Week 1 – Friday 4 September
Introductory material
Obligatory reading:
Ochoa Gautier, Ana María 2014. Aurality: Listening and knowledge in nineteenth-century Colombia. Durham: Duke University Press. [Introduction ‘The ear and the voice in the lettered city’s geophysical history’, 1-29].
Feld, Steven 2015. ‘Acoustemology’ in D. Novak & M. Sakakeeny (eds) Keywords in sound. Durham: Duke University Press, 12-21.
Mundy, Rachel 2018. Animal musicalities: Birds, beasts, and evolutionary listening. Middletown; Wesleyan University Press [Introduction, 13-25].
Recommended additional reading:
Clayton, Martin 2001. ‘Towards a theory of musical meaning (in India and elsewhere)’ British Journal of Ethnomusicology 10/1, 1-17.
Turino, Thomas 2008. Music as social life: The politics of participation. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. [Introduction: ‘Why music matters’, 1-22].
Listening Assignment
Attend an event, occasion, venue – be it planned or spontaneous – in which people understand their world / navigate their surroundings / make sense of their environment through musical or sonic expression and perception. Such an event could be a rehearsal or a concert, a jam session, busking in the street, a film, a party with live or recorded music, a restaurant or café with live or recorded music, an ultrasound room in a hospital, a garage where technicians aurally test a motor block, … – any occasion, space or place in which sonic interaction is meaningful.
While you are attending take notes (preferably written) about the following aspects:
- How do you hear the structure and form of the sound? Do you observe patterns, recurrences, closures and new beginnings? Those versed in solfeggio and music analysis can use their analytical skills to report about form, texture, tonal, rhythmical and metrical particularities if applicable.
- How do the people behave who produce the sound? What about their bodily posture, movements, alignment to each other?
- How do the people behave who hear the sound? What about their bodily posture, movements, alignment to each other? Do they respond sonically? How do you compare them to those who produce the sound?
- How does the sound function as a carrier of information about itself or its surroundings? What does the sound “convey” or “do” to all those in attendance, including you?
- How do those in attendance understand each other and their surroundings through the sound? What knowledge or information (including mood and ambience) is exchanged through the sound between attendants?
- Are there nonhumans participating in this exchange of understanding, alliance or confrontation?
The occasion you attend can be connected to the musical case study that you choose for your blogs, but it does not have to be. In any case, you can use your findings from this assignment as material for your blogs if you wish.
Tuesday 8 September 23:59 hours: Submission deadline Listening assignment in coherent notes.
Week 2 – Friday 11 September
Musical sense-making
Obligatory reading:
Hahn, Tomie 2007. Sensational knowledge: Embodying culture through Japanese dance. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press. [Introduction: ‘Sensual orientations’, 1-21].
Agawu, V. Kofi 2016. ‘Tonality as a colonizing force in Africa’ in: Radano, Ronald & Tejumola Olaniyan (eds), Audible empire: Music, global politics, critique. Durham: Duke University Press, 334-355.
Ingold, Tim 2019. ‘Noise, sound, silence’ in Kathleen Coessens (ed.) Sensorial aesthetics in music practices. Leuven: Leuven University Press, 47-60.
Recommended additional reading:
Ochoa Gautier, Ana María 2014. Aurality: Listening and knowledge in nineteenth-century Colombia. Durham: Duke University Press. [Chapter One: ‘On howls and pitches’, 31-75].
Mundy, Rachel 2018. Animal musicalities: Birds, beasts, and evolutionary listening. Middletown; Wesleyan University Press [Chapter Four: ‘Songs on the dissection table’, 93-111].
Tuesday 15 September 23:59 hours: Submission deadline Blogpost 1 (1,500 words)
Week 3 – Friday 18 September
Discussion and peer review of issues in Blog 1
Week 4 – Friday 25 September
Auditory cosmogonies
Obligatory reading:
Brabec de Mori, Bernd 2015. ‘Sonic substances and silent sounds: An auditory anthropology of ritual songs’, Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America 13/2, 25-42.
Recommended additional reading:
Menezes Bastos, Rafael de 1999. ‘Apùap world hearing: On the Kamayurá phono-auditory system and the anthropological concept of culture’ the world of music 41/1 (Hearing and listening in cultural contexts), 85-93.
Mundy, Rachel 2018. Animal musicalities: Birds, beasts, and evolutionary listening. Middletown; Wesleyan University Press [Chapter Seven: ‘The rose garden’, 153-176].
Tuesday 29 September 23:59 hours: Submission deadline Blogpost 2 (1,500 words)
Week 5 – Friday 2 October
Discussion and peer review of issues in Blog 2
Week 6 – Friday 9 October
Musical agency and relationality
Obligatory reading:
Clark, Emily Hansell 2021. ‘“So nicely in harmony with the tropical nature”: Listening to the cultural and the natural in Suriname, 1883-2020’ the world of music (new series) 10/2, 51-78.
McMurray, Peter 2021. ‘Toward a Black ecomusicology, 1853? Listening to enslavement with Solomon Northup’ 19th-Century Music 45/1, 79-90.
Recommended additional reading:
Bates, Eliot 2012. ‘The social life of musical instruments’ Ethnomusicology 56/3 (Fall), 363-395.
Week 7 – Friday 16 October
Aural knowledge
Obligatory reading:
Impey, Angela 2018. Song walking: Women, music, and environmental justice in an African borderland. Chicago [etc.]: The University of Chicago Press (Chicago Studies in Ethnomusicology). [Introduction, Chapter 1: ‘Paths toward a hearing’ & Postscript: ‘“Talk” 3: Listening in, Sounding out’, 2-44, 219-224].
Mundy, Rachel 2018. Animal musicalities: Birds, beasts, and evolutionary listening. Middletown; Wesleyan University Press [Conclusion: ‘The animanities’, 178-191].
Week 8 – Friday 23 October 23:59 hours:
Submission deadline Blogpost 3: a 2,500-word final blogpost in which the feedback and insights shared in previous blogs have been demonstrably processed.
Knowing the World through Music 