Author: Juan Eduardo Wolf

The Americas is a broad geographic expanse covering a range of cultures that is impossible to cover in-depth in a single academic term. There are ideas, however, that can help us bring important aspects of these cultures together: indigeneity, colonization, diaspora, and hyrbidity. Using these ideas, we will look at a number of countries and cultures in the Americas to see these ideas help us analyze music in specific regions. No musical experience is necessary, but students will be asked to think through listening examples to understand why different musics sound the way they do. This version of the class will focus primarily on countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, but the ideas are applicable throughout the Americas.

Selected Texts Include:

Moore, Robin with Walter Aaron Clark (eds). 2012. Musics of Latin America. W.W. Norton & Company: New York.

This version of the course focuses primarily on the island of Puerto Rico. The classic trope about its music is that it resulted of the mixing of three cultures: African, European, and Native American. This orientation, however, asks us to think critically about the relationship between our ideas of music and race. We will explore the ways in which genres are described in terms of racial stereotypes as well as attempt to understand how history both supports and undermines these culturally engrained notions. Because of Puerto Rico’s colonial relationship with the United States, we will also examine how people in the United States, including those of Puerto Rican descent, see Puerto Rican music, which often reflects the politics of Puerto Rican sovereignty. In addition to reading, discussion, and listening, students will also work to attain basic skills for performing several of the featured genres. This course fulfills the IC (International Cultures) Multicultural Requirement.

Selected Texts Include:

The reading or listening materials will be made available on the course Blackboard site and include authors like Frances Aparicio, Peter Manuel and Wayne Marshall.

Because this is a new course, it is currently listed as MUS 399, but we are expecting it to be approved by the end of fall term for its permanent number MUS 365. Students may register for CRN 27333, and when approved this course course CRN will be automatically linked to the new course number.

Ethnomusicology is often defined as “the study of music in/as culture,” but what does that mean? This class begins with a brief overview of the history of the discipline (Rice) from its origins in U.S. cultural anthropology and German comparative musicology. We will then explore the key concepts one senior ethnomusicologist (Turino) has developed over the course of his career to understand musics as diverse as those found in fiestas patronales in the Andes, Bira ceremonies in Zimbabwe, and contra dances in the Midwest. Finally, we delve into a prize-winning ethnography on Ewe ritual (Friedson) to appreciate what an in-depth fieldwork study can produce. Graduate students participating in the class will be assigned additional readings, class preps, and more intensive writing projects. This course fulfills the IC (International Cultures) Multicultural Requirement.

Selected Texts Include:

Friedson, Steven M. 2009. Remains of Ritual: Northern Gods in a Southern Land. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Rice, Timothy. 2013. Ethnomusicology: A Very Brief Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press.
Turino, Thomas. 2007. Music as Social Life: the Politics of Participation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Beyond humanly organized sound, music is a tool to think with. The different ways in which humans use and talk about music can teach us much about each other. In this class, we will examine music-related practices from cultures associated with three different regions of the world (Fall 2014: South India, China, Hispanic Caribbean). You will learn how people raised in these cultures produce and perceive these musics as well as what concepts scholars have developed to understand these expressions more generally. Beyond exposing you to musics that you may not be familiar with, my goal is for you to apply the concepts you learn here to think critically about the multiple cultural performances you experience in your own lives. This course fulfills the IC (International Cultures) Multicultural Requirement.

Selected Texts Include:

Lau, Frederick. 2008. Music in China. Oxford University Press: New York.
Moore, Robin. 2010. Music in the Hispanic Caribbean. Oxford University Press: New York.
Viswanathan, T. and Matthew Harp Allen. 2004. Music in South India. Oxford University Press: New York.

You will also need an i-clicker for this class.

Time and time again, Latin American music and dance is described as the result of the mixing of three cultures: the African, European, and Native American. This perspective, however, oversimplifies the complex ways ideas about race, music, and dance developed during Latin America’s colonial era and how they continue to interact today. In this class, we will read about the ways in which racial ideologies shaped the musics that now represent various Latin American nations. We will discuss how certain instruments (charangos, drums, harps) and expressions (candombe, samba, tango, wayno, yaravi)  associated with Blackness and Indianness were symbolically appropriated and what impact those appropriations had on how people saw and continue to understand race. Graduate students participating in the class will be assigned additional readings, class preps, and more intensive writing projects.

Selected Texts Include:

Mendoza, Zoila. 2008. Creating Our Own: Folklore, Performance, and Identity in Cuzco, Peru. Durham: Duke University Press