Ethnomusicology Graduate Student Colloquium

All three presenters are Ph.D. students in the ethnomusciology program. All are welcome!

Friday, November 8, 4:00 PM Leah Smith Lecture Hall (School of Music room 2200)

1) Nathanial Gailey-Schiltz "Songs Unsung: Censorship of Popular Song in Occupied Japan"

The Occupation of Japan by Allied forces following World War II marked an unprecedented incursion of outside (soto) influence into Japanese affairs. From the Meiji Restoration through WWII, the Japanese government had practiced censorship, especially of Western ideas, but General MacArthur’s “Press Code for Japan,” enforced by Occupation forces, codified appropriate topics of national discourse from a new, foreign angle. This paper examines one facet of postwar music culture: the censorship of published ryūkōka, a style of popular song mixing Japanese and Western musical idioms. Ryūkōka—popular in the decades before WWII but ostensibly forced out of public attention in favor of military tunes as Japan focused on the war effort—surged into popularity again after the war, and its publication was subject to Allied censorship following the new Press Code. While this music was first subject to choices made by Japanese songwriters and performers about what kinds of topics should be “in” and “out,” the published music that consumers could purchase was subject to a second, foreign interpretation of appropriateness, and these two viewpoints, one from inside and one from outside, did not always agree. Through an examination of censored materials in the Gordon W. Prange Collection, this paper explores the negotiation of these viewpoints and ideas about Japanese musical identity during the Occupation.

2) Dawn Avery "Modern/ Traditional What's the difference? Indigenous Composition, Performance and Methodology"

This paper explores the role of composition as a tool for revitalization and as creative expressions of indigeneity. I look at how performance technique, creative compositional processes and musical content may serve as important expressions for revitalization, innovation and “ndn-ness” in two Native American compositional residency programs: Native American Composer Apprentice Project and the Native Composer’s Project. While a growing discourse on indigenous methodology has developed in Native literary nationalism and Indigenous studies, insufficient work has yet to be done on how Native composers conceptualize Indigenous-centered creative practice. My presentation explores how Indigenous methodologies that foreground cultural advocacy, revitalization, and education can be articulated using Indigenous language and cultural metaphor. Toward this end, I apply the Kanienkeha (Mohawk) concept of “now” or “non:wa” that also refers to three modes of perception – the now o f the past, the present, and the future – toward understanding the intersection of innovation and tradition in classical Native music. This research joins the existing discourse that critiques binary oppositions separating Indigenous tradition (as past) and innovation (as present and future). Through interviews, fieldwork, and musical analysis, this presentation illustrates native values of interconnectedness and continuity, politics and soundscapes, of native composition teachers and their students and how these, in turn, may be understood through the application of Indigenous research techniques.

3) Patricia S. Vergara "‘No, I’m Not a Reporter!’: Misunderstanding the Role of the Researcher in the Ethnomusicology of Popular Music and Conflict"

When accessing performance spaces and contact with musicians for interviews in the realm of popular music, in the sense that it is produced with commercial goals, ethnomusicologists are often the odd presence among much more visible and explicable journalists, TV reporters, and other mass media professionals, which often leads to misunderstandings of one’s position as researcher. Drawing from fieldwork experiences in Colombia and Mexico on música norteña and, more specifically, contemporary corridos- a Mexican ballad genre that has spread transnationally over the last few decades and is perceived to narrate true stories, often about the drug traffic and/or political conflict- this paper looks at how misperceptions may also impact the level of the researcher’s personal safety and possibly jeopardize it, as much of this research was conducted in areas subject to violence related to the traffic of illicit drugs and the actions of armed groups such as the leftist guerrilla in Colomb ia. Taking up John M. O’Connel’s (2010) proposition, this paper also addresses the question of how ethnomusicology may contribute to the understanding of conflict in this context.