Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Political aspects of Music festivals'

Sustainably managed music festivals have significant value and can provide a multitude of benefits to a healthy, sustainable and desirable society if their negative impacts are mitigated and positive impacts cultivated. To reach this great potential, sustainable event management of music festivals must become widely adopted and expanded as common practice. To drive this improvement of sustainable event management, there is a need to first understand the barriers and success factors event organizers face moving their music festivals toward sustainability. This study uses a research design of mixed quantitative-qualitative methods: a survey of thirty diverse music festival organizers across the United States and interviews with five selected survey participants. Research draws on pertinent literature from sustainability theory and practice, previous research on sustainable event management, existing strategies of sustainable events, and lessons from organizational change studies. Findings revealed seven key barriers and four success factors associated with sustainable event management of music festivals as well as three specific needs of event organizers to improve sustainable event management. With these findings, seven strategies are presented to help event organizers adopt and improve sustainable event management of music festivals. This study is significant because it fills an important gap in the academic literature on events and sustainability. Additionally, this study is immediately applicable to Untied States music festivals. The findings were drawn directly from the perspectives and experiences of event organizers, and the strategies are designed to be specifically applied to their sustainable event management work.

Thesis (M.A.)--Indiana University, 2010.
Title from screen (viewed on July 19, 2010). Department of English, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI). Advisor(s): Karen Kovacik, Peggy Zeglin Brand, Ronda C. Henry. Includes vitae. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 79-83).

This thesis investigates the presentation of AmaXhosa traditional dancing and music on the stages of the National Arts Festival (NAF), Main Programme, of South Africa in 2009. Four productions featuring AmaXhosa traditional dancing and music, as well as a fine art exhibition, are analysed to determine how the AmaXhosa culture is being portrayed, what is considered authentic and how these productions may affect the memory of the AmaXhosa nation. In an attempt to understand the position of these productions within the NAF the South African cultural context as well as the NAF is examined. The post-apartheid, post-rainbow nation, South African cultural context is discussed and how the NAF could contribute towards creating a more unified South African identity. Incorporated and inscribed memory categories are related to how one could determine authenticity in traditional indigenous productions. A cautionary note on incorporated memory is linked to efficacy, while a loss of incorporated memory within the AmaXhosa society may result in ritual acts being orientated towards entertainment. If the private culture is consistently displayed in the public realm then it is inevitable that the ways in which the AmaXhosa recollect their history will be altered. The contribution of the transitional spaces of theatres and proscenium arch stages to the choreography and incorporated memory of the performers relates to the collective recollection of the AmaXhosa. Bearing this in mind, this thesis suggests that the NAF is playing a dual role in the evolution of the AmaXhosa. It is both positively contributing to the economic upliftment of a sector of the population and exposing people to this rich and multilayered culture. However, it is also impacting the efficacy of the private culture and fracturing the traditional knowledge of the AmaXhosa by assisting in the inscription of their performance forms.
This thesis consists of three parts (1 pdf document and two video mp4 files)

I am concerned with the performance of subversive ... narratives ... the performance of possibilities aims to create ... a ... space where unjust systems and processes are identified and interrogated. (Madison 280). If a woman cannot feel comfortable in her own body, she has no home. (Winterson, J; The Guardian 29.03.2013). Black metal is beyond music. It exceeds its function of musical genre. It radiates with its sepulchral fire on every side of culture [...] Black metal is the suffering body that illustrates, in the same spring, all the human darkness as much as its vital impetus. (Lesourd 41-42). Representation matters. Growing up there were only two women in famous metal bands that I would have considered role models; Jo Bench from Bolt Thrower (UK) and Sean Ysseult from White Zombie (US). This lack or under-representation of women in metal was always obvious to me and has stayed with me as I have developed as a metal musician. Women fans that see women musicians on stage, creates a paradigm of connection; that representation means something. Judith Butler states ‘on the one hand, representation serves as the operative term within a political process that seeks to extend visibility and legitimacy to women as political subjects; on the other hand, representation is the normative function of language which is said either to reveal or distort what is assumed to be true about the category of women’ (1). Butler references de Beauvoir, Kristeva, Irigaray, Foucault and Wittig regarding the lack of category of women, that ‘woman does not have a sex’ (Irigaray qtd. in Butler 1) and that ‘strictly speaking, “women” cannot be said to exist’ (Kristeva qtd. in Butler 1). If this is to be understood in relation to my research, my embodied subjectivity as performative text, regardless of its reception suggests that my autoethnographic position acts as a counter to women’s lack of category. If there is a lack of category, then there is something important happening to ‘woman as subject’. This research seeks to analyse ‘woman as subject’ in female black metal performance by using interpretive performance autoethnography and psychoanalysis. As the guitarist and front woman with the black metal band Denigrata, my involvement has meant that the journey to find my home rests within the blackened heart of musical performance. Interpretive performance autoethnography provides the analytical frame that helps identify the ways in which patriarchal modes of address and engagement inform and frame ‘woman as subject’ in female black metal performance.

This thesis explores the complexities of race relations in the nineteenth century American West. The groups considered here are African Americans, Anglo Americans, Chinese, Mexican Americans, and Native Americans. In recent decades historians of the West have begun to tell the narratives of racial minorities. This study adopts the aims of these scholars through a new lens--music. Ultimately, this thesis argues that historians can use music, both individual songs and broader conceptions about music, to understand the complex and contradictory race relations of the nineteenth century west. Proceeding thematically, the first chapter explores the ways Anglo Americans used music to exert their dominance and defend their superiority over minorities. The second chapter examines the ways racial minorities used music to counter Anglo American dominance and exercise their own agency. The final chapter considers the ways in which music fostered peaceful and cooperative relationships between races. Following each chapter is a short interlude which discusses the musical innovations that occurred when the groups encountered the musical heritage of one another. This study demonstrates that music is an underutilized resource for historical analysis. It helps make comprehensible the complicated relations between races. By demonstrating the relevance of music to the history of race relations, this thesis also suggests that music as a historical subject is ripe for further analysis.

This thesis explores E. M. Forster's interest in the politics of music, illustrating the importance of music to Forster's conceptions of personal relationships and imperialism, national character and literary influence, pacifism and heroism, class and amateurism. Discussing Forster's novels, short stories, essays, lectures, letters, diaries, and broadcast talks, the thesis looks into the political nuances in Forster's numerous allusions and references to musical composition, performance, and consumption. In so doing, the thesis challenges previous formalistic studies of Forster's representations of music by highlighting his attention to the contentious relations between music and political contingencies. The first chapter examines A Passage to India, considering Forster's depictions of music in relation to the novel's concern with friendship and imperialism. It explores the ways in which music functions politically in Forster's most ‘rhythmical' novel. The second chapter focuses on Forster's description of the performance of Lucia di Lammermoor in Where Angels Fear to Tread. Reading this highly crafted scene as Forster's attempt to ‘modernize' fictional narrative, it discusses Forster's negotiation of national character and literary heritage. The third chapter assesses Forster's Wagnerism, scrutinizing the conjunction between Forster's rumination on heroism and his criticism of Siegfried. The chapter pays particular attention to Forster's uncharacteristic silence on Wagner during and after the Second World War. The fourth chapter investigates Forster's celebration of musical amateurism. By analysing his characterization of musical amateurs and professionals in ‘The Machine Stops', Arctic Summer, and Maurice, the chapter discusses the gender and class politics of Forster's championing of freedom and idiosyncrasy.

In South Africa, the performing arts have contributed to enhancing national identity and distinctiveness despite coming up against weak legislation, policy and infrastructure to support their growth and proliferation (Fredericks, 2005: 9). Coupled with a decline in both government and consumer support and the contradictory disparity between valuing the arts and the funding of the arts, theatre companies can no longer rely on the comfort of external subsidies and financial support. In order to be economically viable and sustainable to ensure their survival, there is an increasing demand for theatre companies to look to novel ways of increasing audience demand for theatre and improving audience attendance. However, instead of risking artistic integrity and the performance product to satisfy the market, this research suggests that promotion and development of theatre at arts festivals provides a platform to access a wider theatre-going public, which therefore facilitates a change in the market focus toward appreciation of the product (production). It explores leading arguments pertaining to the attendance of arts and cultural events, namely, Peterson and Simkus (1992), later updated by Peterson‟s (2005)„omnivore-univore‟ argument. The argument purports cultural consumption as binary in nature: either significant and diverse or limited, if not absent altogether. Supported by a number of case-studies, including Chan and Goldthorpe (2005) and Montgomery and Robinson (2008) and Snowball et al. (2009), the investigation challenges Bourdieu‟s (1984) theory on cultural distinction as well as the homology and individualisation argument. In determining the factors that influence cultural taste and consumer behaviour, including motivators and inhibitors of attendance and a predominant emphasis on audience risk and information asymmetry, the research was placed in a local context, providing an overview of the socio-economic theatre environment in South Africa. It investigated the nature, structure and impact of local festivals (as events) in changing audience demand and theatre attendance. With specific reference to the South African National Arts Festival (NAF) the research notes the effects of Hauptfleisch‟s „eventification‟ phenomenon on univore attenders and therefore expands the omnivore-univore theory to include a new breed of attender: the “Festivore”. A case study explored the “Festivore” hypothesis through empirical research, surveys and face-to-face qualitative interviews and on-seat questionnaire responses by festival attenders. Personal interviews and communication was also carried out with leading experts in the field. The data was then analysed using SPSS 13 electronic statistical analysis programme to determine the socio-demographics and the factors that affect theatre attendance of existing, as well as potential target, theatre audiences at the National Arts Festival The study concluded that South African theatre attenders are generally omnivorous consumers and that, more importantly, there seems to be a shift towards „festivorous‟ consumption. Furthermore, evidence supports the development and proliferation of festivals as a means not only to support and promote the arts in South Africa but, more importantly, to generate new theatre audiences and entrench theatre attendance into South African culture.

This dissertation investigates how German-language critics articulated and publicly negotiated ideas about music and expressionism in the first five years after World War I. A close reading of largely unexplored primary sources reveals that "musical expressionism" was originally conceived as an intrinsically musical matter rather than as a stylistic analog to expressionism in other art forms, and thus as especially relevant to purely instrumental rather than vocal and stage genres. By focusing on critical reception of an unlikely group of instrumental chamber works, I elucidate how the acts of performing, listening to, and evaluating "expressionist" music were enmeshed in the complexities of a politicized public concert life in the immediate postwar period. The opening chapters establish broad music-aesthetic and sociopolitical contexts for critics' postwar discussions of "musical expressionism." After the first, introductory chapter, Chapter 2 traces how art and literary critics came to position music as the most expressionist of the arts based on nineteenth-century ideas about the apparently unique ontology of music. Chapter 3 considers how this conception of expressionism led progressive-minded music critics to interpret expressionist music as the next step in the historical development of absolute music. These critics strategically—and controversially—portrayed Schoenberg's "atonal" polyphony as a legitimate revival of "linear" polyphony in fugues by Bach and late Beethoven. Chapter 4 then situates critical debates about the musical and cultural value of expressionism within broader struggles to construct narratives that would explain Germany's traumatic defeat in the Great War and abrupt restructuring as a fragile democratic republic. Against this backdrop, the later chapters explore critics' responses to public performances of specific "expressionist" chamber works. Chapter 5 traces reactions to a provocative performance of Schoenberg's Chamber Symphony, op. 9 (1906) at the Berlin Volksbühne in February 1920. Chapter 6 examines the interplay of musical-aesthetic and sociopolitical issues in critical reception of several postwar concerts that juxtaposed Schoenberg's "expressionist" Chamber Symphony with Franz Schreker's "impressionist" Chamber Symphony (1916). Chapter 7 considers how critics situated performances of Alexander Zemlinsky's Second String Quartet, op. 15 (1916) in relation to ideas about "expressionism" in music. Finally, Chapter 8 considers critical reception of performances of Béla Bartók's Second String Quartet, op. 17 (1917) in the context of two concert series sponsored by "expressionist" journals: the Anbruch-Abende in Vienna (1918) and the Melos-Abende in Berlin (1922 and 1923). Each of these final chapters uses contemporary criticism as a vehicle for a close reading of the relevant musical work, resulting in a portrait of "expressionist" music that is both contextually and musically nuanced.

Bulgaria, though a fairly small Eastern European country, boasts an ancient history of folk traditions and music; however, very few notated works exist due to the people's primitive lifestyle throughout Bulgaria's history. Singing and dancing as well as creating instruments from wood and animal skin were considered an integral part of everyday life, equal to cooking, sewing, herding, or farming; in fact, one almost always accompanied the other. Thus, more than 1500 years of folklore was orally passed on and preserved generation after generation; however, nothing was notated until only very recently when Bulgarians realized the cultural and national value of their history. After the liberation from Ottoman Rule (1453-1877) a nationalist movement spread throughout the Balkan countries, which resulted in the emergence of Bulgarian composers. Music and songs from the local folk traditions evolved, developed, and - with notation - became the foundation for the vocal and instrumental music of the so-called first generation of Bulgarian composers. Around the turn of the century, many Bulgarian artists and musicians traveled to Western Europe (mostly Austria, Germany, and Russia) and upon their return, their artistic output created an original mixture of Bulgarian national folk with influences from Western classical music. After World War II, Bulgaria became one of the countries governed by the Communist regime, which restricted all travel to and contact with the West, including cultural influences from the West. Gradually, as the Communist regime became less controlling until it dissolved completely in 1989, restrictions on music and culture started to lift. Petar Christoskov (1917-2006), considered part of the second generation of Bulgarian composers, began his compositional career immediately after returning from Germany to a communist-ruled Bulgaria. His first opus was the set of 12 Caprices for Solo Violin (1953, formerly known as Concert Etudes in Folk Style); they have a fairly simple compositional style but are full of elements from the Bulgarian folk tradition. Some of these caprices, along with other works from the beginning of Christoskov's compositional career, were commissioned by the nationalist government and/or were required repertoire at national music competitions. Nearly thirty years after the first set of caprices, Christoskov composed another set: 24 Caprices for Solo Violin, Op. 24 (1978-9). These later works also contain many Bulgarian folk characteristics, but their compositional style is much more abstract, atonal, and complex - more “mainstream Western.” The goal of this document is to compare and contrast the two sets of Caprices for Solo Violin, Op. 1 and Op. 24, by investigating the development of Petar Christoskov's compositional style. I will argue that the constantly-changing political systems in twentieth-century Bulgaria had a direct impact on the composer's artistic output. After a historical overview of Bulgaria's music and political background, the two sets of caprices will be compared and contrasted by focusing on technical, musical, and sociological similarities and differences. In order to illustrate these similarities and differences, three caprices from each set will be selected and analyzed, as well as compared and contrasted with each other. The second part of the document will discuss the negative influence of the political climate on music and printing, with a focus on the difficulties of preserving Bulgarian culture itself. This research has the additional purpose of serving as scholarly support for a future project: as a personal contribution to the circulation and preservation of Bulgarian music, I intend to produce a new violin edition of Petar Christoskov's caprices as well as complete the arrangements for viola.

An examination of the compositional style illustrative of the anti-collectivist ideology as found in Edison Denisov's Quatre Pièces pour flûte et piano. Includes a short history of Denisov's formal training, history of the Soviet musical environment, an overview of his creative output, and discussion of the anti-collectivist characteristics in his works. Defines the anti-collectivist doctrine as individual reaction to the totalitarian collective of the Soviet communist state of the twentieth century. Identification of eclectic compositional techniques, and how they represent individual expression under a totalitarian regime. Listing of Denisov's works with the flute in a primary role, interviews with Aurèle Nicolet and Ekaterina Denisov, correspondence from Denisov to Nicolet, and the manuscript score to Quatre Pièces pour flûte et piano follow as appendices.

The censorship of popular music in South Africa during the 1980s severely affected South African musicians. The apartheid government was directly involved in centralized state censorship by means of the Directorate of Publications, while the South African Broadcasting Corporation exercised government censorship at the level of airplay. Others who assisted state censorship included religious and cultural interest groups. State censorship in turn put pressure on record companies, musicians and others to practice self-censorship. Many musicians who overtly sang about taboo topics or who used controversial language subsequently experienced censorship in different forms, including police harassment. Musicians were also subject to anti-apartheid forms of censorship,such as the United Nations endorsed cultural boycott. Not all instances of censorship were overtly political, but they were always framed by, and took place within, a repressive legal-political system. This thesis found that despite the state's attempt to maintain its hegemony, musicians sought ways of overcoming censorship practices. It is argued that the ensuing struggle cannot be conceived of in simple binary terms. The works of Antonio Gramsci, Michel Foucault and Pierre Bourdieu, in particular, are applied to the South African context in exploring the localized nuances of the cultural struggle over music censorship. It is argued that fragmented resistance to censorship arose out of the very censorship structures that attempted to silence musicians. Textual analysis brought to light that resistance took various forms including songs with provocative lyrics and titles, and more subtle means of bypassing censorship, including the use of symbolism, camouflaged lyrics, satire and crossover performance. Musicians were faced with the challenge of bypassing censors yet nevertheless conveying their message to an audience. The most successful cases negotiated censorial practices while getting an apparent message across to a wide audience. Broader forms of resistance were also explored, including opposition through live performance, counter-hegemonic information on record covers, resistance from exile, alignment with political organizations and legal challenges to state censorship. In addition, some record companies developed strategies of resistance to censorship. The many innovative practices outlined in this thesis demonstrate that even in the context of constraint, resistance is possible. Despite censorship, South African musicians were able to express themselves through approaching their music in an innovative way.

To what degree is it possible to score an artistic event for which the impetus is a social, rather than aesthetic, effect - and indeed, to what degree are these effects separable? How, in short, can the composer or artist create a blueprint for a relational practice that is fundamentally concerned more with actions within the community than it is with any outcomes or objects presented to the community? This thesis seeks to explore the role of the Other through the composition of a set of participatory scores for social activity. Devised from the perspective of a composer and sound-artist, this practice-led research investigates three strands of social engagement: collaboration, interpretation, and intervention. These strands each revolve around the problems inherent to performing and scoring socially-engaged, site-specific sound works, as well as the reality of their dissemination in the public domain. Each of the methods employed not only feeds back into the score-making process, but also serves to critique existing methods and hierarchies within artistic participation, ultimately arguing for an open-ended and non-linear relationship between the act of sensing, and the (community-influenced) construction of the sensible. Exploring post-structural, ethical, and ontological notions of what it means to share and construct community with Other, this research examines the role of art as a creative movement between self-constructs that are at once individual and indivisible from the community. This work argues that such creativity extends not only to the realisation of artworks, but across the whole gamut of activity within the social event. By undertaking practice-based research into the role of Other within the event of an artwork, this thesis interrogates the socio-political hierarchies inherent to both the specific art-event, and the pre-existing community in which such events unfold. As such, the art-event points not only to the specific creative act of its making, but equally the latent creativity within the community in which the art is disseminated. The spectator, no less than the artist, defines the terms of the community by which such acts are made available to perception as an ontological reading that is not only sensed, but sensible.

The arts in many countries, but particularly in developing ones, are coming under increasing financial pressure and finding it difficult to justify the increases in government funding needed to maintain and grow the cultural sector. The trend in cultural economics, as well as in other areas, appears to be towards including qualitative valuations, as well as the more traditional quantitative ones. This thesis argues that the value of cultural events should include long term historical qualitative analysis, financial or economic impact and a valuation of the positive externalities provided by cultural events and that any one of these should only be regarded as a partial analysis. Four methods of valuing the arts using the South African National Arts Festival (NAF) as an example are demonstrated. Firstly, a qualitative historical analysis of the role of the NAF in South Africa’s transformation process from Apartheid to the democratic New South Africa is examined, using theories of cultural capital as a theoretical basis. It is argued that the value of cultural events needs to take into account long-term influences especially in countries undergoing political and social transformation. The second valuation method applied is the traditional economic impact study. Four economic impact studies conducted on the NAF are discussed and methodologies compared. It is concluded that, despite the skepticism of many cultural economists, the method can provide a useful partial valuation and may also be used for effective lobbying for government support of the arts. Chapter four discusses willingness to pay studies conducted at the NAF in 2000 and 2003 (as well as a pilot study conducted at the Klein Karoo Nationale Kunstefees). It is found that lower income and education groups do benefit from the positive externalities provided by the Festival and that this is reflected in their willingness to pay to support it. It is also argued that such contingent valuation studies can provide a reasonably reliable valuation of Festival externalities, but that they may be partly capturing current or future expected financial gains as well. Finally, the relatively new choice experiment methodology (also called conjoint analysis) is demonstrated on visitors to the NAF. The great advantage of this method in valuing cultural events is that it provides part-worths of various Festival attributes for different demographic groups. This enables organizes to structure the programme in such a way as to attract previously excluded groups and to conduct a cost-benefit analysis for each part of the Festival.

Premiering at the twilight of the gauchesco era and the dawn of Argentine musical Modernism, El matrero (1929) by Felipe Boero (1884-1958) remains underexplored in terms of its social milieu and artistic heritage. Instantly hailed as a masterpiece, the work retains a place in the local repertory, though it has never been performed internationally. The opera draws on myths of the gaucho and takes further inspiration from the energized intellectual environment surrounding the one-hundred-year anniversary of Argentine Independence. The most influential writers of the Centenary were Leopoldo Lugones (1874-1938), Ricardo Rojas (1882-1957), and Manuel Gálvez (1882-1962). Their times were marked by contradictions: xenophobia and the desire for foreign approbation; pride in an imaginary, "barbaric" yet noble ideal wiped out by the "civilizing" ambitions of revered nineteenth-century leaders. Krausism, a system of ideas following the teachings of Karl Friedrich Krause (1781-1832), had an impact on the period as exhibited in the political philosophy of Hipólito Yrigoyen (1852-1933), who served as president from 1916 to 1922 and 1928 to 1930 when he was deposed by a right-wing coup d'état. Uncritical applications of traditional understandings of nationalism have had a negative impact on Latin American music scholarship. A distillation of scholarly conceptions of Argentine nacionalismo, which address the meaning of the word as it was used in the early twentieth century, combined with an examination of major works of important literary figures of the Centenary provide a firmer ground for discussion. Gálvez paints a conservative portrait of a refined, well-traveled dilettante who finds true enlightenment only in his own rural, Argentine culture. A liberal, Rojas understands nationalism as devotion to the development of national institutions and local art. Lugones argues the foundation of national art should be the gaucho, and articulates the hierarchical sociabilities it should articulate. Boero adopts elements of Krausism and the nationalistic system of values advanced by the Centenary writers within an Occidentalist framework. Occidentalism describes cosmopolitan initiatives to incorporate the ideals of the West as structural to Argentine identity. It shares the liberal outlook of the central government that valued international openness and European and Anglo-American affinity. Boero wrote to satisfy the responsibilities of the various occupations he held as opera composer, pedagogue, and art musician, but was always dedicated to the strengthening of national institutions and development of what he perceived to be a native art. His pieces evince the Occidental ideal in their adoption of Impressionistic, Puccinian, and folkloric elements in varied ways, sometimes in individual pieces in isolation, other times all within the same work. The use of each of these styles is done in a thoroughly Eurocentric manner as even the "gaucho" elements are utilized according to traditional art music conventions. Boero demonstrates his mastery of a variety of techniques throughout his oeuvre and explores each of them in his magnum opus. The play El matrero, written by the contemporary Uruguayan playwright, Yamandú Rodríguez, draws on themes explored and celebrated by the Centenary writers and resonates with certain Krausist values. The libretto diverges from the play in a few significant ways that suggest a more conservative political outlook. More than simply a story told in the popular gauchesco style, the work is a kind of origin story with supposedly authentic depictions of rural life that present a model for contemporary sociabilities informed by the Krausism and liberalism of the era. Musical analysis of the opera confirms affinities with verismo and Impressionism, but also reveals a unique stamp, not only in the use of gauchesco topoi, but the harmonic language and interplay of styles. These styles are not blended into a single, cohesive unity but arise at key points within the heterogeneous work. A critical analysis allows the musical styles to be considered to articulate a social hierarchy marked by Krausist organicism already hinted at in the text. The various character groups of the opera have distinct voices that reveal separate classes. In line with current Argentine thought rooted in the nineteenth century and the Centenary, and due to the work's status as an origin story, the relationships between the groups may be seen to represent a model for contemporary society with the elite successfully managing the affairs of their underlings. The music helps articulate these relationships with moments of diegetic gauchesco music-making being relegated to the voices and bodies of the lower classes and the representatives of the upper class speaking with a mixture of art music styles and a sublimated folkloric style. The combined study of text and music reveals an Occidentalist perspective with the native Argentine elements subordinated to the European. In spite of their lower sociopolitical position, the folk are not despised but given a coherent musical language with which to express themselves, and the higher characters are musically united to their gaucho compatriots. The combination of musical styles creates an engaging, complex tapestry more than worthy of considered study and appreciation. Uncritical applications of traditional understandings of nationalism have had a negative impact on Latin American music scholarship. A distillation of scholarly conceptions of Argentine nacionalismo, which address the meaning of the word as it was used in the early twentieth century, combined with an examination of major works of important literary figures of the Centenary provide a firmer ground for discussion. Gálvez paints a conservative portrait of a refined, well-traveled dilettante who finds true enlightenment only in his own rural, Argentine culture. A liberal, Rojas understands nationalism as devotion to the development of national institutions and local art. Lugones argues the foundation of national art should be the gaucho, and articulates the hierarchical sociabilities it should articulate. Boero adopts elements of Krausism and the nationalistic system of values advanced by the Centenary writers within an Occidentalist framework. Occidentalism describes cosmopolitan initiatives to incorporate the ideals of the West as structural to Argentine identity. It shares the liberal outlook of the central government that valued international openness and European and Anglo-American affinity. Boero wrote to satisfy the responsibilities of the various occupations he held as opera composer, pedagogue, and art musician, but was always dedicated to the strengthening of national institutions and development of what he perceived to be a native art. His pieces evince the Occidental ideal in their adoption of Impressionistic, Puccinian, and folkloric elements in varied ways, sometimes in individual pieces in isolation, other times all within the same work. The use of each of these styles is done in a thoroughly Eurocentric manner as even the "gaucho" elements are utilized according to traditional art music conventions. Boero demonstrates his mastery of a variety of techniques throughout his oeuvre and explores each of them in his magnum opus. The play El matrero, written by the contemporary Uruguayan playwright, Yamandú Rodríguez, draws on themes explored and celebrated by the Centenary writers and resonates with certain Krausist values. The libretto diverges from the play in a few significant ways that suggest a more conservative political outlook. More than simply a story told in the popular gauchesco style, the work is a kind of origin story with supposedly authentic depictions of rural life that present a model for contemporary sociabilities informed by the Krausism and liberalism of the era. Musical analysis of the opera confirms affinities with verismo and Impressionism, but also reveals a unique stamp, not only in the use of gauchesco topoi, but the harmonic language and interplay of styles. These styles are not blended into a single, cohesive unity but arise at key points within the heterogeneous work. A critical analysis allows the musical styles to be considered to articulate a social hierarchy marked by Krausist organicism already hinted at in the text. The various character groups of the opera have distinct voices that reveal separate classes. In line with current Argentine thought rooted in the nineteenth century and the Centenary, and due to the work's status as an origin story, the relationships between the groups may be seen to represent a model for contemporary society with the elite successfully managing the affairs of their underlings. The music helps articulate these relationships with moments of diegetic gauchesco music-making being relegated to the voices and bodies of the lower classes and the representatives of the upper class speaking with a mixture of art music styles and a sublimated folkloric style. The combined study of text and music reveals an Occidentalist perspective with the native Argentine elements subordinated to the European. In spite of their lower sociopolitical position, the folk are not despised but given a coherent musical language with which to express themselves, and the higher characters are musically united to their gaucho compatriots. The combination of musical styles creates an engaging, complex tapestry more than worthy of considered study and appreciation.

The Concerto for Bassoon by Andrzej Panufnik is a valuable addition to bassoon literature. It provides a rare opportunity for the bassoon soloist to perform a piece which is strongly programmatic. The purpose of this document is to examine the historical and theoretical context of the Concerto for Bassoon with special emphasis drawn to Panufnik's understanding of religion in connection with Polish national identity and the national struggle for democratic independence galvanized by the murder of Father Jerzy Popieluszko in 1984. Panufnik's relationship with the Polish communist regime, both prior to and after his 1954 defection to England, is explored at length. Each of these aspects informed Panufnik's compositional approach and the expressive qualities inherent in the Concerto for Bassoon. The Concerto for Bassoon was commissioned by the Polanki Society of Milwaukee, Wisconsin and was premiered by the Milwaukee Chamber Players, with Robert Thompson as the soloist. While Panufnik intended the piece to serve as a protest against the repression of the Soviet government in Poland, the U. S. context of the commission and premiere is also examined. Additionally, the original manuscript and subsequent piano reduction are compared. Although the Concerto for Bassoon has been subject to formal analysis by several scholars, discussion of the piece is generally contained within a larger discussion of several other compositions, and a comprehensive analysis of the piece has not yet been presented. This document contains a thorough formal analysis of all movements, as well as analysis of Panufnik's compositional style within the context of serialism, postmodernism, and the new Polish school of composition. The Concerto fro Bassoon features several devices common to Panufnik's larger opus, including the se of a common three-note cell, strong contrasts between section and movements, and symmetrical patterns of transposition, metric alteration, dynamic alteration, and registral expansion.

Government investigations into the motion picture industry are well-documented, as is the widespread blacklisting that was concurrent. Not nearly so well documented are the many investigations of musicians and musical organizations which occurred during this same period. The degree to which various musicians and musical organizations were investigated varied considerably. Some warranted only passing mention, while others were rigorously questioned in formal Congressional hearings. Hanns Eisler was deported as a result of the House Committee on Un-American Activities' (HUAC) investigation into his background and activities in the United States. Leonard Bernstein, Marc Blitzstein, and Aaron Copland are but a few of the prominent composers investigated by the government for their involvement in leftist organizations. The Symphony of the Air was denied visas for a Near East tour after several orchestra members were implicated as Communists. Members of musicians' unions in New York and Los Angeles were called before HUAC hearings because of alleged infiltration by Communists into their ranks. The Metropolitan Music School of New York, led by its president-emeritus, the composer Wallingford Riegger, was the subject of a two day congressional hearing in New York City. There is no way to measure either quantitatively or qualitatively the effect of the period on the music but only the extent to which the activities affected the musicians themselves. The extraordinary paucity of published information about the treatment of the musicians during this period is put into even greater relief when compared to the thorough manner in which the other arts, notably literature and film, have been examined. This work attempts to fill this gap and shed light on a particularly dark chapter in the history of contemporary music.

The focus of this sociological research is on the five most popular and commercially successful Australian indie music festivals: Livid, Big Day Out, the Falls festival, Homebake, and Splendour in the Grass. The three key features of Australian indie music festivals are, firstly, that they are multi-staged ticketed outdoor events, with clearly defined yet temporal boundaries. Secondly, the festivals have a youth-orientated focus yet are open to all ages. Finally, the festivals are primarily dominated by indie-guitar culture and music. My aim is to investigate how these music festivals are able to strike an apparently paradoxical balance between the creation of a temporal community, or network of festivalgoers, and the commodity of the festivals themselves. My research methodology utilises a postmodern approach to ethnography, which has allowed me to investigate the festivalgoers as an ‘insider researcher.’ Data was collected through a series of participant observations at Australian indie music festivals which included the use of photographs and field notes. In addition I conducted nineteen semi-structured interviews and two focus groups with festivalgoers and festival organisers. The thesis adopts a post-subcultural approach to investigating the festivalgoers as an ideal type of a neo-tribal grouping. Post-subculture theory deals with the dynamic, heterogeneous and fickle nature of contemporary alliances and individuals’ feelings of group ‘in-betweeness’ in late capitalist/ global consumer society. I argue that Maffesoli’s theory of neo-tribalism can shine new light on the relationships between youth, music and style. Music festivals are anchoring places for neo-tribal groupings like the festivalgoers as well as a commercialised event. An analysis of the festivalgoers’ ritual clothing (t-shirts as commodities), leads to the conclusion that the festivalgoers use t-shirts to engage in a process of identification. T-shirts, I argue, are an example of a linking image which creates both a sense of individualism as well as a connection to a collective identity or sociality. Through a case study of moshing and audience behaviour it is discovered that the festivalgoers develop neo-tribal sociality and identification with each other through their participation in indie music festivals. Although pleasure seems to be the foremost significant dimension of participating in these festivals, the festivalgoers nevertheless appear to have developed an innate sense of togetherness and neo-tribal sociality. The intensity and demanding experience of attending a festival fosters the opportunity for a sense of connectedness and belonging to develop among festivalgoers.
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

This dissertation investigates the socio-cultural and musical transfigurations of a rural-identified musical genre known as música típica as it engages with the dynamics of Panama's rural-urban divide and the country's nascent engagement with the global political economy. Though regarded as emblematic of Panama's national folklore, música típica is also the basis for the country's principal and most commercially successful popular music style known by the same name. The primary concern of this project is to examine how and why this particular genre continues to undergo simultaneous processes of folklorization and commercialization. As an unresolved genre of music, I argue that música típica can offer rich insight into the politics of working out individual and national Panamanian identities. Based on eighteen months of ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Panama City and several rural communities in the country's interior, I examine the social struggles that subtend the emergence of música típica's genre variations within local, national, and transnational contexts. Through close ethnographic analysis of particular case studies, this work explores how musicians, fans, and the country's political and economic structures constitute divisions in regards to generic labeling and how differing fields of musical circulation and meaning are imagined. This study will first present an examination of late nineteenth and twentieth century Panamanian nationalist discourses in order to contextualize música típica's stylistic and ideological development as a commercial genre of popular music. The following chapter will construct a social history of música típica that takes into account the multiple historical trajectories that today's consumers and producers engage, negotiate, and contest in an attempt to ascribe social and cultural meaning to the role the genre assumes in contemporary discourses of national identity. Processes of folkloric canonization and reconstruction will then be examined in order to understand how the marketing efforts of the Panamanian government draw on a discourse of nationality. The role of corporate sponsorship in today's música típica scene will also be investigated, specifically addressing how the marketing of this genre by beer companies, national cultural festivals, and the Panamanian television industry builds on a foundation of commercial music practices. Subsequent chapters will focus on the local and transnational dynamics of genre formation and dissolution as revealed in the ideological discourses and socio-musical practices of música típica's practitioners, especially in accordion and vocal performance practices. An analysis of música típica's field of cultural production, with its particular mappings of identity, place, and sound, will provide insight into Panamanian modernity and the social experiences of Panamanians, especially within Latin American and global contexts.

In this thesis, I explore the dynamics of German Swiss folk music today in relation to the emerging musicians who have been involved in a folk music post-secondary program in recent years. Approaching the field as a community of musical practice (Lave and Wenger 1991), I attend to processes of learning and transmission and to the spaces of experience in which it takes place. In participant responses, three key themes emerged. The first was the significance of the recently-established folk music postsecondary program as a site of learning and participation for emerging German Swiss musicians. The second was the importance of creativity among this demographic, and the way in which learning environments and spaces of experience (Gosselain 2016), such as universities or festivals, shape this creative potential. The third was the centrality of Swiss folk music festivals to the continuance of this music and community, and the way in which they offer spaces of experience in which to connect, learn, share, and participate. In this thesis, I draw on the theoretical concepts of legitimate peripheral participation, boundary objects, spaces of experience, and genealogy, and explore issues pertaining to informal and formal learning, intergenerationality, access and power, and peripherality.
Graduate
2018-08-31

by Wong Yan Chau, Christina.
Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1994.
Includes bibliographical references (leaves 175-186).
Chapter I. --- Introduction --- p.2
Chapter II. --- Historical Background --- p.5
Chapter III. --- A Review of the Related Literature --- p.14
Chapter A. --- The Culture Industry Approach --- p.15
Chapter B. --- The Liberal-Pluralist Approach --- p.26
Chapter C. --- The Technological Approach --- p.31
Chapter IV. --- The Theoretical Perspective --- p.36
Chapter V. --- Methodological Approach to Study --- p.42
Chapter A. --- Content Analysis of Lyrical Messages --- p.42
Chapter 1. --- Method --- p.42
Chapter 2. --- Data --- p.43
Chapter 3. --- Analytic Framework of the Textual Analysis --- p.45
Chapter B. --- Analysis of Rock Music within Hegemony --- p.48
Chapter 1. --- Method --- p.48
Chapter 2. --- Data --- p.50
Chapter VI. --- Meanings in Rock Music --- p.52
Chapter A. --- Themes in each fictional mode --- p.52
Chapter B. --- Thematic content of Rock Music --- p.54
Chapter 1. --- The Ironic Mode --- p.54
Chapter 2. --- The Mimetic Mode --- p.64
Chapter a. --- Phenomena of Identity Crisis --- p.64
Chapter i. --- Loss of direction --- p.65
Chapter ii. --- Roots-seeking --- p.68
Chapter iii. --- Alternating identity --- p.69
Chapter iv. --- Alienation --- p.71
Breakaway --- p.71
A Stranger in the City --- p.74
Chapter b. --- Outlook on Life --- p.76
Chapter c. --- Social Problems --- p.79
Chapter i. --- War --- p.79
Chapter ii. --- Incivility --- p.81
Chapter d. --- The Experience of Growing Up --- p.82
Chapter i. --- Anti-patriarchism --- p.82
Chapter ii. --- Wandering --- p.83
Chapter iii. --- The Loss of Childhood --- p.84
Chapter e. --- Love --- p.85
Chapter i. --- Yearning for love --- p.85
Chapter ii. --- Frustrations with love --- p.86
Chapter iii. --- Wild love --- p.88
Chapter iv. --- Inauthentic love --- p.90
Chapter 3. --- The Leadership Mode --- p.93
Chapter a. --- The Exploratory Spirit --- p.93
Chapter b. --- Individuality and Non-Conformity --- p.96
Chapter c. --- The Authentic Self --- p.98
Chapter 4. --- The Romantic Mode --- p.102
Chapter a. --- Nostalgia for a Glorious Past --- p.102
Chapter b. --- Anarchy in the Demonic World --- p.105
Chapter c. --- Union with nature --- p.107
Chapter d. --- The Pastoral Utopia --- p.111
Chapter e. --- Fictional Characters and Objects Speaking --- p.112
Chapter 5. --- The Mythic Mode --- p.117
Chapter C. --- The World View of Rock Music --- p.120
Chapter VII. --- The Relations of Rock Music to Hegemony --- p.125
Chapter A. --- Messages of Rock and the Hegemony --- p.125
Chapter B. --- Music as a Contested Terrain --- p.130
Chapter 1. --- The Hegemonic Power: Cooptation and Marginalization --- p.130
Chapter 2. --- The Deviant Culture: Struggle by Means of adaptation and negotiation --- p.140
Chapter VIII. --- Conclusion --- p.155
Chapter IX. --- Limitations of the Study --- p.158
Chapter X. --- Future Studies on Rock Music --- p.161
Notes --- p.165
Bibliography --- p.175
Discography --- p.185
Appendix 1. The Sample of Rock Songs --- p.187

張武宜.
"2013年9月".
"2013 nian 9 yue".
Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2013.
Includes bibliographical references (leaves 229-239).
Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web.
Abstract in Chinese and English.
Zhang Wuyi.

Yeung, Hiu Yan Dorcas.
Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2010.
Includes bibliographical references (leaves 166-173).
Abstracts in English and Chinese.
Abstract --- p.i
Acknowledgements --- p.iv
Table of Contents --- p.v
Tables and Figures --- p.vii
Chapter Chapter 1. --- Introduction
Chapter 1.1. --- Background --- p.1
Chapter 1.2. --- Objectives and research questions --- p.8
Chapter 1.3. --- Significance --- p.11
Chapter 1.4. --- Chapters overview --- p.12
Chapter Chapter 2. --- The Scene of Classical Music and Cultural Policy in Hong Kong
Chapter 2.1. --- Defining classical music and beyond --- p.16
Chapter 2.2. --- Development of orchestras and classical music in Hong Kong --- p.17
Chapter 2.3. --- Models of cultural policy and policy in Hong Kong --- p.21
Chapter 2.4. --- Supporting arts groups --- p.29
Chapter 2.5. --- Current funding policy --- p.31
Chapter Chapter 3. --- Literature Review
Chapter 3.1. --- Introduction --- p.38
Chapter 3.2. --- Theorizing state and arts - the field of cultural production --- p.38
Chapter 3.3. --- Arts administration --- p.47
Chapter 3.4. --- Amateur --- p.51
Chapter 3.5. --- "Chapter summary: Amateur arts group, administration and the field" --- p.58
Chapter Chapter 4. --- Methodology
Chapter 4.1. --- In-depth interviews --- p.60
Chapter 4.2. --- Documentation --- p.63
Chapter 4.3. --- Limitations --- p.63
Chapter Chapter 5. --- Being (and Surviving as) an Amateur: Case Studies of Music Groups
Chapter 5.1. --- Introduction --- p.65
Chapter 5.2. --- Estimating number of amateur music groups --- p.65
Chapter 5.3. --- The spectrum from professional to hobbyist --- p.67
Chapter 5.4. --- The need for resources --- p.76
Chapter 5.5. --- From beliefs to action --- p.89
Chapter 5.6. --- Models of operation --- p.96
Chapter 5.7. --- Chapter summary --- p.105
Chapter Chapter 6. --- Between What We Want and How They Do: Matching with the Administrative Habitus
Chapter 6.1. --- Introduction --- p.107
Chapter 6.2. --- The significance of arts administration --- p.107
Chapter 6.3. --- The mechanism --- p.110
Chapter 6.4. --- Getting around the system --- p.124
Chapter 6.5. --- Arts administration as a field --- p.131
Chapter 6.6. --- Negotiating with the administration --- p.140
Chapter 6.7. --- Chapter summary: Mapping the field --- p.144
Chapter Chapter 7. --- Conclusion
Chapter 7.1. --- Conclusion --- p.149
Chapter 7.2. --- Implications on cultural policy --- p.154
Chapter 7.3. --- Implications on amateur and amateur activities --- p.158
Chapter 7.4. --- Limitations and future direction --- p.159
Appendixes --- p.163
References --- p.166

This dissertation examines how a contested musical practice makes the problems of modernity in India audible. In particular, I look at the relationship between South Indian "fusion" musicians and India's recent economic and cultural growth attributed to the economic reforms of 1991. Fusion is the local name for a musical practice that combines South Indian classical music with elements from rock, jazz, and world music. During thirteen months of ethnographic fieldwork carried out in the South Indian city of Chennai between 2006-8, I attended countless concerts, interviewed dozens of people involved with musical production, and performed with musicians. I observed how musicians and audiences perpetuated the idea that fusion was contested and I documented the local debates that often expressed a deep uncertainty and ambiguity about the legitimacy of fusion. What can a contested musical practice reveal about the recent economic and cultural changes in contemporary urban India? Fusion is contested because its multiple and contradicting histories, definitions, and opinions make it a unique musical problem in Chennai. This problem is further complicated when the explicit intension of fusion as musical mixing is also understood as an example of persistent debates of cultural mixing that are so crucial to India's colonial history and postcolonial present. In this dissertation, I show how fusion triggers debates that provide a unique constellation of irresolvable tensions that help situate contemporary, urban, South Indian musicians within the changing relations between India and the West. The contestation about fusion has led to a lacuna of critical scholarship that this dissertation remedies. I argue that rather than being a reason to overlook fusion, fusion's contestation loads it with meaning and makes it a rich, unexamined site of expressive culture. It provides a unique domain to understand how musicians in Chennai represent the always-changing relations of India and the West through their discourse about music and musical sound.

Apart from politics and market, ideology was a significant factor in the realm of rock music. Upholding an ideology that focused on individuality and autonomy, and epousing a set of aesthetic value that placed emphases on live performance: how to maintain a balance between autonomy from politics and adaptation to market tastes became a question for both rock artists and the culture industry, a topic of which will be examined in the dissertation.
At the same time, this paper examined the struggle of rock artists against the official constraints and prohibitive coding via rock lyrics, the visual, the music, the body as well as the theatrical performance.
Finally, this paper explores how rock artists and the rock industry turned to alternative spaces for projecting their causes: the Internet, the underground music network and the realm of piracy, spaces where interferences from both the state and the market were minimum.
It also took as its study why rock music was a noise in the market and how rock labels contested for a space in the market which had been plagued by piracy and lack of protection for intellectual property rights. It at the same time explored the ways rock companies attempted to make the books balanced in operating the rock music business in a market where rock fans only constituted a marginal audience.
It looked at how the government imposed control and prohibition on the publishing, performance and dissemination of rock music which it perceived as an alien noise. For this, interviews had been held with personnel from the official apparatuses, the culture industry, the mass media as well as the rock artists and musicians, in a way to understand why rock was rarely heard on the radio or performed on television; why rock music became a term rarely appeared in the official press; and why rock was not allowed to mingle with official discourse like party songs or national anthem; and in what ways the contents of songs as well as the visuals on album covers were censored; and how the government controlled the speech, acts and dress of rock artists on stage.
This paper concludes with the view that despite the many constraints encountered by rock music in the realm of both the state and the market, rock music as a cultural space did not totally lose its freedom, autonomy or integrity. It adopted a mode of communication which is hinged on the non-verbal, the second-order signification, the hidden and the symbolic. It utilised a strategy which avoids direct antagonism with the political regime, and sought outlets for its own messages and meanings.
This paper started by examining how rock music had been transformed into a genre distinguished with its ideology and aesthetics in a socialist country where politics and economy weighed equally significant.
This study took rock music as a cultural space that reflected a larger political and economic environment in China, where it had been marginalized and segregated as a noise by both the state and the market.
Wong Yan Chau Christina.
"September 2006."
Adviser: Joseph Man Chan.
Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 68-03, Section: A, page: 0783.
Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2006.
Includes bibliographical references.
Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web.
Electronic reproduction. [Ann Arbor, MI] : ProQuest Information and Learning, [200-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web.
Abstracts in English and Chinese.
School code: 1307.

This dissertation is a study of popular music and state-controlled radio broadcasting in the Arabic-speaking world, focusing on Syria and the Syrian radioscape, and a set of American stations named Radio Sawa. I examine American and Syrian politically directed broadcasts as multi-faceted objects around which broadcasters and listeners often differ not only in goals, operating assumptions, and political beliefs, but also in how they fundamentally conceptualize the practice of listening to the radio. Beginning with the history of international broadcasting in the Middle East, I analyze the institutional theories under which music is employed as a tool of American and Syrian policy, the imagined youths to whom the musical messages are addressed, and the actual sonic content tasked with political persuasion. At the reception side of the broadcaster-listener interaction, this dissertation addresses the auditory practices, histories of radio, and theories of music through which listeners in the sonic environment of Damascus, Syria create locally relevant meaning out of music and radio. Drawing on theories of listening and communication developed in historical musicology and ethnomusicology, science and technology studies, and recent transnational ethnographic and media studies, as well as on theories of listening developed in the Arabic public discourse about popular music, my dissertation outlines the intersection of the hypothetical listeners defined by the US and Syrian governments in their efforts to use music for political ends, and the actual people who turn on the radio to hear the music.

This is an ethnographic study of the fraught and complex cultural politics of music making in Palestine-Israel in the context of the post-Oslo era. I examine the politics of sound and the ways in which music making and attached discourses reflect and constitute identities, and also, contextualize political action. Ethical and aesthetic positions that shape contemporary artistic production in Israel-Palestine are informed by profound imbalances of power between the State (Israel), the stateless (Palestinians of the occupied Palestinian territories), the complex positioning of Israel's Palestinian minority, and contingent exposure to ongoing political violence. Cultural production in this period is also profoundly informed by highly polarized sentiments and retreat from the expressive modes of relationality that accompanied the 1990s peace process, strategic shifts in the Palestinian struggle for liberation, which is increasingly taking place on the world stage through diplomatic and cultural work, and the conceptual life and currency Palestine has gained as an entity deserving of statehood around the world. The ethnography attends to how the conflict is lived and expressed, musically and discursively, in both Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories (oPt) of the West Bank, encompassing different sites, institutions and individuals. I examine the ways in which music making and attached discourses reflect and constitute identities, with the understanding that musical culture is a sphere in which power and hegemony are asserted, negotiated and resisted through shifting relations between and within different groups. In all the different contexts presented, the dissertation is thematically and theoretically underpinned by the ways in which music is used to culturally assert or reterritorialize social and spatial boundaries in a situation of conflict. Beginning with cultural policy promoted by music institutions located in Israel and in the West Bank, the ethnography focuses on two opposing approaches to cultural interventions in the conflict: music as a site of resistance and nation building amongst Palestinian music conservatories located in the oPt, and music is a site of fostering coexistence and shared models of citizenship amongst Jewish and Arab citizens in mixed Palestinian-Jewish environments in Israel. This follows with the ways in which music making is used to re-write the spatial and temporal boundaries imposed on individuals and communities by the repressive regime of the occupation. The ethnography also attends to the ways in which the cultural construction of place and nation is lived and sounded outside of institutional frameworks, in the blurry boundaries and `boderzones' where fixed ethno-national divisions do not align with physical spaces and individual identities. This opens up spaces for alternative imaginings of national and post-national identities, of resistance and coexistence, of the universal and the particular, that musically highlight the daily struggles of individuals and communities negotiating multiplex modalities of difference.

This dissertation explores the evolution of operatic idioms, especially vocal typecasting conventions, in response to social change in the volatile late Russian Empire. It complements earlier composer-centered approaches to Russian opera with a focus on the contributions of a heretofore neglected group of historical agents: singers. By examining the operas themselves as well as primary sources such as memoirs, letters, reviews, photographs, and early sound recordings, I trace the ways in which singers crystallized the Russian intelligentsia's evolving attitudes toward political and parental authority, gender roles, and political radicalism in memorable operatic characters. With four chapters devoted to the extraordinary bass, tenor, soprano, and mezzo stars who worked with composers to establish the stock characters and vocal conventions of this repertoire, I argue that art imitated life: these singers transmuted their own real-life experiences of Russian society into operatic portrayals that resonated with the controversies of their time. This dissertation thus provides a new angle on Russian opera's engagement with the political and social issues of the era leading up to the Revolution.

This dissertation examines the history of popular music in Lomé, the capital city of Togo, a small West African country that has thus far been largely excluded from ethnomusicological inquiry. Through ethnographic and historical research, it explores shifting practices of, ideas about, and sentiments towards, local popular music and their articulations with state power and political culture during the nearly four-decade lasting regime of late President Eyadéma. It divides this long timespan into three distinct periods of political domination. The first period covers the years between Eyadéma’s inception of power in a military coup d’état in 1967 through the rise of his charismatic authority in the 1970s. The second period covers the 1980s, a time of economic decline and growing socio-political tensions, during which the state relied increasingly on terror and violence to solidify its power. The final period covers the last years of Eyadéma’s regime, from the people’s struggle for democracy in the early 1990s through a forged political reconciliation, followed by a gradual process of economic and social liberalization leading up to Eyadéma’s death in 2005. Within this political framework and chronological outline, this dissertation captures an essentially disjointed history of local popular music, which involves musical characteristics and socio-musical processes that remain substantially unaddressed – as is Togo itself – in the extensive literature on African popular music. These characteristics and processes include the stifling of musical creativity and musical evisceration under state patronage, subtle dynamics of subversion among socially alienated musicians involved in seemingly unremarkable generic musical styles, and an overall predominance of imported popular music styles, rather than the hybrid national popular musics prominently featured in the ethnomusicological literature on West Africa. This work is structured around the theme of “absence,” a concept that was dominant in the local discourse on popular music in Lomé towards the end of Eyadéma’s regime. The young generation of urban Togolese, especially, mourned the absence of a set of local musical conditions, principally that of an identifiably Togolese popular music sound. By theorizing “absence” as a phenomenon of perception, rather than an objective state of non-existence, the analysis centers on the nature of the disjunctures between that which is desired and expected, and that which is. In addition to probing various political, economic, cultural, ideological, and discursive trajectories that led up to, and informed, the emergence of perceptions of absence around the turn of the millennium, this work also critically engages with the absence of Togo in the ethnomusicological literature. It identifies, analyzes, and historicizes paradigmatic trends and epistemological conventions that engendered a scholarly concentration on socially vital, stylistically innovative, and audibly “African” popular music cultures, the legacies of which, I argue, have not only inadvertently reinforced celebratory tropes of otherness that parallel those circulating in the context of the World Music market, but have also rendered a place like Togo invisible and inaudible to ethnomusicologists. The larger aim of this dissertation is thus to broaden the scope of the Africanist project on popular music towards the representation of a fuller spectrum of socio-musical experiences in postcolonial Africa through the inclusion of a place whose popular music history is characterized more by absence and alienation than it is by a tangible and assertive musical presence. The ethnomusicological analysis of post-independence popular music practice in Togo also contributes to the broader literature on this generally understudied country in Africa, by revealing and analyzing larger social and cultural responses to, and articulations with, Eyadéma’s autocratic regime, most importantly the absence of a genuine cultural nationalism in the context of Togo’s Cultural Revolution in the 1970s, a pervasive political disengagement among Togolese in the 1980s, and a short-lived search for a national identity around the turn of the millennium. This dissertation can thus be situated within the larger Africanist body of literature on postcolonial state power. By illuminating the complexities inherent in state-subject relations through an investigation of musicians’ modi operandi across various stages of Togolese political domination, it especially resonates with a body of work inspired by Achille Mbembe that has complicated interpretations of domination in the context of postcolonial totalitarian regimes.

楊偉傑.
"2008年12月".
"2008 nian 12 yue".
Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2008.
Includes bibliographical references (leaves 94-103).
Abstracts in Chinese and English.
Yang Weijie.
論文評審委員會 --- p.ii
論文摘要 --- p.iii
論文摘要（英文） --- p.iv
鳴謝 --- p.vi
圖表目錄 --- p.x
Chapter 第一章： --- 論文概述
Chapter 第一節： --- 歷史背景與研究動機 --- p.1
Chapter 第二節： --- 研究目標 --- p.7
Chapter 第三節： --- 與研究題目相關的研究和理論 --- p.8
Chapter 第四節： --- 論文題目界定 --- p.13
Chapter 第五節： --- 研究理論 --- p.13
Chapter 第六節： --- 研究方法和局限 --- p.16
Chapter 第七節： --- 論文章節概覽 --- p.19
Chapter 第二章： --- 香港的「愛國學校教育」
Chapter 第一節： --- 「愛國學校」釋義 --- p.21
Chapter 第二節： --- 歷史背景 --- p.22
Chapter 第三節： --- 香港的「愛國學校」 --- p.24
Chapter 第四節： --- 「愛國學校」裏的「愛國教育」 --- p.25
Chapter 第五節： --- 「愛國學校」裏的中國音樂 --- p.27
Chapter 第六節： --- 香島中學簡史 --- p.33
Chapter 第七節： --- 小結 --- p.35
Chapter 第三章： --- 一九五零年代至七零年代香港的中國音樂概況
Chapter 第一節： --- 香港的「主流」與「非主流」音樂文化 --- p.37
Chapter 第二節： --- 從「國樂」到「民樂」：五十至七十年代香港現代中國器樂合奏之演變 --- p.38
Chapter 第三節： --- 五十至七十年代香港的現代中國器樂合奏團 --- p.41
Chapter 第四節： --- 「文革」前香港的現代中國器樂合奏團（一九五七至六五） --- p.43
Chapter 第五節： --- 「文革」期間香港的現代中國器樂合奏團（一九六六至七六） --- p.45
Chapter 第六節： --- 「文革」後香港的現代中國器樂合奏團（一九七七至七九） --- p.48
Chapter 第七節： --- 小結 --- p.50
Chapter 第四章： --- 香島中學與中國音樂
Chapter 第一節： --- 香島中學的中國器樂活動 --- p.52
Chapter 第二節： --- 香島中學的中國器樂人物 --- p.56
Chapter 第三節： --- 香島中學校友的中國器樂活動與組織能力：以陳敏莊、邱岩生、黎漢明為例 --- p.65
Chapter 第四節： --- 香島中學的中國器樂活動與香港中國器樂發展的關係 --- p.69
Chapter 第五章： --- 結論 --- p.75
附錄一：香港中國器樂界的香島校友介紹 --- p.83
附錄二 ：〈大寨紅花遍地開〉總譜（節錄） --- p.90
參考資料 --- p.94

This dissertation is an ethnography centered around two bands based in Guangzhou and their relationships with one of China’s largest record companies. Bridging ethnomusicology, popular music studies, cultural geography, media studies, vocal anthropology, and the anthropology of infrastructure, it examines emergent forms of musical creativity and modes of circulation as they relate to shifts in concepts of self, space, publics, and state instigated by China’s political and economic reforms. Chapter One discusses a long history of state-sponsored cartographic musical anthologies, as well as Confucian and Maoist ways of understanding the relationships between place, person, and music. These discussions provide a context for understanding contemporary musical cosmopolitanisms that both build upon and disrupt these histories; they also provoke a rethinking of ethnomusicological and related linguistic theorizations about music, place, and subjectivity. Through biographies of seven musicians working in present-day Guangzhou, Chapter Two outlines a concept of “musical subjectivity” that looks to the intersection of personal histories, national histories, and creativity as a means of exploring the role of individual agency and expressive culture in broader cultural shifts. Chapter Three focuses on the intertwining of actual corporeal mobilities and vicarious musical mobilities, and explores relationships between circulations of global popular musics, emergent forms of musical creativity, and an evolving geography of contemporary China. Chapter Four extends these concerns to a discussion of media systems in China, and outlines an approach to “sonic infrastructures” that puts sound studies in dialogue with the anthropology of infrastructure in order to understand how evolving modes of musical circulation and the listening practices associated with them are connected to broader economic, political, and cultural spatialities. Finally, Chapter Five examines the intersecting aesthetic and political implications of popular music sung in local languages (fangyan) by focusing on contemporary forms of articulation between music, language, listening, and place. Taken together, these chapters explore musical cosmopolitanisms as knowledge-making processes that are reconfiguring notions of self, state, publics, and space in contemporary China.

More than a confined account of the musical activity of the Chicano Movement, my research considers Chicana/o music of the period as a critical part of the protest music genres of Latin America (eg. Nueva canción, canto nuevo) and the Unites States (eg. labor/union and civil rights songs). Consequently, although situated squarely within the context of the Chicano Movement, this project necessarily examines the musical yet political links between Chicano musicians and their counterparts in the American labor movement, Civil Rights Movement, and Latin American social movements of the period. Coupled with the mobilization of their own Mexican musical and cultural traditions, Chicano musicians engaged these other repertoires of struggle to form the nexus of Chicana/o musical expression during the Movement. By viewing Chicana/o music within this broader lens, my research demonstrates that the complexities of the movimiento and Chicana/o political struggle cannot be adequately understood without thinking about how Chicano cultural producers engage a diversity of other race, ethnic, and regional struggles. Rather than assume a homologous relationship between music and identity, my research historicizes musical practices in the context of their struggle for political, social, and cultural rights and resources and the strategies employed by diverse communities working together to overcome the failures of governmental and institutional programs. The creative dialogues and musical exchanges that occurred among Chicano musicians suggest not only forms of ethnic solidarity but also the culturally “hybrid” expressions that shape even nationalist movements. Key to this approach is recognizing the simultaneously global and local character of Chicana/o musical production, where the flows of transnationalism circulated not only ideas, peoples, and sounds, but also political struggles. This project thus raises a number of critical questions about Chicano Movement music and its political import. Ultimately, I suggest that it was the ability to perform authoritatively within the bi-cultural and increasingly transnational space of the Chicano experience that empowered movimiento music to express the feelings of autonomy engendered by the Movement.
text

This dissertation offers an aesthetic and historical overview of crunk, a hip- hop subgenre that took form in Atlanta, Georgia during the late 1990s. Get Crunk! is an ethnography that draws heavily on methodologies from African-American studies, musicological analysis, and performance studies in order to discuss crunk as a performed response to the policing of black youth in public space in the 1990s. Crunk is a subgenre of hip-hop that emanated from party circuits in the American southeast during the 1990s, characterized by the prevalence of repeating chanted phrases, harmonically sparse beats, and moderate tempi. The music is often accompanied by images that convey psychic pain, i.e. contortions of the body and face, and a moshing dance style in which participants thrash against one another in spontaneously formed epicenters while chanting along with the music. Crunk’s ascension to prominence coincided with a moment in Atlanta’s history during which inhabitants worked diligently to redefine Atlanta for various political purposes. Some hoped to recast the city as a cosmopolitan tourist destination for the approaching new millennium, while others sought to recreate the city as a beacon of Southern gentility, an articulation of the city’s mythologized pre-Civil War existence; both of these positions impacted Atlanta’s growing hip-hop community, which had the twins goals of drawing in black youth tourism and creating and marketing an easily identifiable Southern style of hip-hop for mainstream consumption; the result was crunk. This dissertation investigates the formation and function of crunk methods of composition, performance, and listening in Southern recreational spaces, the ways in which artists and audiences negotiate identities based on notions of race, gender, and region through crunk, and various manifestations of aesthetic evaluation and moral panic surrounding crunk. The argument here is that the dynamic rituals of listening and emergent performance among crunk audiences constitute a kind of catharsis and social commentary for its primarily black youth listenership; one that lies beyond the scope of lyrical analysis and, accordingly requires analysis that incorporates a conceptualization of listening as an embodied, participatory experience expressed through gesture. The first chapter begins with a historical overview of race, segregation, and the allocation of public space in Atlanta, Georgia in order to establish the social topography upon which Atlanta hip-hop was built; it ends with a social and historical overview of yeeking, Atlanta’s first distinct hip-hop party dance style and marked precursor to crunk. The second chapter delves into essentialist constructions of Southern identity and hip-hop authenticity, from which Atlanta hip- hoppers constructed novel expressions of Southern hip-hop identity through a process akin to Dick Hebdige’s theory of bricolage. Chapter three discusses the history and sociopolitical significance of Freaknik, a large Atlanta spring break event that catered specifically to students of Historically Black Colleges and Universities. At its peak, Freaknik became the focus of a moral panic, which led to increased policing of black youth in public space and ultimately the dismantling of the event due in large part to harassment; it is this moment in Atlanta’s history which gives context to the performative abandon of crunk. The fourth chapter discusses the aesthetics of crunk music and imagery, focusing on the subgenre’s embrace of Southern gangsta archetypes, timbral dissonance in compositional methodology, and crunk’s corporeal and vocal catharses illustrated by performative violent embodiment (i.e. moshing) and the centrality of screams and chants. The fifth chapter focuses on gender performativity in Southern hip-hop party spaces. The chapter begins with a discussion of gender normativity in yeeking and how insincere non-normative performances of gender are incorporated as a means of reinforcing the gender normativity; this is framed by analyses of a yeek dance move called “the sissy” and the trap era dance, the nae nae. As is argued in the latter half of this chapter, women performers in crunk engaged in the same kind of bricolage outlined in chapter two in order to transform traditionally male-centric crunk music into something specifically and performatively woman centered. Ultimately, these discussions of gender indicate a kind of performative fluidity that echoes the kind of performance-based subversion that this dissertation argues crunk represented for black youth laying claim to public space in the years following the decline of Freaknik. The conclusion holds that, while the era of the crunk subgenre has passed, many of the underlying performative political subtexts persisted in subsequent subgenres of Southern hip-hop (e.g. snap, trap, etc.), which lays the foundation for discourse on methodologies of performative resistance in other hip-hop formats.

This thesis explores some of the ways in which listening to South African popular music allows individuals to enter into imaginative engagements with others in South Africa, and in so doing, negotiate their place in the social landscape. Taking as its starting point the notion of the "musical imaginary" - the web of connotational meanings arising out of the interaction between music and society, rendering it a particularly suitable medium through which to imagine social actors - it focuses specifically on the role of music in constructions of 'race' and, to a lesser extent, of 'nation'. It examines some of the ways in which dominant discourses exert pressure on what is imagined, as well as highlighting the creativity of listeners who appropriate the musical imaginary for their own ends of identification. It attempts to depict the complexity of musical identification in postapartheid South Africa, in which individuals must negotiate multiple boundaries marking difference, including categories of 'race', ethnicity, gender and class. It also investigates perceptions of the role of music in generating new identities and modes of social interaction, and offers some speculations as to how an analysis of these perceptions may contribute to current theoretical models of change in multicultural societies.
Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2005.

This ethnographic study concerns itself with the role that local rap performance plays in either reinforcing or challenging perceptions of 'race' amongst the participants of hip-hop culture in Durban, South Africa, and what this implies for the prospects of reconciliation. Using Cohen's (1989) theory of community and Grossberg's (1996) theory of affective alliances, I explore the ways in which music may create and maintain differences and commonalities between groups of people. It is my hypothesis that genre conventions and connotations, and the discourses that circulate about rap music (for example, rap music as a form of expression particular to the 'black Atlantic' diaspora and conditioned by a racially segregated society [Rose 1994]), allow hip-hop to either reinforce or challenge participants' perceptions of 'race'. I examine how musical and lyrical utterances thrust into a semantic historical and socio-political context limit how rap performance can mean and how, as a dialogic speech genre, rap can uphold, subvert or negotiate its genre associations, including, through the use of double-voiced discourse, dominant ideas concerning 'race' and cultural identity. Acknowledging the idiom as of a form of black cultural expression (Rose 1994), interviewees mention narratives of hip-hop's historical origins, rap artists' use of Five Percenter and Black Nationalist ideologies, and poverty, as factors that either reinforce or challenge notions of 'race'. The simultaneous transgression of and/or adherence to, racialized space and spatialized 'race' (Forman 2002) by different 'races', as well as the presence or absence of multilingualism, are viewed as indicators of the level of commitment to the notion of a democratic place for all 'race' and language groups in post-apartheid South Africa. It is the aim of this thesis to add to the body of knowledge concerning the nature of our post-apartheid identities, what influences them and in what way. And in a broader context, to explore the role of music in societies in transition and the role it might play in facilitating an ability to 'imagine culture beyond the colour line' (Gilroy 2000).
Thesis (M.Mus.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2008.

This study explores the impact of the counter culture on students at two Anglophone universities in the 1960s and 70s. It focuses on the social and historical differences that predisposed English speaking youth to metropolitan based cultures. It explores this in the context of a lack of identity with the dominant culture of apartheid. The study examines the method of transmission, absorption, translation and incorporation of the counterculture and the New Left. The factors that highlighted the differences between South African students and their counterparts abroad are seen not only in their access to technology but also in the nature of their relationship to power both political and educational. The importance of understanding what bred different responses to similar stimuli assists in understanding the process in which the global became local. It is argued here that the attraction of the counterculture lay in the broader cultural scope it gave to expressions of difference and resistance as a response to the rigid and continuous expansion of punitive measures by the apartheid government. The persistence through the 1960s of a liberal framework is examined in the context of a response to these measures as well as a failure to move beyond the racial foregrounding of the political system. The influences of events in the USA, UK and France in 1968 are seen in the context of their importance in South Africa as a catalyst to practical and theoretical change. The significance of individuals as translators of the discourses of the New Left is paralleled in examinations of South African musicians whose lyrics and compositions carried both the ideas of the counter culture as well as expressed responses and issues shared by their audiences. The importance of the coalescing of both the New Left and the counterculture are evident in the early 1970s. Students adopted a Marxist framework within which to analyse South Africa, and the methods of the New Left in France in seeking alliances with workers. This practical approach was an example of the global becoming local and introduced those with access to privileged white education into a reexamination of the role of education in changing society. The counterculture expressed itself in the adoption of both cultural and educational methods of focusing on change as a response both to students relationship to power as well as to the emphasis of the 1960s on a broader more individually expressed ability to embrace change and new values. The study concludes that the framework of the New Left when employed in redefining South African history was central to a process of both economic and cultural change within the country. The absence of a strongly expressed identity suggests the widespread appeal of the central values of the counterculture which emphasized distance and disaffiliation from the dominant culture. The opportunity offered by this position is seen as a response to the political expressions of a racially defined student body against a less obvious but significant change in the definition and role of tertiary education and cultural institutions.
Theses (Ph.D)-University of KwaZulu Natal, Durban, 2010.

The study interrogates the context reflectivity of postcolonial Shona popular music in Zimbabwe. It also explores the extent to which the legal environment in which the same music is produced, disseminated and consumed affects expressivity and artistic precision. The study is inspired by the New Historicism theory which assumes that every work of art is a product of the historical moment that created it and can be identified with the cultural and political movements of the time. The same is believed of popular music. The study is also beholden to the Marxist literary tradition for its assessment of the discourse of politics and socio-economic issues in popular music. For all the analysis, an Afrocentric eye view informs the thesis. Being qualitative in perspective, the research mainly uses the hermeneutic research design as an operational framework for the interpretation of lyrical data. Hermeneutics, as a method of textual analysis, emphasizes the socio-cultural and historic influences on qualitative interpretation. Postcolonial Shona popular music is purposively sampled and critically studied using the hermeneutic method to tease out latent social and political nuances in lyrical data. Interviews are roped in as alternative opinions to validate hermeneutic data. The research observes that the legislative environment in which Zimbabwean popular music is composed is, on paper, very conducive for the art but in practice severely restrictive. The constitution allows the artiste sufficient space to sing any subject but confessions by some critics alert on the incidences of some censored products. Even against that backdrop artistes have gone on to compose politically suggestive music. However, from the first decade of independence, the tendency for the artiste has been to flow with the meta-narrative or hegemonic discourses of the state, while in the later decades the artiste sounds critical of the nationalist government. Realising the power of music to articulate serious national issues; among other prescriptions, the study recommends that government creates a flexible and democratic legislation that allows for unbounded creativity and consumption of artistic products.
African Languages
D. Litt. et Phil. (African Languages)

This thesis introduces the reader to rock music in Durban from 1963 to 1985, tracing the development of rock in Durban from rock'n'roll to hard core punk. Although the thesis is historically orientated, it also endeavours to show the relationship of rock music in Durban to three central themes, viz: the relationship of rock in Durban to the socio-political realities of apartheid in South Africa; the role of women in local rock, and the identity crisis experienced by white, English-speaking South Africans. Each of these themes is explored in a separate chapter, with Chapter Two providing the bulk of historical data on which the remaining chapters are based. Besides the important goal of documenting a forgotten and ignored rock history, one central concern pervades this work. In every chapter, the conclusions reached all point to the identity crisis experienced both by South African rock audiences and the rock musicians themselves. The constant hankering after international (and specifically British) rock music trends both by audiences and fans is symptomatic of a culture in crisis, and it is the search for the reasons for this identity crisis that dominate this work. The global/local debate and its relationship to rock in South Africa has been a useful theoretical tool in the unravelling of the identity crisis mentioned above. Chapter Four focusses on the role of women in the Durban rock scene and documents the difficulties experienced by women who were rock musicians in Durban. This is a small contribution to the increasing field of womens' studies, and I have attempted to relate the role of women in rock in Durban to other studies in this field.
Thesis (M.Mus.)-University of Natal, Durban, 1995.

A research report submitted to the Wits School of Arts, University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa in partial fulfilment of a Degree of Master’s of Arts. Sunday 11 October 2015
This qualitative research report explores the motivations for, and barriers to, young people attending and consuming live music in small to medium venues in Johannesburg. With the average age of South Africans being just 25 years, young people represent a large, existing and potential new audience for live music venues looking to grow new audiences. Yet there are challenging racial, spatial and economic legacies of apartheid which live music venues need to overcome to reach out to more young people. Young South Africans are often described as one entity, defined by their ‘race’, age and education level. This research uncovers new insights into what motivates young South Africans to attend live music from socialising with friends to deeper emotional connections with music and artists. Broader themes such as young people’s desire for authenticity, uniqueness and self-identity are explored in the context of live music as well as their preferences for open spaces and freedom of movement during their live music experiences. This research explores how to segment South African live music audiences based on motivation and consumption patterns, to understand if it could help inform future audience development strategies in South Africa. Live music venues’ understanding and practice of audience development has been analysed to better understand how embedded the arts marketing profession is within the sector and what appetite there could be for the introduction of a motivation-based audience segmentation tool. Finally, the report reflects on the findings and makes recommendations on how live music venues could authentically engage with young audiences; what measures could be taken to cultivate more artistically-led, but audience-focused venues; and ultimately, how to attract more young audiences to their venues. Keywords Audience development, arts motivation, arts marketing, arts consumption, arts audiences, hedonic consumption, authenticity, live music, live music venues, barriers to arts attendance, Johannesburg, Gauteng, South Africa, young people, Morris Hargreaves and McIntyre, Concerts SA, The Orbit, Niki’s Oasis, Afrikan Freedom Station and the Soweto Theatre.

Lee Ying Chuen.
Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1999.
Includes bibliographical references (leaves 104-110).
Abstracts in English and Chinese.
Chapter Chapter One --- Introduction --- p.6
Chapter Chapter Two --- Literature Review --- p.13
Chapter Chapter Three --- Mapping the Local Sound Scape --- p.29
Chapter Chapter Four --- Blackbird: A living Song --- p.54
Chapter Chapter Five --- Freedom of Art as Freedom of Life --Cultural Discourse as Political Activity --- p.80
Chapter Chapter Six --- Concluding Remarks --- p.95
Postscript --- p.98
Appendix --- p.101
References --- p.104

This dissertation considers how music has been heard with American law during an age of mass incarceration. Drawing upon records in legal archives for thousands of cases from the late 1980s to the present, it describes how legal hearings of music have contributed towards the reproduction of racial injustice. The dissertation takes two distinct modes of hearing as objects for analysis: (1) the hearing of music as evidence; and (2) the hearing of music as an offense. The dissertation describes how, since the late 1980s, the American criminal justice system has routinely and selectively heard rap music as evidence within its investigations and prosecutions. It shows how rap has served variously as a clue or lead during investigations, an aggravator of charges filed and sentences pursued during plea bargaining, a support for arguments against bail, a form of proof for elements of a crime or elements of a sentence enhancement allegation, a support for an affirmative defense, a witness impeacher, a form of proof for an aggravating factor in sentencing, and a support for arguments against parole. The dissertation questions whether quick-fix, colorblind policy proposals are likely to halt this selective hearing of rap, suggesting the need for frank discussions to take place about the political contours of problematization. The dissertation then describes how, over the same time period, through both the criminal justice system and the procedures of administrative law, music has been heard routinely as a subfelony offense. It shows how offenses have been heard in music to facilitate narcotics investigations, raise revenue for cash-strapped municipalities, patrol the borders of the nation, and drive residents from neighborhoods. It demonstrates how the academic study of music can become attentive to harms and injustices made possible through hearing that are not reducible to the restriction of musical freedom, including but not limited to harassment, profiling, the imposition of crushing debts, vehicle impoundment, eviction, and deportation, by engaging in fine-grained study of the social life of music’s regulative rules.

The study explores the theme of protest as encoded in selected Kalanga music. In particular, the study focuses on the analysis of songs sung by Kalanga musicians such as Chase Skuza, Ndux Junior and Batshele Brothers, Ndolwane Super Sounds and Tornado Heroes within the period 2000-2013.The selected period is generally considered to be a crisis period in Zimbabwe. Further, the study also relies on views from key respondents obtained through semi structured interviews and questionnaires. The research adopts the Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) framework and the hegemony theory to help identify the discourses as encoded in the theme of protest in Kalanga music. The two frameworks are engaged because they challenge critical thinkers to move away from seeing language as immaterial to acknowledging and believing that words are meaningful in specific political, social and historical contexts. The study establishes that Kalanga music is protest art that speaks on behalf of the people by pointing out the injustices and malpractices that take place in society. The selected music demonstrates the battles that are ongoing that the musicians are protesting against. The study notes that protest music raises the consciousness of the citizens on the wayward behaviour of individuals and institutions. The protest themes identified include; corruption, poor governance and poor leadership, unfulfilled promises, lack of unity, repressive and oppressive laws, a skewed representation of the nation’s history, deployment of Shona teachers in Matabeleland, decrying moral decadence, protest against jealousy and envy and protest against xenophobia. Findings of the study also demonstrate that music goes beyond simply reflecting and describing situations but it also becomes an avenue through which discursive spaces are opened. The study also shows that Kalanga music provides alternative platforms for the articulation of matters generally considered taboo within Zimbabwean spaces, Kalanga music has a potential to contribute to national cohesion and national growth using its constructive criticism of the political, social and economic state of Zimbabwe. The study has clearly enunciated that protest music assists in the interrogation of a society’s moral compass and in turn question some convictions. Kalanga songs are not merely frivolous components of various sects of Zimbabwean culture, or passing sources of insignificant entertainment. Instead, they and their singers are critical contributors to the shaping of those eras, playing irreplaceable roles as they spur collective mindsets of protest across many social aggregates through their appeal to the desires, the morals, the lamentations, the angers and the passions of the Kalanga people.
Linguistics and Modern Languages
Ph. D. (Languages, Linguistics and Literature)