Switching Partners: Dancing with the Ontological Engineers

Ontologies are today being applied in almost every field to support the alignment and retrieval of data of distributed provenance. Here we focus on new ontological work on dance and on related cultural phenomena belonging to what UNESCO calls the “intangible heritage.” Currently data and information about dance, including video data, are stored in an uncontrolled variety of ad hoc ways. This serves not only to prevent retrieval, comparison and analysis of the data, but may also impinge on our ability to preserve the data that already exists. Here we explore recent technological developments that are designed to counteract such problems by allowing information to be retrieved across disciplinary, cultural, linguistic and technological boundaries. Software applications such as the ones envisaged here will enable speedier recovery of data and facilitate its analysis in ways that will assist both archiving of and research on dance

Historical sources of ethnomusicology in contemporary debate

This anthology concerns traditional music and archives, and discusses their relationship as seen from historical and epistemological perspectives. Music recordings on wax cylinders, 78 records or magnetic tape, made in the first half of the 20th century, are regarded today as valuable sources for understanding musical processes in their social dimension and as unique cultural heritage. Most of these historical sound recordings are preserved in sound archives, now increasingly accessible in digital formats. Written by renowned experts, the articles here focus on archives, individual and collective memory, and heritage as today’s recreation of the past. Contributors discuss the role of historical sources of traditional music in contemporary research based on examples from music cultures in West Africa, Scandinavia, Turkey, and Portugal, among others. The book will appeal to musicologists and cultural anthropologists, as well as historians and sociologists, and will be of interest to anyone concerned with sound archives, libraries, universities and cultural institutions dedicated to traditional music

The Relation of Music Archiving and Intangible Cultural Heritage in Serbia

Speaking from an ethnomusicological standpoint, this paper elaborates on the use of recorded sound and audio-visual material for the purpose of documenting particular musical elements in Serbia, according to the concept of UNESCO intangible cultural heritage. There is a difference between contemporary field recordings for archival purposes, according to the ICH concept, and the employment of already recorded historical legacy. Through the example of music elements from Serbian national register of ICH, this paper will raise the questions of ethnomusicological politics of field recording and digitization of archived historical recordings, as well as analyze the politics of heritage management. Based on ethnomusicological and archival experience, the aim of this paper is to offer a model of application of sound archive for the future, which can effectively contribute to the concept of intangible cultural heritage in Serbia

Life beyond ritual? Preserving the shamanic performance arts in South Korea today.

An overview of the remaining topic teams: Innovative Research, Scholarship and Creative Activities, Campus Climate, and Faculty Roles and Structure

Dance as world of senses, socio-cosmic order and mobility. Case study of Catholic women in Goa, India

The sensorial and aesthetic dimensions of the songs and dances of the Catholic Gawda women highlight the connection between religion, ritual and touristic performances. On the one hand, in the village, the aesthetics of the ritual’s place acquires symbolic meaning together with the body experience shared by women while dancing collectively—reinforcing their ties through the individual bodies. By learning the dance steps through the imitation of older women in their yearly ritual, the Gawda demonstrate that ‘when sensory orders express cosmic orders, cosmologies are not only learnt through hearing or reading, but lived through the body’. The arrangement of the objects, the space’s combination of nature and sacred symbols, the colours highlighting women’s movements, the sound of their voices—all emphasize the non-verbal dimension of the ritual. On the other hand, during state events or touristic performances the aesthetical references change, and the songs, dances and clothes become standardized and shorter in order to provide identical reproductions for different audiences.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

Releasing the pause button on Hugh Tracey’s field recordings of 1959: repatriation and revitalisation of a selection of the Bangwaketse music held at the International Library of African Music (ILAM)

This thesis examines an attempt at repatriation and the revitalisation of archival holdings from the International Library of African Music (ILAM) to the Bangwaketse community of Botswana. I assess how the attempt may shape future possibilities for the repatriation of more recordings from ILAM to other areas in Botswana. Drawing on the narrative compiled from the various sessions of memory retrieval and recollections of the past, I establish how the Bangwaketse claim ownership of their musical heritage. Memory and nostalgic reactions to musical sound contribute to a construction of communal truths as held by the people who claim their heritage to the music from ILAM. Memory retrieval and recollection are explored in this research as a process that allows the members of the community to reconnect with their past, interpret their memories, modify and create the ideal image of their community and retell their stories. Through the interactions and exploration of memory, I explore how the Bangwaketse are motivated to engage with the recordings from ILAM. In addition, based on the observation of the recent music performances of the Bangwaketse, I examine how the approaches they used, to sustain the traditional music that they continue to play, may inform the process of returning and revitalising archival holdings from ILAM. I argue that, for the purpose of revitalising the old archival recordings, the performers require incentives that are related to social developments and their contexts. Furthermore, the revitalisation effort is a joint effort between the performers, culture bearers as well as the audiences. In addition, I argue that in order to reinsert the archival recordings in the community, the recordings should be worked through the education sector and be taught to all generations, especially the children who hold the possibility of continued music revitalisation. The research evaluates how the traditional music of the Bangwaketse is conceptualized in recent years by the different research participants. The project further describes the innate need for a continued music culture by the Bangwaketse. Some sections of the data explain how music ‘escaped’ the social practices and structures of the past. After tracing how the traditional music ceased, I study how the Bangwaketse communally construct different strategies to re-insert the music into their livelihoods in order to realise the revitalisation of ILAM recordings in their original performance contexts