Michael Frishkopf

From CCE wiki archived
Revision as of 10:03, 27 May 2014 by Michaelf (talk | contribs)
Jump to: navigation, search

After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music -- Aldous Huxley

Ethnomusicology is "the meaningful social practice of studying music as a meaningful social practice" (Frishkopf 2013).

“My soul is a hidden orchestra; I know not what instruments, what fiddlestrings and harps, drums and tamboura I sound and clash inside myself. All I hear is the symphony.” -- Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

Music is living sound -- Willard Rhodes

"I have nothing to say and I'm saying it" -- John Cage


Dr. Michael Frishkopf
Professor, Department of Music

Associate Director, Canadian Centre for Ethnomusicology (CCE)
Research Fellow, folkwaysAlive!
Adjunct Professor, Religious Studies
Adjunct Professor, Division of Community Engagement, Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry Mail: Michael Frishkopf, Department of Music, Faculty of Arts, University of Alberta, 3-82 Fine Arts Building, Edmonton, AB CANADA T6G 2C9
Office: 334D Old Arts Building
Tel: Skype: (617) 275-2589; office: (780) 492-0225. Music Dept: (780) 492-3263
Fax: Music Dept: (780) 492-9246. CCE (780) 492-0242
Web: http://bit.ly/mfwiki
Email is preferable for all initial communications. Note: I am on sabbatical Fall 2013 through Summer 2014. Please email me with any questions.

Introduction

Michael Frishkopf, Professor of Music at the University of Alberta, is an ethnomusicologist and composer. A graduate of Yale College (BS Mathematics, 1984), Tufts University (MA Ethnomusicology, 1989), and the University of California, Los Angeles (Ph.D. Music, 1999), Dr. Frishkopf’s ethnomusicological research interests include Sufi music; the Arab music industry; sound in Islamic ritual performance; music and religion; comparative music theory; the sociology of musical taste; social network analysis; (virtual [world) music], digital music repositories; music in West Africa; music of refugees (mainly Liberian refugees in the Buduburam refugee camp, Ghana); participatory action research; psychoacoustics and music cognition; music therapy as memory therapy...

His research and teaching combine a number of different fields, including ethnomusicology, anthropology, Middle East studies, religious/Islamic studies, psychoacoustics, computer science, media studies, literary studies, music theory... He is a lifetime member of both the Society for Ethnomusicology and the Middle East Studies Association of North America.

He has received numerous fellowships supporting his research, including grants from Fulbright, the American Research Center in Egypt, the Social Science Research Council, the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, the Killam Foundation (Canada), the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada, supporting his extensive fieldwork in Egypt.

In performance, Michael specializes in the nay (Middle Eastern reed flute), and also performs the song-drum-dance traditions of Ghana. He is the founder (in 2004) of the University of Alberta Middle Eastern and North African Music Ensemble, as well as the University of Alberta West African Music Ensemble (in 1999). Both ensembles perform frequently in public in the Edmonton area, especially to support progressive causes. He also performs “Third Stream” and world music inflected jazz on the piano, following studies with Ran Blake and others in the Third Stream program at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston.

Some current projects include:

  • Sounds of Islam and Sufi ritual
  • Music, Sound, and Architecture in Islam
  • Music media and the music industry in the Arab world
  • [Virtual (world] music) - world music and ethnomusicology in cyberworlds
  • Giving voice to hope: popular music towards sustainable development and peace (Liberia, Ghana...)
  • Sustaining traditional musical culture in collaboration with local organizations (Egyptian music, Arab music, West African music)
  • Digital repositories and metadata for ethnomusicology
  • The transmission of musical taste in Canada
  • Music culture as social network (social network analysis)
  • Developing a computer-based system for microtonal ear training.

CV

Curriculum Vitae


Publications

Theses

Some recent talks

Applied Ethnomusicology

Music for Global Human Development

(http://m4ghd.org)

In recent years, I’ve moved sharply towards an engaged ethnomusicology, centered on what I call music and global human development, collaborating on production of “traditional” and “popular” musics (including media and music education) as tools for global development of communities marginalized and disempowered by colonialism and its aftermath, on either side of the North-South divide between “developed” and “developing” nations. Such work follows a participatory action research paradigm, ideally engaging local communities as equals, and subjecting all work to critical reflective scrutiny.

There are two main directions to this work:

Songs for sustainable peace and development

A set of participatory action research projects centered on the use of popular music to disseminate development messages, especially for key development issues in public health, education, religious/ethnic tolerance, and peace. I have been working primarily in collaboration with Liberian refugee musicians in Ghana, and recent returnees to Liberia, helping them articulate and disseminate musical messages of peace and development, producing media with a triple purpose: catalyzing positive social change locally, raising awareness globally, and generating a revenue stream to support their musical communities. Several songs have been completed; see http://bit.ly/songsspd.

Also see:

Music for cultural continuity and civil society

Projects for cultural continuity, supporting Ewe music of Ghana, El Mastaba Centre for Egyptian Folk Music, the Egyptian Centre for Culture and Art, and AMAR (Foundation for Arab Music Archiving and Research), Beirut, including consulting as a member of the Board. Media products are designed to catalyze local social progress, raise global awareness, and generate a revenue stream for local musicians.

  • Traditional Ghanaian music culture
    • Collaboration with traditional Ghanaian musicians on Kinka: Traditional songs of Avenorpedo, to sustain and develop traditional music
    • Mobilizing scholarship for talented but underprivileged Ghanaian musicians, such as Kofi Avi, so they can complete a well-rounded education.
  • Traditional Egyptian music culture
    • Collaboration with El Mastaba Center for Egyptian Folk Music, Cairo, to preserve, archive, document and develop Egyptian music. We are developing an applied research project to support digitization and metadata tagging for El Mastaba's extensive collections, while simultaneously providing training in these procedures to enable sustainability, with in-kind support through secure offsite storage at the University of Alberta.
    • Collaboration with Egyptian Center for Culture and Art, Cairo: To encourage the diversity, specificity and vibrancy of Egypt's cultural scene. Have provided advisory support.
    • Collaboration with AMAR (Foundation for Arab Music Archiving and Research), Beirut: to preserve and disseminate archival recordings of traditional Arab music from the early 20th century. Member of the Board of Directors.
  • World music presentations to local Edmonton schools and daycares (ongoing series of presentations, at the University of Alberta, or onsite)
  • Local community outreach through performance U of A Senate to celebrate campus volunteers

Multimedia projects

Documentary video

Documentary audio

Digital repositories

  • Principal Investigator and project director, VMCTM: Virtual Museum of Canadian Traditional Music. Sponsored by Virtual Museum Canada and the Canadian Heritage Information Network. (funded by Canadian Heritage Information Network). Managed complex three year development, including over a dozen participants, a partnership with Smithsonian Folkways, and a $175,000 budget. In French and English.
  • Musical change in a West African Village. Ongoing (2007-2010) collaborative research project carried out together with students participating in the UofA Ghana summer program, led by Michael Frishkopf.
  • SonoCairo searchable web 2.0 catalog. Relational database containing metadata for several thousand cassette recordings produced by the Egyptian state recording company (SonoCairo) from 1962 to present, based on Egypt research 2003-04 (in development)

Technology

Educational programs

Musical composition and improvisation

http://bit.ly/mfwikicomp

Some recent work:

(Click for notes on several of the following compositions) ...

  • Helen's Necklace (several versions, and score), composed and performed for Carole Frechette's acclaimed play, and performed in 2005, at the Shadow Theatre
  • Spacings, for two pianos and two flutes, inspired by forms of traditional Zimbabwean mbira music (2007)
  • BaAka Soundings, a stochastic piece for variable-sized ensemble including mixed chorus, bell, and percussion sticks. Programmed in R, drawing on melodic cells and polyphonic style of the BaAka people, Central African Republic. Composed for a production of The Ik, by Colin Turnbull; directed by Heather Fitzsimmons, and performed at Edmonton’s Walterdale Playhouse, 2000.
  • e-Dhikr, inspired by Sufi sounds of Cairo. Composed and performed (entirely) by M. Frishkopf, with nay, percussion, voice, and looper. (2008)
  • Kurd, neo-takht composition/improvisational frame, premiered at the Dignity of Difference conference, 2009.
  • For Marcel Khalife (rough sketch version). (2010)
  • 40,000[10], Third Stream composition/improvisation (performed at Amnesty International's Small Places concert, University of Alberta, October 2008, towards awareness of political prisoners of the Arab world,). Inspired by Ran Blake, 3rd Stream, Arabic maqam, the Muslim adhan (call to prayer), and Olivier Messiaen's birdsongs and modes of limited transposition.

Nay improvisations...

  • Nay 1 (Edmonton Sound Sessions) (2010)
  • Nay 2 (Edmonton Sound Sessions) (2010)

Concert, workshop, and conference organization

(a random sample)

In the media...