Spring 2015

Music 705: Seminar in Ethnomusicology Musical Echoes:

Old and New African Diasporas

Weds 1-4 P.M.

Music Building 3rd Floor Seminar Room

 

Instructor

Professor Carol Muller, Rm 332, 201 S. 34th Street,

or Africa Center, 639 Williams Hall

camuller@sas.upenn.edu

Office Hours, by appointment, or email.

215 898 7544 (main office)

 

Class Objectives

The purpose of this seminar is to examine contemporary ideas about African [musical] diasporas. This includes extending the old African diaspora, which has assumed a hegemonic place in the academic study of African diaspora, into contemporary forms of African diasporas.  In some instances, the old and new diasporas find points of intersection through human and musical contact. Frequently these points of intersection are mediated and transported through modern and globally distributed technologies.

Listening diasporically is a key part of the intellectual and musical discovery in this seminar, especially listening live.  Coming to know is a process, and so everyone will keep a journal of readings, ideas, experiences submitted at the end of the semester along with your final TURNINGS paper.

Be aware that there is no way to cover in a comprehensive way the wide range of issues that are raised in the experience and subject of diaspora and exile.  We will not focus specifically on issues of memory or trauma, for example.  And yet, that theme runs through much of what we read; as does the issue of music and politics, music and revolution, or music and love.

 

Your Grade

Class participation

• Weekly Participation, Live Performances, and Journal 50%

Final Paper

• Verbal presentation 10%
• Paper 40%

 

Weekly Participation

This will be assessed in terms of your preparedness for the seminar, the quality of questions asked, your engagement with the music itself and its bearing on what we are reading, the thoughtfulness of your responses, and your attendance of live performances.  Your reading and thinking summaries must be submitted in journal form with your final paper—A TURNINGS piece of up to 15 pages.
Live Performances

Attend at least two but hopefully more performances of African diasporic/globally distributed music this semester, write about every performance attended by dwelling on one substantial diasporic idea, or briefly fleshing out 2 or 3 you read them into the performance.  Read at least one out loud in class—no more than  5-6 mins of reading out loud.

 

Reading BEYOND the class

afropop.org (Links to an external site.)

Africa is a Country http://africasacountry.com (Links to an external site.)

 

Final Paper

In the last two classes everyone will read a 15 minute conference version of their final written paper (i.e., without footnotes and references) based on the idea of TURNINGS (Ifekwunigwe).  You will get feedback on your work from your peers for about 5 minutes.  The final version of your paper and journal must be submitted 9 days after the verbal presentation as both hardcopy and online.  You may single space and double side your journal and paper.
Schedule of Readings

Wednesday January 21, 2015: Introduction

How Big is Africa?  (Links to an external site.)http://www.bu.edu/africa/outreach/resources/curriculum/curriculum-guide/ (Links to an external site.)

Map of Africa http://www.worldatlas.com/webimage/countrys/africapolitmap.jpg (Links to an external site.)

or http://kai.subblue.com/images/true-size-of-africa-kk-v2.pdf (Links to an external site.)

A few more facts, 1.1 billion people; by 2100 40% of worlds population will be African (without some intervention), 8/10 fastest growing economies are African.  50 wealthiest Africans worth $21 billion, and world’s richest black woman is no longer Oprah Winfrey but self made Nigerian billionaire.

 

Readings

Ifekwunigwe, Jayne.  2003.  Returning(s): Relocating the Critical Feminist Auto-Ethnographer in Jana Evans Braziel and Anita Mannur (eds.) Theorizing Diaspora, Blackwell, Malden, 184-206.

Zeleza, Paul Tiyambe.  2008.  The Challenges of Studying the African Diasporas.  African Sociological Review12/2, 4-21.

FYI:

Campbell, James.  2002 [2000]“The Americanization of South Africa,” in Elaine Tyler May and Reinhold Wagnleitner (eds.), Here, There and Everywhere: The Foreign Politics of American Popular Culture.  Hanover: University Press of New England, pp. 34-63. (Reprinted in Andrew Offenburger, Scott Rosenberg, and Christopher Saunders (eds.), Safundi: A South African and American Comparative Reader (Phoenix: Safundi)

Tunde Jegede, Africa I Remember, Anglo diasporic musician

 

Viewing Africa I Remember, about Anglo-African Tunde Jegede’s journey back to Africa, musically and creatively.  https://media.sas.upenn.edu/watch/87297 (Links to an external site.)

 

CLIPS

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfnaQ9Cuw5k (Links to an external site.) (Links to an external site.)(2009) with African Classical Music Ensemble

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o78bvm8B5VU (Links to an external site.) (Links to an external site.)(2013) Tunde Jegede and the African Classical Music Ensemble

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwORgr5S3is (Links to an external site.) (Links to an external site.)(2009 performance of earlier composition), with the Brodsky Quartet

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kjuoeVd3CQ (Links to an external site.) (Links to an external site.)Song of the Waterfall (without video image of performance)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SbcAjvVDcY (Links to an external site.) (Links to an external site.)Tunde Jegede’s Nomadic Mystics rehearsing (204, but uploaded 2010)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0UhNpd9eE0 (Links to an external site.) (Links to an external site.)

 

Follow up: FYI

Think about the idea of an “African Classical Music” created by musicians in diaspora, and by composers in Africa.  Is such a genre possible, is adopting European classical music repertory and strategies allowing oneself to be colonized by European ways, or is there a way to be an African “classical” composer and performer?  What strategies?

See website: www.tundejegede.com (Links to an external site.)

 

READINGS to prompt discussion about the creation of a category of “African classical music”–how should it sound, is it possible to create without a sense of cultural imperialism, what is it’s relationship to language, to exisiting popular and folk musical forms, is hybridity the only way forward? What about Tunde Jegede as composer of diaspora, who harnesses whatever he needs to create something new–how does the music industry, which is so divided into categories–support music like Jegede’

Abiola Irele

Paul Robeson

 

Wednesday January 28, 2015: Inventing Africa, Representing its Music

Mudimbe, VY.1988.  The Invention of Africa: Gnosis, Philosophy, and the Order of Knowledge.  Bloomington: Indiana UP  This is an e-book through Penn library.  Read at least three chapters, as much as you can.  Make sure you read Introduction and first chapter, if you can ch. 3 and conclusion.

Agawu, K.  2003.  Representing African Music: Postcolonial Notes, Queries, Positions.  NY: Routledge.

Erlmann, V.  1999. “Spectatorial Lust” The African Choir in England.  1891-93.  IN Bernth Lindfors (ed.)  Africans on Stage.  READ ALSO Lindfors’ brief introduction.
Wednesday February 4, 2015: Diaspora Generally, Africa Specifically

Baldwin, Kate.  2003.  Proximate Practices, Gender, Diaspora, and the Rise of Black Internationalism. Diaspora 12/2.

Butler, Kim.  2001.  Defining Diaspora, Refining a Discourse.  Diaspora 10/2.

Hine, Darlene Clark et al (eds.)  2009.  Black Europe and the African Diaspora.  University of Illinois Press, Foreword, 1-28.

Jayne Ifekwunigwe.  2000.  Writing Home: Reconfiguring the (English) African Diaspora.  IN Kwesi Owusu (ed.)  Black British Culture and Society: A Text Reader.  NY: Routledge, 489-98.

Okphewho, Isidore.  2009. Introduction: Can We Go Home Again? IN Okphewho (ed).  The New African Diaspora.  Bloomington: Indiana UP, 3-30

Safron, William.  1999.  Comparing Diasporas.  Diaspora 8/3.

_____________.  1991.  Diasporas in Modern Societies: Myths of Homeland and Return.  Diaspora 1/2.

Slobin, Mark.  1994.  Introduction to issue on Music and Diaspora.  Diaspora 3/3.
Wednesday February 11, 2015: Race Vs Empire, Satchmo Blows up The World

Von Eschen, Penny.  1997.  Race Against Empire: Black Americans and Anti-colonialism, 1937-57.  Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1-43, 69-95.

Kelly, Robin.  200?  Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination.  Boston: Beacon.  Excepts.

Crist, Stephen.  2009.  Jazz as Democracy?  Dave Brubeck and Cold War Politics.  Journal of Musicology 26/2.

Recommended

________________.  2004.  Satchmo Blows Up the World: Jazz Ambassadors Play the Cold War.  Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP.  1-91.

Wednesday February 18, 2015: Old vs New African Diaspora

Gates, HL.  1988.  The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African American Literary Criticism.  NY: Oxford UP.  Intro, Chs. 1, 2, 4

Gilroy, Paul.  1993.  The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness.  Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, ix-xi, 1-40, 72-110, 187-223. (or Intro, Chs, 1, 3, 6)

FYI: Chivallon, Christine.  2002. Beyond Gilroy’s Black Atlantic: The Experience of the African Diaspora.  Diaspora11/3.

Christman, Laura.  2000.  Journeying to Death: Gilroy’s Black Atlantic.  IN Kwesi Owusu (ed.)  Black British Culture and Society: A Text Reader.  NY: Routledge, 453-64.

Wednesday February 25, 2015: African Ties to American Music

Ballantine, C.  2012 (1993).  Marabi Night: Jazz, “race” and society in apartheid South Africa.  UKZN Press.

Monson, Ingrid 2007.  Freedom Sounds: Civil Rights Call out to Jazz and Africa.  Chs 1, 3-5.

Monson, Ingrid.  2000.  The African Diaspora: A Musical Perspective.  NY: Garland.  1-22,  329-52 (Art Blakey’s African Diaspora).

 

Wednesday March 4, 2015: Diaspora or Cosmopolitanism?

Turino, Tom.  2000.  Nationalists, Cosmopolitans, and Popular Music in Zimbabwe.  Chicago: U of Chicago Press.

Feld, Steven.  2012.  Jazz Cosmopolitanism in Accra: Five Musical Years in Ghana.  Durham: Duke UP.

 

SPRING BREAK March 11, 2015

 

Wednesday March 18, 2015: Diaspora and Globalization

Klein, Debra.  2007.  Yoruba Bata Goes Global: Artists, Culture Brokers, and Fans.  Chicago: U of Chicago Press.

Olatunji, B.  2005.  The Beat of My Drum: an Autobiography.  Philadelphia: Temple UP.

Searching for Sugar Man.  Nc.  Directed by Malik Bendjelloul.

 

Wednesday March 25: Diasporic Biography?

Pick a biography of an African Musician, how does a life story provoke/lead to social and cultural theory insight into diasporic experience?
Wednesday April 1, 2015 NO CLASS

 

 Wednesday April 8, 2015 Poetics of Diaspora: Musical Echoes

Muller and Benjamin. 2011. Musical Echoes: South African Women Thinking in Jazz, Durham: Duke UP

Nuttall, Sarah.  2009.  Entanglement: Literary and Cultural Reflections on Post-Apartheid.  Johannesburg: Wits University Press, 1-32.

Yon, D.  2012.  Sathima’s Windsong Documentary Film

View: Sathima’s Windsong, discuss nature of diasporic experience

See also Lucia, 2003.  Abdullah Ibrahim: The Uses of Memory.  British Forum for Ethnomusicology.

 

Wednesday April 15, 2015 Poetics of Diaspora

Nutall, Beautiful/Ugly: African and Diaspora Aesthetics.  Durham: Duke UP.  Read chapters by Nutall, Mbembe, Clarke, Barnard

Ntarangwi, Reversed Gaze: An African Ethnography of American Anthropology.  Urbana: U of Illinois, Preface, chs, 2, 4, 6

Ingold, Making, chs. 1, 2, 8

Fisher and Fortnum (eds.) On Not Knowing, How Artists Think.  London: Black Dog Publishing.  Read Introduction.
Wednesdays April 22 and 29, 2015: Your Presentations

Prepare and present a 15-minute (conference length) presentation of your paper.  This should be about 8 double-spaced pages on the subject of Africa, old or new diaspora and music.  You may extend this paper into a 12-15 page piece, including all notes, references.  Anything longer will not be read.

Final papers and journals to be submitted in hardcopy and online by noon May 8, 2015.