Pub Date : 2024-06-03DOI: 10.1017/s1752196324000087
Julia Chybowski
The Ohio-based Black songwriter, Joshua Simpson, published two books of antislavery songs in the mid-nineteenth century, Original Anti-Slavery Songs in 1852 and Emancipation Car in 1854. Unlike most other known songsters, which were compilations of poetry from several authors, Simpson authored original lyrics for borrowed melodies, and he did so with extraordinary care, engaging the original song to enhance his activist messages. Employing the rhetorical practice of signification, his linkage of new lyrics with preexisting songs sometimes builds upon meaning from the original text, reusing it to add weight to the moral and political arguments against slavery. He also extends nature imagery and lyrics about the comforts of home and family in traditional ballads and contemporary sentimental songs to his new lyrics, but more often his signifying practice is ironic. He inverts the original song's sentimentality in deliberately discomforting ways that could persuade Americans to assist self-emancipating people and work toward wholescale abolition of slavery. Simpson's most radical songs talk back irreverently to the originals, especially minstrel tunes containing degrading caricatures and proslavery propaganda as well as patriotic anthems proclaiming hypocritical platitudes. Simpson did not simply write new songs; he transformed some of the most popular and beloved songs of his era, harnessing their renown to sharpen his activist messages.
{"title":"Joshua McCarter Simpson's Songs and Mid-Nineteenth Century Antislavery Activism","authors":"Julia Chybowski","doi":"10.1017/s1752196324000087","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s1752196324000087","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The Ohio-based Black songwriter, Joshua Simpson, published two books of antislavery songs in the mid-nineteenth century, Original Anti-Slavery Songs in 1852 and Emancipation Car in 1854. Unlike most other known songsters, which were compilations of poetry from several authors, Simpson authored original lyrics for borrowed melodies, and he did so with extraordinary care, engaging the original song to enhance his activist messages. Employing the rhetorical practice of signification, his linkage of new lyrics with preexisting songs sometimes builds upon meaning from the original text, reusing it to add weight to the moral and political arguments against slavery. He also extends nature imagery and lyrics about the comforts of home and family in traditional ballads and contemporary sentimental songs to his new lyrics, but more often his signifying practice is ironic. He inverts the original song's sentimentality in deliberately discomforting ways that could persuade Americans to assist self-emancipating people and work toward wholescale abolition of slavery. Simpson's most radical songs talk back irreverently to the originals, especially minstrel tunes containing degrading caricatures and proslavery propaganda as well as patriotic anthems proclaiming hypocritical platitudes. Simpson did not simply write new songs; he transformed some of the most popular and beloved songs of his era, harnessing their renown to sharpen his activist messages.</p>","PeriodicalId":42557,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Society for American Music","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2024-06-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141256469","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-06-03DOI: 10.1017/s1752196324000063
Adriana Martínez Figueroa
Since the late nineteenth century, the “Indian” as symbol has been a recurring trope in the art music of Mexico and the United States. Composers in both countries have often turned to representations of Indigenous Peoples as symbolic of nature, spirituality, and/or aspects of the national Self. This article seeks to place James DeMars's opera Guadalupe, Our Lady of the Roses (2008) in the context of two major cultural trends: Indianism in the U.S., and the representation of Mexico by U.S. composers. DeMars's use of Indigenous instruments in Guadalupe, including Mexican pre-Hispanic percussion, and flutes performed by famed Navajo-Ute flutist R. Carlos Nakai, continues the Indianist tradition of associating the Indigenous cultures of both countries with nature, spirituality, and authenticity. Similar associations emerge in the development and reception of both “world music” and the Native American recording industry since the 1980s, as exemplified by Nakai's career. DeMars uses these instruments in combination with Plains Native American features and generic exoticisms to represent both the Mexican Indigenous Peoples and the spiritual message of the opera. The sympathetic treatment of Indigenous cultures in Guadalupe nevertheless exists in tension with their exoticism and Otherness; in this the work is representative of U.S. cultural responses to Mexico stretching back throughout the long twentieth century.
自十九世纪末以来,作为象征的 "印第安人 "一直是墨西哥和美国艺术音乐中反复出现的特例。这两个国家的作曲家经常将原住民的形象作为自然、精神和/或民族自我的象征。本文试图将詹姆斯-德玛斯(James DeMars)的歌剧《玫瑰圣母瓜达卢佩》(Guadalupe, Our Lady of the Roses)(2008 年)置于两大文化潮流的背景之下:美国的印第安主义和美国作曲家对墨西哥的表现。德玛斯在《瓜达卢佩》中使用了土著乐器,包括墨西哥前西班牙时期的打击乐器和由著名的纳瓦霍-尤特长笛演奏家 R. Carlos Nakai 演奏的长笛,延续了印第安主义的传统,将两国的土著文化与自然、灵性和真实性联系在一起。自 20 世纪 80 年代以来,"世界音乐 "和美国原住民唱片业的发展和接受过程中也出现了类似的联系,Nakai 的职业生涯就是例证。德玛斯将这些乐器与美国平原原住民的特征和一般的异国情调相结合,表现了墨西哥原住民和歌剧的精神信息。尽管如此,《瓜达卢佩》中对土著文化的同情处理与其异国情调和他者性之间存在着紧张关系;在这一点上,这部作品代表了美国对墨西哥的文化反应,这种反应可追溯到漫长的 20 世纪。
{"title":"Binational Indianism in James DeMars’s Guadalupe, Our Lady of the Roses","authors":"Adriana Martínez Figueroa","doi":"10.1017/s1752196324000063","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s1752196324000063","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Since the late nineteenth century, the “Indian” as symbol has been a recurring trope in the art music of Mexico and the United States. Composers in both countries have often turned to representations of Indigenous Peoples as symbolic of nature, spirituality, and/or aspects of the national Self. This article seeks to place James DeMars's opera <span>Guadalupe, Our Lady of the Roses (2008)</span> in the context of two major cultural trends: Indianism in the U.S., and the representation of Mexico by U.S. composers. DeMars's use of Indigenous instruments in <span>Guadalupe</span>, including Mexican pre-Hispanic percussion, and flutes performed by famed Navajo-Ute flutist R. Carlos Nakai, continues the Indianist tradition of associating the Indigenous cultures of both countries with nature, spirituality, and authenticity. Similar associations emerge in the development and reception of both “world music” and the Native American recording industry since the 1980s, as exemplified by Nakai's career. DeMars uses these instruments in combination with Plains Native American features and generic exoticisms to represent both the Mexican Indigenous Peoples and the spiritual message of the opera. The sympathetic treatment of Indigenous cultures in Guadalupe nevertheless exists in tension with their exoticism and Otherness; in this the work is representative of U.S. cultural responses to Mexico stretching back throughout the long twentieth century.</p>","PeriodicalId":42557,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Society for American Music","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2024-06-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141255532","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-04-04DOI: 10.1017/s1752196324000075
Derek Baron
This article examines the politics of music at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, the flagship federal off-reservation boarding school for the compulsory education of Indigenous children, established in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, in 1879. By examining the music education and performance culture at the Carlisle School, this article considers the role of music both within boarding school discourses of “civilization” and in terms of the larger federal goal of dispossession of Native land. Based on original archival research and engagements with contemporary discourses in Indigenous music and sound studies, the article then considers a nationalistic comic opera titled The Captain of Plymouth performed by Native students at the Carlisle commencement exercises in 1909. It argues ultimately that, although music, dance, and expressive culture were a central concern for federal assimilationist policy, music making at Carlisle provided a groundwork for the emergence of an intertribal social formation that guided musical practices and self-determination movements of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
{"title":"Opera and Land: Settler Colonialism and the Geopolitics of Music at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School","authors":"Derek Baron","doi":"10.1017/s1752196324000075","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s1752196324000075","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines the politics of music at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, the flagship federal off-reservation boarding school for the compulsory education of Indigenous children, established in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, in 1879. By examining the music education and performance culture at the Carlisle School, this article considers the role of music both within boarding school discourses of “civilization” and in terms of the larger federal goal of dispossession of Native land. Based on original archival research and engagements with contemporary discourses in Indigenous music and sound studies, the article then considers a nationalistic comic opera titled <jats:italic>The Captain of Plymouth</jats:italic> performed by Native students at the Carlisle commencement exercises in 1909. It argues ultimately that, although music, dance, and expressive culture were a central concern for federal assimilationist policy, music making at Carlisle provided a groundwork for the emergence of an intertribal social formation that guided musical practices and self-determination movements of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.","PeriodicalId":42557,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Society for American Music","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2024-04-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140569847","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-03-14DOI: 10.1017/s1752196324000099
Luis Achondo
Andrés Segovia's repertoire—the repertorio segoviano—has crucially shaped the guitar canon. Although some guitar scholars argue that these works helped rescue the instrument from the periphery of art music, others contend that, by commissioning music from minor, conservative composers, Segovia missed the chance to request pieces from the most influential twentieth-century modernists. This article questions the conservative homogeneity of the repertorio segoviano. Focusing on Segovia's collaborations with Heitor Villa-Lobos, I argue that it contains traces of coloniality: The perpetuation of colonial domination in Latin America. The relationship between Segovia and Villa-Lobos was more contentious than the official narrative suggests—tensions stemming from their dominant personalities, divergent approaches to guitar composition, and conflicting musical ideologies. Indeed, although Segovia's stance aligned with Francoist and European conservative aesthetics, Villa-Lobos embraced a transcultural approach to music shaped by, a response to, and exertion of the coloniality of power—discrepancies that were engraved in their collaborations and ultimately the repertorio segoviano. This article ultimately foregrounds that elite composers from the periphery played an essential role in the modernization of the guitar in the twentieth century, thereby questioning historiographies that detach the instrument from the social, political, and cultural messiness of colonial difference and the coloniality of power.
{"title":"Heitor Villa-Lobos and the Traces of Coloniality in Andrés Segovia's Guitar Repertoire","authors":"Luis Achondo","doi":"10.1017/s1752196324000099","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s1752196324000099","url":null,"abstract":"Andrés Segovia's repertoire—<jats:italic>the repertorio segoviano</jats:italic>—has crucially shaped the guitar canon. Although some guitar scholars argue that these works helped rescue the instrument from the periphery of art music, others contend that, by commissioning music from minor, conservative composers, Segovia missed the chance to request pieces from the most influential twentieth-century modernists. This article questions the conservative homogeneity of the <jats:italic>repertorio segoviano</jats:italic>. Focusing on Segovia's collaborations with Heitor Villa-Lobos, I argue that it contains traces of coloniality: The perpetuation of colonial domination in Latin America. The relationship between Segovia and Villa-Lobos was more contentious than the official narrative suggests—tensions stemming from their dominant personalities, divergent approaches to guitar composition, and conflicting musical ideologies. Indeed, although Segovia's stance aligned with Francoist and European conservative aesthetics, Villa-Lobos embraced a transcultural approach to music shaped by, a response to, and exertion of the coloniality of power—discrepancies that were engraved in their collaborations and ultimately the <jats:italic>repertorio segoviano</jats:italic>. This article ultimately foregrounds that elite composers from the periphery played an essential role in the modernization of the guitar in the twentieth century, thereby questioning historiographies that detach the instrument from the social, political, and cultural messiness of colonial difference and the coloniality of power.","PeriodicalId":42557,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Society for American Music","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2024-03-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140156818","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-03-06DOI: 10.1017/s1752196324000051
Varun Chandrasekhar
{"title":"Ry Cooder and Taj Mahal. Get on Board. Nonesuch/Warner Records, 2022, CD.","authors":"Varun Chandrasekhar","doi":"10.1017/s1752196324000051","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s1752196324000051","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42557,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Society for American Music","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2024-03-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140077743","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-02-26DOI: 10.1017/s1752196323000469
Stephen Stacks
In 1981, Bernice Johnson Reagon gave a talk at the West Coast Women's Festival, challenging the group of mainly white feminists to embrace coalition politics—a political praxis theorized and advocated by Black and Israeli feminists that sought to build coalitions only after distinct group identities were embraced and nurtured. Long before she articulated this concept as the future of the Movements within which she worked, Reagon piloted it in her post-Civil Rights Movement music making. In her work with the Harambee Singers and the Southern Folk Cultural Revival Project between 1966 and 1974, Reagon developed a musical coalition politics that would inform her later interventions. Not only were Reagon's musical coalition politics during this period a musical embodiment of the vanguard of feminist theory, but they also shed light on how one of the most important musician-scholar-activists of the twentieth century approached the crafting of a new political identity in conversation with the shifting front of the Black Freedom Movement in the immediate wake of the classical phase of the Civil Rights Movement. This little-known period of Reagon's output offers scholars of Black music, scholars of American music, feminists/Black feminists, and activists much to contemplate and incorporate into our work.
{"title":"Bernice Johnson Reagon's Musical Coalition Politics, 1966–81","authors":"Stephen Stacks","doi":"10.1017/s1752196323000469","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s1752196323000469","url":null,"abstract":"<p>In 1981, Bernice Johnson Reagon gave a talk at the West Coast Women's Festival, challenging the group of mainly white feminists to embrace coalition politics—a political praxis theorized and advocated by Black and Israeli feminists that sought to build coalitions only after distinct group identities were embraced and nurtured. Long before she articulated this concept as the future of the Movements within which she worked, Reagon piloted it in her post-Civil Rights Movement music making. In her work with the Harambee Singers and the Southern Folk Cultural Revival Project between 1966 and 1974, Reagon developed a musical coalition politics that would inform her later interventions. Not only were Reagon's musical coalition politics during this period a musical embodiment of the vanguard of feminist theory, but they also shed light on how one of the most important musician-scholar-activists of the twentieth century approached the crafting of a new political identity in conversation with the shifting front of the Black Freedom Movement in the immediate wake of the classical phase of the Civil Rights Movement. This little-known period of Reagon's output offers scholars of Black music, scholars of American music, feminists/Black feminists, and activists much to contemplate and incorporate into our work.</p>","PeriodicalId":42557,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Society for American Music","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2024-02-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139968743","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-02-01DOI: 10.1017/s1752196323000445
Mandy Smith
{"title":"The Lady Swings: Memoirs of a Jazz Drummer By Dottie Dodgion and Wayne Enstice. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2021.","authors":"Mandy Smith","doi":"10.1017/s1752196323000445","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s1752196323000445","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42557,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Society for American Music","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2024-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140465140","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-02-01DOI: 10.1017/s1752196323000408
Karen M. Cook
{"title":"Stephanie Economou. Assassin's Creed Valhalla: Dawn of Ragnarok. Ubisoft Music, 2022","authors":"Karen M. Cook","doi":"10.1017/s1752196323000408","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s1752196323000408","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42557,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Society for American Music","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2024-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140467557","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-02-01DOI: 10.1017/s1752196323000391
Nicholas Booker
{"title":"The Berkeley Folk Music Festival & the Folk Revival on the US West Coast—An Introduction. Northwestern University. Website. https://sites.northwestern.edu/bfmf/","authors":"Nicholas Booker","doi":"10.1017/s1752196323000391","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s1752196323000391","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42557,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Society for American Music","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2024-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140465079","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-02-01DOI: 10.1017/s1752196323000457
Denise von Glahn
{"title":"Terrible Freedom: The Life and Work of Lucia Dlugoszewski By Amy C. Beal. Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2022.","authors":"Denise von Glahn","doi":"10.1017/s1752196323000457","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s1752196323000457","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42557,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Society for American Music","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2024-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140466713","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}