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Abstract: On July 1, 2021, we extended invitations to a diverse group of scholars of American music to contribute a short piece for this issue. The invitation read as follows:We write to invite you to contribute to a special issue of American Music celebrating the fortieth anniversary of the journal.This special issue will gather a diverse and sizable range of voices to reflect in scholarly, professional, personal, and, if you wish, polemical terms on the current state and future prospects of American music scholarship as an intellectual endeavor within and beyond the academy.You may write on any topic you wish relating to American music as the journal defines it: "all aspects of American music and music in America." ... Read More PubDate: 2023-07-05T00:00:00-05:00
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Abstract: The journal American Music stands as an expanding body of permanent scholarship widely available in libraries and online. This corpus—up to but not including this, the 160th issue—encompasses forty volumes divided into 159 issues containing a total of 701 articles authored by 740 scholars.1 Only thirty-one articles in the history of the journal—a mere 4 percent—credit more than one author. This statistic precisely expresses in quantitative terms the predominance of single-author scholarship in the music disciplines.This multiauthored study, written by the current editor and editorial assistants, gathers and analyzes data on each of the 701 articles in American Music. The goal is to consider larger trends in ... Read More PubDate: 2023-07-05T00:00:00-05:00
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Abstract: Los paramilitares, la guerrilla, los hijos del conflicto, las pandillas, las listas negras, los falsos positivos, los periodistas asesinados, los desaparecidos, los narco gobiernos, todo lo que robaron, los que se manifiestan y los que se olvidaron, las persecuciones, los golpes de estado, el país en quiebra, los exiliados, el peso devaluado, el tráfico de droga, los carteles, las invasiones, los inmigrantes sin papeles, cinco presidentes en once días, disparo a quema ropa por parte de la policía, más de cien años de tortura, la Nueva Trova cantando en plena dictadura. Somos la sangre que sopla la presión atmosférica. Gambino, mi hermano. . . . esto sí es América.The paramilitary, the guerillas, the kids of the ... Read More PubDate: 2023-07-05T00:00:00-05:00
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Abstract: Project Spectrum's graduate student committee discussed the future of higher-education music studies in North America. The conversations were held and recorded on April 6, May 4, and June 15, 2022. The transcript below has been edited for publication. Individuals were first asked to answer the question, "What could we implement into our work now that would lead to better music studies'" Then, the discussion moved from the individual contributions to a moderated conversation on the topics of collective organizing and coalition building within and outside of academia.I approached this question first by thinking about systems of power that shape academia at large, specifically as it concerns financial resources and ... Read More PubDate: 2023-07-05T00:00:00-05:00
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Abstract: I am thinking about belonging, displacement, and liberation. Rather than a linear narrative, these comments present a trio of contrapuntally interlocking themes: American music, African American musicologists, and the American nation more broadly.I am writing this as we approach Independence Day 2022, a holiday that says a lot about Americanness in the United States as it celebrates the signing of the Declaration of Independence. This suggests a point of freedom for the nation: a late eighteenth-century liberation from their colonial status to the British. I was a child when this country celebrated its 200th anniversary in 1976 and, like other 4th of July celebrations in my family, this time marked a moment in the ... Read More PubDate: 2023-07-05T00:00:00-05:00
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Abstract: During the lockdown and quarantine for COVID-19, the majority of us found some solace and retreat in front of the television, laptop, computer, tablet, or cell phone, watching and listening—and also binging on—new and old serials and films, available on the growing streaming media platforms. No doubt many of us have increased our monthly subscriptions of streaming apps in order to augment our options, particularly when we hit the point where "there is nothing good on." This period under quarantine was—and, in some sense, has continued to be—a startling experience for all of us. The need to find an escape became clear as we were isolated from each other. For me, the increase in watching and listening to TV and ... Read More PubDate: 2023-07-05T00:00:00-05:00
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Abstract: I am honored to provide a brief essay in this issue celebrating forty years of American Music, but I confess the opportunity to write an op-ed for the discipline is daunting. To be able to express my own wishes for where I would like to see musicological discourse move in the coming years seems almost luxurious—as if it were a substitute for a late-night conversation among friends at a Society for American Music, American Musicological Society, or Society for Ethnomusicology conference, something we have not been able to enjoy since COVID took away the possibility of such reflections among colleagues. Naturally, my essay stems from the point of view of my own research and a desire to see more people take up the ... Read More PubDate: 2023-07-05T00:00:00-05:00
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Abstract: A page with music printed on both sides is inserted between two pages of a 1722 book published in Paris about Native Americans in North America.1 The songs are likely from the Illinois people, possibly part of a Calumet ceremony.2 There are seven staff lines per page in treble clef with no bar lines, representing two songs, divided from one another by an unobtrusive double bar line on the first page. The first song features a predominantly quarter-note melody with a repeating descending contour set to what seem to be vocables (ni na ha). The second song is longer and more melodically and rhythmically elaborate with lyrics. The page offers no titles or attribution. Features that would be of great consequence for ... Read More PubDate: 2023-07-05T00:00:00-05:00
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Abstract: I am writing from the traditional homelands of the Winnemem Wintu Tribe just north of Redding, California. It's past 11 p.m. after a long hot day, and Winnemem Wintu Tribal members and supporters are still chatting in small groups close to rows of long tables illuminated by strings of lights on a nearby fence. We are gathered in service of salmon.Winnemem Wintu oral histories recount salmon giving their voice to Winnemem ancestors in exchange for the Winnemem's promise always to speak for them. The relationship between Winnemem Wintu and Chinook salmon, or nur in the Winnemem Wintu language, extends past voice. "Whatever happens to the salmon happens to us," says Winnemem Wintu Chief Caleen Sisk. Currently there ... Read More PubDate: 2023-07-05T00:00:00-05:00
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Abstract: In any discussion of borders and transnational mobility, music should be acknowledged as a fundamental part of migrants' cultural capital. Music acts as a counterweight to political and media power, an outlet for anger and frustration, and an aid to mitigating conflict. It is also cathartic, and it links individuals both to the communities they have left behind and to other migrants in their new location. The United States has a long tradition of studies in this field, but in Mexico, popular music has rarely been examined as a generator of identity, a motor for collective social action, a creator of cultural regions, or an intangible cultural heritage—despite the fact that it is one of Mexican society's most ... Read More PubDate: 2023-07-05T00:00:00-05:00
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Abstract: It might be argued that the history of Western art music would look very different if the literature theorized black feminisms.The art of the Black feminist scholar-performer encompasses the conviction that there is a history of classical music (i.e., Western art music) to be told both from a Black woman's vantage point and the subsequent dialogue between research and repertoire. I apply this to my scholarship on African American women's contributions to classical music in the era of the Black Chicago Renaissance, which unfolded through the first half of the twentieth century. I am particularly drawn to the wider narrative of community and sisterhood that surrounded Florence Price (1888–1953) and her status as the ... Read More PubDate: 2023-07-05T00:00:00-05:00
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Abstract: When asked to pinpoint the date that the full seriousness of the COVID-19 pandemic dawned for me, personally, I tend to use the March 17, 2020, launch of Music Scholarship at a Distance (MSaaD or #MusicColloq for short)—a virtual daily colloquium series that I co-organized with fellow musicologist Will Robin. While just a few days prior I had been negotiating spring-break travel plans, the cascading announcements of institutional closures, travel and other restrictions, and conference cancelations led us to set up the series in just a few (frantic) days. MSaaD—though relatively small in scope and casual in tone—thus became an early harbinger and prototype for the myriad virtual conferences and other professional ... Read More PubDate: 2023-07-05T00:00:00-05:00
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Abstract: This is a story of my complicity in corporate silence but also one of recognition and intervention. Simply put, here, I address manifestations of racism toward Asians and Asian Americans in music schools/departments and at meetings of our professional societies. Reports of anti-Asian incidents have increased since the former U.S. President's reference to the virus with a racist moniker.1 In response, cultural, industry, and political leaders, including President Obama, expressed outrage, and warned against a possible rise in anti-Asian sentiment. A BBC News Report in May 2020 referenced incidents that posed threats to the safety and dignity of Asians, in the aftermath of the then-president's feckless remark.2 More ... Read More PubDate: 2023-07-05T00:00:00-05:00
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Abstract: A phrase that arises repeatedly in relation to country music characterizes it as "quintessentially American." In 2019 this characterization got a fresh boost from Ken Burns, who positioned it prominently in his Country Music documentary series. The words give voice to an established truism, but is there any truth to them' In what sense, if any, is country music quintessentially American music'With this question in mind, I will explore the meanings of country music and quintessential Americanness in the light of country music's history, its long-standing reputation as a white genre, and recent work that is rewriting the story of country and other American music. Twentieth-century conventional wisdom held that ... Read More PubDate: 2023-07-05T00:00:00-05:00
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Abstract: "Our people speak to the myth."Black love and hip-hop brought Calvin Taylor Skinner and me together in 2018 as we nurtured a commuter relationship between Knoxville and Bloomington, Indiana. During our five-to six-hour drives, I talked about my research on musical masculinity, while my theologian-activist guy shared provocative YouTube videos and podcasts facilitated by hip-hop sages to stir conversation.1 The sages self-identify variously as Pan-African, American descendants of slaves (ADOS) or Foundational Black Americans (FBA), among other Black-centered/African-centered terms. The ADOS/FBA experts probed a constellation of obscure discourses: extraterrestrial encounters, Dr. Sebi, erased ancient African ... Read More PubDate: 2023-07-05T00:00:00-05:00
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Abstract: It may sound strange for me to admit it, but before entering UCLA's PhD program in musicology, I had no idea what musicology was. I had majored in ethnic studies as an undergraduate at UC Berkeley, writing a senior thesis that told the story of mainly Chinese and Japanese American jazz musicians in Los Angeles, New York, Boston, Chicago, and the San Francisco Bay Area, exploring how their musical activities intersected with the Asian American Movement of the 1980s. I only learned about the program at UCLA because my undergraduate advisor, José David Saldívar, recommended that I consider it. I certainly had not been groomed for this path. With only two semesters of introductory musicianship at UC Berkeley and about ... Read More PubDate: 2023-07-05T00:00:00-05:00
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Abstract: I just got finished writing a chapter on composer Julia Perry's 1960 piece Homunculus C.F., a serial minimalist work, for a collection called—as for now—Expanding the Canon: Black Composers in the Music Theory Classroom, edited by Melissa Hoag. Perry (1924–1979) was a Black, possibly queer, American composer whose works were influenced by Black American genres, Western European forms and harmonic languages, and serialism as taught by Luigi Dallapiccola. In the essay, I write about Perry's use of pitch-class sets and pivot dyads and timbre and taleas and durational parameters.1 I felt very comfortable analyzing a woman composer's use of serial and minimalist techniques; it's something I've done before and a lot. And ... Read More PubDate: 2023-07-05T00:00:00-05:00
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Abstract: More than two years of living with the COVID pandemic has changed how many of us approach our profession, including our work as researchers, scholars, musicians, teachers, and administrators. Like many other nonessential workers in the United States, I witnessed my workplace redefined overnight (literally) in the middle of March 2020, at the beginning of the first lockdown in the United States. Planned travel for research and conferences was canceled, and my university moved all teaching and administrative commitments online. Even as I experienced a level of isolation that was previously unimaginable, the widespread and long overdue adoption of Zoom and other online collaborative workspaces provided new ... Read More PubDate: 2023-07-05T00:00:00-05:00
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Abstract: Physical fitness has long been a central preoccupation within American culture. One of the most influential publications in this area was Physical Culture. It was founded by entrepreneur and self-proclaimed "fitness guru" Bernarr Macfadden in 1899 and ran until about 1961. Macfadden did not invent the term "physical culture" but rather appropriated it from a pre-existing trend that glorified health and wellness above all else. The magazine presented what its contributors felt constituted "sound health": exercise, disease prevention, hygiene, bodily symmetry, and a balanced diet. Many of the articles in early issues of Physical Culture were opinion pieces that claimed authority by citing research in the fields of ... Read More PubDate: 2023-07-05T00:00:00-05:00
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Abstract: I might not have gotten involved with podcasts, were it not for two colleagues, an undergraduate student, and Dolly Parton.For the past two and a half years, I have studied, produced, and taught from podcasts. They have changed my relationship to American music and those who care for its many streams. In this essay, I will share some observations on how podcasts may help us reflect differently on the values that propel our work as scholars and teachers. In my case, a variety of circumstances led me to the format, which in turn facilitated forms of connection and collaboration that I had not originally envisioned. As a disclaimer and invitation, I do not offer these thoughts from a position of podcasterly prestige ... Read More PubDate: 2023-07-05T00:00:00-05:00
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Abstract: Amidst a season of mass shootings in the United States, I woke up to a piece of news on the homepage of the World Journal, the largest Chinese-language newspaper in the United States. An elderly Korean American man in Flushing, Queens, was approached and shoved at a gas station by a man he did not know, who shouted, "I hate Chinese!" When the attending police officer learned the man was not physically injured, he advised him to let it go. "You just had a bad day." The old man replied, "Isn't there a nationwide problem with hate against Asians' I don't want this person to take to the streets and continue to hurt others." The NYPD filed a case but recorded it merely as a violation, noting that there was no injury. ... Read More PubDate: 2023-07-05T00:00:00-05:00
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Abstract: This article challenges readers to relisten to rock 'n' roll, a musical genre that has often been synonymous with postwar American culture and ideology, via the nuclear Pacific; in doing so, it proposes an Archipelagic American music studies that decenters the primacy of "the narrative of continental America (which has been a geographical story central to U.S. historiography and self-conception)," as well as U.S. musical historiography and American music studies.1 Accounts of rock 'n' roll locate its genealogy, primarily and understandably, in African American music. Similarly, rock 'n' roll is often considered to be an American export that has become a global phenomenon. By amplifying erasures of Indigenous lives ... Read More PubDate: 2023-07-05T00:00:00-05:00
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Abstract: Since 2019, I have served as the music director of Interlochen Public Radio. I oversee everything related to Classical IPR, a 24-hour classical music FM station at Interlochen Center for the Arts. My role involves everything from how we sound on the air to what initiatives we're undertaking in the local community to how on earth our little FM station in the woods of northern Michigan can compete in a crowded field of music services from all over the globe. In this piece, I'll provide an overview of how some American classical music radio stations are approaching diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and then turn to some of the ways my team at Classical IPR addresses DEI on the air.Classical stations around the ... Read More PubDate: 2023-07-05T00:00:00-05:00
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Abstract: Perhaps no historical composer has sparked more public interest in recent memory than Florence Price (1888–1953). Since 2018, when Alex Ross of the New Yorker and musicologist Micaela Baranello reported on the world premiere recording of Price's two violin concertos in expansive contextual essays, global performances of her music have skyrocketed, even despite the COVID-19 pandemic. As one scholar among many endeavoring to build on biographical work by pioneers like Barbara Garvey Jackson, Mildred Denby Green, and Rae Linda Brown, I've come face to face with impediments to scholarship on American classical music embedded in the webs of contemporary global capitalism manifested in the classical music industry. This ... Read More PubDate: 2023-07-05T00:00:00-05:00
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Abstract: As the original journal for the Sonneck Society, American Music helped solidify that organization's presence and shape its scholarly profile: on a more personal scale, it also launched a professional career when it published my first article in fall 1996. In "A Sense of Place: Charles Ives and 'Putnam's Camp, Redding, Connecticut,'" I proposed that place provided one perspective from which to understand music, music culture, and personal and national history and identity, and this was especially so in the case of Ives.1 Although place was recognized by numerous disciplines as an essential locus of knowledge and traditional ways of knowing, it was not widely employed as a starting point for "high-art" musicological ... Read More PubDate: 2023-07-05T00:00:00-05:00
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Abstract: I thought I was imagining things at first.Shortly after I moved to Durham, North Carolina, in March 2020, I began hearing The Butterfly Lovers Violin Concerto whenever I walked around the neighborhood. It was always only the first ten or so minutes of the first movement: the trilling flute, then the oboe tenderly soloing over lush strings, the violin's glissando into a D—I could almost feel my left hand sliding into third position for that note, even though it had been more than a decade.In my professional life as an ethnomusicologist, I think and write about how people listen to the din of everyday life in Sinophone Toronto. I spend a lot time treading the conceptual edges of "Chinese" and "sound." But even with ... Read More PubDate: 2023-07-05T00:00:00-05:00