Music, Circulation, and Appropriation

What happens when one culture sings in the musical voice of another? Through close examination of musical performances, we’ll see how the effects of both (or more) cultures are present in the music itself. And in so doing, we’ll further critique what it means to be “Western,” “global,” and “modern.” We’ll examine theories of cultural creolization and media circulation and apply them to specific case studies of musical traditions in transformation. We’ll begin in the 19th century, when Hungarian musical traditions were being heard and imitated by the Romantics and early Moderns, and continue by examining how black and white folk traditions from the United States were assimilated and transformed in the early 20th century. We’ll see that musical cultural “flows” don’t always move in the same direction, as with traditions moving both toward and from guitar traditions of central Africa in the 1950s and ’60s. Later in the semester, we’ll closely examine how musical traditions can be manifested in certain physical objects, which can gain a life of their own; for example, what happens when one musical culture uses the instruments of another for its own purposes? We’ll ask how the socioeconomic implications of the circulation of other musical objects—records, CDs, and mp3s—are affecting the very meaning of those musics in the 21st century. This course continues to develop ideas explored in “Non-Western” Western Musics in Europe and Asia, although that class is not an official prerequisite.  This course may also be taken as a component in a Music Third.