Castelo Branco, Salwa El Shawan y Moreno Fernández, Susana. 2018. Music in Portugal and Spain: Experiencing Music, Expressing Culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 137pp., CD and a companion website

Part of the Global Music Series, Music in Portugal and Spain: Experiencing Music, Expressing Culture is written by two of the leading scholars in music from Spain and Portugal, two countries that have experienced similar and even at times joint historical trajectories. As ‘the first textbook that deals with the musics of Portugal and Spain comparatively’ (pxii), we are offered a more comprehensive musical and cultural overview than a textbook dealing with either of these geographical areas separately

#NoBordersTour. Världens Band: creating and performing music across borders

Moving away from a university context, and within a framework of intercultural (ed. Burnard &co. 2016), performance (ed. Solis 2004) and social change (Baker 2014) studies, this article will explore the constant border negotiations of a professional international world music band, formed by thirteen musicians from seven countries: India, Senegal, Sweden, France, England and Scotland. Imagined as a utopian social experiment by two Swedish brothers in 2012, Världens Band (the World’s Band) quickly grew beyond the project phase and established itself as a group, performing self-branded ‘transglobal roots fusion’ music. With six different nationalities and the will to create music that both reflects and transcends them, borders are a constant source of negotiation for the musicians in musical, political and touring contexts. Musically, the band chooses to represent a united ensemble featuring musicians rather than ‘countries’. Although each individual strongly represents his or her own tradition, rehearsals are a vital space where musical negotiation and collective arranging shape pieces, respecting both cultural backgrounds and the will to collaborate across borders. The inclusiveness message featured in the music becomes a strong yet consciously unvoiced political message on stage of an ideal world where multiculturalism is a strength rather than a divisive force. Politically, the band reinforced its inclusiveness message over time, namely during the 2015 refugee crisis that coincided with a 10-week tour branded ‘No Borders Tour’. Since, performing for schools and refugee audiences is fully integrated into their schedules with the ideology of counteracting the growing nationalist movements in Scandinavia and the rest of Europe. Off stage, borders continue to impact the musicians. Not only do visas have to be issued and frontiers crossed, sometimes unsuccessfully, there is also a constant cultural dialogue between the band members as they learn to understand each other. Verbal communication then becomes key and the leadership of the band manager becomes at times crucial as space is made for voicing opinions and thoughts, resulting in a better understanding of each individual. Through all these different aspects, Världens Band offers a platform for rethinking intercultural collaboration within a professional context, beyond the popular one-off projects or groups with a high turnover (see Hughes 2004)

Autour des instruments de musique, une recherche pluridisciplinaire

Entre septembre 2015 et février 2016, dans le cadre du programme Geste-Acoustique-Musique (GeAcMus), initié par Sorbonne Universités, nous avons formé une équipe composée de chercheurs en sciences humaines, de chercheurs en sciences exactes et de musiciens profes- sionnels, pour mieux dévoiler, dans différentes cultures, les interactions entre le geste de l’instrumentiste, les propriétés mécaniques de son instrument et la musique interprétée. Pour ce domaine de recherche émergent, l’interdisciplinarité nous a permis d’apporter de nouveaux regards, plus complets, sur les instruments choisis. Notre partie du projet GeAcMus, centrée sur des instruments à vent (les flûtes et les cornemuses), était dirigée par une équipe comprenant des acousti- ciens, des ingénieurs et une ethnomusicologue. Tous musiciens, nous avons mis nos compétences au service de trois différents projets développés en parallèle, choisis selon les centres d’intérêt de chacun

Fourth International Bagpipe Conference

The International Bagpipe Organisation organised the Fourth International Bagpipe Conference to mark International Bagpipe Day 2018 (10 March), a celebration of the world’s diverse bagpipes and bagpiping traditions. Following the success of previous conferences, the upcoming event spread over three days, starting on Friday evening with an opening concert and ending on Sunday afternoon. The conference was held in Palma, Mallorca, where there is a rich and unbroken piping tradition. The conferences are a productive and welcoming platform for all people interested in the study of bagpipes: musicologists, ethnomusicologists, music experts, instrument makers, musicians, composers, dancers and music lovers. This event is an exciting interdisciplinary opportunity to discuss various questions relating to the study of bagpipes both today and historically. All three days are open to the general public and bagpipe enthusiasts are encouraged to attend. As the conference will be held in Catalan speaking territory, papers were welcomed in English, Spanish and Catalan. Simultaneous translation from English to Spanish and Spanish to English was provide

Music or Mechanics? Understanding the Role of a Bagpiper's Arm

International audienceDespite their many organological and esthetical differences, bagpipes are all played thanks to the movement of the arm on a bag, creating enough pressure to activate the reeds and produce sound. Repertoires, scales and registers vary according to the instruments and their musical cultures, going from a fully chromatic scale over two octaves (such as the uilleann pipes from Ireland) to a diatonic scale within a range of a sixth (such as the Greek tsampouna or the Tunisian mizwid). Unlike fingerings and melodic ornamentation, the musician's arm technique is rarely discussed in bagpipe literature, nor is it particularly verbalized during a piper's tuition. According to Simon McKerrell, 'each player learns it individually and develops their own technique' [1]. Despite this lack of verbalization, bagpipe experts seem to agree that the breathing technique and the bag are essential elements of their playing [1],[2]. In this research, carried out during the Geste-Acoustique-Musique program (Sorbonne Universités, Paris), we endeavor to understand how the bagpiper exerts control on his/her bag. Understanding this may enhance our comprehension of the importance of the arm in a musical context. Our main questions are: what role does the arm have in the control of the instrument? Is the bag controlled with musical intention? Leading from this, further questions can be asked such as how does this influence the instrument's repertoire and the musician's performance? To answer these questions, we will present data collected during three experiments in different cultural contexts and with musicians of different levels. Using acoustic equipment, we were able to measure the insufflated airflow, the pressure in the bag, the angle of the arm as well as make videos and record the sound. In order to complement our scientific data, we carried out an online questionnaire, which allowed us to gather information on the perception of musicians and their subjective impressions on the control of their instrument. With acoustic measurements, qualitative data and an ethnomusicological framework, this research offers a multidimensional and interdisciplinary study of the control of the bagpipe's bag

Music in a bag? Controlling the bag of Majorcan and Galician bagpipes

After defining the mechanical framework of the bag control of bagpipe, this paper presents a study of the bag pressure control in a musical context through the comparison of six players and two bag- pipes: one Galician (gaita) and one Majorcan (xeremies), the latter mainly differentiated organolog- ically by a much larger bag size. General observations first lead to the identification and interpretation of the range of control parameters observed. A more detailed analysis of the control parameters during the production of steady notes highlights the coordination between insufflations and the arm displacement necessary to produce a stable and continuous sound. Finally, the bag pressure variation is observed in a musical context and correlated with the musical task, thus, asso- ciating different control strategies to the different bagpipes played by the musicians

#NoBorders. Världens Band: Creating and Performing Music Across Borders

no abstract --- JSTOR link to article (restricted access) - https://www.jstor.org/stable/2656297

The xeremies in Mallorca: an introduction

An introductory article about the Mallorcan Bagpipes (xeremies), its history, its revival and its current practice

A musician in the field: the productivity of performance as an intercultural research tool

This chapter offers new perspectives on the relationship between performance and fieldwork. Anchored in ethnomusicological theory, the chapter focuses on the ethnomusicologist’s experience as both a researcher and a performer in the field. Research was perceived as a performance (after Barz 1997) and this contributed towards legitimising the researcher’s role and identity. As the ethnomusicologist became an accepted outsider, the field developed into a two-way experience between the people on the field and the researcher. However, the “lived experience” (Titon 1997) of music performance was still essential to gain cultural insights, learning what could only be experienced

Five illustrated bagpipes in “Musical instruments and their homes”: An insight into the 19th-century instrument collector’s world

In 1888 Mary Elizabeth Brown sent out copies of her new catalogue, Musical instruments and their homes, to her many missionary friends across the world; they had helped her to collect instruments from around the globe, leading to an impressive collection of approximately 270 instruments, which she donated to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1889 (Brown 2014). The subtitle of the catalogue reads: With two hundred and seventy illustrations in pen and ink by Wm. Adams Brown, the whole forming a complete catalogue of the collection of musical instruments now in the possession of Mrs. J. Crosby Brown of New York. As suggested in this lengthy description, the catalogue was beautifully illustrated by Brown’s son, William Adams Brown, with line drawings for each instrument, alongside short descriptions with minimal measurements. W.A. Brown’s contribution is significant: It gives unique pictorial insight into the breadth of the collection, and it adds myriad details that are usually forgotten or glossed over in textual descriptions. His drawings give us a much better understanding of the instruments collected, and may point to unwitting mistakes that, in turn, give us insights into the collecting world of the late 19th century