Since time immemorial, Inuit drum dancing songs have been used throughout the Arctic to reaffirm kinship ties, decompress from the rigors of hunting and gathering, and redirect competitive behavior. The Effects of Inuit Drum Dancing on Psychosocial Well-Being and Resilience: Productivity and Cultural Competence in an Inuit Settlement explores the sociocultural context surrounding two forms of traditional Inuit drum dancing in Ulukhaktok, an Inuit settlement in the Canadian Northwest Territories. Tim Murray uses case studies and social script analysis to argue that drum dance participation has emerged in this community as a way of supporting the psychosocial well-being of the settlement’s younger population and to explore how in the wake of colonization, drum dancing has resolidified in Ulukhaktok. Specifically, chapters examine the impacts of generational isolation and its downstream effects on the lives of settlement youth and young adults, the deployment of drum dancing as a tactical resource for modulating emotional access with elders, and its reemergence within the Ulukhaktok taskscape as a platform for reinterpreting local understandings of productivity and cultural competence.
Is the music world clinging to an outdated school of thought in ethnomusicology? Nercessian shows how the theory of cultural relativism continues to detrimentally pervade ethnomusicological thought, and then offers a solution that may better serve musical study in today’s more globalized world. At the heart of cultural relativism, which seeks to avoid imposing the standards of an outside culture on a work, is the emic-etic dichotomy, which delineates the perspective of the outsider and that of the culture of origin. Nercessian points out that in our increasingly globalized society, cultures are no longer separate and distinct. A new theory is necessary to account for the cultural overlap. Borrowing from Derrida, the author offers a new solution that will allow for multiple perspectives, without favoring that of the insider or emic. Of importance to students and scholars of ethnomusicology, this book also speaks to other fields of study where cultural relativism continues to dominate.
Over the past two decades, there has been a major increase in research into the effects of the arts on health and well-being, alongside developments in practice and policy activities in different countries across the WHO European Region and further afield. This report synthesizes the global evidence on the role of the arts in improving health and well-being, with a specific focus on the WHO European Region. Results from over 3000 studies identified a major role for the arts in the prevention of ill health, promotion of health, and management and treatment of illness across the lifespan. The reviewed evidence included study designs such as uncontrolled pilot studies, case studies, small-scale cross-sectional surveys, nationally representative longitudinal cohort studies, community-wide ethnographies and randomized controlled trials from diverse disciplines. The beneficial impact of the arts could be furthered through acknowledging and acting on the growing evidence base; promoting arts engagement at the individual, local and national levels; and supporting cross-sectoral collaboration.
Historical ethnomusicology is increasingly acknowledged as a significant emerging subfield of ethnomusicology due to the fact that historical research requires a different set of theories and methods than studies of contemporary practices and many historiographic techniques are rapidly transforming as a result of new technologies. In 2005, Bruno Nettl observed that “the term ‘historical ethnomusicology’ has begun to appear in programs of conferences and in publications” (Nettl 2005, 274), and as recently as 2012 scholars similarly noted “an increasing concern with the writing of musical histories in ethnomusicology” (Ruskin and Rice 2012, 318). Relevant positions recently advanced by other authors include that historical musicologists are “all ethnomusicologists now” and that “all ethnomusicology is historical” (Stobart, 2008), yet we sense that such arguments—while useful, and theoretically correct—may ultimately distract from careful consideration of the kinds of contemporary theories and rigorous methods uniquely suited to historical inquiry in the field of music. In Theory and Method in Historical Ethnomusicology, editors Jonathan McCollum and David Hebert, along with contributors Judah Cohen, Chris Goertzen, Keith Howard, Ann Lucas, Daniel Neuman, and Diane Thram systematically demonstrate various ways that new approaches to historiography––and the related application of new technologies––impact the work of ethnomusicologists who seek to meaningfully represent music traditions across barriers of both time and space. Contributors specializing in historical musics of Armenia, Iran, India, Japan, southern Africa, American Jews, and southern fiddling traditions of the United States describe the opening of new theoretical approaches and methodologies for research on global music history. In the Foreword, Keith Howard offers his perspective on historical ethnomusicology and the importance of reconsidering theories and methods applicable to this field for the enhancement of musical understandings in the present and future.
This edited volume examines manele (sing. manea), an urban Romanian song-dance ethnopop genre that combines local traditional and popular music with Balkan and Middle Eastern elements. The genre is performed primarily by male Romani musicians at weddings and clubs and appeals especially to Romanian and Romani youth. It became immensely popular after the collapse of communism, representing for many the newly liberated social conditions of the post-1989 world. But manele have also engendered much controversy among the educated and professional elite, who view the genre as vulgar and even “alien” to the Romanian national character. The essays collected here examine the “manea phenomenon” as a vibrant form of cultural expression that engages in several levels of social meaning, all informed by historical conditions, politics, aesthetics, tradition, ethnicity, gender, class, and geography.
The New York City Labor Chorus (NYCLC) was the first group of its kind when it formed in 1991 with members of different unions joining together in song. Song, Struggle and Solidarity: The New York City Labor Chorus in Its Twenty-fifth Year is the product of Mark Abendroth’s ethnography on the NYCLC during its calendar year from fall 2016 to spring 2017. Abendroth was in his sixth year as an active member of the chorus at that time. He kept field notes of nearly every NYCLC performance and weekly rehearsal during the year. He also interviewed twenty-eight of the approximately eighty-five members and studied documents in the group’s history. Chapters include a history of singing in the labor movement in the United States, a history of the NYCLC in its first twenty-four years, and a focus on developments during the group’s twenty-fifth year. The book ends with the author’s conclusions on the NYCLC’s accomplishments, challenges, and possibilities.
Politically and historically, the Mediterranean has been a space for critical dialogue for competing and often antagonistic voices, and still functions as meeting place for diverse and interdisciplinary approaches. Although other academic disciplines have attempted a unified approach to Mediterranean studies, until recently Mediterranean music as a singular concept has received relatively little scholarly development. This volume is a crucial first step and investigates several musical cultures that have traditionally demonstrated common threads, trends, and interactions. The music of Greece, Crete, Turkey, Albania, Corsica, Italy, Spain, Morocco, Algeria and Palestine are all considered in this volume as the scholars represented here reveal the musical commonality among otherwise divergent traditions. Unnecessary technical jargon is avoided, and an interdisciplinary approach embracing ethnology and material culture considerations makes this volume relevant not only to musicologists and anthropologists, but likewise to the general reader interested in tourism.
For nearly eight centuries — from the Muslim conquest of Spain in 711 to the final expulsion of the Jews in 1492 — Muslims, Jews and Christians shared a common Andalusian culture under alternating Muslim and Christian rule. Following their expulsion, the Spanish and Arabic- speaking Jews joined pre-existing diasporic communities and established new ones across the Mediterranean and beyond. In the twentieth century, radical social and political upheavals in the former Ottoman and European-occupied territories led to the mass exodus of Jews from Turkey and the Arab Mediterranean, with the majority settling in Israel. Following a trajectory from medieval Al-Andalus to present-day Israel via North Africa, Italy, Turkey and Syria, pausing for perspectives from Enlightenment Europe, Musical Exodus: Al-Andalus and its Jewish Diasporas tells of diverse song and instrumental traditions born of the multiple musical encounters between Jews and their Muslim and Christian neighbors in different Mediterranean diasporas, and the revival and renewal of those traditions in present-day Israel. In this collection of essays from Philip V. Bohlman, Daniel Jütte, Tony Langlois, Piergabriele Mancuso, John O’Connell, Vanessa Paloma, Carmel Raz, Dwight Reynolds, Edwin Seroussi, and Jonathan Shannon, with opening and closing contributions by Ruth F. Davis and Stephen Blum, distinguished ethnomusicologists, cultural historians, linguists and performers explore from multidisciplinary perspectives the complex and diverse processes and conditions of intercultural and intracultural musical encounters. The authors consider how musical traditions acquired new functions and meanings in different social, political and diasporic contexts; explore the historical role of Jewish musicians as cultural intermediaries between the different faith communities; and examine how music is implicated in projects of remembering and forgetting as societies come to terms with mass exodus by reconstructing their narratives of the past. The essays in Musical Exodus: Al-Andalus and its Jewish Diasporas extend beyond the music of medieval Iberia and its Mediterranean Jewish diasporas to wider aspects of Jewish-Christian and Jewish-Muslim relations. The authors offer new perspectives on theories of musical interaction, hybridization, and the cultural meaning of musical expression in diasporic and minority communities. The essays address how music is implicated in constructions of ethnicity and nationhood and of myth and history, while also examining the resurgence of Al-Andalus as a symbol in musical projects that claim to promote cross-cultural understanding and peace. The diverse scholarship in Musical Exodus makes a vital contribution to scholars of music and European and Jewish history.
In Decolonizing Trauma Work, Renee Linklater explores healing and wellness in Indigenous communities on Turtle Island. Drawing on a decolonizing approach, which puts the “soul wound” of colonialism at the centre, Linklater engages ten Indigenous health care practitioners in a dialogue regarding Indigenous notions of wellness and wholistic health, critiques of psychiatry and psychiatric diagnoses, and Indigenous approaches to helping people through trauma, depression and experiences of parallel and multiple realities. Through stories and strategies that are grounded in Indigenous worldviews and embedded with cultural knowledge, Linklater offers purposeful and practical methods to help individuals and communities that have experienced trauma. Decolonizing Trauma Work, one of the first books of its kind, is a resource for education and training programs, health care practitioners, healing centres, clinical services and policy initiatives.
Activism through Music during the Apartheid Era and Beyond documents the grassroots activism of Sharon Katz & the Peace Train against the backdrop of enormous diversity and the volatile social and political climate in South Africa during the early 1990s. Among the intersections of race, healing and the "soft power" of music, Katz offers a vision of the possibilities of national identity and belonging as South Africans grappled with the transition from apartheid to democracy. Through extensive fieldwork across two countries (South Africa and the United States) and drawing on personal experiences as a South African of color, Ambigay Yudkoff reveals a compelling narrative of multigenerational collaboration. This experience creates a sense of community fostering relationships that develop through music, travel, performances, and socialization. In South Africa and the United States, and recently in Cuba and Mexico, the Peace Train's journey in musical activism provides a vehicle for racial integration and intercultural understanding.
