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Expand+MUS20080 Musics of the World
Academic Year 2021/2022
In this module, we will examine the nature of music and its place in human life through the study and analysis of musical traditions from around the world. Our inquiries center on both the phen...
Hide-MUS20080 Musics of the World
Academic Year 2021/2022
In this module, we will examine the nature of music and its place in human life through the study and analysis of musical traditions from around the world. Our inquiries center on both the phenomenology of music ‘itself’ and the role that music plays in culture. Towards this end, our work comprises two main areas: close listening, analysis, and experiences of music, and readings that detail ethnomusicological approaches to these encounters. Rather than attempting to cover the entire globe, we will instead consider both the nature of music and musical thought in three distinct units (Sub-Saharan Africa, the Islamic World, and Indonesia). There will be a practical component in at least one of these units, as students will participate in an introduction to the performance of Javanese gamelan music. Our study of these areas will be complemented by readings that will allow students to gain a basic familiarity with the terms and concepts associated with these musics, with theoretical perspectives that allow us to examine the role of music within these cultures, and finally with frameworks that enable scholars to understand the nature of music’s relationship to human life and society throughout the world. The aim is both to build knowledge of different musical cultures and to sharpen critical thinking for how we engage with music in culture more generally.
Learning Outcomes:
Students will be able to demonstrate knowledge and understanding of diverse musical traditions covered in this course. They will be able to differentiate between different world musical styles and identify basic musical elements, instruments and processes in the musics covered in this course. They will be able to analyse and describe a variety of world musics. They will acquire a vocabulary and conceptual framework for understanding non-Western musics in their wider social and cultural contexts.
Indicative Module Content:
INTRODUCTION: ETHNOMUSICOLOGY AND MUSIC
Week 1 – Studying Musics of the World
Week 2 – Definitions of Music in/as/and Culture
Reading:
1. Blacking, John. “Humanly organized sound.”
Listening:
1. Wagogo Soothing Song
2. “Goldberg Variations” – JS Bach
3. Inuit Sung Games - Kattajjait about animals
4. Ghanaian postal workers canceling stamps
5. Work song – “Raggy Levy” by the Georgia Sea Island Singers
6. Pachydermically Organized Sound – “Thung Kwian Sunrise”
CASE STUDY 1: MUSIC IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA
Week 3 – Understanding Sub-Saharan Africa as a Musical ‘Region’
Reading:
Locke, “Improvisation in West African Musics.”
Listening:
1. Shona Mbira: “Nhemamusasa”
2. Ewe Dance Drumming: Gadzo, a theatrical dance
3. Mande Kora music: Ala L’a Ke
Week 4 – Music and the Nation in Zimbabwe and Jamaica
Reading: Turino, ‘Musical Nationalism and Chimurenga Songs of the
1970s’
Listening:
1. “Ndanzwa Ngoma Kurira” – Thomas Mapfumo
2. “Jaja Mujuakacha” – Thomas Mapfumo
3. “Munoshusha” – Oliver Mtukudzi
4. “Boogu Yagga Gal” – Chin’s Calypso Sextet
5. “Exodus” – Bob Marley
Week 5 – Musical hybridity in the case of Brass Bands
Reading:
1. Boonzajer-Flaes. Brass Unbound
Listening:
1. Listening selections from accompanying CD
2. Brass Unbound Film
**Listening Quiz – on music covered weeks 1-4
CASE STUDY 2: MUSIC AND ISLAM
Week 6 – Sacred Musical Structures in and out of Worship
Reading:
1. al-Faruqi, ‘What Makes Religious Music Religious?’
Listening:
1. Adhan, Egypt
2. Qur’anic Recitation
3. Umm Kulthum – ‘Al-Atlal’
4. Umm Kulthum – ‘Ana Fi’ntizaarak’
5. Umm Kulthum – ‘Salu Qalbi’
Week 7 – Art Music Traditions of the Middle East
Reading:
1. Nasr, ‘Islam and Music: The Legal and Spiritual Dimensions’
Listening:
1. Radif of Nour-Ali-Boroumand
2. Improvisation based on Daramad of Chahargah
3. Avaz
4. Son Pesrev
5. Hicaz Ayini
6. Ney Taksimi
7. Son Yuruk Semai
Week 8 – Sufism(s) and Sufi Musics
Reading: selected Sufi poetry
Listening:
1. Qawwali – ‘Chasm-E-Maste Ajabe’ version 1
2. Qawwali – ‘Chasm-E-Maste Ajabe’ version 2
3. Qawwali – ‘Man Kunto Maula’ from shrine
4. Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan – ‘Man Kunto Maula’
5. Whirling Dervish performance, Istanbul
CASE STUDY 3: MUSIC IN JAVA
Background Reading for Case Study 3: Brinner, Benjamin. Music in Central Java.
*** This is a full-length text with an accompanying CD, which you will be
expected to read and listen to by the end of this case study.
Week 9 – Introduction to Gamelan
**Listening Quiz – on music covered weeks 5-8
Week 10 – Central Javanese Gamelan Workshop
Week 11 – Central Javanese Gamelan Workshop
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