MofA Week 1

Welcome to Area Studies in Ethnomusicology: The Arab World

• Course approaches - questions...
  • Propositional/factual: under what conditions is X true? (inductive, scientific, objective)
  • Procedural/experiential: how to X? (self-training, subjective)
  • Critical/interpretive: why X? what does X mean? (questioning, intersubjective)
  • Transformative/applied: how can X change the world?... CSL (action-based)
• For example, X = "singing microtones"
  • When and where are microtones used? See http://maqamworld.com
  • How to sing them?
  • What are the sociocultural factors behind their emergence and what do they mean?
  • How can their use induce cultural continuity, or evoke memory?
• Who are the course members? Academic interests? Musical skills, living/working/travel experiences? What brings you here? (Please write up a paragraph also on eClass.)
• Some important procedural things...
  • We meet Tuesdays and Thursdays, 2 - 3:20 pm. (You may also like to attend MENAME on Thursday evenings, 6:30 - 9:30. See http://bit.ly/mename )
  • Please do come to class on time, prepared - having completed assignments as much as possible.
  • Please participate actively in discussions
  • Please do not use electronic devices during the class except for the class
  • There are two course websites
    • the wiki is for the outline and lecture notes: http://bit.ly/maw18 ("music of the arab world 18")
    • eClass is for assignments: http://bit.ly/maw18e Please submit all assignments via eClass
  • Most resources are electronic, but there are also physical books for sale in the bookstore and on Reserve. They are not required, but are useful in building a library.

Ethnomusicology of the Arab world: analysis

• Ethnomusicology uses broad ETIC terms of analysis to describe multiple dimensions or aspects of music, in an attempt to come to grips with an entire world of music using a consistent terminology... One can thus divide all music into "aspects": textual, timbral, temporal, tonal, melodic, textural, formal, emotional/experiential, behavioral/social... Ideally the analytical framework should be objective (etic) [is it possible???].

• Here is one systematic analytical framework I've used in the past.

• Let MA = "Arab music" as shorthand for "Music of the Arab World" ( but perhaps not equivalent to Arabic: "al-musiqa al-`arabiyya")
• Question for investigation: Does MA exist as a coherent category? Does it display any consistent features for one or more aspects?
• Method: empirical study and analysis - What does the sonic empirical evidence suggest?

• Based on your listening (using the foregoing links, or other materials at your disposal), to what extent can you characterize Arab music according to the following musical-social aspects? Please edit each wiki page adding your signed comments for next Tuesday...

Analyze "Music of the Arab World" through systematic consideration of its various Aspects:

MA Textual (aspects of text, poetry, linguistic meaning)

MA Timbral (aspects of sound color, instrumentation)

MA Temporal (aspects of rhythm, meter, tempo...)

MA Tonal (aspects of intonation, scale, tonality)

MA Melodic (aspects of modality, melodic patterning, improvisation)

MA Textural (aspects of layering and relationships of multiple parts)

MA Formal (aspects of large-scale structure)

MA Behavioral (the social aspects of the performance - including audience and performer actions and interactions)

MA Emotional (the feeling and experience of music, as inferred from behavior)

Thought questions:

• To what degree do these features gather musics of the Arab world?
• To what degree do these features exclude musics of other worlds?

Is "music of the Arab world" an objectively coherent category? What about "Arab music" - can a satisfactory definition be established, independent of discursive use?

in sum...

• What is music of the Arab world? (please record your thoughts and queries here)

• Let's listen for a while...what do you hear? Consider
  • Sampler
  • Other examples from iTunes

Scholarly/Experiential/Critical Approach

• Area Studies in Ethnomusicology: The Arab World = Ethnomusicology of the Arab world?
  • What is "ethnomusicology"?
  • What is "ethnomusicology of the Arab world"? = "contextual study of music of the Arab world"?
  • What is "music of the Arab world"?
  • What is "the Arab world"?
  • What is "Arab"?
  • What can ethnomusicology contribute (and for what?)
• Course approach
  • Understanding: discursively, experientially
    • discursive, linguistic, descriptive, propositional, declarative knowledge (cognizing)
    • Non-discursive, pre-linguistic, experiential, bodily, musical knowledge (feeling)
  • Doing: procedural (implicit) knowledge
    • Performing (improvising)
    • Creating, composing (editing)
    • Critiquing
    • Community Service Learning (CSL): "doing" - students in action, relevant academia, collaborative applied or PAR research, progressive volunteer pedagogy/research towards the broader social good through giving and learning, community commitment and advocacy, engaged knowledge, global citizenship. Entails "commitments to learning, discovery, and citizenship, and to connecting communities..." (View Dean Cormack's speech)
• Ethnomusicology
  • studying music in culture, society, history
    • semantic networks of symbols: representations, concepts, beliefs (culture, religion, language)
    • social networks of people: relationships, communications, exchanges (society, economy, polity)
    • temporal networks of flow (history)
  • Meta-musicology as musicology...in 3 senses:
    • "beyond" the usual domain of music (western art music) to include all music
    • beyond the usual definition of music ("art of tones") to include social/semantic/historical context
    • "beyond" the usual methods (written word and score to fieldwork)
    • "beyond" the usual disciplinary frame (historical, analytical, theoretical) towards culture, society, history (interdisciplinarity)
  • Theoretical, conceptual
  • Empirical, grounded
• World music, worlds of music
• Area studies
  • in general
  • in ethnomusicology
  • and "Arab"
• Problematizing, critiquing
  • "only that which has no history can be defined" (Friedrich Nietzsche (d. 1900), Genealogy of Morals)
  • etic and emic
  • source and reference
  • problematization: turning a concept into a problem (from the implicit to the descriptive/definitional to the undefinable!)
  • writing a critique: summary/scope + boundaries/limits/relationships
• CSL component: El Mastaba
• Careful review of Course outline
  • Resources
  • Requirements

Problematizing concepts: "Music of the Arab world"

What is music of the Arab world? What is the Arab world? Problematizing concepts

Defining concepts.

Unity in Music of the Arab world?

Listen, watch, and develop some theories...

Category of "Music of the Arab World" (or "Arab music") - is it coherent? Note that this question can be answered by recourse to discourse (do people use such a category? (Is it "emic"?) If so, what does it mean for them?) or by recourse to sound (can we list a set of attributes which define such a category?)

Let's take the latter approach, considering objective audio-visual data presented in class. What features recur? Try to fill in the following list by editing the following pages, before reviewing my own list below. (Emotional and behavioral features require that you watch the music - via video.)

• Some preliminary examples of diversity in Music of the Arab World

• Video examples on youtube (Music of Egypt)

• More audio examples are available on University of Alberta Library database: (a) Smithsonian Global Sound; (b) Contemporary World Music

• Audio examples with metadata. PLEASE LISTEN TO THESE OFTEN!! Review as many as possible in your SC papers in relation to other readings, categorizing by style. Note that these mp3 files contain metadata (download the files and inspect using iTunes or another program).

Problematizing concepts: "Music of the Arab world"

What is music of the Arab world? What is the Arab world? Problematizing concepts

Defining concepts.

Unity in Music of the Arab world?

Listen, watch, and develop some theories...

Category of "Music of the Arab World" (or "Arab music") - is it coherent? Note that this question can be answered by recourse to discourse (do people use such a category? (Is it "emic"?) If so, what does it mean for them?) or by recourse to sound (can we list a set of attributes which define such a category?)

Let's take the latter approach, considering objective audio-visual data presented in class. What features recur? Try to fill in the following list by editing the following pages, before reviewing my own list below. (Emotional and behavioral features require that you watch the music - via video.)

• Some preliminary examples of diversity in Music of the Arab World

• Video examples on youtube (Music of Egypt)

• More audio examples are available on University of Alberta Library database: (a) Smithsonian Global Sound; (b) Contemporary World Music

• Audio examples with metadata. PLEASE LISTEN TO THESE OFTEN!! Review as many as possible in your SC papers in relation to other readings, categorizing by style. Note that these mp3 files contain metadata (download the files and inspect using iTunes or another program).

Ethnomusicology of the Arab world: analysis

• Ethnomusicology uses broad ETIC terms of analysis to describe multiple dimensions or aspects of music, in an attempt to come to grips with an entire world of music using a consistent terminology... One can thus divide all music into "aspects": textual, timbral, temporal, tonal, melodic, textural, formal, emotional/experiential, behavioral/social... Ideally the analytical framework should be objective (etic) [is it possible???].

• Here is one systematic analytical framework I've used in the past.

• Let MA = "Arab music" as shorthand for "Music of the Arab World" ( but perhaps not equivalent to Arabic: "al-musiqa al-`arabiyya")
• Question for investigation: Does MA exist as a coherent category? Does it display any consistent features for one or more aspects?
• Method: empirical study and analysis - What does the sonic empirical evidence suggest?

• Based on your listening (using the foregoing links, or other materials at your disposal), to what extent can you characterize Arab music according to the following musical-social aspects? Please edit each wiki page adding your signed comments for next Tuesday...

Analyze "Music of the Arab World" through systematic consideration of its various Aspects:

MA Textual (aspects of text, poetry, linguistic meaning)

MA Timbral (aspects of sound color, instrumentation)

MA Temporal (aspects of rhythm, meter, tempo...)

MA Tonal (aspects of intonation, scale, tonality)

MA Melodic (aspects of modality, melodic patterning, improvisation)

MA Textural (aspects of layering and relationships of multiple parts)

MA Formal (aspects of large-scale structure)

MA Emotional (the feeling and experience of music, as inferred from behavior)

MA Behavioral (the social aspects of the performance - including audience and performer actions and interactions)

Thought questions:

• To what degree do these features gather musics of the Arab world?
• To what degree do these features exclude musics of other worlds?

Is "music of the Arab world" an objectively coherent category? What about "Arab music" - can a satisfactory definition be established, independent of discursive use?

in sum...

• What is music of the Arab world? (please record your thoughts and queries here)