Pub Date : 2023-02-01DOI: 10.1017/S1752196322000475
Lydia Warren
for too long, these songs might finally be given the hearing they deserve (181). A Sound History offers a foundation for such a hearing, but does not take the work of a systematic study of the songs upon itself; musical and lyrical detail is examined largely to verify the songs, rather than to consider their aesthetic and political claims. A full examination of the material thus remains a task for future scholarship. Since the book is peppered with invitations to examine the Gellert collection at the Archive of Traditional Music at Indiana University, it would seem this is Garabedian’s hope, too. Such future work might consider further why dismissive attitudes toward Gellert’s collection have persisted long after the postwar conflicts that generated them faded, a question to which Garabedian sketches only one possible answer. Folk and blues scholarship, he suggests in the Epilogue, is a small field, deeply influenced and still well-populated by figures who came of age during the 1960s revival, and it remains an interpretive community whose politics, while progressive, still hold fast to the romantic racialism of their revivalist forebears (177). But as demonstrated by the book’s comparison of the 1930s and 1960s folk revivals, the continuity of personnel does not guarantee a continuity of politics. Further work in this area might, then, ask: What are the continuities between Cold War anticommunism and the neoliberalism of the 2000s, or the rightist populism of the 2010s? Why have some disciplines, such as History and American Studies, been quicker to develop a more sanguine approach to the “dialectic of resistance between ‘red’ and ‘black’” than music studies (12)? Beyond the confines of academic politics, is there space in the contemporary Left, too often mired in bad-faith battles between “class-reductionism” and “racial liberalism,” for this kind of historical example? As the book strongly argues, the lines between academic and national politics are finer than it might be comfortable to believe. As I write, several states have passed, or are in the process of passing laws that would make the songs in Gellert’s volume, and indeed Garabedian’s exegesis, once again “verboten” (29), at least within public education systems. As a study in the racial character of U.S. political suppression, then, Garabedian’s book could not be more timely. As a contribution to U.S. music history, it speaks equally to folklore, cultural history, and music studies without sacrificing accessibility or rigor. And as a validation of a radical tradition, a testament to the possibility of a politics beyond the meagre rewards of whiteness’s “psychological wage,” it is essential.
{"title":"Fictional Blues: Narrative Self-Invention from Bessie Smith to Jack White By Kimberly Mack. University of Massachusetts Press, 2020.","authors":"Lydia Warren","doi":"10.1017/S1752196322000475","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S1752196322000475","url":null,"abstract":"for too long, these songs might finally be given the hearing they deserve (181). A Sound History offers a foundation for such a hearing, but does not take the work of a systematic study of the songs upon itself; musical and lyrical detail is examined largely to verify the songs, rather than to consider their aesthetic and political claims. A full examination of the material thus remains a task for future scholarship. Since the book is peppered with invitations to examine the Gellert collection at the Archive of Traditional Music at Indiana University, it would seem this is Garabedian’s hope, too. Such future work might consider further why dismissive attitudes toward Gellert’s collection have persisted long after the postwar conflicts that generated them faded, a question to which Garabedian sketches only one possible answer. Folk and blues scholarship, he suggests in the Epilogue, is a small field, deeply influenced and still well-populated by figures who came of age during the 1960s revival, and it remains an interpretive community whose politics, while progressive, still hold fast to the romantic racialism of their revivalist forebears (177). But as demonstrated by the book’s comparison of the 1930s and 1960s folk revivals, the continuity of personnel does not guarantee a continuity of politics. Further work in this area might, then, ask: What are the continuities between Cold War anticommunism and the neoliberalism of the 2000s, or the rightist populism of the 2010s? Why have some disciplines, such as History and American Studies, been quicker to develop a more sanguine approach to the “dialectic of resistance between ‘red’ and ‘black’” than music studies (12)? Beyond the confines of academic politics, is there space in the contemporary Left, too often mired in bad-faith battles between “class-reductionism” and “racial liberalism,” for this kind of historical example? As the book strongly argues, the lines between academic and national politics are finer than it might be comfortable to believe. As I write, several states have passed, or are in the process of passing laws that would make the songs in Gellert’s volume, and indeed Garabedian’s exegesis, once again “verboten” (29), at least within public education systems. As a study in the racial character of U.S. political suppression, then, Garabedian’s book could not be more timely. As a contribution to U.S. music history, it speaks equally to folklore, cultural history, and music studies without sacrificing accessibility or rigor. And as a validation of a radical tradition, a testament to the possibility of a politics beyond the meagre rewards of whiteness’s “psychological wage,” it is essential.","PeriodicalId":42557,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Society for American Music","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46593852","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 : 2023-02-01DOI: 10.1017/s1752196322000463
John Check
{"title":"Dvořák's Prophecy: A New Narrative for American Classical Music Produced by Joseph Horowitz. Naxos, 2021","authors":"John Check","doi":"10.1017/s1752196322000463","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s1752196322000463","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42557,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Society for American Music","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49562988","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 : 2023-02-01DOI: 10.1017/S175219632200044X
Alexander W. Cowan
These songs … are of inestimable value, if they do nothing more than show that not all Negroes are shouting spirituals, cheering endowed football teams, dancing to the blues, or mouthing inter-racial oratory. Some of them are tired of being poor, and picturesque, and hungry. Terribly and bitterly tired (1).
{"title":"A Sound History: Lawrence Gellert, Black Musical Protest, and White Denial By Steven P. Garabedian. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2020.","authors":"Alexander W. Cowan","doi":"10.1017/S175219632200044X","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S175219632200044X","url":null,"abstract":"These songs … are of inestimable value, if they do nothing more than show that not all Negroes are shouting spirituals, cheering endowed football teams, dancing to the blues, or mouthing inter-racial oratory. Some of them are tired of being poor, and picturesque, and hungry. Terribly and bitterly tired (1).","PeriodicalId":42557,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Society for American Music","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43653391","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 : 2023-02-01DOI: 10.1017/S1752196322000426
George Blake
Abstract Writing about jazz often emphasizes urbanity and focuses on a geographically bounded scene. This can obscure what people do with jazz to affirm community across distances, in the context of Black suburbanization. Likewise, the construction of jazz as an art music oriented around a canonical past does not allow a full understanding of what musicians do with commercial culture to construct community in the present. In this article, I present the notion of sonic suburbanization to foreground the ways Black people exert agency through musicking, claiming suburban space and affirming community across urban and suburban lines. This is live performance that is “both/and”: Both suburban and urban; both community and commercial. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Cleveland, this research focuses on the ways live smooth jazz performers invoke multiple musical histories while congregating heterogeneous Black identities across boundaries. To demonstrate the crossovers of live smooth jazz, I begin by outlining the idea of sonic suburbanization. I then note the proximity of Black music genres in a context of racial segregation. Despite suburbanization's role in dislocating Black geographic cohesion, live musical performance continues to affirm a crossover Black community through interposing an array of sensibilities. Finally, I point to the conceptual schemas of musicians in the scene who foreground continuity with jazz, pop, and gospel. Live smooth jazz performers take pride in rhetorical effectiveness and genre versatility as part of connecting to the audience. Although some scholars attend to smooth jazz outside “real jazz,” musicians in the scene view smooth jazz as real jazz.
{"title":"What We Talk about When We Talk about Live Smooth Jazz: Sonic Suburbanization, Multipurpose Places of Assembly, and Collective Memory in Regional Cleveland","authors":"George Blake","doi":"10.1017/S1752196322000426","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S1752196322000426","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Writing about jazz often emphasizes urbanity and focuses on a geographically bounded scene. This can obscure what people do with jazz to affirm community across distances, in the context of Black suburbanization. Likewise, the construction of jazz as an art music oriented around a canonical past does not allow a full understanding of what musicians do with commercial culture to construct community in the present. In this article, I present the notion of sonic suburbanization to foreground the ways Black people exert agency through musicking, claiming suburban space and affirming community across urban and suburban lines. This is live performance that is “both/and”: Both suburban and urban; both community and commercial. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Cleveland, this research focuses on the ways live smooth jazz performers invoke multiple musical histories while congregating heterogeneous Black identities across boundaries. To demonstrate the crossovers of live smooth jazz, I begin by outlining the idea of sonic suburbanization. I then note the proximity of Black music genres in a context of racial segregation. Despite suburbanization's role in dislocating Black geographic cohesion, live musical performance continues to affirm a crossover Black community through interposing an array of sensibilities. Finally, I point to the conceptual schemas of musicians in the scene who foreground continuity with jazz, pop, and gospel. Live smooth jazz performers take pride in rhetorical effectiveness and genre versatility as part of connecting to the audience. Although some scholars attend to smooth jazz outside “real jazz,” musicians in the scene view smooth jazz as real jazz.","PeriodicalId":42557,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Society for American Music","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44783080","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 : 2023-01-18DOI: 10.1017/S1752196322000438
Marc E. Hannaford
Abstract Muhal Richard Abrams's ground-breaking work as a composer, improviser, and cofounder of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) is far reaching and multifaceted. Russian composer, theorist, and polymath Joseph Schillinger appears repeatedly in discussions of Abrams and the AACM, suggesting that music theory played a generative role in Abrams's creative practice and pedagogy. This article focuses on Abrams's engagement with The Schillinger System of Musical Composition. It theorizes Abrams's incorporation of Schillinger's work into his broader creative pallette, analyzes Abrams's compositional application of Schillinger's theory, and suggests conceptual resonances between Abrams's creative practice and the text. Ultimately, this article suggests a larger network of African American theorists, which I conceptualize as “fugitive music theory.”
{"title":"Theory on the South Side: Muhal Richard Abrams's Engagement with Joseph Schillinger's System of Musical Composition","authors":"Marc E. Hannaford","doi":"10.1017/S1752196322000438","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S1752196322000438","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Muhal Richard Abrams's ground-breaking work as a composer, improviser, and cofounder of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) is far reaching and multifaceted. Russian composer, theorist, and polymath Joseph Schillinger appears repeatedly in discussions of Abrams and the AACM, suggesting that music theory played a generative role in Abrams's creative practice and pedagogy. This article focuses on Abrams's engagement with The Schillinger System of Musical Composition. It theorizes Abrams's incorporation of Schillinger's work into his broader creative pallette, analyzes Abrams's compositional application of Schillinger's theory, and suggests conceptual resonances between Abrams's creative practice and the text. Ultimately, this article suggests a larger network of African American theorists, which I conceptualize as “fugitive music theory.”","PeriodicalId":42557,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Society for American Music","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-01-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"57042597","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 : 2022-11-01DOI: 10.1017/s1752196322000396
{"title":"SAM volume 16 issue 4 Cover and Back matter","authors":"","doi":"10.1017/s1752196322000396","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s1752196322000396","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42557,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Society for American Music","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"57042576","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 : 2022-11-01DOI: 10.1017/s1752196322000384
{"title":"SAM volume 16 issue 4 Cover and Front matter","authors":"","doi":"10.1017/s1752196322000384","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s1752196322000384","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42557,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Society for American Music","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46290742","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 : 2022-10-25DOI: 10.1017/S175219632200027X
Anne Searcy
Abstract On May 12, 1983, New York City Ballet became the first major ballet company to perform a work to minimalist music: Jerome Robbins's Glass Pieces, titled after its score by Philip Glass. The premiere came at a turning point for both minimalism and ballet. The dance world was reeling in the wake of the death of choreographer George Balanchine. Simultaneously, minimalist music was in the process of moving from countercultural avant-garde venues to wealthy, high-status institutions. Although previously minimalist music had helped postmodern choreographers create works that celebrated everyday movement and equality among dancers, for Robbins minimalist music conjured a sense of urban propulsion. In each of the ballet's first two sections, Robbins choreographed to Glass's music in two ways simultaneously: A group from the corps de ballet used the egalitarian techniques from postmodern dance to create a modern urban backdrop, while another group of soloists used virtuosic techniques from modernist ballet. This allowed audiences to shift their focus at any given moment between the anonymity of the corps and the heroic subjectivity of the soloists. In the third section of Glass Pieces, Robbins staged a virtuosic group dance for the corps de ballet, using Glass's exoticist music for Akhnaten to create an escape from the relentless modernity of the first two sections. Altogether, I argue that Glass Pieces is one of the earliest works of contemporary ballet and an important step in minimalist music's transition from its earlier heyday as a music representing countercultural egalitarianism to one representing the modern city.
{"title":"Dancers on a Grid: Musical Minimalism Arrives at New York City Ballet in 1983","authors":"Anne Searcy","doi":"10.1017/S175219632200027X","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S175219632200027X","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract On May 12, 1983, New York City Ballet became the first major ballet company to perform a work to minimalist music: Jerome Robbins's Glass Pieces, titled after its score by Philip Glass. The premiere came at a turning point for both minimalism and ballet. The dance world was reeling in the wake of the death of choreographer George Balanchine. Simultaneously, minimalist music was in the process of moving from countercultural avant-garde venues to wealthy, high-status institutions. Although previously minimalist music had helped postmodern choreographers create works that celebrated everyday movement and equality among dancers, for Robbins minimalist music conjured a sense of urban propulsion. In each of the ballet's first two sections, Robbins choreographed to Glass's music in two ways simultaneously: A group from the corps de ballet used the egalitarian techniques from postmodern dance to create a modern urban backdrop, while another group of soloists used virtuosic techniques from modernist ballet. This allowed audiences to shift their focus at any given moment between the anonymity of the corps and the heroic subjectivity of the soloists. In the third section of Glass Pieces, Robbins staged a virtuosic group dance for the corps de ballet, using Glass's exoticist music for Akhnaten to create an escape from the relentless modernity of the first two sections. Altogether, I argue that Glass Pieces is one of the earliest works of contemporary ballet and an important step in minimalist music's transition from its earlier heyday as a music representing countercultural egalitarianism to one representing the modern city.","PeriodicalId":42557,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Society for American Music","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-10-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45645764","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 : 2022-10-25DOI: 10.1017/S1752196322000293
Hermann Hudde
Abstract Latin American and Latinx composers continue to contribute to music by bringing a subtle universe of sounds shaped by their agency and cultural history. Composer Max Lifchitz (b. 1948) bridges his artistic output with entrepreneurship and pedagogy. Since migrating from Mexico to the United States, Lifchitz has constructed a multifaceted persona as a cultural broker. As a composer, Lifchitz's self-defined eclecticism forms the basis of his musical voice, which reconciles opposites and flows between contrasting compositional aesthetics, cultures, and techniques. In 1980, he created the North/South Consonance organization, which has been an open and anti-canonical space for composers from different aesthetics, traditions, and ethnic and gender identities to share their works with new music audiences. In Lifchitz's role as a pedagogue, he positions music as a pluriversal tool to generate epistemological equity and inclusion and a more intercultural educational experience. Despite his contributions to contemporary Western art music, his impact on new music has not yet been studied. Therefore, the article's purpose is to examine Lifchitz's extensive and complex contributions from a transmodern theoretical perspective as postulated by philosopher Enrique Dussel (b. 1934) to demonstrate how the composer's music and persona represent qualities of this philosophical theory and promote the redefinition of art music and the musician's role in the twenty-first century.
{"title":"Max Lifchitz: A Transmodern Composer in American Music?","authors":"Hermann Hudde","doi":"10.1017/S1752196322000293","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S1752196322000293","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Latin American and Latinx composers continue to contribute to music by bringing a subtle universe of sounds shaped by their agency and cultural history. Composer Max Lifchitz (b. 1948) bridges his artistic output with entrepreneurship and pedagogy. Since migrating from Mexico to the United States, Lifchitz has constructed a multifaceted persona as a cultural broker. As a composer, Lifchitz's self-defined eclecticism forms the basis of his musical voice, which reconciles opposites and flows between contrasting compositional aesthetics, cultures, and techniques. In 1980, he created the North/South Consonance organization, which has been an open and anti-canonical space for composers from different aesthetics, traditions, and ethnic and gender identities to share their works with new music audiences. In Lifchitz's role as a pedagogue, he positions music as a pluriversal tool to generate epistemological equity and inclusion and a more intercultural educational experience. Despite his contributions to contemporary Western art music, his impact on new music has not yet been studied. Therefore, the article's purpose is to examine Lifchitz's extensive and complex contributions from a transmodern theoretical perspective as postulated by philosopher Enrique Dussel (b. 1934) to demonstrate how the composer's music and persona represent qualities of this philosophical theory and promote the redefinition of art music and the musician's role in the twenty-first century.","PeriodicalId":42557,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Society for American Music","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-10-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49331641","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 : 2022-10-20DOI: 10.1017/s1752196322000360
E. Morgan
{"title":"Moravian Soundscapes: A Sonic History of the Moravian Missions in Early Pennsylvania By Sarah Justina Eyerly. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2020.","authors":"E. Morgan","doi":"10.1017/s1752196322000360","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s1752196322000360","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42557,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Society for American Music","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-10-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47025798","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}
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