SO! Amplifies: Sounding Board Curated by Leonardo Cardoso
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SO! Amplifies. . .a highly-curated, rolling mini-post series by which we editors hip you to cultural makers and organizations doing work we really really dig. You’re welcome!
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The first annual Sounding Board sound exhibit was held at The Companion Gallery in Austin, Texas on December 3 – 6, 2015, as part of the 60th anniversary meeting of the Society of Ethnomusicology (SEM). In the promotional literature for the show, the curator, Leonardo Cardoso (Texas A&M), described its objective: to give students, ethnographers, ethnomusicologists, and any “sound-minded” people an opportunity to share research and contemplate fieldwork from different perspectives. Cardoso hoped that SEM Sounding Board would “stimulate dialogue between ethnomusicology and other fields, especially sound studies, sound art, ecomusicology, anthropology, and media studies.” He also sought to facilitate interaction between the local community in Austin and SEM scholars who traveled to attend the conference.
I spoke with Cardoso about this exhibit on several occasions. When I asked him why name the exhibit “Sounding Board”?, he told me that Veit Erlmann (University of Texas Austin), described once described his role as a mentor as someone to bounce ideas off of, like a sounding board. In a similar way, Cardoso’s vision for the first annual SEM sound art exhibit was to create opportunities for scholars and local people to meet and discuss sound, ethnography, art, and fieldwork in an open context, and learn from each other while interacting in that space. He designed Sounding Board as a place where “ideas are amplified” and scholars and community members can make fruitful connections because they have an opportunity to reflect and discuss research with people from different backgrounds.
In his invitation to SEM attendees, Cardoso described Sounding Board as
[eight] sound works that probe into sonic in-placements (water and wind), sonic displacements (the telephone, the radio, and the microphone), sonic emplacements (the acoustic territories of urban Taiwan, the Brazilian hinterlands, and West Texas), and sonic mix-placements (in Mexico City).
This collective sound exhibit showcases the creative work of scholars attentive to the spatial, acoustemological, and ethnographic potential of sound. SEM SOUNDING BOARD challenges distinctions between sound-as-episteme and sound-as-performance, sound-as-ethnography and sound-as-art.
Interactive, Immersive, Ethnographic Sound Art
The playfully engaging work, Pool of Sound, welcomed me to the interactive SEM Sounding Board exhibit. As soon as I walked into The Companion Gallery, I noticed the eye catching 1st Annual SEM Sounding Board poster near a studio monitor on a stand, facing another monitor, placed directly across from it, about 20 feet away. A large illuminated circular area gleamed in between the silent speakers. When I moved into the light, I suddenly heard the clear sounds of gently rushing water, but only for an instant, then there was silence again, as soon as I stood still. As I turned and stepped towards one of the speakers I heard the rushing water return. The gurgling sound mirrored my movement and when I stopped, the sound of the water stopped.
Lina Dib (Rice University) created the piece, with an
enchanted zone [that] literally becomes a pool of sound where sound becomes substance, something to be physically and playfully encountered. In other words, sound with this installation becomes palpable, sound is made (in)to matter. The larger the visitors’ gestures, the louder and stronger the sound of water becomes.
Dib cites Jean-Luc Nancy in her work’s description, understanding her piece as an embodiment of Nancy’s observation in Listening that sound envelops the listener: “Sound has no hidden face; it is all in front, in back, and outside inside, inside-out.”
While experimenting with the intersections of sound and gesture in Dib’s Pool of Sound, I noticed someone sit down at an antique-looking wooden desk across the gallery, pick up an old school, land line telephone, dial a number, and start writing on a notecard. The person at the desk was experiencing Schizophone, Calling Son Jarocho, a installation by Craig Campbell (University of Texas Austin) and collaborators, Julian Etienne, Juan-Pablo Gonzalez, and Cameron Quevedo. When the person hung up and left, I sat down, braced the phone between my ear and shoulder and listened to a dial tone.
“Calling Son Jarocho,” image by Leo Cardoso
I dialed a few numbers and started to hear a conversation through the receiver: musicians were speaking in Spanish, discussing certain subtleties of a Son Jarocho performance. I felt like I was eavesdropping. I dialed another number and the sounds of Son Jarocho music flooded my ear. This installation provides numerous sound bytes of field recordings related to Son Jarocho music of Mexico. Each recording is described on a notecard that gives ethnographic descriptions of the situation. Campbell also asks the listener to participate in the piece by filling out a card to leave a record of their experience. The artist says that his “work builds on R. Murray Schafer’s ‘schizophonia’ to signal the profound but also banal experience of listening to recorded sound. The schizophone recruits the telephone–a mundane, though now largely residual technology–to frame and structure an encounter with archival recordings.”
A few feet away from the Schizophone desk, a poster stand held a flyer for the piece Wind Noise by Marina Peterson (Ohio University). A pair of headphones clung to the stand.
“Wind Noise” by Marina Peterson, Image by Leo Cardoso
When I put the headphones on I expected to hear some cinematic blowing, or the soft sound of a summer breeze. Instead, I heard a familiar, dreaded, thumping noise. Peterson’s work indulges in a recording taboo: the clipping, dull thud of wind hitting an unprotected microphone.
As I listened, I thought about noise and how to define it. Usually, this thudding sound would bother me and I would cut out chunks of recordings to get rid of it. But in the context of a sound art exhibit, I found myself examining this noise, and listening to it as art. This reinterpretation of sound in relation to space reminded me of David Novak’s discussion of “Noise” as a genre in the context of Japanese music coffeehouses in his article, “2.5 meters of space: Japanese music coffeehouses and experimental practices of listening.” Peterson discusses her work as an exploration of technology, mediation, and the microphone. She describes these recordings as
an effort to reveal the microphone as technology by disrupting it. Wind noise is sound as touch – this is the sound produced by touching the microphone, whether by finger, breath, or air. These recordings do not capture the sound of wind, but the sound wind makes on the microphone. The sound the microphone makes when touched by wind.
In a recessed corner of the gallery I saw a music stand with a piece of paper on it. I didn’t know if it was part of the Sounding Board installation, or just a piece of equipment, set aside. As I stepped up to the stand to read the paper, I unexpectedly stepped into a chamber of sound. A Holosonics AudioSpotlight AS-24i directional speaker, mounted on the ceiling, beamed a column of music into that area, which a listener can hear only when directly below the speaker.
The piece is called Resting Place, by Michael Austin (Howard University). In the description of this work Austin states:
Resting Place is based on the old cowboy song ‘Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie.’ Not only does this work confront listeners with thoughts of mortality and final resting places, it embodies the wide open spaces of my childhood home and serves as a place of peace and relief for the here and now.
“Resting Place” visitation, image by Leo Cardoso
Austin grew up in the countryside of the Texas Panhandle, and his work intends to bring a piece of that Texan soundscape to a corner of the gallery. I could hear the sounds of birds, wind, and water combined with chant and meditative, drone music; they were all sounds that would usually communicate rest and peace. Unfortunately, I had a difficult time entering that relaxed frame of mind because the recording of the Texan soundscape often clipped, which disrupted my concentration on the calming aspects of the field recording. Composers such as Annea Lockwood and Janet Cardiff use binaural microphones to capture nature sounds up close and create an intimate surround sound experience for the listener; although I am fascinated by the concept of creating a “soundscape chamber” by using a hyper directional speaker, I would love to hear the details of Austin’s field recordings through a nice pair of headphones.
Resting Place and Wind Noise invite contemplation as the listener receives sound. In contrast, the broadcasting sound piece by Tom Miller (Berkeley College) is intensely interactive. In Radio Texas International, a Micro Radio Station in the Austin Wavescape, Miller creates an experience where it is possible to broadcast sound and listen to recordings.
Tom Miller’s “Radiophonics Lab,” Image by Leo Cardoso
Resting Place and Wind Noise invite contemplation as the listener passively receives sound. In contrast, the broadcasting sound piece by Tom Miller (Berkeley College) is intensely interactive. In Radio Texas International, a Micro Radio Station in the Austin Wavescape, Miller creates an experience where it is possible to broadcast sound and listen to recordings. Miller explains that for this piece he
operate[s] a low power Mini FM Micro Radio station in the gallery… Tuning to open frequencies, a legal micro power transmitter broadcast[s] to receivers distributed within a 200-foot radius as a hyperlocal, pop-up intervention into the FM band. Using headsets, listeners will tune the radio dials seeking to locate the signal interspersed with the music, religious broadcasts, news, foreign language programming and static of the local radio wavescape.
In the video of his work you can hear several different ethnographic recordings that are broadcasted by Miller in the gallery, and at the same time intertwine with the sounds of local radio stations in Austin. Besides broadcasting field recordings, Miller also aired live interviews and music throughout the three-day exhibit. I was delighted to have the chance to play some traditional Irish music on the air for Radio Texas International.
雜 (dza) is a piece by Yun Emily Wang (University of Toronto) and Wendy Hsu (Dept. of Cultural Affairs, City of Los Angeles), who created a work that inhabits a cardboard box. The artist Zimoun often uses percussive elements to explore acoustics and cardboard, but in 雜 (dza), Wang and Hsu employ the box as a resonator to amplify and combine sounds emitted from headphones playing loops. The listener is asked to put their head in the box to hear a cacophony of intermingled field recordings that create a decontextualized soundscape of Taiwan.
Listener experiencing “雜 (dza) ,” image by Leo Cardoso
The artists explain that “These composed loops recontextualize the sonic materiality of the informal economy and quotidian life exemplified at a Taiwanese night market, and interact with the spatial and sonic elements of the venue and its role within the emerging art-as-enterprise share economy.
There were two pieces of interactive, ethnographic sound art that integrated both audio and visual elements of fieldwork in Mexico City, and Brazil. Dry Signals by Michael Silvers (University of Illinois Urbana – Champaign) invites the auditor to “touch the screen” and listen to field recordings. The touchscreen of the laptop displays an image of a painting of a small town surrounded by mountains, near water.
“Dry Signals,” Image by Leo Cardoso
I put the headphones on and touched a part of the image of the town that caught my attention: a traditional forró trio standing on the porch of small pink house (no.8). In the headphones I immediately heard the rhythmic music produced by the musicians playing the drum, the accordion, and a triangle.
Silvers describes the inspiration for Dry Signals as an exploration of
the sounds of drought in northeastern Brazil. From trickling reservoir spillways… to the music and shuffling feet of dance parties in dusty fields, these sounds tell stories of labor, birds, politics, agriculture, plants, mass media, corruption, water, and the quotidian experience of life in the semi-arid Brazilian hinterlands.
The artists take advantage of touchscreen technology to give the viewer a chance to curate their own soundtrack of their experience of the painting. There is no lag in the experience of touching, listening and viewing the village and surrounding landscape. Even though the field recordings are not uniform in sound quality, I enjoyed the experience of hearing an ethnographic audio record of a small town in northeastern Brazil, by touching an image of it.
Anthony Rasmussen (UC Riverside) provides an opportunity to peek in on urban street scenes filmed throughout Mexico City in his work, El Caracol: A Stroll through Space and Time in Mexico City.
“El Caracol,” Image by Leo Cardoso
Some of the most compelling scenes in the 20 minute loop of video and audio depict street protests in Mexico City which are accompanied by ambient sounds from the field recording, combined with subtle music, and seemingly unconnected background conversation.
The artist explains that
the video element consists of footage captured while walking through various sites in Mexico City and represents the phenomenological ‘present’. The audio element provides a counterpoint to the visual; as the loop begins the audio corresponds to the action on screen, but with increasing frequency (based on the ‘Fibonacci Spiral’) the contemporary sounds will be ‘ruptured’ by historical recordings of Mexico City that drift further back in time.
I particularly enjoyed the sections where the connection between the audio and the video was unclear. Toby Butler’s article “A walk of art: the potential of the sound walk,” traces the efforts of different artists and their uses of the sound walk in their work, but he does not describe any endeavors like Rasmussen’s, where ethnographic footage is the prime source of the walk. I wondered about the position of peering through the hole to watch Rasmussen’s field recording of Mexico City, and I realized that at times, gazing through the hole gave me the sense that I was the ethnographer gathering footage.
“always more sound to experience”
I visited the Sounding Board exhibit several times while attending the SEM conference. Every time I left I felt like there was always more sound to experience. I wanted to hear all of the numerous field recording of Son Jarocho material presented by Campbell’s Schizophone; Miller’s Radio Texas International changed every time I listened and I wondered what ethnographic material I might encounter the next time I tuned in. I never tired of Lina Dib’s Pool of Sound because it gave me the chance to perform the gurgling of water, using gesture. Apart from the evocative expressions of ethnology as art, Sounding Board converted The Companion Gallery into an interactive playground of sound.
Son Jarocho Community Fandango at SEM Sounding Board, Image by Leo Cardoso
The live performances in the gallery on Friday night brought the ethnographic sound art to life. When I listened to at least twenty members of the Comunidad Fandango of Austin perform and dance Son Jarocho music in the gallery on Friday evening, I began to make connections to the field recordings that I heard in Schizophone. When Bruno Vinezof and Forró de Quintal took the stage to play forró music from northeastern Brazil, I could feel the groove of the drum that was merely suggested in the field recording that I had listened to in Dry Signals. It was a unique pleasure to observe and participate in these musical traditions with my body, after having encountered them earlier through headphones as sound art.
When I spoke with Cardoso he was especially grateful to the Son Jarocho community of Austin, who volunteered to participate in the show by gathering in The Companion Gallery for a Fandango. He emphasized the grassroots aspect of this community music making event which came about because Cardoso knows the group and their passion for Son Jarocho music.
Cardoso plans to expand the variety of works and disciplines involved in next year’s Sounding Board to include media studies, literature, film, and the visual arts. As SEM 2016 will be meeting in Washington DC and co-hosted by Smithsonian Folkways Recordings (and George Washington University), this should not only be possible, but especially exciting.
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Featured image: Lina Dib’s “Pool of Sound” by Matt Morris
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Jay Loomis is a composer, a performer, and a graduate student in ethnomusicology at Stony Brook University with a particular interest in transnationalism, soundscapes, improvisation, wind instruments, and electronic music. He hosts a radio show called “Face the Music,” and recently curated a sound installation called “SOUNDREAMS” at Stony Brook University, which used geo-located sounds and music strategically placed around the university campus which people heard by using a smart phone app called Recho. Jay hand crafts Native American and other kinds of flutes, and leads flute making workshops in local libraries and schools. He plays a variety of wind instruments from around the world. He recently led workshops in a contemporary music festival in Cuenca, Ecuador (FIMAC: Festival Internacional de Musica Academica Contemporanea). Participants in Jay’s workshops arranged music and created flutes as a practical way to examine how indigenous music making practices and pre colonial instruments can contribute to the world of contemporary academic music.
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SO! Amplifies: Shizu Saldamando’s OUROBOROS–J.L. Stoever
SO! Amplifies: Mendi+Keith Obadike and Sounding Race in America–Mendi + Keith Obadike
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Sound at SEM/CORD 2011
Sound Studies has been celebrated, as Kara Keeling and Josh Kun recently pointed out in American Quarterly, as both the result of and inspiration for an increasing number of scholars, who “not only take the culture, consumption, and politics of sound seriously but are making it the centerpiece of their research, publishing, and pedagogy.” But what significance does Sound Studies hold for ethnomusicology, a discipline that for over half a century has focused directly on the social and political dimensions of what John Blacking famously called “humanly organized sound”? This question will be one of many circulating in Philadelphia this week at the 56th annual meeting of the Society for Ethnomusicology (SEM).
The Heart of Baltimore Avenue, a mural with accompanying sound broadcast at 91.3 FM.
Despite the centrality of ethnographers of music, including Steven Feld and Veit Erlmann, to the emergence of this new interdisciplinary body of knowledge, many ethnomusicologists saw room for greater dialogue with other disciplines for whom the sonic was a relatively novel epistemological filter. To this end, in early 2009 a group of young SEM members formed the Sound Studies Special Interest Group (SSSIG) in order to foster cross-disciplinary discussions and highlight work within SEM that reimagined sound beyond “the music itself.” This year’s conference will mark the end of my tenure as co-chair of the Sound Studies SIG, and elections will be held for a replacement at our annual lunch meeting on Thursday, November 17th. If you are interested in joining the group and can attend the conference, please join us. If you can’t make it to Philadelphia, you can still join the group’s active discussion forum.
The past few years have witnessed an increasing number of presentations at SEM that fall under the umbrella of Sound Studies, a trend acknowledged in the theme of last fall’s meeting in Los Angeles, “Sound Ecologies.” This year is no different, and from a preliminary glance at the program, I have taken the liberty of highlighting a few acoustic currents running throughout the conference. A large number of panels this year are devoted to issues of embodiment, which can, for the most part, be attributed to the fact that SEM has paired up with the Congress on Research in Dance (CORD) for a joint conference. In the summary below I have noted which group is sponsoring each panel listed, although the conference requires only one registration and all panels are open to all participants and attendees.
Pandemonium, a 2005 sound installation at the Eastern State Penitentiary
The theme of this year’s joint conference is “Moving Music / Sounding Dance: Intersections, Disconnections, and Alignments between Dance and Music.” Many of this year’s panels focus on the relationship between sound and bodies, including embodied practices in music and dance and bodily communications of carnality, empathy and affect, and music and movement, for example. The voice is also prominent this year, in panels on its relationship to the body and music, dance performance in the Pacific Islands, pedagogy and practice, and female Iranian vocalists in exile. As in other years, the relationship between ethnomusicology and medicine is also represented, as are music’s connection to healing and the sporting body.
Technology, another area of interest for Sound Studies, will receive thorough attention this year. Panels on techno-mediated performance, sound and technology, online gamespaces and prosthetic technologies of queer expression, and material culture and labor.
Looking beyond sound toward intersensoriality, many panels discuss the relationship between the aural and other senses, in terms of music visualization, sound, sight and time, ethnographic film, and sensing movement and sound in dance.
- The Painted Bride Art Center
Two events that promise to be of special interest will focus on language, one a roundtable on keywords in music and motion, the other a panel on the lexicon of music, noise, sound, and silence.
A number of panels hearken back to early work on soundscapes, from discussions of field recordings and ethnography and gender and negotiating space, to the sounds of post-industrial society, protest and public spaces, and boomboxes and dance parties. My last official duty as SSSIG co-chair will be to lead a soundwalk through Philadelphia’s city center. This soundwalk is an event that the SSSIG would love to see annually as a way to connect meetings to their immediate environs.
All in all, this year’s joint conference promises to be an enjoyable one, with plenty of fascinating presentations and more good music than you can shake a tailfeather at. Even if you can’t attend, you can follow along virtually on twitter. Both #SEM2011 and #2011SEM seem to be in use.
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Bill Bahng Boyer is co-chair of the Society for Ethnomusicology Sound Studies Special Interest Group and a lecturer in music, writing and rhetoric at Dartmouth College. He is also a doctoral candidate in music at New York University, completing a dissertation on public listening in the New York City subway system.
Jump to FRIDAY, November 18
Jump to SATURDAY, November 19
Jump to SUNDAY, November 20
THURSDAY PANELS
8:30 am -10:30 am
Sounding Religion in the Public Sphere
SEM: 1E Freedom Ballroom (Section F) Chair: Monique M Ingalls, Rutgers University
Monique M Ingalls, Rutgers University. Worship in the Streets: Performing Religion, Nation, and Ethnicity through Music in Toronto’s Jesus in the City Parade
Carolyn Landau, King’s College London. Pluralism, Tolerance and Engagement with the “Mainstream”: Navigating Ismaili-Muslim Identities in Public Musical Performances
David M Kammerer, Brigham Young University-Hawaii. Anything But a “Silent Night”: Tonga’s Royal Maopa Brass Band and the Tradition of Christmas Eve Serenading
Deborah Justice, Indiana University. When Sacred Space becomes Secular Space: How a Church’s Saturday Dinner Show for Charity Eases Sunday Morning Tensions
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Recovering and Composing Hybridity through Histories of Music and Violence
SEM: 1I Salon 5/6 Chair: Jessica A Schwartz, New York University
Jessica A Schwartz, New York University. Between Continuity and Disruption: Strategic Hybridity in the Musical Activism of Rongelapese Women
T. Christopher Aplin, independent scholar. Martial Cosmopolitans: Apache War and Song Beyond Borders during the “Loco Outbreak”
Kristy Riggs, Columbia University. Musical Fabulation and the Retelling of Violence in 1840s Algeria
Sarah McClimon, University of Hawaii at Manoa. War Memories Revisited: Hybrid Nationalism and Discourses of Cultural Purity in Japanese Military Song Festivals
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Dancing Matter(s): Embodied Practices in Music and Dance
SEM: 2A Freedom Ballroom (Section E), Live Video-Streaming Room Chair: Tomie Hahn, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Tomie Hahn, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Dancing with Sensible Objects
Sean Williams, Evergreen State College. Dancing with the Drum: Teaching and Learning Sundanese Jaipongan
Sally Ann Ness, University of California, Riverside. Dancing Instruments; Objectivity in Musical Performance
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Vocal Epistemologies: Bodies, Pedagogy, Practice
SEM: 2H Salon 3/4 Chair: Robert O Beahrs, University of California, Berkeley
Robert O Beahrs, University of California, Berkeley. Echoing through the Nine Skies: Embodied Knowledge Production in Tuvan Throat-Singing Pedagogy
Marti Newland, Columbia University. Cocolo Japanese Gospel Choir: Mediating Spiritual and Racial Difference through Vocal Adduction
Sumitra Ranganathan, University of California, Berkeley. Dwelling in my Throat: Sound and Experience in a North Indian Classical Dhrupad Tradition
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Local Philadelphia Communities
CORD: Independence Ballroom D
Laura Vriend. Sufjan Stevens and the Magic Snowflake: Sound and Spatiality in Headlong Dance Theater’s Explanatorium
Christine Dang. My Laudations Shorten for me the Journey to the Saints’: The Poetics of Exile in an Islamic Community of Philadelphia
Abimbola N. Cole. Welcome to the United Stated of Africa: Kwame Nkrumah’s Philadelphia Years, African Nationalism, and Hip-Hop Perspectives on Unity in the New Africa
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Sacred Journeys, Spaces, Sounds
CORD: Logans 1
Andrea Mantell Seidel. Sacred Sound: Tuning the Cosmic Strings of the Subtle Dancing Body
Emily Wright. Sacred Spaces: History and Practice in Christian Sacred Dance
Lizzie Leopold. Voyager, A Journey into Our Outer Spaces: A Choreographic and Scholarly Exploration
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1:45-3:45pm
Techno-Mediated Performance: Virtual, Visceral, Spectacular
SEM: 3E Freedom Ballroom (Section F) Chair: Kiri Miller, Brown University
Kiri Miller, Brown University. Virtual Transmission, Visceral Practice: Dance Central and the Cybershala
J. Meryl Krieger, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis. From Live Performance to Mashup: Mediated Performance in Popular Music
Judith Hamera, Texas A&M University. Dances with Zombies: Michael Jackson and Movement in the Age of Post-Industrial Reproduction
Sydney Hutchinson, Syracuse University. Downloading Dance: OK Go, YouTube, and the Future of Pop
Gendered Intimacies and Musical Negotiations of Space
SEM: 3F Freedom Ballroom (Section G) Chair: Ian R MacMillen, University of Pennsylvania
Anna Stirr, St. John’s College, University of Oxford. Sensuality, Exchange, and Violence in Nepali Nightclubs
Gavin Steingo, Columbia University. On the Sonic Politics of Spinning
Ian R MacMillen, University of Pennsylvania. Conscription into Intimacy: Young Men, Power, and the Gendered Inclusion of Croatian Tambura Musicians
Jane Sugarman, CUNY Graduate Center, Discussant
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Round Table – Sound and Sense in the Muslim World: The Politics of Listening
SEM: 3J Parlor A Chair: Deborah Kapchan, New York University
Jonathan Glasser, College of William and Mary
Rich Jankowsky, Tufts University
Galeet Dardashti, independent scholar
Deborah Kapchan, New York University
Michael Frishkopf, University of Alberta
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THURSDAY INDIVIDUAL PAPERS
Noel Lobley, University of Oxford, Pitt Rivers Museum. Recording, Remembering and Using the Sounds of Africa
2:15 SEM: 3H Salon 3/4
Gregory Weinstein, University of Chicago. An “Acoustically Perfect Hall”?: Engineering Space in Classical Recordings
3:15 SEM: 3H Salon 3/4
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Philadelphia Record Exchange
EVENTS
SEM Sound Studies Special Interest Group Meeting
12:30 pm – 1:30 pm Salon 5/6
SEM Audio Visual Committee
12:30 pm – 1:30 pmFreedom Ballroom (Section G)
SEM Student Open Meeting, Sponsored by the Student Concerns Committee
12:30 pm – 1:30 pm Independence Ballroom (Section A)
SEM SSSIG Philadelphia Soundwalk
Led by Bill Bahng Boyer, SSSIG co-chair
4:00 pm – 5:30 pm 4K Hotel Lobby
SEM/CORD Joint First-Time Attendees and New Members Reception
5:30 pm – 6:30 pm Horizons Rooftop Ballroom
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Philadelphia native Fresh Prince
FRIDAY PANELS
8:30 pm -10:30 pm
Round Table— Keywords of Music and Motion
SEM: 5D Independence Ballroom (Section C) Chair: Christina Zanfagna, Santa Clara University
Christina Zanfagna, Santa Clara University
Jason Stanyek, New York University
Melvin Butler, University of Chicago
Tamara Roberts, University of California, Berkeley
Martin Daughtry, New York University
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Intimately Political: Bodily Communications of Carnality, Empathy and Affect in Dance Practices and Criticism.
CORD: Freedom Ballroom H
Evandne Kelly. Embodied Affects of Nationalism and Ethnicity in the Dances of Fijian Diasporas in Canada
Emma Doran. Dancing in Your Seat: Reading Empathy in Print Media
Shawn Newman. It’s all in the hips: Sexual and Artistic Minority in Canadian Concert Jazz Dance
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10:45am-12:15pm
Rethinking Music Visualization
CORD: Independence Ballroom D
Paul Scolieri. Ruth St. Denis, Walter Benjamin, and the Mimetic Faculty
Daniel Callahan. Absolutely Unmanly: The Music Visualizations of Ted Shawn and His Men Dancers
Stephanie Jordan. Troubling Visualisations: Mark Morris Marks the Music
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1:45-3:45pm
Sounds of Difference and Recognition: Music, Interculturalism, and Belonging in the European Nation-State
SEM: 7C Independence Ballroom (Section B) Chair: Benjamin Teitelbaum, Brown University
Joshua Tucker, Brown University. New Latinos in the Old World: Music, Multiculturalism, and Ethnogenesis in a Changing Spain
Benjamin Teitelbaum, Brown University. Unity Intoned: Music and the Rhetorical Paradoxes of Swedish Radical Nationalism
Adriana Helbig, University of Pittsburgh. The Influence of Paul Robeson?s Musical Legacy on Soviet and Post-Soviet Racial Ideologies
Timothy Rice, University of California, Los Angeles. Discussant
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SEM: 7I Salon 5/6 Chair: Leslie Gay, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
Trevor S Harvey, Florida State University. Live from Second Life: Social Actualization through Musical Participation in Virtual Worlds
Alan Williams, University of Massachusetts, Lowell. All Hands On Deck: Choreographed Intimacy in the Analog Mixing Process
Tim Miller, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Instruments as Technology: Co-constructing the Pedal Steel Guitar
Lauren Flood, Columbia University. Arduino Revolution: Hacking the Way to New Sounds and Moveable Art with Open Source Technology
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SEM: 7J Parlor A Chair: Elizabeth Tolbert, Peabody Conservatory, Johns Hopkins University
Max M Schmeder, Columbia University. At One With One’s Instrument: Transcending the Body-Instrument Divide
Katherine L Meizel, Bowling Green State University. Hearing Voices: Toward a Model for the Study of Vocality
Peter Williams, University of Kansas. Docile Bodies Improvising: Gender and Constraint in Improvised Music and Movement
John R Pippen, University of Western Ontario. Moving New Music: Disrupting the Mind/Body Divide in Western Art Music
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CORD: Independence Ballroom D
Toni Shapiro-Phim. A Sacred Melody and Innovative Choreography in Cambodia
Karen Schaffman. Kinesthetics of Crying and Soundtracks of Tears: Performing Grief in Works by Deborah Hay and Ralph Lemon
Carlos Odria. Improvising Transcendence for Health and Healing: Spontaneous Sounds and Bodies in a Dance Composition Class
Rodrigo Caballero. Sound, healing and the body: acoustemologies of health in the Pacific Northwest
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4:00-5:30
The Body in Flow: Sport as Dance
SEM: 8A Freedom Ballroom (Section E), Live Video-Streaming Room Chair: Jonathan M Dueck, Duke University
Jonathan M Dueck, Duke University. The Big Dance: Sound, Gender, and Flow in Collegiate Basketball
Timothy J Cooley, University of California, Santa Barbara. To Surf is to Dance: Hawaiian Mele and Hula and the History of Surfing
Judy Bauerlein, California State University, San Marcos. A Wave is A Body In Motion
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SEM: 8E Freedom Ballroom (Section F) Chair: Gregory Barz, Vanderbilt University
William Cheng, Harvard University. Acoustemologies of the Closet: Online Gamespaces and Prosthetic Technologies of Queer Expression
Sarah E Hankins, Harvard University. “The Disguise Will Never Work All the Way”: Realness, Queerness and Music in a Gender Performance Community
Mark D Swift, Washington and Jefferson College. Dance Style, Masculine Identity, and the Gay Ethnographer in a Suburban Brazilian Scene
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Sounding Bodies, Moving Voices: Dance Performance in the Pacific Islands
SEM: 8F Freedom Ballroom (Section G) Chair: Adrienne Kaeppler, Smithsonian Institution
Jane Freeman Moulin, University of Hawai’i at Manoa. The Dancer’s Voice
Lisa Burke, Framingham State University. “A Wind that Penetrates the Skin”: Understanding Kiribati Music through Dance
Brian Diettrich, New Zealand School of Music. Stirred Spirits, Adorned Bodies: Sound and Gesture in Chuukese Community Performances
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Issues of Representation and Presentation in Public Culture Media Production
SEM: 8G Logans 2 Chair: Clifford R Murphy, Maryland State Arts Council
Clifford R Murphy, Maryland State Arts Council. Visiting With Neighbors: Fieldwork on Radio in Maryland
Nathan Salsburg, Lomax Archives/Association for Cultural Equity. Folk Revival 2.0: Presenting and Representing Vernacular Music in 2011
Maureen Loughran, Tulane University. Five Years After the Storm: Authority and Public Engagement in Radio Production
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Louise J Wrazen, York University. The Displaced Voice: Assertions of Selfhood and Belonging Amidst Change
9:00 am SEM: 5H Salon 3/4
Sharon F Kivenko, Harvard University. Listening for the Call and Knowing When to Come In: “Performance Sociability” in Mande Dance
9:30 am SEM: 5I Salon 5/6
Farzaneh Hemmasi, Hunter College. At a Distance: Voice, Dance, and Display among Female Iranian Vocalists in Exile
2:15 pm SEM: 7E Freedom Ballroom (Section F)
Chun-bin Chen, Tainan National University of the Arts. Hybridity in Taiwanese Aboriginal Cassette Culture
4:30 pm SEM: 8C Independence Ballroom (Section B)
Samuel Araujo, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro. Amidst Walls, Wired Fences and Armored Cars: The Sound Heritage of Post-Industrial Society
5:00 pm SEM: 8K Parlor C
The Sun Ra Arkestra House
EVENTS
British Forum for Ethnomusicology High Tea Party
5:30 pm – 6:30 pm Liberty D
The Drexel University Mediterranean Ensemble Presents
A Mostly Balkan Party . . . Philly Style
7:30 pm – 9:30 pm The Stein Auditorium, Drexel University Campus 3215 Market St.
A.J. Racy and The Arabesque Music Ensemble in Concert
Presented by Al-Bustan Seeds of Culture
8:00 pm – 10:00 pm Trinity Center for Urban Life, 22nd and Spruce Streets
Dance Workshop: Sound and Vibrational Signals in Buto Dance
Led by Tanya Calamoneri
8:00 pm – 10:00 pm Independence Ballroom D, free to all registered CORD attendees
Dance Workshop: Singing Dance and Sensing Sound
Led by Amy Larimer
8:00 pm – 10:00 pm Salon 10, free to all registered CORD attendees
SEM Dance Section, CORD and CCDR Reception
10:00 pm – 11:00 pm Salon 5/6 (Free to all registered attendees)
.
SATURDAY PANELS
8:30-10:30am
Listening to the Field: Sonic Presentations of Ethnographic Material
SEM: 9A Freedom Ballroom (Section E), Live Video-Streaming Room Chair: Ben Tausig, New York University
Ben Tausig, New York University. Playing Under Protest: Diffusion and Decay
Mack Hagood, Indiana University. Audio Production as SEO Services: Sounds and Stories in the Path of I-69
Senti Toy Threadgill, New York University. Voice in the Box: The Politics of Affect and Acoustemology in Nagaland
Deborah Wong, University of California, Riverside. Discussant
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Engaging Ethnomusicology and the Health Sciences
SEM: 9D Independence Ballroom (Section C) Chair: Frederick J Moehn, New York University
Theresa A Allison, University of California, San Francisco; Jewish Home, San Francisco. Music and Memory, Dementia and Song: Engaging the Health Sciences in Research on Music, Memory and Relationships
Heather B White, University of California, Berkeley. You are the Music, While the Music Lasts: The Neuroscience Behind Social Music Production and Identity
Jeffrey W Cupchik, Eastman School of Music, University of Rochester. Teaching Medical Ethnomusicology: Engaging the Science(s) of Healing
Dane Harwood, independent scholar. Integrating Quantitative Methodology in Ethnomusicological Research: The Challenges to Moving towards Reproducible Results
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Music, Sound, Noise, Silence: Towards A Conceptual Lexicon
SEM: 9H Salon 3/4 Chair: Matt Sakakeeny, Tulane University
Matt Sakakeeny, Tulane University. Music
Thomas Porcello, Vassar College. Sound
David Novak, University of California, Santa Barbara. Noise
Ana María Ochoa, Columbia University. Silence
.
Music in Oman: Interculturalism, Time, Space, and Politics in the Sultanate
SEM: 9I Salon 5/6 Chair: Anne K Rasmussen, College of William and Mary
Anne K Rasmussen, College of William and Mary. The Musical Design of National Space and Time in Oman
Nasser Al Taee, Oman Royal Opera House. Mozart in Muscat: Politics, Performance, and Patronage in Oman
Majid Al Harthy, Sultan Qaboos University. African Identities, Afro-Omani Music, and the Official Constructions of a Musical Past
Salwa El-Shawan Castelo-Branco, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal. Discussant
.
The Commercial, the Popular, and the Crazed
CORD: Independence Ballroom D
Mary Fogarty. Musical Tastes in Popular Dance Practices
Mary Elizabeth Anderson. Oprah Feelin’: The Commercial Flash Mob’s Affective Game
Jennifer Fisher. When Good Adjectives Go Bad: “Lyrical Dance,” Romanticism, Brain Science, and the Competition Dance Machine
Ok Hee Jeong. The politics of Korean Wave
Asheley Smith. “Crank That”: The Work of Dance Crazes as Collective Memory and in Mechanical Reproduction
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CORD: Freedom Ballroom H
Candace Bordelon. Finding “the Feeling” Through Movement and Music: Oriental Dance, Tarab, and Umm Kulthum
W. Eric Aikens. Using Entropy as a Measure of the Dispersal of Temporal Energy in the Music/Dance Relation
Stephanie Schroedter. Music as Movement – “Kinesthetic listening” in the Creation and Reception of Dance
Wendy Rogers. Dancing in a Sound Space
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The Sonic, the Visual, and the Temporal
CORD: Salon 10
Freya Vass-Rhee. The sounds (and sights) of silence: William Forsythe’s compositions of quiet
Allen Fogelsanger. The Play of Visual and Sonic Actions: Watching Dance and Music
Wen-Chi Wu. Beyond Spontaneity Acquired Through the Lived “Habit-Body” vis-à-vis Performing Techniques
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10:45-12:15
SEM: 10F Freedom Ballroom (Section G) Chair: Daniel Reed, Indiana University
Kate Galloway, University of Toronto. Ecological Auditory Culture: The Relationship Between Ethnographic Soundscape Composition and How We Listen to the Environment
Devin M Burke, Case Western Reserve University. Sign Language Music Videos: Analyzing Embodied Musicking in a Culturally Hybridistic and Technologically Mediated Audio/Visual Artform
Leona N Lanzilotti, Eastman School of Music. Musical Theatre of the Deaf and Hearing: Understanding Musical Embodiment in a Mixed-Cast Production of Guys & Dolls
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SEM: 10H Salon 3/4 Chair: Beth K Aracena, Eastern Mennonite University
Rebecca A Schwartz-Bishir, independent scholar. Music that Moves: Musique dansante and the Sensory Experience of the Dancing Body
Lynda Paul, Yale University. Liveness Reconsidered: Sound and Concealment in Cirque du Soleil
Beth K Aracena, Eastern Mennonite University. Towards a “Natural History” of Corpus Christi Processions in the New World
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INDIVIDUAL PAPERS OF INTEREST
Donna A Buchanan, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Choreographic Encounters of an Ethnomusicological Kind: Sound, Movement, Spirituality, and Community where the Balkans and Caucasus Converge
9:00 SEM: 9G Logans 2
Rachel Goc, University of Wisconsin, Madison. Global Practices of Motown Visual and Sonic Aesthetic
9:30 SEM: 9F Freedom Ballroom
Michael S O’Brien, Luther College. This is What Democracy Sounds Like: Mediation and Performativity in the Soundscapes of the 2011 Wisconsin Pro-Labor Protests
11:15 SEM: 10J Parlor A
Corinna S Campbell, Harvard University. Sounding the Body, Dancing the Drum: Integrated Analysis of an Afro-Surinamese Performance Genre
11:45 SEM: 10A Freedom Ballroom (Section E), Live Video Streaming Room
Rachel Mundy, Columbia University. O Bird of the Morning: Sound, Silence, and Information at the Species Boundary
11:45 SEM: 10K Parlor C
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EVENTS
SEM Seeger Lecture
Randy Martin: “Complex Harmonic Movements: Politicalities of Music and Dance”
4:00 pm – 5:30 pm Liberty Ballroom B, C and D
PhillyBloco Dance Party
7:30 pm – 10:30 pm Liberty Ballroom B, C, and D
(Ticket Required – $10.00 per attendee in advance or $15.00 per attendee at the door)
SUNDAY, November 20, 2011
SUNDAY PANELS
8:30-10:30am
Musical Advocacy: Mediation, Creativity, and Social Engagement
SEM: 12A Freedom Ballroom (Section E), Live Video-Streaming Room Chair: Carol Muller, University of Pennsylvania
Marié Abe, Harvard University. Reimagining Oaxacan Heritage through Accordions and Airwaves in Central Valley, California
Michael Birenbaum-Quintero, Bowdoin College. Process, Network, and Knowledge: Theory and Praxis of a Grassroots Music Archive in the Afro-Colombian Hinterlands
Shalini R Ayyagari, American University. “Postcards from Paradise Weren’t Meant for Me”: Community Affiliation and Advocacy Work through South Asian American Hip Hop
Kay Shelemay, Harvard University. Discussant
.
Material Culture and Musical Labor
SEM: 12C Independence Ballroom (Section B) Chair: Allen Roda, New York University
Allen Roda, New York University. Resounding Objects: Scripting Sounds and Making Music in Banaras Tabla Workshops
Darien Lamen, University of Pennsylvania. Crafting Sound: Sound Systems, Skilled Labor, and Artisanship in Belém do Pará, Brazil
John Paul Meyers, University of Pennsylvania. Stickers, Strings, and Sgt. Pepper Jackets: Resources for Re-Creating the Past in the Tribute Band Scene
Paul Greene, Pennsylvania State University. Discussant
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Screening and Round Table—From Fieldwork to “Film-work”: Representing Realities Through Ethnomusicological Film
SEM: 12F Freedom Ballroom (Section G) Chair: Elizabeth Clendinning, Florida State University
Discussants
Tim Storhoff, Florida State Univeristy
Todd Rosendahl, Florida State Univeristy
Sara Brown, Florida State Univeristy
Kayleen Justus, Florida State Univerisity
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SEM: 12H Salon 3/4 Chair: Ken Prouty, Michigan State University
Brett S Pyper, Klein Karoo National Arts Festival, South Africa. Listening Made Visible: Dance as Kinetic Listening Within South African Jazz Appreciation Societies
Yoko Suzuki, University of Pittsburgh. She’s a Japanese Jerry Lee Lewis!: Body, Mind, and Spectacle in Hiromi’s Jazz Piano Performance
Michael C Heller, Harvard University. Modeling Community in the Loft Jazz Era
Colter J Harper, University of Pittsburgh. Jazz, Race, and the Visual Narrative: Constructing Identity through the Photography of Charles “Teenie” Harris
.
Modes of Analysis, Modes of Listening
SEM: 12G Logans 2 Chair: Matt J Rahaim, University of Minnesota
Shayna Silverstein, University of Chicago. Microrhythms and Metric Variation in Groove-Based Dance Music of the Arab East
Cornelia Fales, Indiana University. Provoking Modal Listening In Music
Mark Hijleh, Houghton College. World Music Theory: Issues and Possibilities
Michael Tenzer, University of British Columbia, and Matt J Rahaim, University of Minnesota. Discussants
Round Table: Ethnicity, Culture and Body
CORD: Freedom Ballroom H
Dr. Suzana Martins, Dr. Daniela Amoroso, MA. Nadir Nóbrega, Sandra Santana
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INDIVIDUAL PAPERS OF INTEREST
Marc Gidal, Ramapo College of New Jersey. Audible Boundary-Work: “Crossing” and “Purifying” Afro-Gaucho Religions through Sound and Music
8:30 am SEM: 12I Salon 5/6
Michael B MacDonald. Decentralized Dance Party Manifesto: Boomboxes, Anarchy, and the Commons
10:00 am CORD: Independence Ballroom D
Emily J McManus, University of Minnesota. Listening to a Body and a Sound: Female Leading and Same-Sex Tango in the United States
11:15 am SEM: 13B Independence Ballroom (Section A)
Michael O’Toole, University of Chicago. How the City Sounds: Festivals and Urban Space in Contemporary Berlin
11:45 am SEM: 13I Salon 5/6
Liberty Bell
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