Study Questions

Quiz I

Peter Manuel’s Popular Musics of the Non-Western World [choose one from the following]

1. Why is popular music an important field of scholarly inquiry? 

2. What “styles” reflect non-Western popular music? 

3.  What are the “unarticulated criteria” (politics) that distinguish different types of music?

4.  Is urbanization and modernization synonymous? (such as with the development of new musical forms)

5. How do the forces and nature of migration affect the perception of migrants and their life chances in the new environment?   

6. What is meant by “recipient culture”?

Rough Guide - Middle East [choose one from the following]

1.  Why does the Zikr (and Mulid) have secular appeal (both in the Middle East and in the West)?

2.  Why is Israel such a fertile ground for (music) fusion?

3.  How does the Zaghareed “represent the unity of  Palestinian culture”?

4.  In what ways are the modern Turkish state (as reflected in Ataturk’s TRT) and post-modern Turkish Diaspora (in Germany) similar/dissimilar?

 

Key Concepts: aesthetic, al Adhan,  artifact, art music, classical, compositional process, “cultural grey out”, elements of music, emic, ethnic, ethnocentricity, ethnomusicology, etic, folk music, globalization, musicology, performance practice, style, Sufism, Third World, Zikr

 

 

Study Questions

Quiz II

Anthony Seeger's,  Performance and Identity: Problems and Perspectives [summary]

  1. We should perceive societies as composed of many different groups rather than a single group with a single culture and identity
  1. The music through which a group establishes its identity can easily change from situation to situation and will do so in systematic and intelligible ways.
  1. We need to recognize the fluidity of sociopolitical contexts.
  1. We should examine the implications of our analyses for the people we are studying.
  1. We should abandon any illusion of music as a universal language or as a means for unification that is somehow more honest than speech

Rough Guide - Africa

Key Concepts: culture, identity, Berlin Conference, rai, St. Yared, washint, krar, Wax and gold, mbalax, griot tradition, tariqa, kora, balafon, djembe, negritude, mouridism, marabouts, morna, Kriolu, Simentera, circularity of migration, rumba, funky, soukous, seben, authenticite, sapeurs

Study Questions

Quiz III

Mtafiti Imara's,  Political Forces in the Compositional Process [summary]

economics, ethnicity, eroticism, and essence

Rough Guide - Europe [choose one from the following]

1.      How we depict the other says a lot about ourselves…exoticism “is a form of relativism where an other is exalted or denigrated as a means of defining the self… (it) is constructed as a distant, picturesque other that evokes feelings, emotions and ideals in the self that have been considered lost in the civilizing process”  [Berliner 4]  How have any of the subjects presented in this course acted as a metaphor for social critique of your own music-culture?

2.      A soundscape is a comprehensive notion that encompasses the sound, setting, and significance of a given music-culture. [Shelemay] Differentiate between the Portuguese fado soundscape and any American-based genre.

3.      Point out historical intersections between the Romany (gypsies) and cultures they have encountered.  Critique the interdependence of these cultures in terms of the “political forces” of the creative process.

Key Concepts: laulu, kalevala, kantele, shaman, exoticism, drone, taraf, doina, orientalism, fado, saudade,  guitarra, cavaquinho, moda,  imperialism,  assimilado, modinha, nova cancao, Morris dance, orientalism, ethnic, erotic, essence, economics

 

 

 

Index