Cultural macroevolution of musical instruments in South America

Musical instruments provide material evidence to study the diversity and technical innovation of music in space and time. We employed a cultural evolutionary perspective to analyse organological data and their relation to language groups and population history in South America, a unique and complex geographic area for human evolution. The ethnological and archaeological native musical instrument record, documented in three newly assembled continental databases, reveals exceptionally high diversity of wind instruments. We explored similarities in the collection of instruments for each population, considering geographic patterns and focusing on groupings associated with language families. A network analysis of panpipe organological features illustrates four regional/cultural clusters: two in the Tropical Forest and two in the Andes. Twenty-five percent of the instruments in the standard organological classification are present in the archaeological, but not in the ethnographic record, suggesting extinction events. Most recent extinctions can be traced back to European contact, causing a reduction in indigenous cultural diversity

Mining Characteristic Patterns for Comparative Music Corpus Analysis

A core issue of computational pattern mining is the identification of interesting patterns. When mining music corpora organized into classes of songs, patterns may be of interest because they are characteristic, describing prevalent properties of classes, or because they are discriminant, capturing distinctive properties of classes. Existing work in computational music corpus analysis has focused on discovering discriminant patterns. This paper studies characteristic patterns, investigating the behavior of different pattern interestingness measures in balancing coverage and discriminability of classes in top k pattern mining and in individual top ranked patterns. Characteristic pattern mining is applied to the collection of Native American music by Frances Densmore, and the discovered patterns are shown to be supported by Densmore’s own analyses

Joik as the Golden Thread of Sami Revitalization

When studying music, it is important to understand its role in the change and continuity of culture. This understanding can be achieved by studying music as an element of peoples\u27 collective identity and how it affects the variability of this identity. Through this, we can discern specific aspects of ethnicity, origination, and nationalism in an ever-changing globalized society. As seen in the Sami people of northern Scandinavia and Russia, where joik tradition is practiced, the relationship between the social identity of indigenous people and music is especially important, as these cultures are rapidly changing and adapting to a globalized society. Definitively Sami, joik may be the oldest European musical tradition which, in the last forty years, has contributed to a Sami cultural revival. Despite the increasing globalization of world cultures, the Sami nation persists in their specific social identity, and music significantly contributes to this cultural renewal

Deconstructing “the South African jazz feel”: roots, rhythms and features of South African jazz

South African jazz has established itself as a distinct and influential genre in modern popular music that merges musical elements from traditional South African musics with influences from U.S.-American jazz. Formed during a time of extreme social inequality in a divided country, South African jazz became the soundtrack of the struggle against social injustice and racial oppression, and was brought to international attention by artists such as Hugh Masekela, Miriam Makeba, and Abdullah Ibrahim who gave poignant musical expression to the hardships of the time. South African jazz is celebrated for its unique sound, original catalogue and all-important “feel”. To many listeners, performers and musicologists, it is this concept of feel that makes South African jazz so distinctive and inimitable. To date, however, much of the scholarly and popular literature on South African jazz has centred on the historical, social and political aspects of the music, with less attention given to close musical-textual analysis. A few studies have considered the melodic and harmonic language of iconic saxophonists and bass players but there are – to date – no close studies of rhythm and feel in South African jazz. Beginning to address this gap in the literature, this study uncovers some of the elements that constitute the South African jazz feel through close rhythmic and more general musical analyses of a selection of South African jazz recordings

Collective Expressions of Monacan Indian Nation Identity: A Communicative Arts Genre Study

This study considers the current communicative arts practices of the Monacan Indian Nation, an Indigenous Virginia tribe of approximately 2500 people located in Amherst County, Virginia. Historically the tribe was a large nation that extended from the falls of the James River near Richmond, Virginia to the Southwestern portions of the state near Roanoke and now the Monacan Indian Nation homeland is at Bear Mountain in Amherst County, Virginia. The study was conducted through interviews and observations at tribal events such as the annual Powwow and culture class, as well as consistent attendance and participation as a musician at St. Paul’s Episcopal Mission Church at Bear Mountain. Early Monacan music, dance, language, and traditional art forms were largely undocumented or lost, and this study examines how current Monacan ethnic identity is expressed over multiple generations showing continuity within these forms. The study includes concepts about Monacan identity through the lenses of multidisciplinary fields and incorporates a table comparing artistic communication genres, a model developed by Brian Schrag and Kathleen Van Buren (2018). This approach assisted in demonstrating an ethnomusicological approach to Monacan identity expression through the various communicative arts genres within the community

Country Music's "Hurtin' Albertan" : Corb Lund and the Construction of "Geo-Cultural" Identity

Le concept de lieu fait partie intégrante de la musique country, genre musical traditionnellement associé à certaines aires géographiques, à des paysages ruraux et aux valeurs communautaires. Bien que la littérature sur la musique country ait bien cerné les liens entre ce genre musical et la notion de lieu, en particulier en ce qui concerne la géographie des origines du genre et de ses scènes importantes, on observe un intérêt scientifique croissant envers les chansons de plus en plus nombreuses explorant le thème du lieu. Cette tradition trouve ses racines dans les chansons hillbilly, les chansons de cowboys chantants, le bluegrass du Kentucky et le western swing, où les artistes ont exprimé la nostalgie des lieux familiers et du temps de leur enfance. Ces récits ne décrivent pas seulement le paysage et la culture d’aires géographiques données; plutôt, ils définissent la relation entre les individus et leur environnement, dévoilant ainsi le caractère, les valeurs et les croyances de l’artiste. En se concentrant sur la musique de l’artiste canadien de country alternatif Corb Lund, cette thèse vise à définir cette relation entre cet artiste de musique country et son environement, et à interroger la façon dont il utilise (à l’instar d’autres artistes du genre) ces chansons afin d’explorer plus à fond les liens avec ses origines albertaines. Plus précisément, il s’agit d’étudier comment ces récits de lieu contribuent à la construction de l’identité de l’artiste, ce que Simon Frith (1996) appelle la persona. Selon Richard Peterson (1997) et Pamela Fox (2009), les artistes country ont tendance à se référer à leurs origines dans un acte de « sincérité authentique », afin de construire une conception personnalisée du lieu (souvent autobiographique). Cette recherche a dû considérer les multiples couches de signification entourant l’artiste en tenant compte du genre, des niveaux identitaires et des rapports géoculturaux. Les approches géoculturelles et écomusicologiques permettent de mieux comprendre les façons dont les individus réagissent au lieu et aux liens intimes entre le « sentiment de soi » et le « sentiment de lieu » (Tuan 1974; Cantrill 1993; Solomon 2000). Le concept d’identité « géoculturelle », issu des sciences politiques (Talukder 2013), est invoqué pour décrire cette relation. Par l’analyse de la musique de Lund, cette thèse explore les manières dont l’artiste aborde la vie quotidienne, le travail et les questions socioculturelles propres à l’Alberta en proposant diverses conceptions du lieu, tout en construisant sa propre identité géoculturelle albertaine.The concept of place is integral to country music, a genre conventionally associated with geographic regions, rural landscapes, and community values. While country music literature has defined the genre’s connection to place in relation to the geography of its origins and prominent scenes, there has been a growing scholarly interest in the place-themed songs that proliferate the genre. The tradition of place songs finds its roots in early hillbilly recordings, songs of the singing cowboy, Kentucky bluegrass, and western swing, where songwriters expressed nostalgia for the seemingly simpler places and times of their childhood. These narratives do not just describe the landscape and culture of geographic regions, but rather, they also define the relationship between individuals and their surrounding environment and community, unveiling elements of the artist’s character, values, and beliefs. Focusing on the music of Canadian alt-country artist Corb Lund, this dissertation seeks to define this relationship between country singer-songwriter and place, and interrogate how he (like many other country artists) uses place songs to explore more fully his ties to his Albertan origins. More specifically, it is interested in how place-based narratives contribute to the construction of an artist’s identity, what Simon Frith (1996) calls the artistic persona. As both Richard Peterson (1997) and Pamela Fox (2009) have noted, country artists tend to refer to their origins as an act of “authentic sincerity, ” constructing personalized (often autobiographical) conceptions of place. For a study of this nature, it was important to consider the multiple layers of signification surrounding a singer-songwriter including genre, levels of artistic identity, and geographic-cultural (“geo-cultural”) association. Cultural geographic and ecomusicological discourse offers a rich understanding of the ways in which individuals respond to place and the intimate connection between the “sense of self” and the “sense of place” (Tuan 1974; Cantrill 1993; Solomon 2000). The concept “geo-cultural” identity, drawn from the political sciences (Talukder 2013), is invoked to describe this connection and define the geographic-cultural elements of an artist’s identity. Through an interrogation of Lund’s music, this dissertation explores how the singer-songwriter describes life, work, and socio-cultural issues in his native Alberta, creating diverse conceptions of place, all while constructing his uniquely Albertan “geo-cultural” identity

Joycean aesthetics and mythic imagination in the music of Frank Corcoran

This essay explores points of convergence and difference in Irish composer Frank Corcoran's relationship to aesthetic elements at the core of James Joyce's writing. Such shared elements include techniques of deconstruction and assemblage, stream-of-consciousness writing, etymological and lexical invention, and the creation of a mythic vision of 20th-century Ireland. By viewing the music of Frank Corcoran through a Joycean lens, the essay brings new light to a late-modernist Irish composer