OU Music Dept Research Seminars on "Entrainment in Cuban Music: An Analysis of Son" & "Word and Song: Performing Devotion in South Asia"

Room MR03 – Ground Floor, Wilson Building A (R023), Open University, Milton Keynes 24 June 2009 – 2:00 pm
All welcome

Adrian Poole (OU) - Entrainment in Cuban Music: An Analysis of Son

Son is a style of popular dance music that combines African and Spanish elements and which originated in the Eastern region of Cuba in the late 19th century. Originally associated with the peasant or working-classes, son developed to become one of Cuba’s most important and influential musical forms and is often described as the forerunner of modern salsa. An important feature of son, and all dance music, is the ‘groove’: the sense of shared timing negotiated between performing musicians which provides the drive, feel and motion that invites audiences to move with the music.

Whilst early ethnomusicologists such as Alan Lomax and John Blacking have explored the relationship between musical rhythmic interaction and bodily movement, it is Charles Keil and Steven Feld’s work on Participatory Discrepancies that provides the most explicit connection between the socio-musical processes that create the musical ‘groove’ and how this groove draws the listener in, evoking a sense of participation and shared experience. In their 2005 article “In time with the music: The concept of entrainment and its significance for ethnomusicology”, Clayton et al suggest an interdisciplinary approach that connects research in ethnomusicology with entrainment theory - how two or more rhythmic entities interact - providing a useful methodological framework that combines ethnography with the analysis of performance timing data.

This paper draws on the these theories to present some initial findings of how musicians in rhythm sections (bass, percussion and piano players) interact with each other to create and develop a successful dance ‘groove’ during the performance of Cuban son.

Jaime Jones (University College, Dublin) - Word and Song: Performing Devotion in South Asia

The liturgical canons of bhakti (devotional) practice in South Asia undergo constant manipulation and transformation through performance. The musicians who activate the canon through song, dance, theatre, and drumming play a fundamental role in the creation of felt connections between sacred ideologies and daily experience, and they do so knowingly. The music-making that constitutes devotional ritual simultaneously reiterates a fixed repertoire and re-creates the same fixed repertoire through musical invention, virtuosity, and stylistic citation. In other words, devotees build new spiritual encounters from the established texts of their tradition through music.

In this paper, I examine the use(s) of music in devotional traditions of South Asia in order to underscore the agency of devotees as performers. I consider the ways in which singers and musicians mobilize histories, practices, and genres in order to effectively and affectively construct bhakti. This focus extends previous literary studies of bhakti songs by sustaining questions about the role of performance in the sacred and the discursive strategies that allow musical practice and worship to coincide.

British Library’s Sound Archive

The British Library has an Archive Sound Recording website with 21,000 selected recordings of:

• music -including classical and world music
• spoken word - including oral history and accents and dialects
• human and natural environments. – including soundscapes and wildlife

You are able to: Search all recordings on the site; listen to the recordings and download them; add notes and tags and create a favourites list.

To find out more visit:http://sounds.bl.uk/

AHRC Beyond Text project asks "What is Black British Jazz?"

The ‘Black British Jazz’ project (BBJ) explores the emergence of a distinct tradition within British music. BBJ melds reggae, hiphop, African music and US jazz into a rich, and constantly developing set of sounds. In documenting this musical hybrid, the project touches on important issues for the study of music – the transmission of cultural values, the social context of musical forms, and frameworks of ownership that impact on musical communities.

The research takes an interdisciplinary approach, bringing together researchers with specialism’s in sociology, music psychology and (ethno) musicolology. It integrates a range of methods, from detailed analysis of performance through to ethnographic and historical investigation.

The project approaches BBJ via three research strands:

• Routes
• Ownership
• Performance

These strands act as guides for our work. But as the project develops we will also be looking for ways of integrating them and highlighting common themes.

In terms of audience the project reaches out, beyond academia, to a broad constituency through film, a radio series/podcast, an end-of- project concert and more. What Is Black British Jazz runs from January 2009 through to July 2011 and is supported through the AHRC’s Beyond Text programme.

The Open University project team are:

• Dr Jason Toynbee (Principal Investigator), Dept of Sociology,
• Dr Mark Doffman (Research Fellow), Dept of Sociology,
• Dr Catherine Tackley (Co-Investigator), Dept of Music,
• Dr Byron Dueck (Co-Investigator), Dept of Music,
• Mark Banks (Co-Investigator), Dept of Sociology,

The project aims are:

• To trace the historical and geographical routes along which black British jazz (BBJ) has developed.
• To examine the role of memory and cultural transmission in the emergence of new musical forms (also to contribute to their preservation through audio-visual recordings).
• To investigate ownership of BBJ in relation to entrepreneurship, creativity and cultural policy.
• To analyse aesthetics, embodied practice and participation in BBJ performance.
  Research questions

The main research question, 'What is Black British Jazz?', is broken down as follows:

• What is the cultural identity of the genre?
• How did it emerge?
• Who owns it, how is it owned and what is the impact of cultural policy on ownership?
• What are the defining themes in its performance? How do musicians use grooves, voices and improvised scripts in its delivery?
• In political and aesthetic terms, why and how does BBJ matter?

Outputs
Research outputs from the project include conventional academic forms such as books, journal articles and conference papers. But the project team also aim to make the results of their work available to a broader public. A film (in collaboration with Metal Dog Productions), a short series of radio programmes/podcasts and a concert will take the project to non-academic audiences. Project data drawn from performances, interviews and documents will also be available as a) archive material held by the British Library and the Center for Black Music Research in Chicago and b) a resource for jazz education.

For more information see: http://www.open.ac.uk/researchprojects/blackbritishjazz/ and http://projects.beyondtext.ac.uk/blackbritishjazz/blog.html

Prof. Giovanni Giuriati presents Performing a Carnival tarantella. A case study from Montemarano

MUSIC DEPARTMENT RESEARCH SEMINAR
2pm on 18 March 2009
in Howard Recital Room, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes
Prof. Giovanni Giuriati (Sapienza Universita’ di Roma)
Performing a Carnival tarantella. A case study from Montemarano, Southern Italy

All OU Staff/Students Welcome

The Seminar will deal with a processional tarantella performed by clarinet, accordion and frame drum in Montemarano, a village in the mountains near Naples. I will draw a comparison between an analysis of an improvisational process based only on the musical text (that I have done some years ago) and a recent analysis that takes into account the moment of the performance showing how the two differ widely in methods and results.

While the first model yielded significant results, in unveiling what I have termed a kaleidoscopic process of improvisation, this kind of analysis lacks several contextual elements that relate in various ways to the act of performance. Among such elements to be taken into account are: interaction among musicians, interaction between musicians, dancers, and the audience, musical composition and stylistic differentiation among performers, relationship with space, micro and macro time scales, physical effort, rivalry and emulation, musical borrowing and reference to external models such as “ballo liscio” and world music, processes of musical and social change.

Such a complex and dynamic kind of analysis, that should not be intended in a normative way, but rather as a reference and a list of variables rather than a self-confined model, and that must take into account both the contextual elements, and the participant observation of the researcher, allows to better interpret the textual elements of the music.

During the Seminar some sound and video examples will be presented to illustrate the case study.

From email from Dr Laura Leante 08/03/09

Two year AHRC Early Career Grant success for the Music Department

Dr Laura Leante has been awarded an AHRC Early Career Grant of over £168,000 for a two year project that will start in October 2009. The project, Reception of performance in North Indian classical music, will involve studying various ways in which performance is experienced by those who participate in it (including both musicians and listeners). The study of performance won't be limited to the artists and the music they make, but will be extended to elements which have often been considered as part of performance 'context' rather than performance per se - with particular emphasis on audience response and interpersonal dynamics.

This study will involve comparing music made in two distinct North Indian regions, and this will allow Dr Leante to determine how the reception of music performance relates to cultural background and context.

Dr Laura Leante and Prof Martin Clayton are co-organising the XXV European Seminar in Ethnomusicology (ESEM), which will be taking place in September 2009. For more information see: http://www.esem-music.eu/