Ethnomusicology, Music Department

This paper describes Bob Wiseman’s allegorical piece, Uranium, arguing that it accesses emotion to alter the consciousness of percipients. Audiences respond with unusual intensity to Uranium’s tragic environmental narrative. By using puppet theatre, film, comedy, and song to win their trust, Wiseman is able to shock his spectators. With interviews and consideration of the semiotic content of Uranium, I explore possibilities for activation of ecological consciousness through performing arts. Building on the shared ideas of Heinrich von Kleist, Gregory Bateson, and Thomas Turino, I argue that Wiseman offers one particularly useful mechanism to advance environmental concerns and learning through the arts. This paper seeks to bridge environmental and (ethno)musicological thought, and has specific relevance to the growing field of ecomusicology, presenting a musical ethnographic case-study in singer-song-writer activism.

"Gnawa Diffusion est un groupe musical à succès de première et de seconde génération d’immigrants d’Afrique du Nord, qui a atteint une importante renommée en Afrique du Nord, au Moyen-Orient et en Europe au cours des deux dernières décennies. Ses membres sont établis en France, mais d’origine Algérienne. Leur message politisé et égalitaire a atteint le monde entier. L’habileté des musiciens, leurs instrumentations, leurs goûts et le message qu’ils envoient à la jeunesse ont porté leur musique sur la scène mondiale. Dans son travail, Gnawa Diffusion soulève une panoplie de questions politiques et cherche à représenter son public. Sa popularité a atteint des sommets au plus fort de la guerre civile algérienne. En analysant l’origine du nom du groupe, ce document retrace les événements et les cultures qui ont influencé Gnawa Diffusion, en explorant l’histoire des Gnaoua, l’histoire de l’Algérie, les relations entre la France et l’Afrique du Nord et la musique contemporaine française. Les questions de l’identité culturelle et de la représentation sont étroitement superposées aux intentions du groupe et au processus de production artistique. Parce que Gnawa Diffusion a été pensé et conçu par Amazigh Kateb Yassine, et parce que ce dernier a été reconnu comme le porte-parole et le principal auteur de Gnawa Diffusion, sa vie et ses mots accompagnent l’analyse de ce journal. L’étude des conséquences de la traite négrière d’Afrique du Nord, de la propagation de l’islam, de la colonisation de l’Afrique du Nord et de l’immigration algérienne en France nous permet de comprendre comment Gnawa Diffusion a su créer la nouvelle musique d’une génération qui cherche à surmonter les divisions héritées culturellement. Dans ce cas-ci, la musique défie les notions communes d’authenticité, ce qui transparaît dans les performances du groupe.

Gnawa Diffusion was a successful musical group of first- and second-generation North African immigrants that achieved significant fame in North Africa, the Middle East and Europe during the last two decades. Based in France, though from Algeria, their politicized egalitarian message reached the world. Their musical skills, instrumentation, tastes and appeal to youth sounds, sentiments and meanings gave their globalized music a prominent place on the global stage. In their work Gnawa Diffusion addressed a panoply of political issues and sought to represent and reach their audience. Their greatest popularity came at the height and conclusion of the Algerian civil war. By parsing the meanings of the band’s name, this paper engages the events and cultures that informed Gnawa Diffusion, exploring the history of the Gnawa, the history of Algeria, and the relationships between France, North Africa and contemporary “French” music. Issues of cultural authenticity and representation are tightly layered within the band’s purposes and process of artistic production. Because Gnawa Diffusion was envisioned, organized and led by Amazigh Kateb Yassin, and because the band and media recognized him as the spokesperson and principal author for Gnawa Diffusion, Amazigh’s life story and words accompany this paper’s arguments and analysis. Through a selective sketch of the various musical consequences of the North African slave trade, the spread of Islam, the colonization of North Africa and the immigration of Algerians to France, we can begin to comprehend how these histories combined and harmonized through Gnawa Diffusion to form the new musical forms of a generation of people who seek to overcome their often divisive cultural heritage. In this case, the intent of the music challenges common notions of authenticity and thereby affirms it."

Hip-hop group the Divided Kingdom Republic (dkr) present a fascinating opportunity to examine how the struggle for creative authenticity and signature sounds within the boundaries of pop music can push artists to engage their indigenous heritage. This paper examines the dkr’s creative process while problematizing their use of the mbira dzaVadzimu musical instrument. Through transcription analysis and conversations with the dkr, it unpacks layers of meaning within their songs as they relate to their transnational lives. Ultimately it argues that by successfully challenging authenticities of mbira and hip-hop performance through unique musical endeavor, Munyaradzi and Kudakwashe have established visions and goals that offer an impressive reinterpretation of mbira music for Zimbabwean musicians to gather behind.

Ethnomusicological institutions transform traditional Zimbabwean musics into
what is practiced in North America and understood by thousands as “Shona music.”
This process produces a false narrative within North America of endangered and
scarce traditional Zimbabwean musical practices, and these ends serve neocolonial
imaginings of the need and right for white stewardship over and charity towards
traditional Zimbabwean music(ians). Such a history strikingly reflects dominant
and reductive North American settler conceptions of the wilderness, national
parks and Indigenous peoples as ecologically vulnerable and in need of protection.
Though this process has also fostered a worthy musical bond between Africans and
North Americans, it has come at the expense of unfettered economic, artistic and
political agency for Zimbabwean musicians and instrument builders who transact
their traditional musics internationally. Working towards an anti-oppressive, ethnographic, ecocritical and ecomusicological approach to interpreting the phenomenon of North American Zimbabwean music, this article addresses the proposal that North America could be an archive for scarce authentic traditional Zimbabwean musics.

Les institutions ethnomusicologiques transforment les musiques traditionnelles
du Zimbabwe en ce qui est pratiqué et reconnu par des milliers, en Amérique du
Nord, comme « Musique Shona ». Ce processus produit, en Amérique du Nord,
un récit erroné des pratiques musicales traditionnelles du Zimbabwe en voie de
disparition et nourrit l’imaginaire néocolonial sur le besoin et la légitimité d’une
intendance blanche et de charité envers les musiciens et les musiques traditionnelles
du Zimbabwe. Une telle histoire souligne les conceptions dominantes et
réductives associées à la mentalité coloniale en Amérique du Nord. Les espaces
naturels et sauvages, les parcs nationaux et les peuples autochtones sont considérés
comme étant écologiquement vulnérables et ayant besoin d’être protégés. Bien que
ce processus ait créé un lien musical louable entre Africains et Nord-Américains, il
s’est développé au détriment du libre-arbitre économique artistique et politique des musiciens et des luthiers zimbabwéens qui ouvrent leurs musiques traditionnelles
à l’international. En développant une approche anti-oppressive, ethnographique,
écocritique et écomusicologique pour interpréter le phénomène de la musique zimbabwéenne nord-américaine, cet article aborde la question de la constitution d’une
archive des musiques authentiques traditionnelles rares du Zimbabwe, en Amérique
du Nord.

Symposium Theme ! The Ecomusicologies 2013 symposium is a featured event within the IMC World Forum, aiming to attract the interest of scholars, musicians, composers and others who may not have yet had an opportunity to engage with this emerging field of critical enquiry. The symposium theme 'Ecosystems and Ecocriticism' is intended as a starting point for discussions about music in the context of different kinds of ecosystems and critical contexts. The theme of the IMC World Forum, 'Sustaining Music, Engaging Communities' aligns with the aims and objectives of many scholars in the field of ecomusicology. For more information about the IMC World Forum, including information about other conferences and events, please see: worldforumonmusic.org.

Ecology, which has long functioned as a metaphor in musical scholarship, seems to be becoming a focus of attention in its own right. Advocates for threatened musical traditions frequently compare them to threatened species, urging us to protect the musical ecosystem. Now, however, scholars are beginning to investigate the connections between music and the world's actual ecosystem, both to broaden the reach of musical scholarship and to recruit it into the environmentalist cause.

This dissertation concerns making music as a utopian ecological practice, skill, or method of associative communication where participants temporarily move towards idealized relationships between themselves and their environment. Live music making can bring people together in the collective present, creating limited states of unification. We are “taken” by music when utopia is performed and brought to the present. From rehearsal to rehearsal, band to band, year to year, musicking binds entire communities more closely together. I locate strategies for community solidarity like turn-taking, trust-building, gift-exchange, communication, fundraising, partying, education, and conflict resolution as plentiful within musical ensembles in any socially environmentally conscious community.

Based upon 10 months of fieldwork and 40 extended interviews, my theoretical assertions are grounded in immersive ethnographic research on Hornby Island, a 12-square-mile Gulf Island between mainland British Columbia and Vancouver Island, Canada. I describe how roughly 1000 Islanders struggle to achieve environmental resilience in a uniquely biodiverse region where fisheries collapsed, logging declined, and second-generation settler farms were replaced with vacation homes in the 20th century. Today, extreme gentrification complicates housing for the island’s vulnerable populations as more than half of island residents live below the poverty line. With demographics that reflect a median age of 62, young individuals, families, and children are squeezed out of the community, unable to reproduce Hornby’s alternative society.

This dissertation begins with theorization that connects music making to community and environmental thought. I then represent the challenges Islanders set for themselves and the struggles they face, like their desire for food sovereignty, off-grid energy, secure housing, protection of their aquifers, affordability of ferry transportation, ecological waste-cycles, and care for each other’s mental health. I bring attention to unique institutions that Islanders have created to better manage their needs and desires. In response to the island’s social and environmental dynamics of justice, I argue and demonstrate through ethnography that music making is an essential communal process that brings people together to dialogue about their needs and advance their goals to establish a more equitable and environmentally responsible community.

This article offers ways of considering the relationship between musicking,
community, and place that arose from research with residents of Hornby Island, British
Columbia. I advance a theory of vibe that captures how Hornby Islanders understand the
role of musicking in their society and its importance for community solidarity, and I offer
practical examples of this theory in action. Throughout the article, I discuss the
relationship between Islanders’ ideas, Charles Keil’s theory of participatory discrepancies
and my conclusions.

This article offers ways of considering the relationship between musicking, community, and place that arose from research with residents of Hornby Island, British Columbia. I advance a theory of vibe that captures how Hornby Islanders understand the role of musicking in their society and its importance for community solidarity, and I offer practical examples of this theory in action. Throughout the article, I discuss the relationship between Islanders' ideas, Charles Keil's theory of participatory discrepancies and my conclusions.

Gnawa Diffusion was a successful musical group of first- and second-generation North African immigrants that achieved significant fame in North Africa, the Middle East and Europe during the last two decades. Based in France, though from Algeria, their politicized egalitarian message reached the world. Their musical skills, instrumentation, tastes and appeal to youth sounds, sentiments and meanings gave their globalized music a prominent place on the global stage. In their work Gnawa Diffusion addressed a panoply of political issues and sought to represent and reach their audience. Their greatest popularity came at the height and conclusion of the Algerian civil war. By parsing the meanings of the band’s name, this paper engages the events and cultures that informed Gnawa Diffusion, exploring the history of the Gnawa, the history of Algeria, and the relationships between France, North Africa and contemporary “French” music. Issues of cultural authenticity and representation are tight...

This paper describes Bob Wiseman's allegorical piece, Uranium, arguing that it accesses emotion to alter the consciousness of percipients. Audiences respond with unusual intensity to Uranium's tragic environmental narrative. By using puppet theatre, film, comedy, and song to win their trust, Wiseman is able to shock his spectators. With interviews and consideration of the semiotic content of Uranium, I explore possibilities for activation of ecological consciousness through performing arts. Building on the shared ideas of Heinrich von Kleist, Gregory Bateson, and Thomas Turino, I argue that Wiseman offers one particularly useful mechanism to advance environmental concerns and learning through the arts. This paper seeks to bridge environmental and (ethno)musicological thought, and has specific relevance to the growing field of ecomusicology, presenting a musical ethnographic case-study in singer-songwriter activism. Introductions On a crisp evening that marked the start of Ontario's autumn, Bob Wiseman performed under a full moon for some 2,000 people at the 2009 Shelter Valley Folk Festival. Facing a barn, bundled up in lawn chairs or on tarps, we were a receptive audience. Surrounded by shocked and weeping people, memories from the night haunt me. Wiseman, mid-set, brought the tragedy of nuclear mining home without shaming, tiring, or losing our attention. Later Wiseman told me, "my job would be a breeze if I only had to perform for family-friendly folk festivals." 1 What follows is a musical ethnographic 2 retracing of the creation of Wiseman's four and a half minute powerful, ecological, allegorical, and political piece, Uranium. After positioning this article as ecomusicological, I offer a phenomenological account of the work for the benefit of those who will never witness the piece in person. I then trace Wiseman's career path in order to frame the conditions that allowed him and his collaborators to create Uranium. Having described Uranium and its creator, I turn to a theoretical exposition of my assertion that Wiseman employs associative semiotic communication that capitalizes on the heightened 1

Over the past decades, a phenomenon of «discovering» hidden Jewish communities in Spain and Portugal has developed, leading to functioning Jewish communities in some cases, and festivals promoting imagined Jewish communities in others. In some cases, there is an overiap between these developments, so that actual religious services, with their music, become part of a tourist-office supported festival. This paper will touch on some wider issues of authenticity and the anthropology of tourism, but will focus on the use of music as an identity marker in these activities. Different origins of the music will be examined: it may be a defining aspect of the culture, and/or it may be shared with other regional groups; or it may be adopted from outside, whether actively sought out or received with little or no initiative on the group's part. In 1492, the Jews were expelled from the kingdoms of León and Castile, in 1497 from Portugal, and in 1498 from Navarra, leaving no Jews on the Iberian Península-officially. The Jews we now know as Sephardim migrated to the ex-Ottoman Empire and north África, eventually to the Americas too; many, especially from Portugal, settled in Amsterdam. Those who chose to stay in Spain and Portugal had to convert to Catholicism, whether voluntarily, semi-voluntarily or by forced baptism. Of these, a ' This is adapted from a conference presentation, for the Canadian Society for Traditional Music; the presentation included video excerpts, and sample symbolic objects from the various events discussed. The research has been sponsored

This monumental, hefty volume is the work of someone who passionately loves musical tradition, and believes in documenting and disseminating it; it is hard to believe that the author's full-time "official" profession has nothing to do with music or ethnography. The focus on Estremadura is an unusual and welcome one: while there is always more work to be done on Trás-os-Montes, the Beiras and other regions of mainland Portugal, little attention has been paid to Estremadura. Clearly, the author wanted to get "everything" in, and the result is a multi-faceted picture of musical traditions in this province, a book to return to often, to read, to look at, and CD's to listen to for pleasure and for study. The songs and pieces discussed in the book are divided into three main chapters: (1) work of various sorts, especially agricultural but also street cries and lullabies, and the romances; (2) the religious and ritual repertoire, including Carnival; and (3) love and recreation, including dance music, and instruments. There is a thoughtful prologue by the eminent Lopes Graça, followed by an introduction, which includes methodology and quite detailed musico-historicoethnographic notes on Estremadura. Useful appendices are the musical transcriptions, mostly corresponding to the items on the CD's: texts of romances and prayers; glossary and local terminology; a guide to the three CD's; indices, and a bibliography. The music is discussed in its daily life contexts, explaining the latter in some detail. Among the interesting discussions is a section on popular dance in Lisbon, and respectful attention is given to the wandering balladmongers, to whom scholars are finally paying more of the attention they deserve. More could be explained about why the romances come under work songs, and the remark that the music of the romances has been given far less scholarly attention than the words is valid indeed, but the deep study the author calls for (pp.110-111) does not really take place here. The book includes a wealth of illustrations: colour photos taken by the author, old black and white photos, splendid post cards from the early 20 th century, 17 th century engravings, and more. Together,they attest to the indissoluble association of music with daily life: agricultural tasks, religious and ritual events.The layout makes full use of page space but avoids being cluttered. Full song texts are provided in smaller print and musical transcriptions are at the back; though one could argue for including them with the discussions which

This volume, in Spanish, is another welcome example of Weich-Shahak's continuing work documenting, disseminating and providing accurate information about Judeo-Spanish song. Over eighty Moroccan Judeo-Spanish romances are fully transcribed (text and music) and annotated, with both textual and musical variants indicated. The selections are taken from Weich-Shahak's 1976-1994 fieldwork in Israel, deposited at the National Sound Archives (NSA) of the Jewish National and University Library at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem; each item is identified with its NSA catalogue number. When Dr Weich-Shahak says "brief" ("breve"), she means it-for example, the history of Moroccan Sephardim is covered in under two pages. While it is refreshing to read a scholarly work which says what it means to say and then goes on to the next point or finishes, sometimes Weich-Shahak can be a little too concise, and a little more information and analysis would be welcome. A tantalizing brevity is a characteristic of the background notes altogether, including Díaz-Más' expert but very short introductory observations. But after all, this volume is subtitled "antología", not "estudio", so the notes can be taken as knowledgeable prologomena. The interested reader should read Weich-Shahak's earlier, and also later, work, covering various aspects of repertoire, social function, and musical analysis, as well as her documentary recordings (Weich-Shahak in "references", below; also Etzion and Weich-Shahak). In any case, Weich-Shahak certainly packs considerable solid information into relatively short texts; the section on melodic structure, for example, are particularly instructive. The text and music transcriptions are carried out and presented with the care and attention to detail which characterizes Weich-Shahak's work, and Díaz-Más' background notes on the texts are, as always, informative. The text transcriptions follow the CSIC system, and are explained clearly, though perhaps a table would be helpful for quick reference. The song transcriptions are well-laid out and easy to read. The incipit/title table at the end (191-202) is useful but appears to have been taken directly from a computer print-out and is not only difficult to read, its headings are actually in English: "theme", "incipit", "place", "code", "no." (number). There are very few typographical errors (e.g. "incuye" for "incluye", p. 27). Regrettably, as over the past several years Hispanists have finally been giving it its deserved serious attention, literatura de cordel has been excluded (except for one ballad; see p.14). The author does list the titles she has recorded, and explains that they are omitted from the anthology only because of the lengthy texts and the differences in structure, not because of value judgments. Still, including at least the melody and a couple of sample strophes, and a sample concordance (a full one would be too extensive) would be helpful, including for comparative ethnomusicological and textual purposes. On the other hand, we find

This solid two-volume set offers a welcome and long-overdue collection of essays on various aspects of literatura de cordel and almost 500 pages of facsimiles from the pliegos collection of the Imprenta Hernando housed at the CSIC in Madrid.1 The chapbooks contain stories, sketches and songs on themes ranging from the pious through the melodramatic and the satirical. Luis Díaz Viana’s introduction provides a substantial overview of literatura de cordel and the history of attitudes toward and studies of the genre. He recalls Julio Caro Baroja’s characterization of it as a “infierno literario ” and discusses the juglar as a kind of “amphibion ” navigating between different registers of culture (I: 34). Díaz Viana goes on to resume and further develop themes at once related to chapbooks and broadsides, and, in a broader application, central to his thinking over the years, particularly challenging the concepts of the “traditional ” and the “popular”, and the very existence of “tradition...

This paper is an overview of my current research on the survival o f the Judeo-Spanish traditional song among Sephardic communi ties in M ontreal and Toronto. It is only recently that serious re search on Canadian Sephardic communities has begun, and little of this work directly concerns music.1 For this reason, my first (and present) task has been to contact and interview members of the community and to collect songs-as well as other aspects of oral history, where possible. Detailed analysis of the song corpus will constitute a later stage of this project. * A d a p te d fro m a p a p e r given a t th e F o lk lo re S tu d ie s A s s o c ia tio n o f C a n a d a m e e tin g in O tta w a , J u n e 1982.

Judeo-Spanish Sephardic ("Ladino") songs have been sung, remembered, composed, and adapted around the Mediterranean, from the late-fifteenth-century expulsions from Iberian lands to festivals of new Ladino songs. This reflective survey explores mythologies around this multi-site, interactive tradition, of which diaspora and re-invention have been defining elements since its inception. Following a brief background, it evokes a lost ethnographic utopia, then moves on to the fledgling recording industry and early forays into systematic fieldwork. It surveys developments in the mid-to-late twentieth and the early twenty-first centuries, when solid scholarship and documentary recordings appeared alongside exoticization and myths. As the repertoire moved into the World Music scene, its older genres and performance styles virtually disappeared, giving way to a re-invented canon and performance practice.