameworks as insider ethnography, holistic integration of performing arts in African worldviews, and expression of African American identity.

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Saturday, Session 2A - 1:00 - 2:00

An Ethnomusicology of Affect and of Small Sounds

Katherine Hagedorn, Chair (Pomona College)

“Affect, Turkish Musical Practices, and the Depressive Position,”

Denise R. Gill (University of California, Santa Barbara)

Musical and cultural texts and practices are infused with affect. Recent critical theorists working with affect have focused their research on the social work that depression does within the cultural field of global capitalism (cf. Muñoz 2006; Halberstam 2005; Ahmed 2004).  My paper considers how depression itself is formed and organized around musical practices and their historical contingencies.  I suggest that certain practices of Turkish classical music can be read as illustrations of the depressive position and its connection to the construction and deployment of Turkish identity.

Drawing from objects-relations theory in the work of Melanie Klein (1986), I examine the depressive position as a site of potentiality.  The depressive position is not a stage to be passed or moved beyond, as it leads to reparation.  Reparation is the recognition of the subject’s striving for belonging that does not ignore the multiple obstacles that must be overcome in the social world.

To showcase how Turkish classical music practices illuminate the workings of the depressive position in a Turkish context, I examine song texts, poetry, and interviews conducted with key performers of the genre.  In the end, I claim that the depression position experienced as and voiced through music is essentially a reparative practice for the individuals involved.

“Ethnomusicology and the Study of Small Sound,”

René T.A. Lysloff (University of California, Riverside)

Small sounds are those brief aural moments captured through sampling technologies, circulated throughout the world as commoditized objects, and recycled as creative grist for digital musical performance.  Until recently, these sounds would hardly be regarded as worthy of study by ethnomusicologists concerned with the loftier task of salvaging entire music traditions.  Nevertheless, even such brief audio samples are rooted in time and place, eventually becoming material for new musical expression.  How do we try to understand the meanings of sound samples?  Does a sound sample have intrinsic meaning?  Is its meaning based upon a parasitic relationship between the sample and its source?  Certainly, some samples have become iconic, representing entire musical traditions, even ways of life.  On the other hand, the sound of, say, the sitar may be commonplace to listeners but how many know what the sitar actually is, or where it comes from?  If the origins of certain sounds are no longer relevant, what do the samples then mean to electronic music artists and their audiences?  Are they simply new timbres—free floating aural signs without referents?  Or are they assigned new meetings as their contexts change over time?

In this paper, I explore the broader cultural implications of sampled sound in electronic and popular music.  I want to propose an ethnomusicology of small sounds: the ethnographic study of schizophonic minutiae expropriated and recontextualized through new media technologies.

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Saturday, Session 2B - 1:00 - 2:00

The Venue, the Audience

Kathy Meizel, Chair (University of California, Santa Barbara)

“Participation and Play: Strategies for Collective Ecstasy and Social Solidarity,”

Yong Ha Jeong (University of California, Los Angeles)

Recent studies have examined the emergence of creative musical works in galleries and public sites that rely heavily on notions of participation and interaction. This study focuses on ritual events that generate collective ecstasy and social solidarity through playful interaction and participation in the performances by the art band called Ojo —a convenient and functional definition of an art band is a band that is formed by those connected to institutions and/or the industry of fine arts. I will explore further, in Ojo events, how members of the audience become producers of musical sound, thereby nullifying the strict division between the performer and spectator (audience). Ojo leads the audience to circle around together with them in the performance space that Ojo and its audience equally occupy.  Slowly, Ojo invites the audience to participate in the musical production and experience through clapping, chanting, call and response, and dancing, which are in concert with the band’s already organized musical template provided through a drum machine, synthesizer, electric guitar, trumpet, and laptop. The performance develops organically into a single entity, where both the audience and the band become, for a moment, a socially enriched community that has achieved together a sense of collective ecstasy.

“We will be serving tea and ta`miyya”: the discursive formation of a music venue in Cairo,”

Lillie S. Gordon (University of California Santa Barbara)

Ethnomusicologists have regularly asked how musicians create themselves and are created through discourse.  In examining the spaces of music presentation, it is also useful to examine the discursive acts used in the formation of music venues and other arts institutions.  For one particular nonprofit, private music venue in Cairo, Egypt, the mission and activities determined by administrators emerge as a conscious corrective for other, more common artistic practices and ways of approaching the arts.  The administrators of this venue, called Makan, set the music presented in opposition to mass-mediated Egyptian and transnational popular music, government presentations of folkloric arts, and the national and pedagogical prioritization of European arts.  Actions based upon this set of oppositions have various effects on the venue and the music therein, influencing the presentation style, the music selected, the activities of artists presented and the construction of the venue itself.  Using interviews, news articles and the venue’s website, I investigate how Makan’s administrators have developed negative views towards more mainstream practices and express those views through the language used to describe their venue.  I then turn to how their actions based on these formulations shape Makan and larger musical practices in the
process.  I draw attention to the various ways such claims influence audiences’ and artists’ perspectives on how the arts can and should exist, thus presenting one example of the importance of music venues in shaping musical communities.

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Saturday, Session 3 - 2:15 - 3:15

Roundtable Panel

"Navigating the Academic Job Market”

Roundtable Facilitator: Elizabeth McLean Macy, SEMSCC Student Concerns Committee Co-Chair

This forum, organized by the Student Concerns Committee, will focus on strategies and preparation for entering the academic job market.  Fostering a dialogue between students and faculty, it will address practical concerns, ranging from constructing the curriculum vitae and the importance of publications, to the academic interview and campus visit in both a liberal arts and a university setting.  The forum is structured with short, 5-minute presentations from faculty at different stages in their careers, followed by a moderated discussion. 

Discussants include: Nancy Guy, Tanya Merchant Henson, YouYoung Kang, Joshua Pilzer, Timothy Rice, and Deborah Wong.

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Saturday, 3:30 - 4:30

Business Meeting

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Saturday, 4:30 - 5:30

Keynote Speaker

Josh Kun (USC Annenberg School of Communications)

“The World Begins Here: Listening to Tijuana.”

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Saturday, 5:45 - 6:45

Reception and Performance

Short performance by Ma Xiaohui, Chinese Erhu Virtuoso

Reception catered by Mama Oi (gourmet Thai and Vietnamese cuisine)

SEMSCC Student Concerns Committee Gathering

Following the Reception, the SEMSCC Student Concerns Committee invites students and faculty to the Getaway Cafe (a nearby pub) for further conversation, pool, pizza, and drinks.

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Sunday, Feb. 25th

Sunday, Session 4A - 9:00 - 10:00

Gender Issues

Cheryl L. Keyes, Chair (University of California, Los Angeles)

“Emansipasi or Siwanataraja: Competing Discourses Used to Empower Female Musicians in Bali,”

Sonja Downing (University of California, Santa Barbara)

During my recent fieldwork research in Bali, I encountered two contrasting stories told by female musicians to justify their participation in instrumental music, and to support younger girls learning to play gamelan.  The first story falls within the nationalist discourse of Women’s Emancipation, which assumes that women are coming from a subservient position, and are in the process of struggling for equality with men in all fields.  Now that women’s gamelans are commonplace, many women credit “Emancipation” for their popularity. The second and competing story is told most often by women of high caste, who maintain that women playing instrumental music is not a new phenomenon.  To support their claims, they draw on episodes from the Hindu epic story of the Mahabharata, in which a few characters teach women to play instrumental music, and on Balinese Hindu cosmology, which includes several deities that possess feminine and masculine characteristics.
Both discourses have their critics.  Julia Suryakusuma and Michael Bakan have argued that the Indonesian Women’s Emancipation movement serves to actually reinforce male-dominant hierarchy within society.  As I have observed, it is often only higher caste women who have the time or access to learn in detail about Balinese literature and religious philosophy.  This paper will address the conflicts between these discourses to illuminate women’s contested positions as musicians in Bali and to examine the ways in which they are empowering the next generations of young girls learning gamelan.

"Not Just an Outfit: Charro Imagery in East Los Angeles Mariachi Performance,"

Jacob Rekedal (University of California, Riverside)

This paper approaches the distinctively visual aesthetics of contemporary mariachi performance as they relates to urbanization, commercialization and filmic depictions on musical stages.  Insights derive largely from fieldwork at the Plaza de Mariachi in East Los Angeles during the fall of 2006.  The study explores issues of masculinity implied by the traditional charro (horseman) image, as well as the enactment of this image in community mariachi ensembles in East Los Angeles.  The origins of the charro image in mainstream, commercial music and film in Mexico are contrasted with its everyday situation in small-scale community performances.  In this light, Nevin’s dichotomy between “virtuoso” and “common” mariachi (Nevin 2002) is invoked and discussed in the context of both its applicability to and its mediation by performers in East Los Angeles. I maintain that mariachi’s staple imagery, reinforced by commercial mariachi stars in Los Angeles as well as other urban centers, and deployed uniformly by performers in any context or locale, indicates both cohesion and tension between elite and quotidian mariachi performers.

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Sunday, Session 4B - 9:00 - 10:00

Musical Instrument Studies

Jacqueline Cogdell DjeDje, Chair (University of California, Los Angeles)

“The Banjo: In, But Not Of, America”

Barbara Taylor (University of California, Santa Barbara)

The banjo is often called “America’s Instrument” and unproblematically associated with white, rural working class Americans. Recently there has been a rise of interest in the Old-Time music community (among both Afro-American and Euro-American musicians and aficionados) in identifying the banjo’s African antecedents. Through the efforts of two individuals, one West African and one Swedish, the idea that the Jola akonting, rather than the ngoni or xalam griot lutes, is a contemporary representative of the American banjo’s most likely progenitors is gaining currency in the U.S. Old-Time music community.
In this paper I discuss the banjo, and this recent development in it’s ongoing circulation of cultural meaning, using Paul Gilroy’s theory of the hybridity of a black Atlantic “counterculture of modernity” (1993), and Karen Linn’s semiotic analysis of the banjo in American popular culture (1991). The banjo is both product and symbol of what Paul Gilroy terms “double consciousness”; it is in American culture yet it exists “completely outside... official values” (Linn: 8) of “occidental rationality” (Gilroy: 38) as a persistent counter to the hegemony of modernist rationalism. Drawing on my experience at the Black Banjo Then and Now Gathering (Boone, NC, April 2005) I consider the African American reappropriation of the banjo as a project of reclamation in the complex negotiation of constructed and acquired cultural meanings, historical processes, and identity articulations embedded in the “utopian aspirations” of the black Atlantic’s “politics of transfiguration” (Gilroy: 37).

“Modernization of the Dhol Tradition in Post-Independence Indian Punjab,” Gibb Schreffler

Gibb Schreffler (University of California, Santa Barbara)

The double-headed barrel drum dhol, introduced to the Punjab by the 16th century, came to carry an important function for countless activities of life in that region.  However, since India’s Independence (1947), both the role and the repertoire of the dhol have progressively narrowed.  The leading players of dhol mostly came from the western side of Punjab, which, becoming a part of Pakistan, has since been estranged from them.  Subsequent developments in the modernizing Indian state of Punjab prompted significant changes in their tradition.  Far from dieing out, the instrument survived while other local instrumental traditions have languished.  Moreover, there are far more players of dhol today than probably ever in history.  Yet the price paid for the flourishing of their profession has been the necessary modernization of the dhol, characterized by loss of richness in the tradition.  In addition, the practical functions of the dhol are giving way to a symbolic function. This paper will demonstrate, in concrete terms, the adaptation of the dhol tradition to modern economic and social conditions, focusing on repertoire and role.  The presentation will be supplemented by video examples of the applications of dhol.

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Sunday, Session 5A - 10:15 - 11:15

Politics and Music

Josh Pilzer, Chair (University of California, Santa Barbara)

“Fade to Black: The Catalysis of Politics and Aesthetics in Egyptian Heavy Metal,”

Benjamin J. Harbert (University of California, Los Angeles)

A scandal involving heavy metal, alleged Satanism, and one hundred jailed well-to-do young Egyptian fans and musicians shook Cairo ten years ago. In a country that retains supernatural vestiges of djinns and the “evil eye,” the occult undertones of Western heavy metal were too much for a suspicious public to accept. The Egyptian government played on these suspicions of new technologies and disdain for Egyptians “playing Westerners” to prove to vocal religious extremists that the government was not anti-Islam but, in fact, the defenders of Islam. During the crackdown, the small heavy metal cadre that had been producing makeshift desert concerts powered by generators cut their hair, hid their black T-shirts, and disbanded. Upon release, those imprisoned fled the country or disappeared into more conventional Egyptian lives. The lead prosecutor was made a national hero.

Over the past decade, the scene has cautiously crept back into Egypt, led by a new generation enabled by the Internet: downloading obscure and increasingly extreme metal mp3s, organizing concerts, and maintaining a virtual space for music and social criticism. Based on recent fieldwork, this paper overviews three decades of heavy metal in Egypt in its techno-political context to show how the dark and aggressive aesthetics of today’s genre help inform a young, educated upper middle class both emotionally and politically. This case offers a unique perspective on both Egyptian political experience and the internationalization of heavy metal music—a perspective that illustrates Egyptian heavy metal as an authentic musical experience rather than an imported incongruity.

“Fashionable Music: The Impact of the Revolution of 1979 on Musical Trends and the Popularity of Traditional Iranian Music,”

Bahram Osqueezadeh (University of California, Santa Barbara)

Iran’s 1979 revolution was a pivotal point for creating drastic changes in the position of Iranian art music in the larger society. Prior to the revolution this music had an elitist position, performed and patronized by but a few.  Concert attendance and record sales were minimal. The numbers of students learning this music were very low.  After the revolution however, the level of general involvement increased substantially; the art music was widely embraced as a welcome symbol of the cultural sophistication of the new republic.  Engagement with traditional Iranian music was seen as a fashionable way to exhibit a desired sense of cultural intellectualism. This shift was in line with the anti-western character of the Iran’s revolution, emphasizing non-western musical trends over western traditions.  Thus, western classical music and heavily-western-influenced pop music became less popular at this same time.  The paper examines the components of this multi-faceted shift.  The research for this paper is based on interviews, a look at the Sheida and Aref ensembles (two groups actively involved in the above sociological changes) and the Chavosh Institute that they founded, a review of various claims concerning statistics for concert attendance, published recordings, and numbers of students of traditional Iranian music, and also my own personal experiences. (I myself am a product of the post-revolution musical trends.  Now a traditional Iranian musician, I began my training some four years after the revolution.)  The present study offers an example of how music can assume a central role in dynamic social and political times.

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Sunday, Session 5B - 10:15 - 11:15

Nationalism, Boundaries, Borders

Ken Habib, Chair (Cal. Poly, San Luis Obispo)

“Authenticity, Mestizaje and Hybridity: Audience Consciousness in Mariachi Music,”

Leticia Soto (University of California, Los Angeles)

The juxtaposition of indigenous Mexican traditions combined with various musical elements of European, African, and Middle Eastern customs creates a multiple consciousness in contemporary mariachi music through variations of mestizaje and hybridity.  Despite these cultural and musical variations in mariachi origins, mariachi music became a symbol of Mexican musical nationalism which in turn produced assumptions of authenticity and hybridity.  Since musical authenticity is subject to interpretation that is created and defended from a cultural and historical perspective, hybrid developments in mariachi music induced a division between purist and popular audiences. The purist audience maintains that mariachi music should not be changed as it maintains authentic ties to the Mexican tradition whereas the popular audience encourages both musical and cultural innovations.  Mariachi music invokes a cultural meaning that is practiced by musicians and their audiences through repertoire, instrumentation, and imagined authenticities.  Thus the combination of imagined authenticity and cultural politics leads to the question of whether this practice will preserve or change the practice of mariachi music and tradition.  I will draw upon literature that includes concepts of contesting authenticity and hybridity along with the philosophy of audience consciousness in effort to explain Bourdieu’s concept of cultural capital as a form of musical expression. With the challenges of examining and defining cultural authenticities, will musicians change the meaning of the mariachi tradition while expressing their habitus of multicultural exposures? What emerges is an evocative picture of how cultural meaning is important to mariachi music and Mexican musical nationalism.

“Notes on Spatial Symbolism and Practice in Finnish Rock Music,”

Matthew John Dorman (University of California, Santa Barbara)

What do you think about Finland? How long are you going to stay in Finland? Do people in the U.S.A. know where Finland is? I heard these questions or something like them frequently from Finns throughout my fieldwork. I found that they were often pushing toward other, perhaps deeper, questions such as: “Where are we?” – or –  “where am I?” in relation to spatial orderings and hierarchies on local and trans-local maps. What this means is that even if geopolitical borders remain stable, cultural maps transform along with one’s relation to them.  Music culture has the remarkable capacity to serve as a nexus for such inquiry. In this paper I want to detail aspects of this, namely, I want to offer a few examples of how people express and experience space as processes of mapping. Finns, I argue, frequently express space and place by pushing boundaries, exploring and exceeding borders, all of which gets at how one ‘fits’ into the world. The idea of locating, positioning, and fitting can be seen as a complementary or an alternative angle to questions of music and identity. I developed a theoretical approach I am calling Geographic Sound Collage (GSC) that I use to understand and interpret – among other things – spatial implications of musical practice in Finland.

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Sunday, Session 6A - 11:30 - 12:30

Understanding Mashaqa’s 1840 Treatise on the Arab Modal System

Paul Humphreys, Chair (Loyola Marymount University)

“Mashaqa’s 1840 Treatise on the Arab modal system: Continuity and Change in Modern Arab Music Theory and Practice,”

Scott Marcus (University of California, Santa Barbara)

Mikha’il Mashaqa’s 1840 Arabic-language treatise on the Arab modal system has received a varied reception.  A rough English translation in the Journal of the American Oriental Society just seven years after its creation caught the attention of Helmholtz (1862) and Ellis (1885).  A number of manuscript copies were created in the 1880s/1890s.  An 1899 serialized publication and translation in a Lebanese journal introduced the work anew: passages appear without accreditation in al-Khula`i’s 1904 Egyptian work.  Mashaqa’s efforts were largely ignored in the 20th-century Middle East through the 1980s after which a 1996 critical edition by a Cairo-based academic again brought the work to light.

Widely regarded as demarcating the beginning of the modern period of Arab music theory, Mashaqa’s writings offer a wealth of information that is only partially understood in the present day.  While his work is the first large effort that refers to the 24-notes per octave of modern Arab music in terms of their present-day Arabic/Persian names (thus allowing the modern-day reader a clear understanding of the notes to which he refers), Mashaqa’s methodology for defining each of 95 melodic modes used in Syria of his day is largely incomprehensible to the modern-day theorist or performer.

The present paper introduces Mashaqa’s detailed modal presentations and highlights points that we can learn from his work.  Special attention is given to aspects of tuning, modal range, accidentals, and the dynamic nature of the modal system: a majority of Mashaqa’s modes are no longer recognized in the present day.

“Cross-cultural Translation: Textual Considerations in Interpreting a Nineteenth-Century Arabic Treatise on Music,”

Tess Popper (University of California, Santa Barbara)

Mashaqa’s 1840 treatise on the Arab tonal system represents a transitional stage in the conceptualization of Arab music theory and practice, reflecting both traditional and modernizing principles found in mid-19th-century Syria. In this paper I will discuss  literary and linguistic issues we encounter in translating Mashaqa’s detailed description of each of the 95 melodic modes that he presents in this text. I first discuss two terms that reflect basic concepts in Mashaqa’s treatment of the topic: his use of the term lahn (melody) rather than maqam (mode) in his naming of  modes; and his use of qarar (stopping place) as a principle means of categorizing these modal patterns. There are also several frequently appearing words whose interpretation as musical terms are unclear: the use of several  forms of the verb dh-h-r; and terms that stem from the root s-l-m.   I also discuss Mashaqa’s inconsistency in describing step-wise progressions in the modes: are we dealing with an inconsistent literary style, or should we understand the author’s wording to reflect his literal intent? After pointing out several other stylistic variations in the text, I conclude with a discussion of the cultural variability of such a translation endeavor. We tend to assume that in our concern with maintaining an accurate rendering of a text, we are adhering to some universal standard of  interpretation.  However, it has been revealing to discover that such academic approaches, like musical cultures themselves, may be culturally specific.

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Sunday, Session 6B - 11:30 - 12:30

Genres and Place

Revell Carr, Chair (University of California, Santa Barbara)

“‘Filling in the Pocket’–Queen City Funk of Cincinnati, Ohio,”

Regina Sewell (University of California, Los Angeles)

Southwest Ohio is the home of a legion of some of the most revered funk musicians and bands including the Ohio Players, Bootsy Collins, Midnight Star, and Zapp. Although regional studies exist such as Portia Maultsby’s research on the street funk of Dayton, Ohio, Cincinnati’s position has not been documented to “fill in the pocket” of funk’s history. During my field research in the summer of 2006, I interviewed numerous Cincinnati funk artists-producers who concurred about the importance of Cincinnati as a nexus of funk music and musicians seminal to the development of the genre and to many of the renowned funk music figures who rose to meteoric heights. For example, many scholars have traced the influence of James Brown on the early development of funk music including his impact on Bootsy Collins, a Cincinnati native.  Moreover, James Brown was a recording artist for many years with the Cincinnati-based record label King Records during the period of 1950s to the mid-1970s.

Drawing from the perspectives of my fieldwork interviews with former Cincinnati funk band members and a former King Records A&R representative, my paper will examine and discuss the unheralded contributions of Cincinnati based funk musicians and their influence on the local funk music scene. The musical legacy of Cincinnati to funk music is an invaluable part of the Southwest Ohio heritage particularly to Cincinnati, known as the “Queen City”. This paper will add to the regional studies of funk music and offer an essential contribution to funk music scholarship.


“Sonic Treasures in a Land of Gold and Diamonds: The Music of the Sakha in Siberia,”

Robin Harris (Bethel University)

The Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) is the largest sub-national entity in the world.  Located in northeastern Siberia, it was renowned for its many gulags, but is now better known for its gold and gemstones -- ninety-nine percent of Russia’s diamonds are mined in the Republic of Sakha and almost one fourth of the planet’s diamond reserves are sequestered in its vast regions of permafrost.

Gold and diamonds are not the only treasures in this frozen part of the world.  The Sakha people (or “Yakut”) of Siberia have a centuries-rich musical heritage, a tradition that has continued to develop and expand right up to the present.  Of primary importance are their distinctive solo song forms which can be traced to the distant past.

In this paper, the writer will provide an overview of Sakha music, discussing the two main styles of Sakha music, dieretii yrya and degeren yrya, while giving special attention to the significance of two key genres – okhuokai, the call and response song form performed as a circle dance, and olonkho, the epic poem form that has, for centuries, expressed the oral history and folklore of the Sakha in a uniquely creative combination of music, poetry, and drama.  In addition, modern trends in Sakha popular music will be briefly addressed.

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