Chant down tha System \u27till Babylon Falls: The Political Dimensions of Urban Grooves and Underground Hip Hop in Zimbabwe

This article, first published in the Journal of Pan African Studies (2013, Volume 6, Issue 3), is a shortened version of the author\u27s M.A. thesis in which she traces the trajectories and ideologies of two separate, but intertwined, youth movements in Harare, Zimbabwe: Urban Grooves and Underground Hip Hop

The Dies Irae ( Day of Wrath ) and Totentanz ( Dance of Death ): Medieval Themes Revisited in 19th Century Music and Culture

During the pivotal November 2002 football game of Arkansas vs. Georgia in the SEC conference championship, the Georgia marching band struck up their defensive rallying song. Instead of a typical defense song, the band played an excerpt of the Gregorian Sequence Dies Irae ( Day of Wrath\u27\u27) from the Roman Catholic Requiem Mass. Drastically dissociated from its original medieval milieu, this musical Sequence still manages to elicit the same effect of fear and foreboding nearly a thousand years later. Precisely because of its deep musical and cultural roots, the Dies Irae occupies a significant place in history, closely intertwined from early on with the medieval folk motif Totentanz ( Dance of Death ), widely depicted in medieval art, and dramatically revived in 19th century music, art, and literature. This multi-disciplinary study focuses on the history of art and music of these two medieval themes during their development, and then moves on to study them in 19th century culture. Specifically, the manipulation of the original Gregorian chant and the incorporation of the idea of a medieval dance are analyzed in the music of Hector Berlioz, Franz Liszt, and Camille Saint-Saens. Numerous other contextual links are explored as well, such as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Victor Hugo, Henri Cazalis, William Blake, and Alfred Rethel, all of whom created 19th century artistic or literary masterpieces derived from the thematic seeds of the Dies Irae and the Totentanz. Although neither of these ideas endured in their original form during the Romantic era, the inherently compelling nature of these themes that center on the macabre but inevitable end of life captivated the Romantic geniuses and continue to intrigue us to this day

Venice in the East: Renaissance Crete and Cyprus

This music bears witness to how ancient Greek and Latin liturgical traditions were richly embellished during the Renaissance on the islands of Crete and Cyprus, all within the shared cultural space of Venetian rule. First performed by Cappella Romana at the Early Music Festival in Utrecht (Netherlands)

16th Century Antiphon

The Renaissance era, which spanned from the 14th century until the 16th century, served as a transitional period. Considered to be a period of rebirth, the Renaissance commenced a revival in culture, literature, and the arts throughout Europe. The 16th century antiphon not only signifies that music was indeed an important aspect during the Renaissance, but is also tangible evidence that choral music, and more specifically Gregorian chant, were prominent forms of musical expression

Dread Hermeneutics: Bob Marley, Paul Ricoeur and the Productive Imagination.

This article presents Paul Ricœur’s hermeneutic of the productive imagination as a methodological tool for understanding the innovative social function of texts that in exceeding their semantic meaning, iconically augment reality. Through the reasoning of Rastafari elder Mortimo Planno’s unpublished text, Rastafarian: The Earth’s Most Strangest Man, and the religious and biblical signification from the music of his most famous postulate, Bob Marley, this article applies Paul Ricœur’s schema of the religious productive imagination to conceptualize the metaphoric transfer from text to life of verbal and iconic images of Rastafari’s hermeneutic of word, sound and power. This transformation is accomplished through what Ricœur terms the phenomenology of the iconic augmentation of reality. Understanding this semantic innovation is critical to understanding the capacity of the religious imagination to transform reality as a proclamation of hope in the midst of despair