Critical Review #1

Critical Review

Jeff Titon Reading, Chapter 2

 

In Jeff Titon’s chapter, “Knowing Fieldwork,” it is interesting to consider how the processes of understanding and explanation both alter and transform how we view, analyze, and listen to, music.  According to Titon, “understanding” is “directed towards people” and allows for interpretation. (27) “Explanation,” on the other hand, is purely analysis-based and provides ethnomusicologists with information that “enables prediction and control.” (27) In pairing these two modes of musical analysis with Titon’s example of interviewing Lazy Bill Lucas, I find it interesting to note which mode best fits his interview; that of explanation or understanding?

Titon shows up to the interview with a set list of questions for Lucas. This is where his explanatory tendency is made evident. However, Lucas drifts into a stream of consciousness that takes Titon through his musical career. Here is where the understanding mode of fieldwork comes into play. Rather than allow his pre-determined questions to guide the interview, Titon allows Lucas’ seemingly tangential reverie to become the source of his fieldwork. Titon realizes that story, rather than dictated facts, will drive his fieldwork and give him a greater knowledge, and yes, understanding, of jazz music. 

Titon’s interview (and lack of “formalized” interview) sets in place just how greatly the modes of fieldwork and research are shifting and advancing. If anything, Titon’s improvisatory form of fieldwork mirrors the improvisation that occurs in actual musical performance.  Just as some of the most interesting music is produced when musicians improvise within the confinements of notes on a page, Titon’s interview proves that this, too, is true when conducting fieldwork. Furthermore, Titon’s experience was so interesting and engaging because he did not just list cold, hard facts through specific questions, but rather, allowed Lucas to go where he naturally felt his story should. As a result, Titon’s fieldwork brought me closer to jazz music and helped me understand it in a more experience-based manor.  

Question for 9/24- I can't find where to post it!

Question:

In Deborah Wong's chapter, "Moving," she writes of an ethnomusicologists own musical opinions in relation to the music and culture that he/she is studying. As ethnomusicologists, we we have to let go of all preconceived ideas and pre-formed opinion s and just look at the music we study as it purely is? Is it possible to fully do this? When is it appropriate/ok to infuse a part of ourselves/our opinions with our fieldwork?

Fieldwork Topic

For my fieldwork topic, I hope to follow the Brown Jazz Band. In researching the Jazz Band, I plan to attend several rehearsals in order to uncover the following:

- How does the jazz band create a varied collection of performance pieces?

- Does the band integrate older "standards"with newer jazz works?

- How often does the band have performances?

- What type of audience does the band garner?

- Is there a meld between classical music and jazz music?

- Where and when are improvisatory techniques used throughout the different pieces?

- How much of the music is pre-planned versus determines by purely improvisation?

As an opera singer, I hope to expand my musical horizons and find both the similarities and differences between classical music and jazz. Both have their moments of improvisation as well as pre-determined musical forms. I am excited to see how they correlate and relate to one another. 

SEM History Findings

SEM History Findings

In researching the journal, Ethnomusicology, I was most intrigued by the connections made between issues from the 1950’s and those published more recently in 2003. Before reading earlier issues, I had made assumptions that information in the 1950’s would have been limited and that research would be more singly focused on Western music and culture rather than non-Western cultures. However, in reading the earlier articles in relation to the more current ones, I was interestingly surprised to find just how eager researchers were to expand their ethnological horizons.

In the 1954 Ethnomusicology newsletter, researchers and ethnomusicologists showed their eagerness in wanting to keep the study of non-Western cultures, and ethnomusicology in general, alive. Ethnomusicologists write of their different studies of the music from China, Rome, Spain, and Germany. I was interested to see just how this defied my original belief that ethnomusicologists in the United States would be reluctant to take their fieldwork to music of other cultures. In relating how articles in the 1950’s wrote of non-Western cultures in relation to what more recent articles present, it is interesting to note that issues from 2001 and 2003 include numerous articles that delve into the music of specific cultures, while articles from the 1950’s write of them in a less detailed manner. For example, an article written in a 2003 issue is titled “Jose Maceda and the Paradoxes of Modern Composition in Southeast Asia.” Clearly, this is only one of many articles that goes into great detail on the music in non-Western cultures.

Furthermore, I also noticed the comment made by Jaap Kunst, noting, “I am sorry to say that in Holland only a very few persons are working in this field… The financial position of the Institute seems to be such that it cannot afford more expenses for its ethno-musicological section…” If anything, this comment makes evident that ethnomusicology has always been a desirable area of study, and its popularity has grown over decades.

The article, “Training and Research Methods in Ethnomusicology,” gives another view of how ethnomusicologist’s views on fieldwork have shifted. While this article was written only three years later than the previous, it takes up where the 1954 issue left off. Unlike the previous article, it provides a definition of ethnomusicology as a “field of knowledge, having as its object the investigation of the art of music as a physical, psychological, aesthetic, and cultural phenomenon.” Author, Mantle Hood acknowledges that the definition of ethnomusicology, at the time, is limited by “traditionally narrow requirements.” However, he knows that this definition is malleable and sees possibility in expanding it in years to come.

In articles written in 2001 and 2003, it is evident that the study of ethnomusicology has advanced. In today’s fieldwork, ethnomusicologists are able to delve further into their research of other cultures due to advancements in technology. In the 1900’s, ethnomusicologists conducted fieldwork using (what we would call) primitive methods. Today, ethnomusicologists base their fieldwork using digital processing techniques and synthesizers. The numerical process that was used in 1955 to calculate the exact expression of relative consonance-dissonance, acts as a precursor to the advanced technologies used today to monitor sound structure, psychoacoustics, and the synthesis of tone. Today, we are able to use graphs and charts to visually capture and understand the layers within sound. As a result, this has given current day ethnomusicologists the ability to not only witness live performances within any culture, but to also preserve them by using the advanced forms of technology mentioned above.

24 Hour Log

Sunday- September 14

10:20 am Hardcore metal at East Side Mini-mart

10:30-12pm  Gym (various pop songs on my workout playlist)

12:30- 1:45pm Songs coming from my roommates room (John Mayer, Beatles, some other unidentifiable artist)

      John Mayer- "Say"

    Beatles- "Help," "Yellow Submarine"

1:45-:146pm- Roommates cellphone rings

  Ringtone- "Do the Locamotion"

2:00-2:05pm-  Walking to the Sci Li- Unidentifiable rap coming from a passing car.

2:05-3:15pm- Faint undertones of jazz coming from someone's ipod at the Sci Li.

3:30- 4:30pm- Whole Foods 

   "No One," "American Boy," Unidentifiable New Age music.

5:00-6:00pm- Practicing Voice in Orwig

    Various Vocalises

    Sang through "Deh Vieni Non Tardar" (Marriage of Figaro- Mozart),  

"O Mio Babbino Caro"(Gianni Schichi- Puccini), "Bester Jugling" (Der Schauspieldirektor- Mozart), "V'adoro Pupille" (Giulio Cesare- Handel), "See What I Wanna See" (See What I Wanna See- Michael John LaChiusa

7:00-8:00pm- Dinner and work at ABP

     Frank Sinatra playing overhead

    "Our Love is Here to Stay," "Baby it's Cold Outside"

8:00-8:30pm- Work at Tealux

     Billy Joel playing overhead

     "Big Shot," I can't remember the rest!

8:30-10:00pm- Rehearsal for "Funnyhouse of Negro"- mainstage production

       Unidentifiable funk music that opens the show

10:00- 11:00pm- James Taylor coming from my roommates room

8:15-9:15 am- Gym- Various songs from my workout playlist

9:30-11 am- Mozart coming from one roommate's room and unidentifiable rock/pop coming from the other's room.