Groove in Cuban Dance Music: An Analysis of Son and Salsa

The rhythmic feel or 'groove' of Cuban dance music is typically characterised by a dynamic rhythmic energy, drive and sense of forward motion that, for those attuned, has the ability to produce heightened emotional responses and evoke engagement and participation through physical movement and dance. No single work on groove in Cuban dance music considers together the cognitive, cultural, socio-musical and emotional dimensions of the music-making practices and aesthetics that characterise groove production. This study integrates these perspectives into a single theoretical framework with the aim of gaining fresh insights into the nature of groove in two prominent styles of Cuban and Cuban-related dance music: son and salsa. Methodologically, this study blends ethnography and the analysis of timing data extracted from real-world performances to explore the shared cultural knowledge, socio-musical processes, aesthetics and emotional dimensions of groove. Ethnography facilitates the detailed investigation of how performers talk about the music-making practices that characterise aspects of musical culture while the use of timing data, recorded in situ, facilitates the investigation of the real-time nuanced micro-timing relationships that shape effective groove production. The findings of this study paint a picture of groove that is rich, complex and multidimensional, one that is built upon the expressive performances, socio-musical interactions and collectivist attitudes of rhythm section musicians as well as powerful cultural models and intersubjectively shared knowledge. When rhythm section musicians engage in expressive and interactive dialogues and work effectively as a synchronous collective, the resultant groove embodies the dynamic rhythmic, communicative and emotional energies of the individuals that comprise the group. In performance situations, when the groove of the rhythm section spontaneously finds union with the kinaesthetic and emotional energies of dancers and audiences, the cumulative energy possesses the power to inspire, excite, energise, invite participation and unite people in joyous celebration

Diaspora Networks, Non-Economic Remittances and Entrepreneurship Development: Evidence from Some Economies in Latin America

Diaspora networks' non-economic remittances in the forms of social, political, cultural and technical contributions to their homeland play important roles in entrepreneurship and economic development. In this paper, we examine the effects of such remittances on entrepreneurship development in economies in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). We analyze how factors such as migrants' skills and education and characteristics of the host country are likely to affect non-economic remittances and their contribution to entrepreneurship and economic development. We offer some examples of initiatives taken in the home country and the host country to maximize the potential non-economic remittances and their impacts on entrepreneurship development in the home country. A key lesson and take-away that we can gain from entrepreneurially successful efforts of some economies is that the primary focus of diaspora policies need to be centered on utilizing various forms of non-economic remittances in stimulating the quantity and quality of entrepreneurial activity

Fostering e-participation sustainability through a BPM-driven semantic model

According to a recent Eurobarometer survey (2014), 68% of Europeans tend not to trust national governments. As the increasing alienation of citizens from politics endangers democracy and welfare, governments, practitioners and researchers look for innovative means to engage citizens in policy matters. One of the measures intended to overcome the so-called democratic deficit is the promotion of civic participation. Digital media proliferation offers a set of novel characteristics related to interactivity, ubiquitous connectivity, social networking and inclusiveness that enable new forms of societal-wide collaboration with a potential impact on leveraging participative democracy. Following this trend, e-Participation is an emerging research area that consists in the use of Information and Communication Technologies to mediate and transform the relations among citizens and governments towards increasing citizens’ participation in public decision-making. However, despite the widespread efforts to implement e-Participation through research programs, new technologies and projects, exhaustive studies on the achieved outcomes reveal that it has not yet been successfully incorporated in institutional politics. Given the problems underlying e-Participation implementation, the present research suggested that, rather than project-oriented efforts, the cornerstone for successfully implementing e-Participation in public institutions as a sustainable added-value activity is a systematic organisational planning, embodying the principles of open-governance and open-engagement. It further suggested that BPM, as a management discipline, can act as a catalyst to enable the desired transformations towards value creation throughout the policy-making cycle, including political, organisational and, ultimately, citizen value. Following these findings, the primary objective of this research was to provide an instrumental model to foster e-Participation sustainability across Government and Public Administration towards a participatory, inclusive, collaborative and deliberative democracy. The developed artefact, consisting in an e-Participation Organisational Semantic Model (ePOSM) underpinned by a BPM-steered approach, introduces this vision. This approach to e-Participation was modelled through a semi-formal lightweight ontology stack structured in four sub-ontologies, namely e-Participation Strategy, Organisational Units, Functions and Roles. The ePOSM facilitates e-Participation sustainability by: (1) Promoting a common and cross-functional understanding of the concepts underlying e-Participation implementation and of their articulation that bridges the gap between technical and non-technical users; (2) Providing an organisational model which allows a centralised and consistent roll-out of strategy-driven e-Participation initiatives, supported by operational units dedicated to the execution of transformation projects and participatory processes; (3) Providing a standardised organisational structure, goals, functions and roles related to e-Participation processes that enhances process-level interoperability among government agencies; (4) Providing a representation usable in software development for business processes’ automation, which allows advanced querying using a reasoner or inference engine to retrieve concrete and specific information about the e-Participation processes in place. An evaluation of the achieved outcomes, as well a comparative analysis with existent models, suggested that this innovative approach tackling the organisational planning dimension can constitute a stepping stone to harness e-Participation value

Port Sustainability Management System for Smaller Ports in Cornwall and Devon

Many smaller ports in Cornwall and Devon (CAD) are situated in environmentally sensitive habitats and generate benefits for stakeholders and local communities. Such ports are often embedded in tourist based economies. Increasing environmental legislation is placing a strain on the resources of smaller ports making compliance a threat to profitability and thus the future of some ports and local economies. Over-reliance on environmental management systems (EMS) across the ports industry has predominated over the importance of holistic sustainability. This project develops and disseminates a port sustainability management system (PSMS) in CAD, assisting ports to plan marine and maritime operations more sustainably, to facilitate mitigation of potential risks, to increase knowledge and awareness of port sustainability, and to promote the adoption of a proactive stance towards sustainable port management. A constructivist philosophy suited a multiple methods research design which included ethnographic content analysis (ECA), statistical verification of qualitative coding, nine scoping interviews, and eight semi-structured interviews during the main phase of data collection. The seven Harbour Masters (HMs) in this phase represented all port governance types found in the UK. Charmaz’s grounded theory (GT) methodology guided the collection and analysis of primary data between August 2012 and February 2013 to create new theory using an inductive constructivist approach. Validation by fifteen of the thirty local HMs during industry testing revealed numerous advantages and benefits of deploying PSMS which is estimated to generate £50,000 worth of benefits per port annually, and £3,865,005 for the 15 participating ports over 5 years. A new model of smaller port sustainability has emerged. PSMS has eleven pillars of sustainability which underpin the spectrum of port operations. Within this model, each pillar is equally important in contributing to the overall sustainability of a port, and neglect of one could jeopardise sustainability overall and potentially cause a chain reaction with other pillars.European Social Fund Combined Universities of Cornwall (ESF-CUC

Why Not Be Free: The Black Worldmaking Praxis, Research Method, & Manifesto For Developing Music Interventions Against Stress In Black Youth

Why Not Be Free? is an interdisciplinary exploration of music intervention development demonstrating the application of my integrated research and artistic practices through an outlined antiracist method for designing music to reduce stress in Black college youth and a manifesto detailing the compositional process. I draw from Black feminist and womanist thought, music cognition, and public health literature to outline a framework for designing music interventions to reduce stress among Black populations: the Music Medicine Critical Race Praxis. I situate my work among Black speculative artists reimagining experiences in everyday Black life as well as music intervention researchers integrating creative and research practices in the design of music-guided slow-breathing interventions. I synthesize the radical Black worldmaking practices of the artists with scientific evidence to highlight the capacity for music to sustain Black aliveness through the cultivation of altered states of being and collective well-being. The manifesto hones in on the core performance elements of the work--breath and music--to elucidate how breathing sustains Black aliveness and the ongoing movement toward liberatory Black futures by synthesizing perspectives across performance studies and Black worldmaking perspectives. These analyses are juxtaposed with anecdotes and documentation from the compositional process to illuminate the development of The Breathing Suite cosmology from my own everyday Black, lived experiences. Altogether, this thesis outlines the development of my arts intervention praxis, my approach integrating research and composition to develop methods and intermedia performances that foster collective well-being—Black aliveness

ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks: a literature review

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) implementation is a complex and vibrant process, one that involves a combination of technological and organizational interactions. Often an ERP implementation project is the single largest IT project that an organization has ever launched and requires a mutual fit of system and organization. Also the concept of an ERP implementation supporting business processes across many different departments is not a generic, rigid and uniform concept and depends on variety of factors. As a result, the issues addressing the ERP implementation process have been one of the major concerns in industry. Therefore ERP implementation receives attention from practitioners and scholars and both, business as well as academic literature is abundant and not always very conclusive or coherent. However, research on ERP systems so far has been mainly focused on diffusion, use and impact issues. Less attention has been given to the methods used during the configuration and the implementation of ERP systems, even though they are commonly used in practice, they still remain largely unexplored and undocumented in Information Systems research. So, the academic relevance of this research is the contribution to the existing body of scientific knowledge. An annotated brief literature review is done in order to evaluate the current state of the existing academic literature. The purpose is to present a systematic overview of relevant ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks as a desire for achieving a better taxonomy of ERP implementation methodologies. This paper is useful to researchers who are interested in ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks. Results will serve as an input for a classification of the existing ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks. Also, this paper aims also at the professional ERP community involved in the process of ERP implementation by promoting a better understanding of ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks, its variety and history

Under Pressure: Music-related interventions in high-performance domains

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Peter Lang via the DOI in this recor

Feeling the groove: shared time and its meanings for three jazz trios

The notion of groove is fundamental to jazz culture and the term yields a rich set of understandings for jazz musicians. Within the literature, no single perspective on groove exists and many questions remain about the relationship between timing processes, phenomenal experience and musical structures in making sense of groove. In this account, the experience and meaning of groove is theorised as emerging from two forms of sharedness. Firstly, a primary intersubjectivity that arises through the timing behaviours of the players; this could be likened to the 'mutual tuning-in' described in social phenomenology. It is proposed that this tuning-in is accomplished through the mechanism of entrainment. The second form of sharedness is understood as the shared temporal models, the cultural knowledge, that musicians make use of in their playing together. Methodologically, this study makes use of detailed investigation of timing data from live performances by three jazz trios, framed by in-depth, semi-structured interview material and steers a new course between existing ethnographic work on jazz and more psychologically informed studies of timing. The findings of the study point towards significant social and structural effects on the groove between players. The impact of musical role on groove and timing is demonstrated and significant temporal models, whose syntactic relations suggest musical proximity or distance, are shown to have a corresponding effect on timing within the trios. The musician's experience of groove is discussed as it relates to the objective timing data and reveals a complex set of understandings involving temporality, consciousness and communication. In the light of these findings, groove is summarised as the feeling of entrainment, inflected through cultural models and expressed through the cultural norms of jazz