Dear all,
February 5, 2019
by Jon
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February 5, 2019
by Jon
0 comments
Dear all,
January 30, 2019
by Jon
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Update:
Our very first EthNoise! of the Winter Quarter has been postponed until Thursday, February 7 (we will meet in Rosenwald 301 from 5-6:20 pm as usual). The presenter (as originally scheduled) will be Thalea Stokes, PhD student in Ethnomusicology here at UChicago. Thalea has just returned from an extended period of fieldwork in Mongolia and Inner Mongolia, and they will be presenting a paper titled, “Mongolian Hip Hop in China: A Unique Political Balancing Act.” I’ve included the paper’s abstract below; please do not cite or circulate without Thalea’s permission. I look forward to seeing you then!
In the grand scheme of globalized hip hop culture, Chinese hip hop is a relative newcomer. Beginning in late 90s Hong Kong, this network of cultural forms—rapping, DJing, breakdancing, graffiti, fashion, and explicit language—spread to mainland China by 2004. Some elements met with immediate approval from the government, while others circumvented state censorship via black market channels. Heavy borrowings from 90s-era gangsta rap were increasingly mediated by traditional and contemporary Chinese musical influences, creating an indigenized Chinese hip hop culture.
The majority Han population soon adopted Chinese hip hop culture as a characteristic mode of youthful artistic expression. But not only Han—youth in certain ethnic minority groups also gravitated toward it and, no less, from an experiential worldview considerably more relatable to Black American experience as typically portrayed in hip hop: historical and contemporary systemic oppression at the hands of the national ethnic majority. One such group was ethnic Mongolians, whose artistic cultural expressions are intricately woven into a millennium’s worth of macro-political history. For Mongolian youth in China, hip hop has become a dangerous but exciting and critically important project: combining subversive expression and brazenly-voiced political grievances in an emphatic assertion of Mongolian identity. The stakes are high in a nation notorious for its heavy-handed treatment of political dissent, especially in the arts and as voiced by ethnic minorities.
Drawn from past and current ethnographic research in Mongolia and Inner Mongolia, my talk examines Mongolian hip hop culture in China and how Mongols navigate the delicate internal and international political intricacies of Chinese governmental policies towards ethnic minorities and political speech. As Mongolian hip hop artists encounter Chinese state censorship—and struggle with internalized self-censorship—they give us new insight into the overarching relationship between Mongolian identity and the Chinese state.
January 7, 2019
by Jon
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Dear all,
December 4, 2018
by Jon
0 comments
Dear all,
November 27, 2018
by Jon
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Dear all,
October 15, 2018
by Jon
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Dear all,
October 7, 2018
by Jon
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Dear all,
October 1, 2018
by Jon
0 comments
Hello, everyone, and happy Monday!
September 22, 2018
by Jon
0 comments
Dear all,
March 24, 2018
by hlrogers
0 comments
Please find below the schedule for EthNoise! for the spring quarter. We will meet on Thursdays at the customary location, in Goodspeed 205, with a time change: from 5:00-6:20pm.
Week 4 (4/19) Dr. Melissa Bilal (Dumanian Visiting Professor in Armenian Studies in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations)
“An Armenian Ethnomusicologist’s Burden: What do I hear in the Captivated Voices of Russian Armenian POWs in WWI German Camps?”
During WWI, the initially secret Royal Prussian Phonographic Commission (Königlich-Preußische Phonographische Kommission) made recordings from the prisoners of war held in various different camps across German territories. Among the interns detained in these camps were Russian Armenian soldiers. In my talk, I will present samples of songs and speech in Armenian, Georgian, and Turkish captured a century ago from these men by the use of the phonograph and gramophone technologies. I will also share the pieces of information we have on the lives of these soldiers. My talk will contextualize these recording sessions held in POW camps within the history of wartime anthropology. It will critically address the large-scale imperial, colonial, and racialized knowledge production endeavor by musicologists, linguists, ethnographers, and physical anthropologists that regarded the Prussian and Austro-Hungarian internment camps as “laboratories.” While questioning the conditions under which captives were turned into research subjects, it will interpret the repertoire through which the Armenian soldiers expressed themselves in the specific historical moment of 1916-1918. I will argue that the written documents and the voices passed onto us by the phonographic commission challenge the idea of an “archive” and/or a “museum” that the commission originally intended to put together.
Week 5 (special Tuesday session with Center for Jewish Studies: 4/24) Eduard Freudmann (Musician)
“Performing the Jewish Archive”
Please see the following links for related information, including that pertaining to a performance on April 23rd.
http://rockefeller.uchicago.edu/
Week 6 (5/3): Dr. Alisha Jones (Assistant Professor of Ethnomusicology, Indiana University)
“I Am Delivert!”: Vocalizing Black Men’s Testimonies of Deliverance from Homsexuality in Pentecostal Worship
In 1995, Grammy Award nominated gospel vocalist Pastor Daryl Coley consented to an interview with Gospel Today’s editor Teresa Hairston for an article entitled, “The California-born gospel singer overcoming homosexuality and diabetes.” It is the earliest music industry account of a gospel vocalist claiming to no longer be homosexual through spiritual “deliverance.” Within historically Black Pentecostal churches that showcase gospel musicians, “deliverance” traditionally refers to a release from physical ailments and perceived spiritual afflictions such as diabetes or homosexuality. While deliverance characterizes various types of healing through spiritual work, many Black gospel music fans deploy the term in a gendered and sexualized manner, referring to a man’s struggle to resist homosexuality. Moreover, the notion of deliverance is promoted through men’s testimonies about becoming heterosexual with what they believe is God’s help. Male vocalists’ overrepresentation in these public accounts of spiritual “healing” from homosexuality reinscribe the stereotype within historically Black Pentecostal churches that to be involved in vocal music ministry is a queering act . Conversely, women’s deliverance narratives are unlikely to be distributed due in part to the socio-cultural fixation on protecting established constructions of Black masculinity.
Expanding upon my 2016 research about the perceptions of Black male vocal participation as queer in Are All the Choir Directors Gay?: Black Men’s Sexuality and Identity in Gospel Performance, this talk explores the sonic qualities of Black men’s public renouncement of their gay identity through deliverance testimonies. In a culture where homosexuals are often regulated to a “don’t ask, don’t tell” social agreement, the testimonies of men delivered from homosexuality conform to what feminist writer Adrienne Rich called compulsory heterosexuality (1960). While deploying ethnomusicological, phonological, linguistic, critical race, and gender studies analysis, Dr. Jones examines these delivered believers’ coded and textured performances of orality in Pentecostal worship: virtuosic singing, “speaking in other tongues,” preaching, and preaching-singing. Educing from musician’s narratives and recordings since Pastor Daryl Coley’s self-disclosure, this talk observes the extent to which their accounts prompt (non)-verbal communication about what constitutes legitimate and sustained deliverance.
Week 7 (5/10): Dr. Michelle Stefano (Folklife Specialist, American Folklife Center)
“The American Folklife Center and Public Folklore”
Week 8 (5/17): Laura Turner (Ph.d. candidate, Music)
“Intimate Icons, Sacrosanct Places: Mount Airy, Surry County and the Construction of an Old-Time Epicenter” (dissertation chapter)
Week 9 (5/24): Lindsay Wright (Ph.D. candidate, Music)
“Teaching Talent: The Pedagogies of Shinichi Suzuki and Mark O’Connor” (dissertation chapter)
Week 10 (5/31): Ameera Nimjee (Ph.D. candidate, Music)