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Abstracts 2005
Session I: Music as Cultural Identity: Diaspora, Race,
and Nation (9–10:30am) |
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Interpreting Blue Lake: Music Videos and Meaning in the Tibetan
Diaspora
Anna Stirr (Columbia University)
This paper is concerned with how meaning is ascribed to music
in the case of one popular Tibetan song. Considered by many
to be the "unofficial anthem" of Tibet, Blue Lake
(mTsho sngon po) was collaboratively written in 1984 by poet
Dhondrup Gyal and composer Chopathar, treating Kokonor lake
as a poetic metonym for Tibet. Recorded by at least eight artists,
this song is well known among Tibetans living in Tibet and in
exile. While the imagery of the lyrics is widely understood
to carry a political message, their metaphoric ambiguity contributes
to multiple interpretations, which are further complicated by
the addition of musical sound and visual image. Further, a listener/viewer's
own background influences his or her interpretive choices. Here
I will examine these ambiguities of interpretation regarding
two music videos of Blue Lake, made in the Chinese city of Chengdu
by the Tibetan singer Dechen Wangmo. Along with my own analysis
of the music videos I present those of several diaspora Tibetans
including the composer, Chopathar. Widely accessible in various
media forms, popular songs such as Blue Lake can provide points
of connection between Tibetans in Tibet, China-proper, and the
increasingly far-flung Tibetan diaspora. Discussions surrounding
meaning in popular music thus play an important role in opening
up an inclusive space for a "polyphonic and participatory"
discourse on Tibetan modernity (Baranovitch 2003).
The Residents' "Theory of Obscurity" and Narratives
of Race and Identity In American Popular Music
Evan Rapport (The Graduate Center, City University of New York)
Interpretations of music are heavily determined by race. More
specifically, musical style and genre are linked to racial narratives
that might be presented by musicians themselves, record companies
and others with vested interests, or mapped onto the musicians
by listeners and consumers.
Anonymity raises questions about the role of identity in hearing
music. The Residents, an underground "rock group"
working completely in disguise (according to a "Theory
of Obscurity") and never granting direct interviews, provide
a good example. Their work seeks to complicate mainstream ideas
of American popular music, for example, by pairing unlikely
icons together (George Gershwin with James Brown, Hank Williams
with John Philip Sousa), or by using shocking symbols (swastikas,
Klansmen outfits, blackface). Because of their anonymity, they
have never had to personally explain these aspects of their
work, offering only a surreal myth involving origins in Louisiana
and a Bavarian avant-gardist named N. Senada.
Despite the issues raised about race in the Residents's oeuvre,
their reception underscores the inseparable bond between identity
narratives and popular music. Without a verifiable "personal"
identity serving as a backdrop, fans and critics assimilate
or ignore shocking references as abstractions without taking
up questions of meaning. I address this absence by interpreting
some of their most race-oriented works in terms of visual imagery
and sonic signifiers such as timbre, vocal inflection, and chord
progressions. I also discuss their attitude towards race as
a Eurological avant-garde utopian project, paradoxically rooted
in race even as it seeks to transcend the concept.
Sounding Alternate Histories: Music, Nationalism, and the
Ethnic Conflict in Sri Lanka
Jim Sykes (University of Chicago)
In this paper, I argue that ethnic conflict, ethnic nationalism
and Western consumerist practices have combined in Sri Lanka
to cause the historically "hybrid" tradition of Kandyan
dance to seem ethnically "pure." Known as the "classical"
music of the Sinhalese majority population, Kandyan dance plays
a crucial role in the maintenance of Sinhalese identity; it
is performed daily in the country's most important Buddhist
shrine, nightly at tourist-only dance recitals, and dancers
and drummers are even featured on the 500-rupee bill (roughly
US $5). Kandyan dance is considered entirely separate from the
performing traditions of the Tamil minority population, who
have waged a violent separatist struggle for over twenty years
against the Sinhalese, leading to the deaths of some 60,000
people.
By examining the way ethnonationalist politics and war have
buried the several millenia-long history of interactions between
Sinhalese, Tamil, and Veddah (aboriginal) peoples, I hope to
play some small part in dismantling the ethnonationalist enterprise.
Crucial to this endeavor, however, is an acknowledgement of
the influence that Western consumerist practices and racial
ideologies have played in promoting Sinhalese ethnonationalism,
both through tourism and through the anthropological representational
project. I argue that our neo-liberal ideology of global "multiculturalism"-which
seeks to map out the cultural traditions of all the world's
peoples and promote them through tourism and documentation-reproduces
a historically Western attachment to the concepts of musical
ownership and the musical object. Crucially, this attachment
reinforces a false authenticity that is reflected in cultural
policy, media representation and national identity, the effect
of which is to actually uphold the ethnonationalist cause we
wish to dismantle.
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Session II: Formal Ambiguities, Violent Behaviors (11am–12pm) |
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Continuous Exposition vs. Two-Part Exposition: Formal Conflicts
in the First Movement of Mozart's Piano Concerto in F Major,
K. 459
Eva Sze (The Graduate Center, City University of New York)
Recent writings on Sonata Theory by James Hepokoski and Warren
Darcy differentiate between two kinds of sonata expositions
in late-eighteenth-century instrumental works: the two-part
exposition and the continuous exposition. Required of the two-part
exposition is the medial caesura, which is most often articulated
by an emphatic half cadence in the secondary key or the tonic
key, or infrequently by a perfect authentic cadence in the secondary
key. By contrast, the continuous exposition does not contain
any medial caesura. In the first movements of Mozart's piano
concertos, the two-part exposition is the norm for both the
opening ritornello and the solo exposition. The F-major Concerto,
K. 459, however, reveals a unique situation wherein a two-part
solo exposition follows a continuous opening ritornello. This
paper explores the form of the first movement of the K. 459
Concerto using Sonata Theory. The first section explains why
the opening ritornello is continuous and the solo exposition
two-part. The second section considers the problems associated
with the co-existence of the continuous and two-part expositions.
The final section revisits the problems through other analytical
perspectives, namely Schenkerian voice leading and Caplinian
formal function. The three methodologies produce conflicting
readings. The differences do not point to weaknesses in the
methodologies themselves; rather, they reveal the formal complexity
in the K. 459 Concerto.
Rape, Ultra-violence, and Beethoven: Classical Music and
Violence in A Clockwork Orange
Christine Lee Gengaro (University of Southern California)
The connection between classical or art music, and deviant,
even violent behavior in film characters has long been established.
From the child-killer of M who whistles Grieg to Hannibal Lecter's
passion for Bach's Goldberg Variations in Silence of the Lambs,
a love of classical music has often belonged to characters on
the moral fringes of society. One of the prototypical characters
whose love for classical music goes hand in hand with his love
of violence and destruction is Alex from Stanley Kubrick's A
Clockwork Orange (1971). The tagline of one movie poster reads:
"The adventures of a young man whose principal interests
are rape, ultra-violence and Beethoven." Music both incites
Alex to violence and accompanies his deviant actions. The music
also acts as a symbol of Alex's power of choice and his control
over the narrative. Alex's ability to choose his own music,
his own actions, his own destiny, is vital to A Clockwork Orange.
In this paper I plan to explore the ways in which music and
violence are linked in the character of Alex and to place A
Clockwork Orange into a larger context of films with violent
characters who enjoy classical music. Do these films suggest
that listening to classical music is a deviant behavior in and
of itself? Is the music a larger symbol of control and power?
Drawing on the recent scholarship of, among others, Kristi Brown
and Claudia Gorbman, I will discuss the implications of using
classical music both as an accompaniment to violent actions
and as an agent of identification for deviant characters.
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Session III: Transgressive Voices: Women in Patriarchal Societies
(2:30–3:30pm) |
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Wagner's Women and Conservative Discourse: Redefined Gender
Expectations in Nazi Germany
Anna Rutledge (University of Toronto)
This presentation reconsiders the reception of Wagner's female
opera roles in the conservative music press during the Nazi
period, keeping Nazi gender ideology and policy in mind. As
the conservative press became a more vocal advocate for the
increasingly powerful far-right, depictions of women in general,
and Wagner's female leads in particular, began to change. This
shift, which moves the characters out of their previous circle
of interpretation and places them within the wider conservative
discourse on what women ought to be, marks both a new interpretation
and appropriation of Wagner opera and the growing unrest surrounding
women's changing role in German society. In order to establish
the shift between the original reception of the female leads
and the new interpretations that begin to appear in the late
nineteen-twenties, I will consider both the original and later
reviews. To further establish this research within a wider social
history, discussion of Nazi gender policy will be included.
Also, I will include a brief history of conservative music journals
in this period, in order to establish their role at the forefront
of Nazi music policy. The primary journal considered in this
paper will be Die Neue Zeitschrift fur Musik, which emerged
as one of the most conservative presses during this period.
Overall, these histories will provide us with at least a basic
understanding of the forces that contributed to the reinterpretation
of Wagner's female opera roles within a wider shift in gender
ideology both inside and outside the arts.
With a Voice like Thunder: Functions of Female Lamentation
in Corsica
Ruth Emily Rosenberg (University of Pennsylvania)
Funeral rites on the Mediterranean island of Corsica traditionally
have been performed by women. Until the twentieth-century, funeral
laments (voceri) were commonly improvised over the body of the
deceased and accompanied by gestures of extreme grief, including
hair-rending, face-scratching, and sobbing. Generally tender
songs that paid homage to the dead, in the case of violent death
(mala morte) these extemporized verses could also name the assassin
and call for a revenge killing. Though the singing of voceri
is no longer a living tradition, texts of many laments were
collected and published in the latter half of the nineteenth-century,
along with detailed descriptions of female mourning practices.
In this paper, based on both historical and ethnographic research,
I use these sources to show how women in nineteenth-century
Corsican society used voceri to enter into social conflict.
Drawing from recent scholarship on Greek lament, I identify
textual formulae and conventions of performance that made voceru,
one of the only public forms of expression available to women
in a male-dominated society, effective on several levels. In
addition to helping communities face the calamity of death through
collective catharsis, laments established authoritative accounts
of conflict and assigned responsibility in cases of homicide.
In less dramatic circumstances, laments allowed women to air
gender-specific grievances and comment on the otherwise private
female experience. I conclude my paper by looking at one example
of how, in the twenty-first century, voceru has been revived
as a viable form of protest in the ongoing conflict between
the French state and Corsican nationalists.
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Session IV: Appropriation, Resistance, and Worship in the
Cold War Era (4–5:30pm) |
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From Ethiopia to the Andrews Sisters: Calypso, Appropriation,
and World War II
Christopher L. Ballengee (Bowling Green State University)
Throughout its history, Trinidadian calypso has had much to
say about local reaction to conflict, both foreign and domestic.
Calypsos concerning World War II, for example, offer a particularly
rich array of engaging social issues, which gauge the depth
of social responsibility embodied in a genre often stereotyped
as inconsequential in the United States.
Leading into World War II, some calypsos urged African solidarity
in response to Italian aggression in Ethiopia, and once the
war was underway, symbolically stood up to the false superiority
of Nazi Germany, while others praised Allied efforts and vowed
complete victory. The Axis powers, however, were not the only
enemies of calypsonians. Food shortages, currency devaluation,
and other effects of global conflict were common themes both
during and after the war. Above all, calypsos dealing with prostitution
and the moral decadence of U.S. servicemen stationed in Trinidad
have been the most enduring. Sanitized versions of these songs,
with overtly sexual images having been replaced by themes of
romantic love, became the best known in the United States via
musicians like the Andrews Sisters and Harry Belafonte, a popularity
most fans of "real" calypso have begrudged for decades.
Thus, while calypso outside the Caribbean is now generally associated
with stereotyped images of "island" life, it is merely
a convenient façade. Calypso has always been a voice
of protest, commentary, and celebration. In the hands of the
U.S. music industry, however, this voice was silenced and led
to widespread misconceptions about Trinidadian music and the
whole of Caribbean culture.
Burning the Flag: Appropriation, Deconstruction, and Mockery
As Sonic Resistance to the War in Vietnam
Timothy P. Kinsella (University of Washington)
In contradistinction to earlier war-related music, the art music
created in response to the Vietnam War is almost without exception
unified by its origin in opposition to the war. Composers marshaled
a wide variety of innovative musical techniques in order to
express the anguish, absurdity, and obscenity of the Vietnam
War, a "postmodern" war which resists traditional
linear narrative approaches. A typical-and powerful-technique
was the appropriation of previously existing music laden with
patriotic, nationalist, and religious sentiment, and its subsequent
ritual "disembowelment" as an act of protest. Quotations
of such material as the national anthem, patriotic songs, presidential
speeches, or news reports were fragmented, decontextualized,
distorted, or otherwise mutilated and reframed, divesting them
of their original meanings. To oppose a conflict characterized
by Orwellian double-speak-"We had to destroy the village
in order to save it"-composers suggested that the war itself
had made a mockery of the values embedded in these national
icons. The strategy was effective because of the immediate emotional
response that listeners have to patriotic music, and the cognitive
dissonance that arises when reality clashes with what they would
like to believe. Composers deploy shock tactics to shatter the
rotten cultural foundation upon which disingenuous war rhetoric
rests. Via musical analysis and hermeneutic explication, this
paper investigates the varied deconstructive operations in several
important works by such composers as Dessau, Wernick, Martirano,
Hannay, Tenney, and Hendrix with regard to the semiotic functions
of the original objects and their redeployment as potent figures
of sonic resistance.
"Lenin in Swaddling Clothes:" A Critique of the
Ideological Conflict between Socialist State Policy and Christian
Music in Romania during the Cold War
Sabina Pauta Pieslak (University of Michigan)
During the economic depression of the early 1930s, when many
members of the Romanian Socialist Workers' Party were considered
subversive and imprisoned by the monarchic government, groups
of Socialist activists adapted the winter caroling practice
associated with the Orthodox Church in order to raise funds
for their incarcerated comrades and to prevent official suspicion
while doing so. Instead of carrying a staff bearing the Star
of Bethlehem with the image of Christ in swaddling clothes at
the center, as is customary in the Romanian caroling tradition,
the Socialists chose a five-pointed "Red Star," symbolic
of Socialism and revolution, surrounding the image of Lenin,
and sang Christian carols, known as colinde or "star songs,"
with altered texts that urged listeners to contribute to the
cause of the working class. Thus, the Socialists of the 1930s
began a paradoxical, inwardly-conflicting practice-using Christian
music to advance the Socialist movement-that would continue,
in various forms, throughout the Cold War era. Despite this
history of contradictory views, or perhaps because of it, scholarship
has tended to exclude consideration of the political contexts
in which the music was and is performed. My presentation offers
a critique of the ideological conflict presented by the Socialist
and atheist policies of the Romanian Communist government with
respect to Christian music, and focuses on the Romanian Christmas
caroling genre, colinda, as a case study through which the course
of this unlikely relationship may be brought to light and better
understood.
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