Fall 2006 Advance Course Information

This information effective for Fall 2006. Check with instructor the first day of class for any changes.

Music

[MUSC-11D]

11D. Introduction to World Music.

Instructor: John Schechter
E-mail:jschech@ucsc.edu

Course Description

This course is an introduction to music-cultural traditions in selected world cultures.  The course introduces the content, scope, and methodology of ethnomusicology.  It focuses on understanding the musical styles, performance practices, and cultural functions of these musical traditions.  The class incorporates live class performance of selected music.

Textbook  

Titon, Jeff Todd, gen.ed.  Worlds of Music:  An Introduction to the Music of the World’s Peoples, Shorter version, 2d ed.  Belmont, CA.:  Thomson/Schirmer, 2005.

This book incorporates the innovative feature—one particularly suited for an introductory-level, general education course comprised of a diverse student body, many of whom may not read musical notation—of structural listening charts in real time; these are excellent, easy to use, visual guides to the structure of all the different pieces analyzed in the text, works from many different cultures. 

The chapters to be covered in the Fall 2006 will be: 

The Music-Culture as a World of Music;  North America/Native America;  Africa/Ewe, Mande, Dagbamba, Shona, BaAka;  North America/Black America; Latin America/Chile, Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru;  Discovering and Documenting a World of Music. 

Each chapter is penned by an ethnomusicologist who has established expertise in that particular region.

Objectives

This course covers topics reflecting the distinctive features of selected world music cultures.  Students learn about and experience different kinds of music, and gain a better understanding of how music is used as a form of human expression across various cultures. 

The course emphasizes active listening of stipulated musical examples from representative music-cultures within larger regions.  Those musical examples are analyzed for their formal-structural aspects, and with regard to their musical parameters of melody, rhythm, harmony (if applicable), texture, and dynamics; the examples are also situated within their historical framework and are examined with regard to their current cultural context and significance.

Major musical instruments also receive special attention, with regard to their construction and configuration, performance practice, and historical trajectories.  In addition, students read biographical excerpts about master musicians from particular regions. 

As much as possible, the course incorporates in-class performance of examples from different cultures:  class solo singing, choral singing, ensemble work, and guest performances. 

In sum, classes may incorporate lecture, analysis of assigned and supplemental listening examples, illustrative videos, and in-class performance.

Learning Outcomes

By the end of this course, students should:

• have a clearer understanding of major forms of music in numerous distinct music-cultures, from selected regions of the world.
• in regard to these forms, be able to articulate their structural principles, their particular roles within their own micro-cultural settings and functions, and their local performance practices.
• understand the history, modern roles, construction and configuration, cultural and symbolic value, and performance practice of major musical instruments of particular regions, e.g., mbira for the Shona of Zimbabwe.
• appreciate the character of particular ensembles—their cultural functions, the genres/repertoire they typically perform, and their lifestyles, e.g., West African drum ensembles, American Indian “Drums” (powwow drumming/singing groups), and Andean Quechua/Aymara panpipe ensembles.
• comprehend the verse-structures and culture-contextual significance of numerous song texts—how they constitute and enact a people’s self-image and emergent identity.
• understand, and be able to explain and to apply to particular musics, important music-analytical terms—both pertinent ones from Western music theory (e.g., pentatonic, cyclic, ostinato, additive rhythm, isorhythm) and pertinent ones from the cultures, themselves.

Course sequence

Week One:

"The Music-Culture as a World of Music" (by Titon)
Students read this chapter in the Titon text and listen to the corresponding recorded selections that appear on the compact disc accompanying the text.

Week Two: 

"North America/Native America" (by McAllester)
Students read this chapter in the Titon text and listen to and analyze the corresponding recorded selections that appear on the compact disc accompanying the text.  Students perform selected samples of Native American musics, from the chapter, at the instructor’s discretion.

Week Three:

"North America/Native America" (continued)
Students now focus on selected examples (now not from the textbook) of traditional Great Plains powwow music, and on selected songs by younger American Indian musicians from the Iroquois, Taos Pueblo, and Navajo (Diné) nations.

Week Four:

"Sub-Saharan Africa/Ewe, Mande, Dagbamba, Shona, BaAka" (by Locke)
Students read this chapter in the Titon text and listen to and analyze the corresponding recorded selections that appear on the compact disc accompanying the text.  Students perform selected samples of African musics, from the chapter, at the instructor’s discretion.

Week Five:

"Sub-Saharan Africa/Ewe, Mande, Dagbamba, Shona, BaAka" (continued)
Students now focus on the (instrumental) music of the Shona (Zimbabwe) mbira thumb-piano:  its construction, musical structures, and apprenticeship system, and on the vocal music of the Mongo peoples of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Mid-term exam:  covers  the first five weeks’ material.

Week Six: 

"North America/Black America" (by Titon)
Students read this chapter in the Titon text and listen to and analyze the corresponding recorded selections that appear on the compact disc accompanying the text.  Students perform selected samples of African-American musics, from the chapter, at the instructor’s discretion.

Week Seven: 

"North America/Black America" (continued)
Students now focus on the blues songs of selected notable blues artists, including Bessie Smith, Robert Johnson, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Sonny Terry, Howlin’ Wolf, Robert Cray, and Albert King.

Week Eight:

"Latin America/Chile, Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru" (by Schechter)
Students read this chapter in the Titon text and listen to and analyze the corresponding recorded selections that appear on the compact disc accompanying the text.  Students perform selected samples of Latin American musics, from the chapter, at the instructor’s discretion.

Week Nine:

"Latin America/Chile, Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru" (continued)
Students now focus on the music-ritual of the Latin American child’s wake and its manifestation in Latin American works of visual and literary art, and on the music of Víctor Jara and that of other noted musicians of the Nueva Canción, or New Song, Movement.

Week Ten:

"Discovering and Documenting a World of Music" (by Titon and Reck)
Students read this chapter in the Titon text and examine the broader issues, pertaining to world music, of family, generation, gender, leisure, religion, ethnicity, regionalism, nationalism, and commercial music.  They also become acquainted with the process of doing music-ethnography

Catch up and review for final exam.
           
Final Exam:  covers  the second 5 weeks’ material.

Supplementary Reading List

• Lornell, Kip and Anne K. Rasmussen.  Musics of Multicultural America:  A Study of Twelve Musical Communities.  New York:  Schirmer, 1997.
• Manuel, Peter.  Popular Musics of the Non-Western World:  An Introductory Survey.  New York:  Oxford University Press, 1988.
• May, Elizabeth, ed.  Musics of Many Cultures:  An Introduction.  Berkeley:  University of California Press, 1980.
• Nettl, Bruno.  Folk and Traditional Music of the Western Continents, 3rd ed.  Revised and edited by Valerie Woodring Goertzen.  Englewood Cliffs, NJ.:  Prentice Hall, 1990.  [with chapters on Latin America by Gerard Béhague]
• Nettl, Bruno, and Charles Capwell, Isabel K.F. Wong, Thomas Turino, Philip V. Bohlman.  Excursions in World Music, 4th ed.  Upper Saddle River, NJ.:  Pearson/Prentice Hall, 2004.
• Oxford University Press.  The Global Music Series.  12 case-study volumes:  Thinking Musically, Teaching Music Globally, Music in Japan, Music in Bali, Music in America, Music in Ireland, Music in East Africa, Music in West Africa, Music in South India, Music in North India, Carnival Music in Trinidad, and Music in Bulgaria.  The respective authors are Wade, Shehan Campbell, Wade, Gold, Reyes, Hast and Scott, Barz, Stone, Viswanathan and Allen, Ruckert, Dudley, and Rice.  Forthcoming in 2005 are Music in the Middle East (Marcus), Mariachi Music in America (Sheehy), Music in Brazil (Murphy), and Music in Central Java (Brinner).
• Reck, David.  Music of the Whole Earth.  New York:  Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1977.
• Schechter, John M., gen.ed.  Music in Latin American Culture:  Regional Traditions.  New York:  Schirmer/Wadsworth/Thomson Learning, 1999.
• Titon, Jeff Todd, gen.ed.  Worlds of Music:  An Introduction to the Music of the World’s Peoples, 4th ed.  Belmont, CA.:  Wadsworth/Thomson/Schirmer, 2002.

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