2'23"

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2010-03-11T16:16:00.001-05:00

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Migration

2010-03-09T17:45:00.002-05:00

A word on logistics: this weekend the address of this blog will be changing. Blogger is no longer allowing you to use FTP publishing, which has been my method of choice these past few years. I actually like the Blogger interface (I know everyone loves WordPress, but, eh...) but regardless of which platform I use, there's no getting around the fact that in the switch I have to move from the directory /blog/ to using subdomain nomenclature.

So if you wouldn't mind kindly updating your links to this humble blog, I would be much obliged. A pointer will remain here, but nobody likes a redirect. The new address will be:

http://blog.pmgentry.net/

Although again, I won't be switching over until this weekend. Just giving my devoted readers advance warning.

Virtual Oscar Pool

2010-03-07T10:00:00.002-05:00

Oscar time! I meant to post this earlier and encourage a blogger Oscar prediction pool with a fabulous prize. But, a little late for that. Maybe next year.

These are predictions for what films will win awards, not what I think should. I haven't even seen half these movies.This year is particularly hard to predict, given the expansion of the Best Picture category and the use of the preferential voting system--history will be less of a guide. Remember, ballots were due last Tuesday and many were mailed in much earlier, so events of the past few days (such as the lawsuit against Hurt Locker) won't have an effect.

Best Picture
I'm sticking with Hurt Locker. James Cameron is widely disliked in the Academy, Hurt Locker is topical, would be the first for a woman director, and was riding the zeitgeist during the voting period. The one unpredictable element is the smear campaign, which had a random assortment of veterans complaining of inaccuracies in the film, and the leaking of an email in which a Hurt Locker producer had urged his friends to not vote for Avatar (it's technically illegal to disparage other films, even just in a private email.) While these accusations could be damaging, my feeling is that they were so patently the result of maneuvering on the part of rivals that I suspect voters won't be swayed. Also, not that it matters, but it was a pretty good movie too.

Best Director
This is solidly for Kathryn Bigelow.

Best Actor
Jeff Bridges is by all accounts a lock. I finally saw Crazy Hearts last night, and it is indeed exactly the sort of performance the Academy loves.

Best Supporting Actor
Very tricky one; I would say pretty much a toss-up. Look for this category to go as a consolation prize to films like Invictus, Lovely Bones and Inglorious Basterds that aren't going to win much else. If pressed, I suppose I'll guess Christoph Waltz.

Best Actress
Also wide-open. Meryl Streep and Helen Mirren are the types that win Oscars just for sneezing, but I have a hunch that won't happen this year. My money is on Carey Mulligan. If Sandra wins, I will shoot myself.

Best Supporting Actress
The Up in the Air vote will presumably split. Nine was panned, and between Maggie Gyllenhall and Mo'Nique, I think I would bet on the former.

Best Animated Feature Film
One of the best rosters for this category ever. Up was a good movie, but not one of the best, and I think there is definite Pixar fatigue out there. It might win if Coraline and Fantastic Mr. Fox split the vote. But I'm going to go out on a limb and say that Coraline's loyal base might see it though. Again, though, what a great year for animation.

Best Screenplay
Perhaps The Hurt Locker, but I think this might be Inglorious Basterds main prize for the night.

Best Adapted Screenplay
Similarly, I think this will be allotted as the consolation prize to Up in the Air, although Oscar votes do like a literary name, and Nick Hornby wrote An Education. Still, I bet on Reitman and Turner.

Best Song
When will Disney learn that offering up more than one song means you split the vote? Apparently not this year. I presume this is a lock for the theme from Crazy Heart.

The rest I leave up to you--tune in next week to discuss the results!

Grim Times at the Public University

2010-03-06T10:25:00.003-05:00

It's been a rough few weeks (well, decades) for public education. First, the University of California spirals further into flames, spilling over from the constant battles over funding into paroxysms of student-on-student violence. Them another flurry of articles about the ongoing determination of some administrators to trade SUNY Binghamton's well-known academic success for a paltry, feeble attempt at pushing one (not all, just one) of their athletic teams to success. Now, this news from down here in Virginia. From the Post:

Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II has urged the state's public colleges and universities to rescind policies that ban discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, arguing in a letter sent to each school that their boards of visitors had no legal authority to adopt such statements.

In his most aggressive initiative on conservative social issues since taking office in January, Cuccinelli (R) wrote in the letter sent Thursday that only the General Assembly can extend legal protections to gay state employees, students and others -- a move the legislature has repeatedly declined to take as recently as this week.

I strongly believe in public education, and find abhorrent the trend towards the privatization of public institutions, a particularly popular approach in this state. But at moments like this, it's hard not to wish for more independence from the state legislature. Back in California, privatization meant limiting marginalized students from access to higher education. Ironically, here in Virginia, the opposite might be true.

A Missed Opportunity

2010-02-18T18:16:00.002-05:00

Via the NY Times blog ArtsBeat:

The topic was weighty: how music can save the world.

The talk ranged across the role of conservatories, the definition of art and music’s capacity to heal.

The World Economic Forum convened a panel discussion at Carnegie Hall Thursday on arts leadership. The focus? “The role and responsibilities of cultural leaders and institutions in the collaborative process of development solutions to a number of challenges affecting the world.” . . .

They all wanted to make the case for why music is important. When all is lost in a natural disaster, say, all that is left is the spirit, Ms. Ochoa-Brillembourg said. “The arts nurture the spirit,” she said. Conversely, dictators try to suppress and control the arts, pointed out Klaus Schwab, the forum’s founder.

If you check out the program for the event, you'll see that the panelists included various arts administrators, a business school professor, some philanthropists, and so on. Can you guess what profession is not represented? If you guessed those of us who actually study these issues for a living, you'd be right. Not a musicologist in sight.

I don't necessarily blame the Davos crowd for missing an opportunity to lend the event historical perspective and a general de-mystification of the role of music in society. One of the ironic things about our discipline is that although we spend an inordinate amount of time asserting our authority over music, we hardly ever assert that authority out in the public sphere where it might actually do some good!

Selling Silence

2010-02-13T09:45:00.003-05:00

Just in time for Kyle's new book, an Acura advertisement in this week's New Yorker shows that silence can mean all sorts of different things.

No word yet if C.F. Peters or the John Cage Trust will be filing a claim. Then again, the versions of 4'33" available from Peters only include the famous "Tacet" edition, and then what they call the "proportional notation" version, the so-called "Kremen" manuscript that uses a rudimentary graphic notation. Instead, Acura is here ripping off the version used by David Tudor at the premiere, which was regular empty manuscript paper carefully measured out into the correct proportions.

Theater in Williamsburg

2010-02-10T12:34:00.003-05:00

Although it's easy to make fun of the Colonial Disneyland that surrounds William & Mary, the resources of Colonial Williamsburg have been a real boon to my American music class this semester. Did you know that the first purpose-built public theater in the British colonies was in Williamsburg, constructed in 1716? I didn't, before I moved here.

I was luckily to be able to invite Sterling Murray to give guest lecture on the subject to my class. Sterling, if you don't know him, taught at West Chester University and has now retired here to the "'burg," as the kids call it, and is now one of a number of scholars looking into the history of 18th century musical theater in this town. There were, in essence, three theaters built over the course of the 18th century, from the first in 1716, to the last which was torn down in 1773. There were no permanent companies in these buildings, but a fairly regular succession of touring companies came through, part of a theater circuit that included a winter stay in Jamaica, and the stops in Charleston, Williamsburg, Annapolis, etc. The repertoire more or less mirrored London theater tastes, from The Beggar's Opera to later pasticcio comic operas like those of Thomas Arne.

The theaters were mostly built next to where the Capitol building once stood. Unlike, the Capitol, however, the theater has not been reconstructed, despite extensive archaeological research that gives us a pretty complete picture of its contours. The design was based heavily upon London theaters, complete with pricey box seats--Washington sat there on occasion--and the notorious row of spikes around the pit to keep the audience from abusing the performers too much. (You can see them in the Hogarth print above.)

Why hasn't the theater been restored? Money is a problem, I am sure, although apparently there have been some successful fundraising attempts. I am told, however, that the major problem is the worry that nobody would want to go see 18th century British musical theater in its four-hour rambunctious glory, mostly viewed from wooden benches crammed together. Plus, you'd have to worry about fire codes, wheelchair access, etc.

Which is too bad. It's typical of many public history projects that buildings representative of public, official culture--the Capitol, the Palace, the Church, etc.--are restored and reconstructed, while the more complicated and marginal parts of eighteenth-century society are deferred. Colonial Williamsburg, however, has made it part of its mission to showcase the daily life of colonial Virginia, and it seems like if anyone should value the theater, it would be them. And I would give tourists more credit--re-staging a night at the theater, completely with bits of Shakespeare, dancing dogs and jugglers, as well as John Gay, could be quite fun. Four hours is definitely a lot to ask, as is the problem of a crowded flammable theater having only one exit, but you know, it's not like any of these reconstructed buildings are truly authentic, and I bet with a little imagination these problems could be surmounted.

Memories

2010-02-07T15:05:00.004-05:00

From yesterday's New York Times:

The fleur-de-lis will be showcased in Sunday’s Super Bowl as the symbol of the Saints.

But it is much more than just the logo of a modern-day football team. Throughout history, the fleur-de-lis has represented many things, including royalty and religion. The symbol, an artistic representation of a flower (a lily or an iris), has been found on ancient Greek and Roman coins.

Like an inkblot in a psychological test, the fleur-de-lis of the Saints can have several interpretations. Some may see it as a most aggressive flower or as the tip of a spear or an arrowhead.

New Orleans players like it but vary in their awareness of its meaning. Linebacker Jonathan Vilma said he did not know of its floral origin. Linebacker Marvin Mitchell called it a “fleur-de-leaf.” ...

Jonathan Casillas, another linebacker, said of the logo, “I love it, man” and called it “very powerful.” He also said he was impressed to see women with fleur-de-lis tattoos.

Darren Sharper, a defensive back, said that if the Saints win the Super Bowl, he will get a fleur-de-lis tattoo, “so I guess I’ll be a New Orleans Saint forever.”

Apparently, neither the Times nor these players remember one of the most potent uses of the fleur-de-lis in New Orleans history. As part of the French code noir which governed the treatment of enslaved Africans, the branding of the fleur-de-lis on the backs of slaves was part punishment, part record-keeping. After one runaway attempt, a slave received the brand on one shoulder, in addition to losing an ear. After another runaway tempt, another fleur-de-lis would go on the other shoulder, and the individual's hamstring would be cut. A third runaway attempt, and the penalty was death.

Check out the comments to this story for some examples of how the symbol is still much contested in New Orleans.

The Ice Dog Cometh

2010-02-06T13:26:00.006-05:00

Politeness, Again

2010-02-05T13:58:00.004-05:00

Zoe Lang, over at amusicology, has a thoughtful post up looking at the recent discussions in our field over threatened cuts at many schools--most vividly, the elimination of the important Department of Paleography at King's College. She has several good points about the need to have a diverse "musicological toolbox" available. She also notes that there is a certain undercurrent of hostility in some of the discussion towards what is called "critical studies," a term left somewhat undefined, but which I think can be taken to mean those of us who use methodologies and theories common in the humanities at large, like feminist theory or postcolonial studies or what have you. Zoe very rightly points out that it is exactly in these approaches to studying music that connections with other disciplines are most often found, and that we need as much engagement as we can get.

I promised myself I wouldn't get baited by the AMS-l discussion--not even when my own former but dearly-beloved graduate program was described as full of "contemptible levels of narcissism, waste, and entitlement." Alas, I succumb. Luckily, Zoe says it very well. I would only make it a bit bolder: faced with severe economic pressures as we are, defensively circling the wagons around one's own small corners of musicology is exactly the wrong approach. Frankly, paleography of the sort studied at King's doesn't make an ounce of difference to my scholarship. A lot of musicological scholarship doesn't. If I read Jonathan's new book on Chopin's Op. 38, it would only be out of curiosity, not because I need to. But it would never occur to me to suggest that these other approaches and subfields of study are somehow not worthy of study, and not valuable to the discipline at large. They are both. They are exactly what make our field so unusually rich.

Making the case for musicology, like any humanities discipline, is not easy in the era of the rapidly-privatizing university. There are plenty of folks out there who would love to see the performing arts relegated to extracurricular activity, and the liberal arts banished entirely. Those are the attitudes that need changing, not the fact that you might not like someone applying feminist theory to Beethoven. Bashing the work of your colleagues strikes me as an obviously wrong-headed manner in which to articulate the important of our field. Perhaps we could instead chill out and let each other take our own scholarly paths, respectfully disagreeing when those paths cross. Save that anger for the endowment fund managers and state legislatures. The word, I believe, is "pluralism," and it is the sign of a healthy discipline.

</sermon>

NAACP at the LoC

2010-02-03T12:44:00.002-05:00

If you've never checked out the NAACP papers at the Library of Congress--I blogged about them a little while back--here's a chance to do so without leaving home. The Library has put a bunch of materials in an "online exhibition." The selection of documents (70, with more to come) is only a tiny fragment of what's available, but it should be enough to whet your appetite. There's also an online collection of primary sources aimed at secondary school educators, which is pretty cool. If you're unable to get to DC, remember that most of the collection was microfilmed awhile back, and is in many a research library collection. I prefer the actual ink-on-paper myself--microfilm is no proper replacement for holding W.E.B. Dubois's hand-scrawled letters in one's greasy little hands.

And yes, I learned about this exhibition because I'm a "fan" of the LoC on Facebook. Which is only slightly less nerdy than being a fan of JSTOR, which I also am.

The Paranoid Suburbanite

2010-02-01T19:10:00.004-05:00

If you'll pardon a brief foray into urban policy, did you see that article linked to at the Times about Obama's "War Against Suburbia"? The author, Joel Kotkin, constructs an argument that goes something like, "Many of Obama's advisors are from Chicago" plus "Obama is putting money into high-speed rail" plus "Obama cares about urban schools" equals Obama is declaring war on Suburbia. And since everyone--EVERYONE--wants to live in the suburbs, they are going to turn on Obama and he will lose horribly his next election.

Never mind that a great deal of Obama's support of mass transit is for projects designed to ease the commute of the average suburbanite. Or that an important reason many leave for suburbs is because they are being priced out of the urban core, not because they necessarily want to. Or that the very idea of "suburbs" as a homogenous entity is laughable, a point Kotkin inadverdently makes himself in pointing out their increasing diversity. Heck, a lot of people these days move to suburbs because they are diverse, closer to work, and more, dare I say, urban!

And the flip side of the coin, as many commenters on the article point out, is that the government puts an enormous amount of funding into subsidizing home ownership. And in many cases, even in the deepest depths of cities, the kind of urban density Kotkin is being imposed on freedom-loving citizens is actually illegal. As Atrios is fond of pointing out, the dense residential neighborhoods of a city like Philadelphia could never be built today--there are too many zoning requirements that require parking garages and such. That's why attractive urban residential areas are so pricey--the housing stock is limited by law. If any kind of war is being fought in this country, it's against those of us who would like to be able to take the bus to work and walk to the grocery store. Instead, we end up with neighborhoods like the one pictured above. That's the "neighborhood" around my Trader Joe's down here in Virginia--a forest of lamp-posts and empty lots as far as the eye can see.

The author, Joel Kotkin, is just kind of a wanna-be policy wonk with no policy and no wonk, but he does give give voice to a certain paranoid strain in American politics. Actually, here's where I can make the connection to some of my academic work. In the United States, at least, success political discourse is all about trying to find an imaginary category to which your audience can imagine themselves belonging, and then constructing that category as simultaneously universal and under attack. In our contemporary scene, that category is the "middle-class", to which we all invariably belong and for which every single politician in this country pledges to be working. Other variations include "families" (everyone fights for American families!) or in the not so distant past, "white people"; a little further back then that, white Protestant men. Kotkin is trying very hard to make "suburbanite" a similar universal-but-marginalized category.

What's actually hilarious is that I then learned that Kotkin also has this theory about what he calls "Gentry liberalism." Apparently it was "so hot a year ago"--seriously those are his words--but now it is in its death throes. If I only had known at the time that I was at the head of a hot political movement!

This About Sums Up the iPad

2010-01-27T22:38:00.002-05:00

A friend sent me this screenshot of his Facebook feed:

Assigning Music: An Update

2010-01-19T23:24:00.003-05:00

An update on my oh-so-fascinating post about the logistics of assigning music in class. There are some good comments to that post you should check out if you are interested. Among other things, Glenn reminded me that iTunes files are only playable on Apple players like the iPod or iPhone. The more I thought about that, the more it stuck in my craw. As prevalent as iPods are, I just didn't want to endorse such a closed system.

So instead, I've decided to use the Amazon MP3 store. There isn't a system for creating lists nearly as elegant as the iMix, but it was easy enough to create a series of links in my Blackboard site for the necessary tracks. Not everything was available, but I was surprised at how much was, even some of the random Americana I have assigned in my US Music survey. (My main regret was that they didn't have the recording of Gottschalk's The Banjo I wanted, the one by my old teacher Neely Bruce. Not available as an MP3 as best as I could tell.) A few things were available out there for free: George Gaskin's 1893 recording of "After the Ball," for example, is available from the UCSB Cylinder Preservation Project and I'm just going to go ahead and give them La Monte Young bootlegs, since, you know, they're bootlegs.

Now all of this is, I should say, just supplementary. A set of audio CDs will be on reserve in the library. I will let you all know, however, how many people end up buying music themselves. It would cost about $100 to download everything, so I don't kid myself that they'll buy all of it. And I'm sure there will be some judicious copying between classmates. You can't control everything, and I feel that by providing the option to buy, I've at least done my part.

And I should have asked this earlier: I know a number of my former students read this blog. If any of you feel like chiming in on how you like to have your music delivered to you, please feel free to leave a comment!

The Law of GaGa

2010-01-13T20:44:00.007-05:00

Happy new year! My semester starts next week; time to get back on the blogging train, no?

One of the more interesting end-of-year/end-of-decade reviews was Ann Powers's piece "Authenticity Takes a Holiday." Her argument, with which I basically agree, is that unlike the 1990s (or at least the first half of the 90s), the 2000s were marked by a decline in the discourse of authenticity. For those of you who don't do pop music studies, this is the omnipresent discourse in which good music is music that is "real," that speaks truths about the one who makes it.

That's the philosophy behind the concept, at least. In practice, authenticity comes to mean very particular aesthetic judgments. When I have authenticity day in my classes, I try to tease it out by first brainstorm with the class a list of artists or songs they find "authentic." Working from that, we then try to figure out what musical qualities are shared by these songs, and often find that those qualities are remarkably similar in a lot of genres--simpler instrumentation, biographical details in the lyrics, "live-sounding recording" (which I put in scare quotes since the work of an authenticist like Steve Albini is just as much a creation of the studio, and what is really meant is a certain style of mic placement), etc.

Obviously these sonic traits can quite easily be separated from their context and used wily-nily. That's why certain self-consciously primitive recording approaches of the last decade--the White Stripes and Amy Winehouse come to mind--can be used in a manner that disrupts any sense of authenticity. The White Stripes might be recording bluesy stripped down rock (authentic!) on old-fashioned magnetic tape recorders (authentic!), but when you're doing it dressed only in red and white...well, Eric Clapton would not approve.

The persistent presence of authenticist effects, however, is why I think it is a little more useful to put the ideological opposition the way Phil Auslander does in his great book on such issues: an opposition between authenticity and "inauthentic authenticity," that is, a discourse that is aware and proud of its inauthenticity--David Bowie is Auslander's prime example. The counterexample would be Milli Vanilli, who attempted to mask, rather than revel in, their inauthenticity. Lost yet? And don't forget, this is very clearly about discursive formulations, not some ontological judgment about what is actually authentic.

Anyways, I definitely agree with Powers that in the past year we have started to see foment in this discourse. Unlike Powers, however, I think Lady GaGa is very much the beginning of a new wave. Sure, when "Just Dance" came out, it seemed like she was just another dance-pop diva in a vaguely Kylie Minogue-esque vain. But as her success grew, and presumably (hopefully?) she gained more creative control, GaGa started to move in fascinating and wonderful directions. There was the video for "Paparazzi" and subsequent performance at the VMAs, which is probably one of the more pleasurably-disturbing things I have seen on MTV this side of Jersey Shore.

Not for the faint of heart (and apologies for the preceding commercial):

So on the one hand you've got classic shock-the-bourgeois sort of thing going on. But the shock isn't of the titillating, ooh-let-me-kiss-Madonna variety we might expect from a pop diva, it's a pretty well-thought out spectacle of modernist primitivism, no? With the blood, and the crutches? Man, lots to say about that, but regardless there is some serious intellectual substance there. I mean, the woman doesn't just wear crazy clothes, she wears a hat designed by Frank Gehry! (And how much do you love the look on P. Diddy's face?!)

And the virtuosic provocation is paired with musical talents that while not perhaps incredibly virtuosic (not yet, at least) are nevertheless real: Lady GaGa is becoming more and more famous, and increasingly hailed, as the pop diva who actually sings live. And while there has always been space for pop divas with musical talent (c.f. Christina Aguilera), it has been fairly uncommon in recent years, and YouTube clips of her singing and accompanying herself on the piano have abounded. On the Ellen Degeneres show:

Pretty great, right? Did you see how she counted in her band with a snap? I don't mean to be too condescending, but literally there are not that many pop singers at the moment who have the musical confidence to count in other musicians. And GaGa isn't shy about her abilities either--when Ellen remarks upon her ability to "actually sing," GaGa responded in mock belief, "I always think that's funny...aren't we supposed to sing? Isn't that part of the gig?"

(It's a fascinating interview in many ways, including that she elaborates on her own experiences of difference. It would be worth teasing that out more, especially given her visible support for the rather assimilationist wings of contemporary gay politics.)

At the same time, the modernist provocations keep her out of the singer-songwriter category, and her phenomenal popularity keeps her out of the realm of a more subcultural sister like Amanda Palmer. GaGa is still pop, and gloriously so. Her proper company can be found with the other great pop singers of 2009 who like GaGa are playing with the boundaries of authenticity--Adam Lambert and Taylor Swift for instance.

Anyways, we're going to watch the "Paparazzi" video on the first day of my "Gender and Sexuality in Music" class next Thursday--stay tuned!

Hat tip to Kariann for telling me about the "Law of GaGa" pictured at top, and apologies to whoever made this image--I can't figure out who you are.

The Faces of American Music

2010-01-06T00:28:00.002-05:00

I was looking for ideas for a banner image to put at the top of my Blackboard site for a survey course on American music I am teaching this semester. So I did a Google Image search for the term "American Music," and this was the first picture to come up:

Somewhere up there in the great musicological beyond, Oscar Sonneck is having spasms.

Happy Birthday Patti!

2009-12-30T23:07:00.000-05:00

(h/t the data stream)

Really Playing with History

2009-12-10T10:46:00.008-05:00

At the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in NYC, Sting recently gave a concert of Christmas music through the ages, to support his new album If On a Winter's Night.... I suppose this is a good example of what Butt, Taruskin, et al call the romance of otherness in historically-informed performance, perhaps gone horribly wrong.

From Jon Pareles's review:

Sting looked like quite the 19th-century Victorian gentleman when he performed a concert of winter songs at the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine on Tuesday night. He wore a long frock coat, a white shirt and an antique-style tie. Much of the music originated from even earlier times: 15th-century carols, songs from Purcell operas, traditional English ballads. Sometimes Sting played a lute.

...

He delved into European early music, old carols and lullabies, odd crannies of church music, Schubert’s “Winterreise” and his own songs (to remake the melancholy “The Hounds of Winter”). He added lyrics to a Bach cello sarabande. And he ended up with a collection of songs that was somber verging on bleak: winter with the King of Pain.

The faith in the carols was humble and awestruck, not celebratory. From the 16th-century poet Robert Southwell, Sting chose the grim imagery of “The Burning Babe”; from Henry Purcell, whom Sting called “England’s first pop star,” he chose “The Cold Song,” about an unwilling resurrection: “Let me freeze again to death!” He pointed out the dire lyrics of lullabies, and he found a 20th-century composer, Peter Warlock, who brought chromatic anxieties into worshipful songs.

Weird. Although I will say that his outfit looks more seventeenth-century Puritan than Victorian, although the Puritans didn't allow beards as I recall. I don't know, I shouldn't be judgmental. We talked about Sting in my med/ren class last semester, apropos of John Dowland. The general consensus was that although his reverb-heavy approach to interpreting Dowland left something to be desired for my (newly educated about lute music) students, they were in favor of anything that brought the repertoire to a wider audience

I hope at the very least he makes a nice donation to the Revels.

Assigning Music

2009-12-06T12:10:00.007-05:00

I have a question for the musicological internets: what would we think of using iTunes as a vehicle for our students acquiring required music for class?

Back when I was first taking music history courses as an undergraduate, my professor lo those many years ago carefully made cassette tape mixes which were available on reserve in the library. To be perfectly honest (sorry Peter!) I can't say that I often did the listening assignments. It was a pain to go to the library in the first place, and sitting on a hard wooden chair with headphones on is just not how I like to engage with the music. As an alternative, some of my courses made use of CD compilations associated with a textbook like Grout/Palisica, which we bought at the campus bookstore with the rest of our required books for the semester. These CDs were pricey, but then you could listen to them at home.

Since then, technology has obviously made great strides in making music available for required listening assignments. At UCLA, both the Music Library, and, separately, a Digital Humanities initiative thingy both had systems whereby recordings chosen by the professor were streamed via web pages. That way a student could listen at home, but copyrights weren't being violated, at least as much. The downside to that, I've found since leaving UCLA, is that creating systems like those take time and money, and I have yet to teach at another school that has made that investment. Another common option is that many of us put recordings on Blackboard sites, and students then just download the files. Totally illegal, of course, and the large files are unwieldy, but it does have the important advantage that students are much more likely to do their listening if it is available in a format that they can put on their iPod.

For standard survey courses there is often a CD compilation available, but they are super-expensive, and lock you into certain musical works that might not be ideal. And if you are doing anything outside of a standard survey--oh, let's say a course on American music during McCarthyism, hypothetically--that doesn't work.

Enter iTunes. If you click here, your iTunes store will open up to a sample iMix I made based on some music I recently assigned to my minimalism seminar. You make these by simply assembling a normal playlist in iTunes, and then choose "Create an iMix" under the "Store" menu. Apple thinks about it for a few hours--I'm not sure exactly what is happening, but it isn't instantaneous--and then spits out a link like that above. In assembling your mix, you theoretically aren't limited to tracks you purchased on iTunes originally. On this list, for example, I had bought Failing Kansas through the Amazon MP3 download store, and iTunes was smart enough to find the same album in their catalog.

Downsides:
1. I'm not entirely comfortable having everything go through one corporation, even a better one like Apple. Enterprising students can of course buy most of these recordings through Amazon or whoever else on their own, but I'm just not going to make the effort to assemble a similar mix through competing sellers.

2. Not everything is available on iTunes, and when it is, sometimes Apple has made it so that you have to buy an entire album just to get the track I want. I imagine that I will still have to put some tracks on reserve, and maybe alter the music I choose a little bit if it makes it easier to buy.

3. For a big survey course--I'm thinking using this system for my Music of the United States course in the spring--it's not entirely cheap. But at the same time, I think it is cheaper then a compilation, or at least comparable. The CD set for the Crawford textbook, for example, runs about $60. I will, however, probably still put CD mixes on reserve on the library in addition to using iTunes.

So what do you think? I'm inclined to give it a try this next semester. Copyright is not my most important concern as a teacher, but especially when it comes to contemporary music or smaller-scale performers and labels, I do care a bit. And more importantly, I do have a desire to instill an ethic in my students that listening to music takes some care. You need to think about what recordings you are listening to, not just find a YouTube video of the piece in question, or take whatever BitTorrent gives you. It's not so much about the money, but the idea that music matters enough to seek out a specific recording for its quality, and sometimes that requires money. At the same time, I want to use a method that works best with contemporary listening habits. So barring any unforeseen issues, I think using this iTunes iMix system, while still putting CD mixes on reserve in the library, is the way to go.

Stop Procrastinating

2009-12-02T18:28:00.000-05:00

Why are you reading this? Shouldn't you be grading?

That's what I'm doing.

Monday Links and Bullets

2009-11-23T10:03:00.011-05:00

The academic blogosphere's two most famous fathers duke it out: Michael Bérubé versus Dean Dad on questions of tenure and academic freedom. So far Michael is winning the "sense of humor" points.
Ah, so that's why Terry Teachout did a Louis Armstrong biography. I was wondering what his angle was going to be.
I forgot to link this earlier, but Tamara Levitz's expanded commentary on the annual meeting program selection process is a fascinating read. Not to drag out and again beat a certain dead horse, but remember how one of Ilias "Will Never Work in This Field Again" Chrissochoidis's complaints about the annual meeting was that "Derrida, Bakhtin, and Adorno are topics more welcome than composers and their work"? I always found that statement particularly amusing, and even went to the trouble of doing a simple keyword search of the program booklets of the last three annual meetings. You'll be happy to know that the word "Derrida" does not appear once. Anyways, Tamara's commentary is very thought-provoking along some of these lines.
An friend of mine was tasered during the protests of the UC Regents meeting last week. Tasered on the back, while sitting down. No link here, because there seems not to be much coverage. Just wanted to tell someone about it.
I hear the SEM annual meeting in Mexico went well! Slim attendance, but to be expected with the way travel funding is these days. Kudos to SEM for crossing the border, and more valiantly then say, meeting in Quebec City or Ottawa.
The Teh-Drinking Musicologist has a characteristically interesting and idiosyncratic take on the "Ecomusicology" study group session at AMS.
A tale of copyright infringement gone wrong: Awhile back, I went to see the Frida Kahlo exhibit at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and in my report on the show I included a picture of Kahlo, Diego Rivera, and Leon Trotsky chatting with each other. I had cheerfully scanned that photo myself out of the show's catalogue, no doubt breaking all sorts of copyright laws. And thus I seem to have invited karmic retribution. There is a horrible little web site called Conservapedia, which purports to counter the liberal bias of Wikipedia by offering a politically sanitized peer-edited encyclopedia to the world. (One of their more notorious projects includes attempting a new translation of the bible that leaves out any language that might imply Jesus was a liberal.) Well, somebody on that site has now stolen my stolen image (with attribution to me, to be fair), and is using it as an illustration on their articles about Trotskyism and Diego Rivera. Sigh.

And finally something to wake up on this dreary, rainy, Monday. I can't say it enough: God bless YouTube. I haven't seen Peter Greenaway's film since my first year in college, and here it is for free on the internets.

More on Music and Segregation

2009-11-17T22:57:00.004-05:00

My, that was a busy conference! A good one, but busy. In what is probably a sign of getting older, I was busy enough schmoozing that I feel like I barely saw any papers. A few highlights however: David Paul looking at the politics of Ives reception, Chairman Bob on the Disney Concert Hall, Albin Zak on Mitch Miller, and of course my comrade on Sunday morning, Ryan Dohoney on Julius Eastman. I also very much enjoyed the amusicology cocktails, and the gigantic Saturday night schmoozathon. Best of all, of course, was catching up with my diasporic community of grad school friends who, our temple destroyed, now find ourselves in exile around the world. (We smuggle handwritten copies of Feminine Endings with us wherever we go.)

And my paper went very well, and I'm very appreciative of all those who dragged themselves in to hear it early on a Sunday morning. In one of my rambling answers to a question I touched on the subject of what sort of music was important to the Civil Rights Movement in its early days, before Brown v. Board of Education. A few years ago I actually once spent some time looking at this issue, in some tangential research in the NAACP papers at the Library of Congress, and since I don't think I'll be publishing or presenting it any time soon, I thought I would sketch out what I found in a blog post.

As a matter of organizational support, the national office of the NAACP really only supported two kinds of music: traditional arrangements of spirituals, and African American classical musicians. The executive secretary of the NAACP from 1931-1955 was the rather patrician Walter White. White was personally a big fan of the conductor Dean Dixon, who as I mentioned earlier would later suffer some blacklisting. In the early 1940s, White was quite vigorous in using the NAACP name to promote Dixon's career, writing letters to people like Leopold Stokowski and Virgil Thomson to help arrange concerts and reviews. (Thomson gave him a favorable review, and wrote back to White "I do hope you will continue to bring to my notice interesting musical events in which colored people are involved.” White's support for Dixon lasted at least until 1952; I would be curious to know if the blacklisting brought it to an end.

The other official musical promotion was of spirituals. There may at one point have been an NAACP choir, and in 1949 the organization sponsored a benefit album organized around the tune "Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing" (which, incidentally, was originally written by an NAACP activist.) There seems to have been a disagreement over how best to record the song; Roy Wilkins wrote a letter agreeing that "the rendition should be one of dignity and thankfulness. It is not a protest hymn and cannot be made such no matter what a recording group does to it."

What about popular music? Well, it's pretty clear that for the most part the leadership of the NAACP could care less. Oscar Hammerstein and John Hammond were both on the board of the NAACP, and there might have been a brief attempt in 1948 to deal with the issue of record companies having "race" departments, but I didn't much evidence that they did anything about it. One interesting little incident came in 1949. The manager of the Ink Spots wrote to the NAACP basically asking for some sort of recognition from the group for having desegregated several night clubs in the south. The main office balked at this, and clearly didn't really know who the Ink Spots were or if it was appropriate for them to recognize them. Finally, in place of a more official proclamation that would need to be ratified by the board, White wrote a letter to the Ink Spots commending them for their work:

Please accept my heartiest congratulations upon your successful appearance in Miami Beach. By breaking the long-standing ban on Negro entertainers in this resort you have opened up new opportunities for the race and have contributed significantly to the whole struggle against racial barriers in any field. This is a valiant struggle which you share in common with freedom-loving Americans of all races, creeds and regions. Your demonstration in Miami Beach should facilitate the presentation of Negro entertainers in theaters and nightclubs in other southern cities heretofore closed to them. May you continue in this pioneer work of surmounting barriers while contributing to the gaiety of the nation through the high quality of the entertainment you offer.

The basic theme of the NAACP's work in the late 1940s and early 1950s was one of slow, painstaking activism. In addition to the epochal work being performed by Thurgood Marhsall's legal unit, the bulk of the organization's files from this period is dealing with the ramifications of McCarthyism. This meant expelling Commmunists from the organization and dealing with recalcitrant local chapters while putting out small fires around the country--White was kept busy writing letters to draft boards, universities, the military, and other institutions assuring them that the NAACP was not a Communist front, and that membership was not a sign of fellow-travelerdom. For this he was later castigated, but unlike many other progressive organizations of the period, the NAACP made it through McCarthyism alive, and with its basic mission intact.

The story of Walter White's complicated relationship with Paul Robeson is a whole other story, but I'll leave that for another time!

Crying in the Chapel on a Sunday Morning

2009-11-10T17:46:00.003-05:00

Worried that this weekend's meeting of the American Musicological Society will interfere with your religious observance? I have a solution for you! This Sunday morning, instead of going to church you can come hear me talk about church, or at least, about somebody crying in a church.

Crying in the Chapel:
Religiosity and Masculinity in Early Doo-Wop
In the early 1950s, as a diverse assortment of African-American musical styles began to coalesce into the category of “rhythm and blues,” one small subset of this new genre began to strike into unusual terrain. Vocal groups, rooted in the pop quartet tradition of the Mills Brothers and the Ink Spots but inflected with a new post-war sensibility that would later be called “doo-wop,” went through a short fad of singing on religious, or at least pseudo-religious, lyrical topics. The most famous such example was the Orioles’ “Crying in the Chapel,” which made it to number thirteen on the pop charts, but the Cadillacs, the Drifters, and many others contributed similar songs as well. It might be easy to associate this fad with the contemporaneous popularity of gospel quartet singing, but these R&B musicians were performing in avowedly secular context, and from their own perspective there was little confusion between gospel music and their own pop creations.

This paper therefore attempts to understand the popularity of religious subject matter in early doo-wop. I approach the question from two angles: first from the songs themselves, showing the important musical differences between these pop numbers and similar songs understood as being “actually” religious. Secondly, however, I look more broadly at one important market for this music, the so-called “black bourgeoisie” of the United States prior to desegregation. Examining magazines, fanzines, and oral histories, I argue that rather than a statement on religion—even in the heightened discourse of religiosity in the early Cold War—this use of spiritual topics was a means by which some African-American men constructed for themselves an alternative masculinity, differentiated from the more overt sexualization of others on the R&B charts.

Ultimately, I find that the use of religious topics in this early doo-wop is a precursor to a more well-known later fad—the adoption of de-sexualized lyrical subjects and increasingly younger singers as a means by which to counter public fears of African American masculinity. This topic is important not only in and of itself; it also address one of the major points of inquiry in post-war African-American music—the shifting duality of the secular and the sacred. It also provides insight into the relationship of music and politics in the early Cold War, and the complex cultural work behind the famous push for desegregation triggered by Brown v Board of Education in 1954.

This will be an an open and affirming presentation.

The Thinking Musicologist's Guide to Philly

2009-11-05T12:50:00.006-05:00

I am not a Philadelphian, but I have spent the last three years observing their ways, and here is what I have learned. I'm sure the AMS has this all up online somewhere, but people keep asking me the following questions:

How Should I Get to the Conference Hotel from the Airport?

The R1 regional rail line runs from the airport to Suburban Station, which is about three blocks away from the conference hotel. It'll cost you $7 one way, which you will want to pay in cash on the train. And, you'll be happy to know, the regional rail system is NOT on strike, although you might want to bring a fire extinguisher.

How Should I Get to the Conference Hotel from the Train Station?

The 30th Street Station, where Amtrak lands, is about a mile away, and is a pleasant enough walk. It would also be a cheap cab ride, easily obtainable at the taxi stand outside. I wouldn't recommend trolley or subway, as you'll end up practically walking a mile anyways. Plus, they're on strike.

Where Should I Drink the Alcohol and Eat the Food?

The neighborhood immediately around the conference hotel is slightly dull, thanks to that whole City Beautiful thing. BUT, a mere ten minute walk due south will get you to the Walnut Street/Rittenhouse Square part of the city, where bars and nightlife abound. People in Philadelphia tend to think of this area as full of yuppies, but that's only true within the context of Philadelphia; if you are from somewhere else it's basically just kind of normal. OR, if you walk about four blocks east and then five blocks (or so) south, you will be in the heart of the Gayborhood, where there are, well, lots of gays. And the bars and restaurants appropriate to their kind. AND, if you walk about five blocks due east from the hotel, you're in Chinatown.

A few nearby places for a meal:

Sabrina's (18th and Callowhill) I haven't been to this location, but the original is cozy and friendly, especially good for breakfast, and the new location comes recommended to me.
Vietnam (11th between Race and Vine) Great Vietnamese food, and a surprisingly nice bar/lounge kind of thing, although only open until 9:30 on Thursday and 10 on the weekend. Yes, even the bar.
Sakura (10th and Race) One of the better Chinese restaurants in Chinatown
Tria (18th between Walnut and Chestnut) Popular wine/tapas place down near Rittenhouse Square.
Reading Terminal (Filbert between 10th and 11th) Big indoor food market in a former railroad station with lots of little food stands and things, sort of like the Fairfax Farmer's Market in LA.

Philadelphia has lots of places for the drinking. It's what we do. You can't go too wrong. I'm not even going to try and make a list; feel free to make suggestions in the comments.

Where I Should I Not Drink the Alcohol or Eat the Food?

The main nightlife part of Philly for tourists and annoying teenagers is "South Street," which refers to the easternmost ten blocks of South Street on the other end of the city. Not only is it full of tourists and annoying teenagers, but it is hard to get to on public transportation. Why bother? You can get better cheesesteaks elsewhere. And if you want to visit actual South Philly, which is quite an experience, walk down Broad Street below Washington. Well, take the orange line, it's a hike. Tell the dancers at the Dolphin I said hi. Just kidding. Or am I...

What should I do while people are droning on endlessly about things I don't care about?

I'm a sucker for eighteenth-century touring as much as anyone, so knock yourself out. It's probably about a half hour walk to Independence Hall. You'll need to get a free-ish ticket, preferably in advance but you can also usually walk up. Seeing the Liberty Bell, on the other hand, requires airplane-style security screening, all to see, well, a bell.
The former Wanamaker's department store on Broad Street now houses a Macy's, but they kept the in-store organ, all 28,250 pipes. There is a 45 minute recital every day at noon, and again at 7pm on Fridays and 5:30 on Saturdays. It is totally awesome.
I've never been, but if you like looking at freakishly deformed things preserved in formaldehyde, the Mutter Museum is for you.
I'm going to be honest: the Philadelphia Museum of Art is not very good, and definitely not worth the ridiculously high entrance price. But it is pretty to look at from the outside. And you can take your official picture on the Rocky steps without paying a thing. If you keep walking past the museum you get to the lovely walk by Boathouse Row and the Schuykill River.

If you all have any other suggestions, put 'em in the comments! I don't think we need two blogger meet-ups, so I'll hopefully see you all at the Amusicology party. With any luck we'll run into Jennifer Carroll.

And of course, at my paper--Sunday morning at 9am, so don't get too rowdy at the parties the night before.

The Morning After

2009-11-04T11:18:00.004-05:00

Unlike California, it's hard to argue with the efforts of the pro-marriage campaign in Maine. Perhaps nouveau Mainer KG will chime in, but from a distance it looks like they did everything right: strongly grassroots, an emphasis on personalized, door-to-door activism, as much engagement with faith leaders as possible, the works. And in Maine you certainly can't blame the defeat on imaginary black homophobes!

Which makes the defeat all the more disheartening. It's one thing to find fault in your own activism, but it is actually much sadder to find fault in your fellow citizenry. Like everyone else I take some solace in the results of the youth vote, and in the fact that after all, almost half of the population voted affirmatively for gay marriage. Can you even have imagine such a thing five years ago? But as much solace as that is, it is not enough. I don't want to stop there. I don't actually want older people, and religious people, and even conservatives to be defeated at the polls. I want them to be on my side. And, because I'm greedy, I don't actually want to win equal rights because of a libertarian, live and let live attitude. Sure, I would appreciate the material political gains that can be made because of that attitude, but it's not enough; "live and let live" is another term for segregation. I don't just want toleration, I want full communion. Call me greedy, but why is it so radical to want that?

Where from here? Unlike some of my brethren on the left, I do actually think that the right to marriage is an important right, and worthy of our attention and work. But since find ourselves now at a lull in that battle, I would respectfully point out all the other battles that have been gathering dust these past few years. Like, what happened to ENDA? Last time it came up, it died a quiet death in the Senate. Now that we have a more solid majority, could it pass? I think it could, and in a rigorous, trans-inclusive form. The right not to be discriminated against in employment and in housing is just as fundamental as the right to marry, and in fact applies to a much wider cross-section of our community than marriage. And as Lisa Duggan pointed out in her important article from last summer on the fight for gay rights in Utah, this is an excellent moment for such legislation. After all, the anti-gay marriage people go out of their way to say that their position is just about the institution of marriage, not about civic equality. All right then, let's see them back that argument up by supporting the rest of the equality equation!

And on a similar note, I'll tell you what battle could use a queer voice--health care reform. The queer community needs health care reform just as much as everyone else, if not more so, from the disproportionate number of gay kids living homeless on the streets, to those unable to get insurance because of the inability to marry, to the special and very expensive medical needs of many transgendered people. True, robust health care reform is a cause that can build bridges even between the NGLTF and the Catholic Church, and we need as many bridges as we can get.