Columbia University
Department of Music
This undergraduate course examines ways in which musical forms, canons, and histories are created and constructed as part of an "economy of symbolic goods" that incorporates and is mediated by conceptions of race, ethnicity, and national identity. The course will examine cases from US and international popular music, 20th and 21st Century experimental music, music of the African and Asian diasporas, pre-20th Century classical music, film music, and conceptions of "world music," focusing on how the creation and reception of forms embodies the intersections of the gendered dynamics of racial formation with debates over national character. Reading knowledge of music is not required.
Weekly Topics and Required Readings
Week 1: Introduction:
Week 2: Conceptions of race and nation
Anderson, Benedict. 1992. Imagined Communities: Reflections On The Origin and Spread of Nationalism, 2nd ed. London and New York: Verso. Chapter 1, Introduction (pp. 1-7); Cultural Roots (pp. 9-36).
Hall, Stuart. 1996. Race, Articulation, and Societies Structured in Dominance. In Baker, Houston, Jr, Manthia Diawara, and Ruth H. Lindeborg, eds. 1996. Black British Cultural Studies: A Reader. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, pp. 16-60
Omi, Michael, and Howard Winant. 1994. Racial Formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1990s, 2nd ed. New York: Routledge. Chapter 4, Racial Formation, pp. 53-76.
Sullivan, Nikki. 2003. A Critical Introduction to Queer Theory. New York: New York University Press. Chapter 4, "Queer Race," pp. 57-80.
Week 3: Canons and Cultural Capital
Becker, Howard. 1982. Aesthetics, aestheticians and critics. Art Worlds. Berkeley: University of California Press, pp. 351-371.
Wolff, Janet. 1993. The Social Production of Art, 2nd ed. London: Macmillan Press, pp. 26-48.
Morgan, Robert P. Rethinking Musical Culture: Canonic Reformulations in a Post-Tonal Age. In Bergeron, Katherine, and Philip V. Bohlman, eds. 1992. Disciplining Music: Musicology and its Canons. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 44-63.
Fink, Robert. 1998. Elvis Everywhere: Musicology and Popular Music Studies at the Twilight of the Canon. American Music, Vol. 16, No. 2, Summer 1998, 135-179.
Foster, Hal. 1985. Recodings: Art, Spectacle, Cultural Politics. Seattle: Bay Press. Against Pluralism, 13-32.
Week 4: Music and American Identity, Part I
MacDonald, Raymond A.R., David J. Hargreaves, and Dorothy Miell, eds. 2002. Musical Identities. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Goran Folkestad, National Identity and Music, pp. 151-162.
Noble, David. 2002. Death of a Nation: American Culture and the End of Exceptionalism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Chapter Six, The Vanishing National Landscape: Painting, Architecture, Music, and Philosophy in the Early Twentieth Century, 151-214
Cowell, Henry. [1933] 2002. Charles Ives. In Higgins, Dick, ed. 2002. Essential Cowell: Selected Writings On Music By Henry Cowell, 1921-1964. Kingston, NY: Documentext, pp. 51-71.
Ives, Charles. Howard Boatwright, ed. [1947] 1961. Essays Before A Sonata, The Majority, and Other Writings. New York: W.W. Norton. Epilogue, 70-102.
Levy, Alan Howard. 1984. The Search for Identity in American Music, 1890-1920. American Music, Vol. 2, No. 2, Summer 1984, 70-81.
Levy, Beth. 2001. "The White Hope of American Music": or, How Roy Harris Became Western. American Music, Vol. 19, No. 2, Summer 2001, 131-167.
Listening 1: Music of Charles Ives (Three Places In New England), Roy Harris (Symphony 1933) Henry Cowell (Piano Piece 1924; The Banshee), Edgard Varese (Ionisation); Carl Ruggles (Sun-Treader).
Week 5: Music and American Identity, Part II
Oja, Carol J. 2000. Making Music Modern: New York in the 1920s. New York: Oxford University Press. Chapter 17, Europeans in Performance and On Tour, 285-297; Chapter 19, Modernism and the Jazz Age, 313-317; Critics, Chapter 20, Crossing Over with George Gershwin, Paul Whiteman, and the Modernists, 318-360.
Floyd, Samuel A., ed. 1990. Black Music in the Harlem Renaissance: A Collection of Essays. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press. Paul Burgett, Vindication as a Thematic Principle in the Writings of Alain Locke on the Music of Black Americans, 29-40.
Barg, Lisa. 2000. Black Voices/White Sounds: Race and Representation in Virgil Thomson's Four Saints in Three Acts. American Music, Vol. 18, No. 2, Summer 2000, 121-161.
Gabbard, Krin. 2000. Race and Reappropriation: Spike Lee Meets Aaron Copland. American Music, Vol. 18, No. 4, Winter 2000, 370-390.
Listening 2: Music of Virgil Thomson (Four Saints in Three Acts), Aaron Copland (Billy The Kid), George Gershwin (Rhapsody in Blue), William Grant Still (Afro-American Symphony)
Week 6: Experimentalisms, Part I
Kordes, Gesa. 2002. Darmstadt, Postwar Experimentation, and the Search for a New Musical Identity. In Applegate, Celia, and Pamela Potter, eds. 2002. Music and German National Identity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, pp. 205-217.
Carroll, Mark. 2003. Music and Ideology in Cold War Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Chapter 10, Serialism, Scientism, and the Post-War World View, 141-164.
Lewis, George. [1996] 2004. Improvised Music After 1950: Afrological and Eurological Perspectives; Afterword. In Fischlin, Daniel, and Ajay Heble, eds. 2004. The Other Side of Nowhere: Jazz, Improvisation, and Communities in Dialogue. Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, pp. 131-162.
Nicholls, David. 1996. Transethnicism and the American Experimental Tradition. The Musical Quarterly, Vol. 80, No. 4, Winter 1996, pp. 569-594.
Listening 3: Music of Pierre Boulez (Structures for Two Pianos), Karlheinz Stockhausen (Zeitmasse Nr 5), John Cage (Music of Changes), Morton Feldman (Durations), Christian Wolff (For 1, 2, or 3 People) Lou Harrison (La Koro Sutro), Steve Reich (Drumming)
Score: Christian Wolff, For 1,2, or 3 People
Week 7: Experimentalisms, Part II
Whitesell, Lloyd. White Noise: Race and Erasure in the Cultural Avant-Garde. American Music, Vol. 19, No. 2, Summer 2001, 168-189.
Lewis, George E. 2004. Experimental Music in Black and White: The AACM in New York, 1970-1985. In O'Meally, Robert G., Brent Hayes Edwards, and Farah Jasmine Griffin. 2004. Uptown Conversations: The New Jazz Studies. New York: Columbia University Press, 50-101.
Corbett, John. 2000. Experimental Oriental. In Born, Georgina, and David Hesmondhalgh, eds. 2000. Western Music and Its Others: Difference, Representation, and Appropriation in Music. Berkeley: University of California Press, pp. 163-186.
Listening 4: Music of Amina Claudine Myers (Suite for Voice Choir), Roscoe Mitchell (The Maze), Leo Smith (The Burning of Stones), the Art Ensemble of Chicago/Lester Bowie (Numbers 1&2), Muhal Richard Abrams (Lifea Blinec), Anthony Davis (X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X; Amistad), Julius Hemphill (Dogon A.D.)
Video: The Art Ensemble of Chicago Live at the Jazz Showcase 1983
Week 8: (Inter)corporealities
Stanyek, Jason. 2004. Transmissions of an Interculture: Pan-African Jazz and Intercultural Improvisation. In Fischlin, Daniel, and Ajay Heble, eds. 2004. The Other Side of Nowhere: Jazz, Improvisation, and Communities in Dialogue. Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, pp. 87-130.
Masaoka, Miya. 2000. Notes From a Trans-Cultural Diary. In Zorn, John, ed. 2000. Arcana: Musicians on Music. New York: Granary Books. 153-166.
Wong, Deborah. 2000. Listening to Local Practice: Performance and Identity Politics in Riverside, California. In Case, Sue-Ellen, Philip Brett, and Susan Leigh Foster, eds. 2000. Decomposition: Post-Disciplinary Performance. Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, pp. 18-36
Wong, Deborah. 2000. The Asian American Body in Performance. In Radano, Ronald, and Philip V. Bohlman, eds. 2000. Music and the Racial Imagination. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, pp. 57-94.
Listening 5: Music of Chico O'Farrill (Manteca), Mongo Santamaria (Afro-Blue), John Coltrane (Afro-Blue), Dizzy Gillespie, Randy Weston, Chano Pozo, George Russell (Cubana Be Cubana Bop), Jon Jang (Two Flowers on a Stem), Fred Ho (The Adventures of Monkey), and Miya Masaoka (film, "Adventures of the Solitary Bee")
Week 9: International Soul
Scott, Anna. 1998. It's All In The Timing: The Latest Moves, James Brown's Grooves, and the Seventies Race-Consciousness Movement in Salvador, Bahia-Brazil. In Guillory, Monique, and Richard C. Green. 1998. Soul: Black Power, Politics, and Pleasure. New York: New York University Press, pp. 9-22
Guilbault, Jocelyne, Racial Projects and Musical Discourses in Trinidad, West Indies. In Radano, Ronald, and Philip V. Bohlman, eds. 2000. Music and the Racial Imagination. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, pp. 435-458.
Listening 6: Music of James Brown, Olodum, Chalkdust (Hollis Liverpool, political calypso), Mighty Sparrow, other calypso artists.
Week 10: Hybridities
Takemitsu, Toru. 1995. Confronting Silence: Selected Writings. Berkeley: Fallen Leaf Press. Articles: "A Single Sound" (51-52); The Distance from Ud to Biwa (53-55); Noh and Transience (56-58); Sounds of East, Sounds of West (59-67)
Yuasa, Joji. 1989. Music as a Reflection of a Composer's Cosmology. Perspectives of New Music, Vol. 27, No. 2, Summer 1989, 176-197.
Lau, Frederick. 2004. Fusion or Fission: The Paradox and Politics of Contemporary Chinese Avant-Garde Music. In Everett, Yayoi Uno, and Frederick Lau, eds. 2004. Locating East Asia in Western Art Music. Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 22-39.
Everett, Yayoi Uno. 2004. Intercultural Synthesis in Postwar Western Art Music: Historical Contexts, Perspectives, and Taxonomy. In Everett, Yayoi Uno, and Frederick Lau, eds. 2004. Locating East Asia in Western Art Music. Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, pp. 1-21.
Gaines, Kevin. 2000. Duke Ellington, Black, Brown, and Beige, and the Cultural Politics of Race. In Radano, Ronald, and Philip V. Bohlman, eds. 2000. Music and the Racial Imagination. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, pp. 585-602.
Listening 7: Music of Tan Dun (Symphony 1997), Chen Yi (Ge Xu, for orchestra), Chou Wen-Chung, Joji Yuasa (Terms of Temporal Detailing), Toru Takemitsu (November Steps), Sachiko M, Duke Ellington (Black, Brown, and Beige Suite)
Week 11: Voicing Gender
Davis, Angela Y. 1998. Blues Legacies and Black Feminism. New York: Vintage. Preaching The Blues: Spirituality and Self-Consciousness, 120-137.
Moisala, Pirkko. 2000. Gender Negotiation of the Composer: Kaija Saariaho in Finland: The Woman Composer as Nomadic Subject. In Moisala, Pirkko, and Beverley Diamond, eds. 2000. Music and Gender. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, pp. 166-188.
Griffin, Farah Jasmine. 2004. When Malindy Sings: A meditation on Black Women's Vocality. In O'Meally, Robert G., Brent Hayes Edwards, and Farah Jasmine Griffin. 2004. Uptown Conversations: The New Jazz Studies. New York: Columbia University Press, pp. 102-125.
Tucker, Sherrie. 1998. Nobody's Sweethearts: Gender, Race, Jazz, and the Darlings of Rhythm. American Music, Vol. 16, No. 3, Autumn 1998, pp. 255-288.
Guillory, Monique. 1998. Black Bodies Swingin': Race, Gender, and Jazz, In Guillory, Monique, and Richard C. Green. 1998. Soul: Black Power, Politics, and Pleasure. New York: New York University Press, 191-215.
Listening 8: Music of Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, Billie Holiday, Abbey Lincoln (When Malindy Sings), Kaija Saariaho (Verblendungen, for orchestra)
Week 12: Posthuman Pop?
Hall, Stuart. 1992. What Is This "Black" In Black Popular Culture? In Morley, David, and Kuan-Hsing Chen, eds. 1996. Stuart Hall: Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies. New York: Routledge, 465-475.
Nelson, Alondra, ed. 2002. Afrofuturism. Social Text 71, Volume 20, No. 2, Summer 2002. Alexander G. Weheliye, "Feenin'": Posthuman Voices in Contemporary Black Popular Music, 21-47
Hayles, N. Katherine. 1999. How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies In Cybernetics, Literature, And Informatics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press (page numbers to be determined)
Potter, Russell A. 1995. Spectacular Vernaculars: Hip-Hop and the Politics of Postmodernism. Albany: State University of New York Press. "Are You Afraid of the Mix of Black and White?": Hip-Hop and the Spectacular Politics of Race, 131-155.
Listening 9: Music of U-Roy, Lee "Scratch" Perry, King Tubby (Jamaican dub), Sun Ra (We Travel the Spaceways), Anthony Braxton Trillium-R, An Opera), Carl Craig, Derrick May (techno), DJ Spooky, Grandmaster Flash, Jonzun Crew
Week 13: Critique of Exotica
Hisama, Ellie M. 2004. John Zorn and the Postmodern Condition. In Everett, Yayoi Uno, and Frederick Lau, eds. 2004. Locating East Asia in Western Art Music. Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, pp. 72-84.
Pasler, Jann. 2004. The Utility of Musical Instruments in the Racial and Colonial Agendas of Late Nineteenth-Century France. Journal of the Royal Musical Association, Vol. 129, No. 1, 24-76.
Said, Edward W. 1993. Culture and Imperialism. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. The Empire at Work: Verdi's Aida, 111-xxx
Gorbman, Claudia. 2000. Scoring the Indian: Music in the Liberal Western. In Born, Georgina, and David Hesmondhalgh, eds. 2000. Western Music and Its Others: Difference, Representation, and Appropriation in Music. Berkeley: University of California Press, 234-253.
Listening 10: Music of John Zorn ("Torture Garden"), Amy Beach, Giuseppe Verdi (Aida), Ravi Shankar, Foday Musa Suso (Senegambian griot), K.R.T Wasitodiningrat (Javanese court gamelan).
Week 14: Globalization and "World Music"
Appadurai, Arjun, ed. Globalization. Durham: Duke University Press. Steven Feld, A Sweet Lullaby for World Music, pp. 189-216
Frith, Simon. 2000. The Discourse of World Music. In Born, Georgina, and David Hesmondhalgh, eds. 2000. Western Music and Its Others: Difference, Representation, and Appropriation in Music. Berkeley: University of California Press, pp. 305-322.
Hutnyk, John. 2000. Critique of Exotica: Music, Politics, and the Culture Industry. London: Pluto Press. Chapter 4, Magical Mystery Tourism, pp. 87-113.
Taylor, Timothy D. 1997. Global Pop: World Music, World Markets. New York: Routledge. Conclusions: We Are The World, and the World is Us, pp. 197-206; Strategic Inauthenticity, pp. 125-145; Popular Musics and Globalization, pp. 1-37.
Teitelbaum, Richard. 1972. World Band. Soundings, No. 1.
Listening 11: Music of Sheila Chandra, Peter Gabriel, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan (Pakistan), David Byrne, Enigma, Jin Hi Kim, Henry Threadgill (Carry The Day)
Week 15: Conclusion