Music and Culture

Students will be introduced to some of the major themes and issues surrounding the relation between musical expression and human social life. The course is not designed as a complete introduction to the world's musics. Instead, we will concentrate on a selection of musical and expressive styles in order to discuss the socially and culturally organized life of sound, aesthetics and performance. Among the broad questions to be addressed will be: How does music express social identity, value and difference? Are musics endangered when people are? Or when environments are? When and how is music-making affirming and empowering? Can musical expression participate in the destruction as well as the production of social life?

The class focuses on contemporary questions of musical expression in a time of massive cultural upheaval, displacement, and globalization. While tradition, and the moral authority of tradition, will be important and recurring issues in our understanding of readings and class discussions, we will explore the issue by listening to musics of indigenous peoples, migrants and immigrants, and by studying music making in times of social rupture and loss of place. Such rupture might occur in the face of violent conflict, corporate expansionism, or transnational migration. Case studies might include "Pygmy" music in the Central African rainforests, mbira spirit possession music in Zimbabwe, Native American musics, Balkan women's choral singing, southwest border conjunto, and Native American or Aboriginal Australian rock and country music, as well as styles and examples brought up by class members. Class sessions will include discussion, listening, and video viewing.