Performing Ethnomusicology - Teaching and Representation in World Music Ensembles

by Solis, Ted

• ISBN13: 9780520238749
• ISBN10: 0520238745
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2004-07-16
• Publisher: Univ of California Pr

Summary

Performing Ethnomusicology is the first book to deal exclusively with creating, teaching, and contextualizing academic world music performing ensembles. Considering the formidable theoretical, ethical, and practical issues that confront ethnomusicologists who direct such ensembles, the sixteen essays in this volume discuss problems of public performance and the pragmatics of pedagogy and learning processes. Their perspectives, drawing upon expertise in Caribbean steelband, Indian, Balinese, Javanese, Philippine, Mexican, Central and West African, Japanese, Chinese, Middle Eastern, and Jewish klezmer ensembles, provide a uniquely informed and many-faceted view of this complicated and rapidly changing landscape. The authors examine the creative and pedagogical negotiations involved in intergenerational and intercultural transmission and explore topics such as reflexivity, representation, hegemony, and aesthetically determined interaction. Performing Ethnomusicology affords sophisticated insights into the structuring of ethnomusicologists' careers and methodologies. This book offers an unprecedented rich history and contemporary examination of academic world music performance in the West, especially in the United States. "Performing Ethnomusicology is an important book not only within the field of ethnomusicology itself, but for scholars in all disciplines engaged in aspects of performance--historical musicology, anthropology, folklore, and cultural studies. The individual articles offer a provocative and disparate array of threads and themes, which Soliacute;s skillfully weaves together in his introductory essay. A book of great importance and long overdue."--R. Anderson Sutton, author of Calling Back the Spirit Contributors: Gage Averill, Kelly Gross, David Harnish, Mantle Hood, David W. Hughes, Michelle Kisliuk, David Locke, Scott Marcus, Hankus Netsky, Ali Jihad Racy, Anne K. Rasmussen, Ted Soliacute;s, Hardja Susilo, Sumarsam, Ricardo D. Trimillos, Roger Vetter, J. Lawrence Witzleben

Author Biography

Ted Solis is Professor of Music in the School of Music at Arizona State University

Table of Contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS	vii
INTRODUCTION. TEACHING WHAT CANNOT BE TAUGHT: AN OPTIMISTIC OVERVIEW
Ted Solis	1	(22)
PART ONE. SOUNDING THE OTHER: ACADEMIC WORLD MUSIC ENSEMBLES IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE
1. Subject, Object, and the Ethnomusicology Ensemble: The Ethnomusicological "We" and "Them"
Ricardo D. Trimillos	23	(30)
2. "A Bridge to Java": Four Decades Teaching Gamelan in America
Interview with Hardja Susilo by David Harnish, Ted Solis, and'. Lawrence Witzleben	53	(16)
3. Opportunity and Interaction: The Gamelan from Java to Wesleyan
Sumarsam	69	(24)
4. "Where's 'One'?": Musical Encounters of the Ensemble Kind
Gage Averill	93	(22)
PART TWO. SQUARE PEGS AND SPOKESFOLK: SERVING AND ADAPTING TO THE ACADEMY
5. A Square Peg in a Round Hole: Teaching Javanese Gamelan in the Ensemble Paradigm of the Academy
Roger Vetter	115	(11)
6. "No, Not 'Bali Hai'!": Challenges of Adaptation and Orientalism in Performing and Teaching Balinese Gamelan
David Harnish	126	(12)
7. Cultural Interactions in an Asian Context: Chinese and Javanese Ensembles in Hong Kong
J. Lawrence Witzleben	138	(17)
PART THREE. PATCHWORKERS, ACTORS, AND AMBASSADORS: REPRESENTING OURSELVES AND OTHERS
8. "Can't Help but Speak, Can't Help but Play": Dual Discourse in Arab Music Pedagogy
Interview with Ali Jihad Racy by Scott Marcus and Ted Solis	155	(13)
9. The African Ensemble in America: Contradictions and Possibilities
David Locke	168	(21)
10. Klez Goes to College
Hankus Nasky	189	(13)
11. Creating a Community, Negotiating Among Communities: Performing Middle Eastern Music for a Diverse Middle Eastern and American Public
Scott Marcus	202	(13)
PART FOUR. TAKE-OFF POINTS: CREATIVITY AND PEDAGOGICAL OBLIGATION
12. Bilateral Negotiations in Bimusicality: Insiders, Outsiders, and the "Real Version" in Middle Eastern Music Performance
Anne K. Rasmussen	215	(14)
13. Community of Comfort: Negotiating a World of "Latin Marimba"
Ted Solis	229	(20)
14. What's the "It" That We Learn to Perform?: Teaching BaAka Music and Dance
Michelle Kisliuk and Kelly Gross	249	(12)
15. "When Can We Improvise?": The Place of Creativity in Academic World Music Performance
David W Hughes	261
AFTERWORD. SOME CLOSING THOUGHTS FROM THE FIRST VOICE
Interview with Mantle Hood by Ricardo Trimillos	283	(6)
WORKS CITED	289	(14)
LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS	303	(4)
INDEX	307