MUSC 3101 Music in Global America
Spring 2020
Instructor: Michelle Yom
[email protected]
Office hours: Tuesdays and Thursdays 11:00-12:15 pm via WebEx
The transnational roots of America’s vernacular music traditions. The diaspora of folk and popular styles from Africa, Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Asia, and the transformation and hybridization of those music styles in diverse U.S. ethnic and cultural communities. Loops of ongoing transnational interaction between contemporary U.S. music styles and urban musics around the world.
Themes
1) The diaspora of folk and popular music traditions to the U.S. from Africa, Europe, Latin America, and the Caribbean.
2) The survival, transformation, and hybridization of those musical practices in diverse U.S. ethnic and cultural communities, as well as the impact those musical practices had on our national popular music.
3) The relationship of musical practice to the construction of identity among select U.S. ethnic/cultural groups.
4) The spread of U.S. musical practices back out across the globe.
Description
This course will focus on the transnational nature of American vernacular music. The diaspora of folk and popular music traditions to the U.S. from Africa, Europe, Latin America, and the Caribbean will be traced historically. The survival, transformation, and hybridization of those musical practices in diverse U.S. ethnic and cultural communities, as well as the impact those musical practices had on our national popular music, will be analyzed. The relationship of musical practice to the construction of identity among select U.S. ethnic/cultural groups will be considered. And finally, the spread of U.S. musical practices back out across the globe, driven by mass media and the internet, and the interaction of those U.S. styles with local music cultures around the world, will be explored.
Music in Global America will draw on the growing body of contemporary ethnomusicology and transnational American literature that seeks to view artistic practice and cultural identity through a global lens that focuses on immigration, migration, and contemporary channels of transnational communication. This global perspective reorients our thinking about the nature of “American” music by focusing on the complex flow of diverse musical practices into and out of the U.S.
Course Requirements
Class Participation and Presentation: 20% 10% (spoken contribution to class discussions up to March 10th)
Video comments: 10%
2/6 Assignment 1: Two-page Music Culture writing exercise: 10%
3/5 Assignment 2: Oral history interview preparation (midterm exam): 10%
4/2 PICK #4 OR #5
5/7 Assignment 3: Four-page essay on Heritage Music and Cultural Identity: 20%
5/7 Assignment 4: Four-page essay on Global Hip Hop: 20%
5/19 Assignment 5: Oral history final project (final exam): 20%.
Required Text
“MUSC 3101 – Music in Global America” Course Packet (available at Far Better Copy)
Course Outline
– Jewish Klezmer
– Irish Folk and Popular
– Mexican Nortena
– Nuyorican salsa
– West Indian Carnival/Calypso
– African American Gospel
– Punjabi Bhangra Beat
– Global Hip Hop
The Music Culture
Week 1:
-Integrating sound structure, human behavior, and social context.
Jan. 28 Overview, syllabus, the Listening Project (https://bclisteningproject.org)
Jan. 30 Titon and Slobin, “The Music Culture”
The Globalization and American Popular Culture
Week 2:
-Theories of cultural globalization, diaspora, and cultural hybridity.
-New technologies and the movement of mediated music around the world.
-Music and cultural boundary crossings.
Feb. 4 Selections from Friedman, The World is Flat; Lomax, “An Appeal for Cultural Equity”
Feb. 6 Selections from Crothers, Globalization and American Popular Culture; Kelley, “Forward: Hip Hop and the Globalization of Black Popular Culture”
MUSIC CULTURE WRITING EXERCISE DUE (Assignment 1)
African Diaspora I: the Southern US
Weeks 3 & 4:
-The emergence of 18th and 19th-century African-American slave work songs and spirituals; the evolution of early 20th-century gospel.
-The process of musical syncretism between African and European forms of expression.
Feb. 11 Southern, “The African Legacy”
Feb. 13 Floyd Jr, “Transformations” (Black spirituals)
Feb. 18 Allen, “Shouting the Church” (Black gospel music)
Feb. 20 Review
Oral History Project Workshop: Listening Project
Week 5:
Feb. 25 workshop: drawing the scope, sequencing interview questions
Feb. 27 workshop: interview practice
African Diaspora II: Afro-Caribbean Carnival in Trinidad and Brooklyn
Week 6:
-Afro-Caribbean music/dance/costuming traditions in 19th century Trinidad.
-The Caribbean diaspora and the emergence of modern Carnival in Harlem and Brooklyn.
-Carnival, resistance, and cultural identity.
Mar. 3 Allen and Wilcken, “Introduction: Island Sounds in the Global City”
Mar. 5 Hill, “The NYC Calypso Craze of the 1930s and 1940s”; Allen, Brooklyn Soca Connection
ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEW PREPARATION DUE (Assignment 2)
Old World Transplants
Week 7:
-The migration of 18th and 19th-century folk music traditions from select European settings to the US.
-The emergence of Irish-American dance and vaudeville traditions.
Mar. 10 Miller, “Irish Traditional Music in New York”
Mar. 12 no class
Transition to distance learning, syllabus revision, assessment
Week 8:
Mar. 17 no class
Mar. 19 All you need to know about the changes to this class
Old World Transplants Part II
Weeks 9:
-Jewish-American klezmer and Yiddish Theater.
-Theories of heritage and cultural revival.
Mar. 24 Slobin, “Under the Klezmer Umbrella” and Klezmer as Heritage Music”
Mar. 26 Sapoznik, “Klezmer: The First one Thousand Years”
Weeks 10 & 11:
The Latin Tinge
-The emergence of Musica Norteno on the Texas/Mexican border.
-Nuyorican mambo and salsa in New York City and around the world.
-Crossing geographic and cultural borders.
-Theories of cultural hybridity and identity in Latin America and in the diaspora.
Mar. 31 No class
Ragland, selections from Musica Nortena: Mexican Americans Creating a Nation between Nations
Apr. 2 Hernandez, “Hybridity, Identity, and Latino Popular Music”
Ragland, selections from Musica Nortena: Mexican Americans Creating a Nation between Nations
Apr. 21 Manuel, “Salsa and Beyond”
Hernandez, “Hybridity, Identity, and Latino Popular Music”
Apr. 23 Hosokowa, “Salsa NoTienne Fronteras: Orquesta de la Luz”
Manuel, “Salsa and Beyond”
HERITAGE MUSIC AND IDENTITY ESSAY DUE (Assignment 3)
Hip Hop and the Globalization of Black Popular Culture
Weeks 12 & 13:
-The transnational roots of Hip Hop in the South Bronx.
-The globalization of hip hop in Latin America, the Caribbean, Europe, Africa, the Mid- East, and Asia.
Apr. 28 Rose, “Flow, Layering, and Rupture in Postindustrial New York”
Apr. 30 Mitchell, “Another Root: Hip Hop Outside the US”
May 5 Magubane, “Globalization and Gangster Rap: Hip Hop in the Post-Apartheid City”; Goldsmith and Fonseca, “Bhangra-Beat and Hip-Hop”
May 7 Báez, “En mi imperio”
Week 14:
-Reassessing Globalization in the digitally connected world.
May 12 Jung, “Transnational Migrations and YouTube Sensations”
May 14 Review
GLOBAL HIP HOP PAPER DUE MAY 7 (Assignment 4)
OR
HERITAGE MUSIC AND IDENTITY ESSAY DUE MAY 7(Assignment 3)
ORAL HISTORY FINAL PROJECT DUE MAY 19 (Assignment 5)
