Musicking

Author: Christopher Small
Publisher: Wesleyan University Press
ISBN: 0819572241
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 241

Book Description
Extending the inquiry of his early groundbreaking books, Christopher Small strikes at the heart of traditional studies of Western music by asserting that music is not a thing, but rather an activity. In this new book, Small outlines a theory of what he terms "musicking," a verb that encompasses all musical activity from composing to performing to listening to a Walkman to singing in the shower. Using Gregory Bateson's philosophy of mind and a Geertzian thick description of a typical concert in a typical symphony hall, Small demonstrates how musicking forms a ritual through which all the participants explore and celebrate the relationships that constitute their social identity. This engaging and deftly written trip through the concert hall will have readers rethinking every aspect of their musical worlds.

Music Learning Today

Author: William I. Bauer
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0197503705
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 217

Book Description
""At the beginning of Chapter 1, I quote author Arthur C. Clarke, who wrote "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" (1984, p. 36). To me, technology has always been somewhat magical. Growing up I liked both magic tricks and electronic gadgets. When I was very young I remember being picked out of the audience by a magician to help him with a trick, thrilled with the seemingly mystical act that he accomplished with my assistance. I loved seeing magicians live or on TV, and I borrowed magic books from the local public library to learn tricks that I tried out on my family. As I became older and obtained various technological devices, they too fascinated me with the somewhat magical (to me) things they were able to do. Two items, in particular, stand out in my memory. I acquired an analog audio tape recorder that I used to play duets with myself by recording one part and then playing it back while performing the other part live. This made practicing my euphonium so much more fun and likely increased my practice time as I worked to record the perfect "take" of each line of the various duets I had in my books! I was also excited to receive a CB radio one Christmas, which allowed me to stay in close contact, at all times of the day and night, with my best friend who had received the same gift. It augmented my social network, such as it existed in those days. In addition, it was amazing to be able to use the radio to listen to and learn from the conversations picked out of the air of people from all over. Technology had magical qualities and I loved how it allowed me to do things that were otherwise not possible, as well as things that made life more interesting and enjoyable. I still feel the same way today. ""--

The Routledge Companion to the Study of Local Musicking

Author: Suzel Ana Reily
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781138920118
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
WINNER OF THE 2019 SOCIETY OF ETHNOMUSICLOGY ELLEN KOSKOFF PRIZE FOR EDITED COLLECTIONS The Routledge Companion to the Study of Local Musicking provides a reference to how, cross-culturally, musicking constructs locality and how locality is constructed by the musicking that takes place within it, that is, how people engage with ideas of community and place through music. The term "musicking" has gained currency in music studies, and refers to the diverse ways in which people engage with music, regardless of the nature of this engagement. By linking musicking to the local, this book highlights the ways in which musical practices and discourses interact with people's everyday experiences and understandings of their immediate environment, their connections and commitment to that locality, and the people who exist within it. It explores what makes local musicking "local." By viewing musicking from the perspective of where it takes place, the contributions in this collection engage with debates on the processes of musicking, identity construction, community-building and network formation, competitions and rivalries, place and space making, and local-global dynamics.

Musicking in Twentieth-Century Europe

Author: Klaus Nathaus
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110651963
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 473

Book Description
Music has gained the increasing attention of historians. Research has branched out to explore music-related topics, including creative labor, economic histories of music production, the social and political uses of music, and musical globalization. This handbook both covers the history of music in Europe and probes its role for the making of Europe during a "long" twentieth century. It offers concise guidance to key historical trends as well as the most important research on central topics within the field.

Music of the Common Tongue

Author: Christopher Small
Publisher: Wesleyan University Press
ISBN: 081957225X
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 512

Book Description
In clear and elegant prose, Music of the Common Tongue, first published in 1987, argues that by any reasonable reckoning of the function of music in human life the African American tradition, that which stems from the collision between African and European ways of doing music which occurred in the Americas and the Caribbean during and after slavery, is the major western music of the twentieth century. In showing why this is so, the author presents not only an account of African American music from its origins but also a more general consideration of the nature of the music act and of its function in human life. The two streams of discussion occupy alternate chapters so that each casts light on the other. The author offers also an answer to what the Musical Times called the "seldom posed though glaringly obtrusive" question: "why is it that the music of an alienated, oppressed, often persecuted black minority should have made so powerful an impact on the entire industrialized world, whatever the color of its skin or economic status?"

Ethics and Christian Musicking

Author: Nathan Myrick
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000360121
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 408

Book Description
The relationship between musical activity and ethical significance occupies long traditions of thought and reflection both within Christianity and beyond. From concerns regarding music and the passions in early Christian writings through to moral panics regarding rock music in the 20th century, Christians have often gravitated to the view that music can become morally weighted, building a range of normative practices and prescriptions upon particular modes of ethical judgment. But how should we think about ethics and Christian musical activity in the contemporary world? As studies of Christian musicking have moved to incorporate the experiences, agencies, and relationships of congregations, ethical questions have become implicit in new ways in a range of recent research - how do communities negotiate questions of value in music? How are processes of encounter with a variety of different others negotiated through musical activity? What responsibilities arise within musical communities? This volume seeks to expand this conversation. Divided into four sections, the book covers the relationship of Christian musicking to the body; responsibilities and values; identity and encounter; and notions of the self. The result is a wide-ranging perspective on music as an ethical practice, particularly as it relates to contemporary religious and spiritual communities. This collection is an important milestone at the intersection of ethnomusicology, musicology, religious studies and theology. It will be a vital reference for scholars and practitioners reflecting on the values and practices of worshipping communities in the contemporary world.

Music, Society, Education

Author: Christopher Small
Publisher: Wesleyan University Press
ISBN: 0819572233
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 249

Book Description
Cited by Soundpost as "remarkable and revolutionary" upon its publication in 1977, Music, Society, Education has become a classic in the study of music as a social force. Christopher Small sets out to examine the social implications of Western classical music, effects that until recently have been largely ignored or dismissed by most musicologists. He strives to view the Western musical tradition "through the mirror of these other musics [Balinese and African] as it were from the outside, and in so doing to learn something of the inner unspoken nature of Western culture as a whole." As series co-editor Robert Walser writes, "By pointing to the complicity of Western culture with Western imperialism, Small challenges us to create a future that is more humane than the past. And by writing a book that enables us to rethink so fundamentally our involvements with music, he teaches us how we might get there."

Eco-Literate Music Pedagogy

Author: Daniel Shevock
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351813145
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 204

Book Description
Eco-Literate Music Pedagogy examines the capacity of musiciking to cultivate ecological literacy, approaching eco-literate music pedagogy through philosophical and autoethnographical lenses. Building on the principle that music contributes uniquely to human ecological thinking, this volume tracks the course of eco-literate music pedagogy while guiding the discussion forward: What does it mean to embrace the impulse to teach music for ecological literacy? What is it like to theorize eco-literate music pedagogy? What is learned through enacting this pedagogy? How do the impulsion, the theorizing, and the enacting relate to one another? Music education for ecological consciousness is experienced in local places, and this study explores the theory underlying eco-literate music pedagogy in juxtaposition with the author’s personal experiences. The work arrives at a new philosophy for music education: a spiritual praxis rooted in soil communities, one informed by ecology’s intrinsic value for non-human being and musicking. Eco-Literate Music Pedagogy adds to the emerging body of music education literature considering ecological and environmental issues.

A Million Years of Music

Author: Gary Tomlinson
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 1935408658
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 367

Book Description
What is the origin of music? In the last few decades this centuries-old puzzle has been reinvigorated by new archaeological evidence and developments in the fields of cognitive science, linguistics, and evolutionary theory. Starting at a period of human prehistory long before Homo sapiens or music existed, Tomlinson describes the incremental attainments that, by changing the communication and society of prehuman species, laid the foundation for musical behaviors in more recent times. He traces in Neandertals and early sapiens the accumulation and development of these capacities, and he details their coalescence into modern musical behavior across the last hundred millennia

How Musical is Man?

Author: John Blacking
Publisher: University of Washington Press
ISBN: 9780295953380
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 152

Book Description
This important study in ethnomusicology is an attempt by the author -- a musician who has become a social anthropologist -- to compare his experiences of music-making in different cultures. He is here presenting new information resulting from his research into African music, especially among the Venda. Venda music, he discovered is in its way no less complex in structure than European music. Literacy and the invention of nation may generate extended musical structures, but they express differences of degree, and not the difference in kind that is implied by the distinction between 'art' and 'folk' music. Many, if not all, of music's essential processes may be found in the constitution of the human body and in patterns of interaction of human bodies in society. Thus all music is structurally, as well as functionally, 'folk' music in the sense that music cannot be transmitted of have meaning without associations between people. If John Blacking's guess about the biological and social origins of music is correct, or even only partly correct, it would generate new ideas about the nature of musicality, the role of music in education and its general role in societies which (like the Venda in the context of their traditional economy) will have more leisure time as automation increases.