AMSGNY Meetings

 

The joint meeting of the Greater New York Chapter of the AMS  and the Mid Atlantic Chapter of the Society for Ethnomusicology (MACSEM), will take place from April 4^th through April 6^th at AMS headquarters at New York University, 20 Cooper Square, Floor 3, New York, NY 10003.  The location is accessible to the West 4^th Street, West 8^th Street, and Astor Place subway stations.  It will be necessary to sign up for the conference, and a form will be sent out around two weeks prior to do so, but there is no fee to attend.

The conference will start on Friday, April 4^th, in the evening, with a roundtable discussion on the similarities/differences between musicology and ethnomusicology.  Each of the presenters will give brief (5 minutes) presentations, and then we will open the floor to discussion. 

Styra Avins and David Schiller will represent the AMSGNY.  Michael Iyanaga, the president of MACSEM, will choose the ethnomusicologists.

This will start at 5:30 PM and will be over around an hour later. 

This will be followed, at 7 PM, with a performance of Japanese gagagku music.   The performers are from the Columbia University Gagaku Program.  Lish Lindsey will also give a brief explanation of the music.

The performers are: Tom Piercy: Hichiriki; Lish Lindsey: Ryūteki; Harrison Hsu: Shō

This is the schedule of presentations:

Saturday, April 5

10 AM-12 Noon

Music, Mimesis, and Affect in Theodor Reik and Sandór Ferenczi

Alec Wood (Yale University)

Echoes of Debussy’s Influence:  The Development of Twentieth-Century Flute Repertoire

Jessica Ringston  (Mannes School of Music)

Voices of Awakening: The genesis and development of Chinese art songs (1920-1945)

            Chih-Hsin Chou (New York City)

Historical and Contemporary Considerations for Understanding the Static Elements Maintained in an Urban Ethnomusical Culture: The Case of the Chinese Funeral Brass Bands in Chinatown

            Joseph Kaminski (College of Staten Island)

 

1 PM-3 PM

The Forgotten Master of Player Piano: J. Lawrence Cook and his thousands of piano rolls

Ching Nam Hippocrates Cheng (Indiana University)

Makers’ Knowledge and Knowledge Making: Reconsidering Monoxyle Lutes’ Construction and Classification

            Hilary Brady Morris (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign)

Fallout: London- Sounding Out British Identity Post-Apocalypse

            Reid Orphan (Lycoming College)

Listening to History Through Learning Đàn Tranh With Yes We Can Music

            Julia Santoli (CUNY Graduate Center)

 

3:30 PM-5 PM

The Many Faces of Moradi’s Music: A Comparative Analysis of Situational Identities

            Kajwan Ziaoddini (University of Maryland)

Critical Analysis of Canonical Repertoires in Mexico from a Social-Ethnographic Perspective: A Case Study of the Cello Department at UNAM’s Music Faculty

Mariana Sánchez (McGill University)

Cor des alpes: Creating and Sustaining Heritage Through Performance Practice

Maureen Kelly (University of Ottawa)

Reverse Engineering Rhythmanalysis Through Samba

            Romulo Moraes (CUNY Graduate Center)

 

Sunday, April 5

10 AM-12 Noon

Mediating the Past and the Present through "Side Rhythm"

            Janhavi Phansalkar (CUNY Graduate Center)

Tracing the Haunting of El Fukú: Sampling and Cultural Endurance Against Settler Colonialism

            Justin Paulino (Bard College)

Vibing and Hegemonic Masculinities in Jazz

            Maurice Restrepo (CUNY Graduate Center)

To Be Fil-Am: Navigating Hyphenated Authenticity in the Diaspora

            Molly Manhoff (Bucknell University)

 

12:30 PM-3 PM

Voice, Brand Persona, and Virality in Doja Cat’s Planet Her (2021)

            Annie Liu (Princeton University)

The Vallenato Paradox: Exploring Hungry Listening and Ideological Interpellation in the Postcolonial Soundscape

            Paloma Orti (Bucknell University)

In Search of Our “True Academy”: Reflections on Modern Band, Open Jams, and the Purpose of Popular Music Education

            Tom Zlabinger (York College)

Crowd Goes Mild: Elder Audiences, Musical Amenities, and Collective Underwhelm in Florida’s Snowbird Communities

            Ken Tianyuan Ge (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)

Plants as Porous: Sound, Art, and Herbalism as Vegetal Knowing

            Gabriel Andruzzi (University of Maryland)

 

ABSTRACTS AND BIOGRAPHIES

Name:  Gabriel Andruzzi

Society Membership: SEM

Institutional Affiliation: University of Maryland

Title: Plants as Porous: Sound, Art, and Herbalism as Vegetal Knowing

Abstract:

How do acts of knowing plants, listening to their messages, and interacting creatively with a conscious and communicative vegetal world contribute to acts of personal and social transformation for humans? My paper addresses this question by exploring the practices of artists and herbalists who use plant life and sound as part of private or public healing performances. Through two ethnographic case studies, I explore how using sounds and plants in healing practices enact interspecies relationships and how these practices reinscribe or transgress species boundaries. The first case study engages with New York City area herbalists and sound healers who gain knowledge about plants through sound and listening practices. Acts of vibrational healing applied across species enact conceptions of a shared human and vegetal consciousness. The second case study explores the works of a Hudson Valley artist who listens and talks with plants, creates devotional music for plants, and acts as an intermediary between plants and other humans. While hearing plant voices asserts a conception of vegetal agency, sonic praise for plants acts as a mode of healing for humans and plants. This research contributes to scholarship in the recent “plant turn,” a growing interest in the vegetal within music studies, and broadly to the eco-humanities. I highlight the various roles plants play: plants as persons, as human surrogates, as healing agents, and as stuff. I argue that plants are liminal figures and porous categories that play multiple, often imbricated, roles in human imaginaries.

 

Name:  Ching Nam Hippocrates Cheng

Society Membership: AMS and SEM

Institutional Affiliation: Indiana University

Title: The Forgotten Master of Player Piano: J. Lawrence Cook and his thousands of piano rolls

Abstract:

The player piano and piano rolls hold a unique place in jazz history, bridging the live, improvisational nature of jazz and the burgeoning field of mechanical music reproduction. These technologies allowed for the intricate nuances of jazz performances to be captured and disseminated more widely, enabling artists to reach audiences beyond the confines of live performances.

This paper delves into the ethnographic and ethnomusicological research on J. Lawrence Cook, a seminal yet underrecognized Black artist and master of player piano in jazz history. He produced thousands of piano rolls, which the Music Roll Companies populated, and was played on player pianos all over the United States.

This paper aims to shed light on Cook's legacy, exploring his unique playing styles by accessing his piano rolls, his contributions to the development of player piano and piano roll technology, his relationship with Fat Wallers (as he produced some rolls under Fats Waller's name) and his importance to jazz history.

By acknowledging Cook's works, I pay homage to a forgotten master whose artistry continues to influence the musical world through his piano rolls, affirming the need to celebrate the unsung masters of jazz and their enduring impact on the genre.

 

Name:  Chih-Hsin Chou

Society Membership: AMS

Institutional Affiliation: New York City

Title: Voices of Awakening: The genesis and development of Chinese art songs (1920-1945)

Abstract:

In the last decades of the 19th century, the territorial sovereignty and economic control of the Qing Dynasty was severely threatened by unequal treatises with the Imperial colonial power as well as Japan. Activists soon realized that science and culture were the true strengths of the West. Their desire for western knowledge and traditions led to a social-political movement, known as the New Culture Movement (1916-1920s).

Educators in the movement considered music as a character-building tool and, therefore, a crucial element of school curriculum. Writers and linguists wished to break free of the Classical literature. Art songs, marrying words and music, became a natural vehicle for furthering their efforts.

Most leading composers and lyricists of early Chinese art songs received their training in the West. Following the tradition of Lieder and mélodie, these compositions were largely written for solo voice with piano accompaniment. Musically, they often featured both western and Chinese attributes. The latter included pentatonic melodic lines, pre-existing theatrical tunes and traditional poetic recitations.

In my proposed presentation, I intend to discuss the following aspects of Chinese art songs:

•Historical Background
•New Culture Movements—Its ideology and its influence on literature and music
•School songs
•Leading composers and lyrists of Chinese art songs (1920-1945)
•Lyrical styles
•Linguistic characters
•Musical features: Demonstrating the western influences and detailing the employment of traditional components

I would conclude with social and cultural impacts of Chinese art songs.

 

Name:  Ken Tianyuan Ge

Society Membership: AMS and SEM

Institutional Affiliation: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Title: Crowd Goes Mild: Elder Audiences, Musical Amenities, and Collective Underwhelm in Florida’s Snowbird Communities

Abstract:

This project grows out of five months of deliberate fieldwork and a decade of professional involvement in what South Florida musicians call the “Borscht Belt”—a robust cabaret and variety entertainment scene that services the many gated retirement villages peppered along the Gold Coast. Succeeding the famed twentieth-century leisurescapes of the Catskills, the Floridian Borscht Belt hosts a demographic of mostly American Jewish (but also white Anglo) retirees who flock to sunnier climes every winter. Within such “snowbird” communities, musical entertainment is brokered and consumed as an amenity: a creature-comfort, whose commodity form both boosts and complicates the value of a given infrastructure. Yet, for all their sensory bombast and targeted boomer-humor, many of these programs fall flat, manifesting a diffuse smattering of titters, groans, and nongermane conversation.

In this paper, I interrogate such underwhelming responses as a distinct category of sound endemic to aesthetic experience in late capitalist society. Against essentialist rationales of age and ethnicity, I argue that audiences who “give nothing” are in fact sounding a collective, heterogenous equivocation on the forces that seek—sometimes, a little too hard—to entertain them. Building on Sianne Ngai’s Theory of the Gimmick (2022), I theorize their affective anemia as an aesthetic-economic judgment on the obfuscated value and overperformed intensity of entertainment in its amenity form. Through interviews, field recordings, and structural analysis of Borscht repertoire and stage techniques, I thus frame the audible refraction of a political economy in which musical laborers encounter audiences that are, in a sense, post-labor.

 

Name: Joseph Kaminski

Society Membership:  SEM

Institutional Affiliation: College of Staten Island

Title: Historical and Contemporary Considerations for Understanding the Static Elements Maintained in an Urban Ethnomusical Culture: the Case of the Chinese Funeral Brass Bands in Chinatown

Abstract:

This presentation regards the urban ethnomusicology of the Chinese funeral brass bands that perform in New York’s Chinatown and the need for a fieldworker’s background in the history of a tradition to prevent misconstrued notions when casting etic paradigms upon remaining static cultural elements. In a modernized and globalized world, especially in cities but also pertaining to villages, musical genres do not come from nowhere. Since they are developments of historical traditions, they maintain underlining values of a static performance, even when the outer expression of the performance has progressed by globalized and external influences. So the urban ethnomusical dichotomy is whether new musical genres to a city are changed by the city, or whether they maintain a static culture that protects itself from the city. The observation of both elements in the Chinese funeral bands is discussed in this presentation. It concludes that the urbanization of music is an ongoing process and in the case of Chinese bands, they already urbanized 130 years ago in China by the development of the modern Chinese military and the Chinese adoption of a Western education system. However, the static elements maintained in the funerals is the music-religious element pertaining to Min Dong spirituality and the afterlife, which is most often overlooked by outside musicians in the field who impose their own musical harmonic arrangements on modal melodies without even a background in the history of the modernization of Chinese modes in the 20th century. Therefore, a fieldworker’s background in the history of the genre also requires a background in the historical changes of the music theoretical system and how both the music and culture had gotten to this point.

 

Bio:

Name:  Maureen Kelly

Society Membership: AMS

Institutional Affiliation: University of Ottawa

Title: Cor des alpes: creating and sustaining heritage through performance practice

Abstract:

This paper investigates alphorn music by Francophone composers and the transnational aesthetic standards of aurally-transmitted works from the traditional canon of Francophone Swiss cantons and communes. Francophone cantonal culture has historically been marginalized, which has resulted in a lack of representation in research, published musical works, and election results. The socio-cultural effects of this phenomenon can be traced back prior to the Napoleonic era and continues to shape and affect Swiss culture through the modern era.

Francophone alphorn players organize, perform, and transmit ideas in ways outside of the accepted Swiss establishment, and often in ways specific to their canton. These cantons have rich cultural histories, alpine herding traditions, and alphorn performance practices that hold distinct regional significance. This paper explores the intergenerational transmission of musical, linguistic, and cultural knowledge as it applies to aesthetic standards, which vary significantly between cantons and communes. Work in these regions is primarily supported by the prior research of Hartley-Moore (2007), Gibson and Weinberg (1980, 1983), and Bendix (esp. 1989, 1992, 2017).

The alphorn community is inherently transnational, and this paper considers the ways in which Francophone composers interact with their North American colleagues. Shared performance aesthetics cultivate a strong sense of belonging and friendship between members of the transnational community, and the influence of Francophone composers and others outside of the mainstream narrative has been especially beneficial to the development of common performance practices. Given their global reach, Francophone music and ideas will continue to influence community formation and transnational aesthetic standards.

 

Name:  Annie Liu

Society Membership: AMS

Institutional Affiliation: Princeton University

Title: Voice, Brand Persona, and Virality in Doja Cat’s Planet Her (2021)

Abstract:

Viral sensation, rapper and singer Doja Cat describes her 2021 album Planet Her as “the center of the universe…where all races of space exist and its where all species can kind of be in harmony there” (Zipper, 2021). This high-femme musical portrait of Afrofuturism explores sexuality, whimsy, and womanhood within a space-age sensibility, evidenced by its galactic cover art and otherworldly music videos.

Synthesizing approaches from Heidemann (2016) and Nobile (2022), I locate three contrasting vocal styles in Planet Her, differentiated by vocal timbre and delivery: breathy singing voice (head voice, open vocal tract, high pitch range), twangy singing voice (chest or mixed voice, twang or constricted vocal tract), and creaky rapped voice (a mixture of creak and rasp). Using the tracks “Woman,” “Naked,” and “Get Into It (Yuh),” I show how her deployment of these vocal styles embodies and articulates themes of vulnerability, confidence, sexuality, and pleasure.

I argue that these vocal styles, while sonically differentiated, inimitably communicate Doja Cat’s brand persona, or “the totality of the musician’s performed self,” (Samples, 2018) on platforms like TikTok. When users view content accompanied by Planet Her tracks, Doja Cat’s timbrally distinct and salient voices facilitate artist identification and listenership. I contend that she articulates her brand persona and illustrates her shifting femininity through her multifaceted voices, operationalizing vocal timbre in service of audibility and virality within an increasingly saturated digital music scene. This synthesis demonstrates the potential applications and extensions of timbre analysis, new media, and digital culture within music studies.

 

Name:  Molly Manhoff

Society Membership: Neither

Institutional Affiliation: Bucknell University

Title: To Be Fil-Am: Navigating Hyphenated Authenticity in the Diaspora

Abstract:

How do you create an identity in the diaspora? How do you navigate a hyphenated identity? What is an “authentic” cultural identity? The question of authenticity haunts Filipino Americans when it comes to cultural presentation. Conversations of cultural performance and how music ties into diasporic identity abound, particularly on the West Coast (e.g. Gonzalves 2010, Lipat-Chesler and Talusan 2020). However, discussions of hyphenated authenticity are held daily by students at various institutions across the United States through cultural clubs and performances. My paper addresses how Filipino American students create new forms of identity through Pilipino Culture Nights. Typically through cultural performances of music and dance, students can experiment with new forms of identity rooted in their personal, embodied experiences. Drawing on three years of leadership in and observation of PCNs at Bucknell University, I explore how Bucknell University’s Philippine Student Association uses the annual Asian Gala performance to navigate the hyphen between Filipino and American identity, as well as the relationship between modernity and tradition. I suggest that the performance of culture provides a mode of identity construction by bridging the temporal (past and present) and physical (the islands to the states) gaps of Filipino American identity. I argue that Filipino-American diasporic identity is created through personal, dynamic, lived experiences, as opposed to ascribing to a stagnated definition of cultural authenticity. In conclusion, by examining how Filipino American students utilize cultural performance through PCNs, their cultural identity is given the fluidity and flexibility necessary in the diaspora.

 

Name:  Romulo Moraes

Society Membership: SEM

Institutional Affiliation: CUNY Graduate Center

Title: Reverse Engineering Rhythmanalysis Through Samba

Abstract:

The concept of "rhythmanalysis" is now a staple in Marxist sociology and urban anthropology through Henri Lefebvre's theorizations, which provided an influential framework to address the production of space and time under capitalism. What is not so well discussed is the way Lefebvre borrowed this notion from French phenomenologist Gaston Bachelard, who in turn took it directly from a Portuguese-Brazilian professor named Lucio Pinheiro dos Santos. Semi-anonymous, Pinheiro dos Santos has been described as a ghost philosopher of sorts. In fact, all his work was thought lost until 2018, when a Brazilian researcher found newspaper articles he published in the 1940s. Those articles remain untranslated, however, meaning most theorizations on rhythmanalysis, including Lefebvre's, have developed irrespective of its main figurehead. It is also fascinating how the concept has gained autonomy in relation to musical concepts of rhythm which could very well help define it.

This paper seeks to remediate both of these faults, connecting recent archival discoveries on the life of this professor to a wider anthropology of rhythm. For Pinheiro dos Santos came from Portugal to Brazil in 1926, and published his book on rhythmanalysis in 1931, just as samba was emerging as a popular music in the country. The hypothesis is, then, that he may have developed rhythmanalysis in tandem with an encounter with complex Afro-Brazilian percussive patterns inherent to samba. And that analyzing the Afro-Brazilian roots of samba may be a good way of reverse engineering the notion of rhythmanalysis as it was originally conceived.

 

Bio: Rômulo Moraes is a Brazilian writer, sound artist, and PhD candidate in Ethnomusicology at CUNY Graduate Center with a Fulbright/CAPES Scholarship. He teaches at Brooklyn College and The New Centre for Research & Practice, and his essays and reviews have been published on magazines like e-flux, The Wire, Brooklyn Rail, Aquarium Drunkard, and Bandcamp Daily, as well as academic journals like Cultural Sociology, American Music Review, Pulse, LaDeleuziana, and Revista Brasileira de Música.

Name:  Hilary Brady Morris

Society Membership: SEM

Institutional Affiliation: University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

Title:  Makers’ Knowledge and Knowledge Making: Reconsidering Monoxyle Lutes’ Construction and Classification

Bio: 

Name:  Reid Orphan

Society Membership: Neither

Institutional Affiliation: Lycoming College

Title:  Fallout: London- Sounding Out British Identity Post-Apocalypse

Abstract:

Released on July 25th, 2024, "Fallout: London" is a free, full-sized, fan-made game in the Fallout franchise, built over the course of five years by a team of volunteers working inside the game "Fallout 4" through a process known as “modding” (modifying, adjusting, or generating new content in computer games with various external tools, usually to be released for free online). "Fallout: London" has received widespread praise and attention that extends beyond the video game community, such as being featured in multiple interviews by the BBC.

As a franchise, Fallout is known for its America-centric storytelling in a post-nuclear wasteland, purposefully leaving the state of the rest of the world a mystery. The franchise leans heavily into Cold War-era language (Cheng 2014, Dickert 2021). This America-centricity extends to the soundtracks of the games, television show, and beyond, largely featuring a 1950s Americana aesthetic mixed with bleak ambient undertones. This left the mostly British team of Fallout: London with a unique question: What does British identity sound like after a nuclear war?

This paper will look at the project of "Fallout: London" and how its creative team (particularly the composers and sound designers) went about finding their idea of real-world British sonic identity and how they transformed this sound into that of the year 2237- over 150 years after the bombs dropped in the Fallout universe. It will examine how the British Fallout fanbase conceives of British identity and how it can be transformed for a post-apocalyptic setting through worldbuilding.

 

Bio: Reid Orphan is a senior at Lycoming College, majoring in music. He is an avid gamer, and much of his research is into the sonic creations of video game fan communities.

 

 

Name:  Paloma Orti

Society Membership: Neither

Institutional Affiliation: Bucknell University

Title:  The Vallenato Paradox: Exploring Hungry Listening and Ideological Interpellation in the Postcolonial Soundscape

Abstract:

Vallenato, a Colombian folk genre born from colonial hybridity, is prominently featured in Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967). This paper examines the paradoxical nature of vallenato: a genre shaped by colonial frameworks and global commodification yet serving as a medium of cultural resistance and identity formation. Through Márquez’s use of vallenato as a narrative device, I explore moments in the novel that highlight the tensions between cultural preservation and commodification, between appropriation and resilience

By integrating Dylan Robinson’s concept of Hungry Listening and Louis Althusser’s theory of ideological interpellation, this study interrogates vallenato as a site of ideological production. Robinson critiques the capitalist systems that decontextualize and commodify cultural expressions, while Althusser reveals how ideological structures shape individuals to reinforce hegemonic power. Together, these frameworks illuminate how vallenato operates within the dual systems of colonial legacy and capitalist exploitation.

This analysis employs a comparative literary methodology, combining intertextual analysis and cultural studies to position vallenato as both a narrative and ideological tool in Márquez’s work. For instance, I discuss a scene in which vallenato paradoxically preserves collective memory while simultaneously perpetuating hierarchical social structures rooted in colonial legacies. This duality underscores vallenato’s significance as a lens for examining the intersections of narrative, music, and cultural identity in postcolonial Colombia.

 

Bio: Paloma Orti holds a degree in Comparative Literature and a Master’s in Literary Studies, both from the University of Granada, Spain. She is currently a Spanish Teaching Assistant at Bucknell University, where she combines literature and language instruction to promote cultural awareness and critical thinking. Her research focuses on postcolonial theory, the intersection of music and literature, and environmental humanities. Paloma is particularly interested in exploring how cultural narratives, especially through artistic expressions, engage with and challenge dominant ideologies, reflecting broader socio-political contexts.

Name: Justin Paulino

Society Membership: Neither

Institutional Affiliation: Bard College

Title: Tracing the Haunting of El Fukú: Sampling and Cultural Endurance Against Settler Colonialism

 

Abstract:

"Tracing the Awakening of El Fukú: Sampling and Cultural Endurance Against Settler Colonialism" examines how communities who have been dispossessed, eradicated, violently vanished and been in “la mierda ever since” conquistadors landed on lands that were never theirs have maintained livelihood and endurance against monstrous forces. As Tiffany Lethabo King states, “the Fukú represents how conquest lives on the tips of the tongues of the descendants of Indigenous and Black folks who are a part of the Dominican and African diaspora in the Americas”. Ultimately, the first soundscapes created by conquest in the “New World” were shaped by Black and Indigenous noise, disrupting the conquistador’s sonic color line. The sonic color line is maintained through the active reinforcement of the listening ear, a form of accumulating dominant listening practices homogenized to maintain the sonic color line. I utilize ethnographic research at musical performances and venues where sampling is being conducted, performed, or referenced. I argue that sampling encompasses what Pauline Oliveros defines as deep listening, maintaining resistance and endurance against El Fuku, historical amnesia and settler colonialism. This project aims to implement deep listening along these sonic color lines through the musical form of sampling. Alongside ethnographic methodologies, I utilize sampling as a methodology and the music of J Dilla’s catalog to frame a performance paper.

 

Bio: Justin Paulino (he/they) is a senior joint major in Sociology and American Indigenous Studies concentrating in Latin American Studies at Bard College. Residing in the Bronx, Justin has an array of musical pursuits and interests including music production, drumming, DJing and more. He is interested in the intersections of urban ecologies, power, sound and decolonial studies. His senior thesis will examine the relations between residents and private universities within city neighborhoods. Justin also works as an undergraduate researcher for Rethinking Place, a Mellon Foundation “Humanities for All Times” initiative at Bard College.

Name:  Janhavi Phansalkar

Society Membership: SEM

Institutional Affiliation: CUNY Graduate Center

Title: Mediating the Past and the Present through "Side Rhythm"

Abstract:

Many objects of the past acquire new meanings that move increasingly further from the one with which they were originally ascribed, as they travel over the centuries. Some associations between object and meaning, however, remain intact. The "tal", a set of brass cymbals is one such example. It is an instrument used for side-rhythm in the performance of devotional music of the Varkari tradition, a 700-year-old devotional order in the state of Maharashtra, India. Although it does not figure as the main instrument of percussion in these performances, the tal is an important signifier of devotion (“bhakti”) even today. This association is explicit in its sonic realm, i.e. in live or recorded musical performances as well as in the visual realm, where it is indispensable to the iconography of the devotional order. Nevertheless, as the tradition moves through different phases of historical development, from the increasing participation of women in the Varkari tradition to the impact of digitization, the tal lends newer and more nuanced meaning to the concept of bhakti. This inevitably gives rise to the question: how does the tal get constituted in the multitude of its relations with traditional texts, practitioners, soundscapes, audience and the recording studio? In this paper, I will explore this question, by drawing from existing scholarship on the subject (Bates, 2012) and the overwhelming presence of the instrument in live performance and digital spaces, from audiovisual platforms like YouTube to iOS mobile apps like iTablaPro.

 

 

Name: Maurice Restrepo

Society Membership: SEM

Institutional Affiliation: CUNY Graduate Center

Title: Vibing and Hegemonic Masculinities in Jazz

Abstract:

A saxophonist walks into a jazz club to participate in their first jam session, joining the house band to perform the bebop standard “Anthropology.” After the saxophonist commits a mistake, the house pianist stops the performance and passive-aggressively “corrects” the saxophonist, shaming him in front of the audience. Disheartened, the young musician leaves after being “vibed.” Often occurring at jam sessions, “vibing” performs a tension-filled role of upholding the high standards of jazz performance while simultaneously perpetuating a culture of exclusivity, limiting opportunities for junior musicians and reinscribing patterns of unequal power relations, including through the reproduction of hegemonic masculinities (Connell and Messerschmidt 2005). Jam sessions continue to serve as important sites of social reproduction in New York City jazz culture, helping set, instill, and perpetuate expectations around common knowledges and practices—both musical and social—in jazz through intergenerationally transmitted and relationally (re)constructed forms of socialization. Transpiring on and off the bandstand, vibing is a negative-coded behavior in which musicians test, undercut, or gatekeep one another’s musical knowledge, performance abilities, and social and cultural capital (Bourdieu 1986). How is vibing enacted and received by jazz musicians? And what forms of meaning-making arise from these interactions? Drawing from musicians lived experiences of vibing, this paper contributes to recent literature on how musicians negotiate hegemonic masculinities in jazz (Hall and Burke 2023) by illuminating the power dynamics imbricated in these processes and exploring how forms of gender power continue to be imposed through entrenched forms of jazz sociality.

 

Bio: Maurice Restrepo is a PhD Candidate in Ethnomusicology at the CUNY Graduate Center, holding certificates in Women & Gender Studies and Critical Theory. His research explores how prevailing ideas about masculinity are being understood by early career musicians in the contemporary jazz scene in New York. Maurice’s work has received support from the IRADAC Fellowship, Provost Enhancement Fellowship, Baisley Powell Elebash Fund, and Dr. Benno Lee Scholarship. His previous research explored the construction and maintenance of a community of musicians who perform the Brazilian choro in New York, and the pedagogical practices of legendary jazz pianist and educator Barry Harris.

Name:  Jessica Ringston

Society Membership: Neither

Institutional Affiliation: Mannes School of Music

Title:  Echoes of Debussy’s Influence:  The Development of Twentieth-Century Flute Repertoire

Abstract:

Claude Debussy’s impact on the compositions of his contemporaries is undeniable, and it is seen in countless works throughout the late-twentieth century. This study examines pieces for flute from the contemporary repertoire by composers from around the world including Edgard Varèse, Toru Takemitsu, and George Crumb. Each of the works analyzed displays a connection to Debussy, varying from direct quotations to subtle implications. Through the assessment of pitch collections, intervals, and scales, this research discusses common structural themes used by Debussy that are applied decades later. Expanding upon previous analyses of experimental repertoire and their suspected Debussyian counterparts, this study investigates the effects of Debussy specific to flute music and how his ideas have evolved into contemporary language since their conception. Focusing on Debussy’s Syrinx, this study illustrates clear connections between Debussy’s works and pieces by modern composers. The findings in the study of Debussy’s influence on twentieth century flute repertoire are relevant not only to flutists, but to the study of contemporary classical music as a whole. The compositions discussed have become staples in the twentieth century repertoire and are frequently performed internationally today. These pieces for flute are each groundbreaking in their own right and have paved the way for further experimentation in the field of contemporary music. The quotation of excerpts from Debussy’s music illustrate the development of flute repertoire, as these excerpts serve as a time capsule from 1913. While they are preserved, everything around them has progressed dramatically.

 

Name:  Mariana Sánchez

Society Membership: Neither

Institutional Affiliation: McGill University

Title:  Critical Analysis of Canonical Repertoires in Mexico from a Social-Ethnographic Perspective: A Case Study of the Cello department at UNAM’s Music Faculty

Abstract:

This research adopts a multidisciplinary lens to examine the impact of classical music's central canon on both social and aesthetic levels, focusing on the formation processes at the cello department in the Music Faculty from UNAM (Autonomous University of Mexico). While previous research has addressed musical canons in other contexts, this work localizes the theoretical framework to a Mexican academic setting.

The central hypothesis poses that ideological biases exist within the cello performance curriculum, reflected in the canonization of repertoires and institutional training processes. Thus, the study combines documentary research and practical work. The first, grounded in theoretical discussions about the concept of canon, explores two main perspectives: (1) traditional philosophical and historical approaches to the canon (Bloom, Kant, Weber) and (2) critical interdisciplinary, intersectional, and decolonial perspectives emphasizing extramusical factors (Bourdieu, Corrado, Citron, González, Yang). Starting from a dialogue between these viewpoints, an initial problematization is achieved.

The practical component includes an analysis of cello curriculum and required repertoires during the program at UNAM, as well as results from 10 ethnographic interviews. These methods assess the prevalence of canonical structures in academic music settings and gather diverse perspectives on the canon’s role in higher education, mainly based on personal experience.

The study does not aim to dismantle the existence canonic repertoires but to raise awareness of its presence and its sociocultural implications. The conclusions suggest context-specific changes to curricula that may reduce the social impact of canonization, fostering a more inclusive and self-aware academic environment.

 

Bio: Currently pursuing a Master’s in Baroque Cello at McGill’s Schulich School of Music, Mariana graduated with honors from UNAM’s Music Faculty in 2023 with a thesis analyzing canonical repertoires in Mexican cello education. Throughout both degrees, she has deepened her interest in research, participating in courses on ethnomusicology and musicology. Her research interests center on social constructions in classical music and academia, emphasizing decolonial, interdisciplinary, and ethnographic approaches. As member of Colectiva Tsunami since 2021, she has contributed to gender-focused initiatives, earning multiple grants. From 2021 to 2024, she directed Cluster magazine, supported by Piso 16’s grant program in 2021.

Name:  Julia Santoli

Society Membership: Neither

Institutional Affiliation: CUNY Graduate Center

Title: Music, Mimesis, and Affect in Theodor Reik and Sandór Ferenczi

Abstract: Listening to History Through Learning Đàn Tranh With Yes We Can Music

How can listening tune into history, the way the past resonates with the present? This question led my work-in-progress, through practice of playing the Vietnamese zither đàn tranh as a student of NYC Vietnamese diasporic music group Yes We Can Music. While there, I started to unravel knowledge that was deep within the performance practice. In reflecting on these experiences, I ask—what sort of knowledges does music hold? In what ways are our ears tuned and attuned to resonances—be they historical, social, or otherwise? 

This has led to my interest in researching historical resonance between student activism of the Union of Vietnamese In the United States against U.S. involvement in the war in Vietnam. I learned about the Union of Vietnamese in America from one of my teachers, Ngô Thanh Nhàn, who was a founding member of the group in 1972 . I am interested in adding to preexisting literature on diasporic communities and knowledge transmission, through histories that travel through music culture itself. While researching as a participant-observer, I look at how pedagogical practices intersect with embodied histories of belonging. As a Vietnamese-American student researcher, this under-researched Leftist history of Vietnamese in the United States struck me as an important aspect of the diaspora’s experience, no matter it’s marginalization from hegemonic histories. It will add to preexisting literature on histories embedded in performance, such as in the work of Anna Morcom; and to pre-existing literature on listening as an embodied practice, such as the work of Roshana Keshti.

 

Bio: Julia Santoli is a multi-disciplinary artist and doctoral student in ethnomusicology at the Graduate Center, CUNY. She was an AIR at Issue Project Room, a Musician in Residence at Pioneer Works, and was an Asian Cultural Council fellow to Japan researching sound art and performance practices in 2019. She is a member of Feedback Ensemble, and a frequent collaborator of artists such as Chinese Artists and Organizers Collective. She is currently pursuing research on mutual cooperation and collaborative practices within SE Asian diasporic music initiatives.

Name:  Alec Wood

Society Membership: AMS

Institutional Affiliation: Yale University

Title: Music, Mimesis, and Affect in Theodor Reik and Sandór Ferenczi

Abstract:

Psychoanalysts have not said much about music, and musicologists about psychoanalysis. This has perhaps been for good reason, as Freud famously disliked music and the logocentrism of his field at odds with musicologists’ sensitivity to extra-symbolic signification. This paper bridges the gap through a close reading of writings by two psychoanalysts with uncommon musical sensitivity: Theodor Reik and Sandór Ferenczi. In Listening with the Third Ear (1948), Reik presents a theory of psychoanalytic listening that emphasizes the curative effects of intuiting the patient’s emotional state through their vocal intonation as opposed to the usual practice of interpreting symptoms. Ferenczi displays a similar impulse across his Clinical Diary (1932) and in several standalone papers, albeit less rigorously theorized than Reik. This paper contextualizes Reik and Ferenczi’s listening practices in the long history of dynamic psychiatry. Reik and Ferenczi inadvertently summon pre-psychoanalytic practices of hypnosis in their articulation of the effects of voice, sound, and music. These practices emphasize the role of mimetic, pre-specular affect over conscious interpretation. By attending to the way these practices manifest in their theories of listening, we can respond to recent impasses in voice, sound, and affect studies, which have been caught between a culturalist, historical approach emphasizing mediation and an ontological approach emphasizing immediacy. Reik and Ferenczi show us how the very possibility of mediation altogether is opened up by musical listening. Listening is not a communication. It is the very act through which we come into being as discrete subjects that can communicate at all.

 

Name:  Kajwan Ziaoddini

Society Membership: SEM

Institutional Affiliation: University of Maryland

Title:  The Many Faces of Moradi’s Music: A Comparative Analysis of Situational Identities

Abstract:

In November 2024, Iranian musicians Ali Akbar Moradi and Pejman Hadadi toured the US East Coast, performing compositions for the tanbur, a long-necked lute mainly used by the Yaresan followers in western Iran. Despite the largely identical musical content across the concerts, they were all labeled differently. In brochures, artists’ and emcees’ short introductions onstage, and more intimate chats after the concerts, their music might be identified as Iranian, Persian, Kurdish, and/or Yaresan. While some of these titles might be awkward or avoided in Iran due to sociopolitical concerns, they may be deemed suitable for promoting this music among American audiences or the Iranian diaspora in the United States.

By comparing the different labels used during Moradi’s 2024 East Coast tour and the way his recordings have been categorized in Iran, this paper examines how labeling processes reflect broader sociopolitical concerns and constraints. Drawing on theories of situational identity (Hall, Okamura), I argue that social contexts determine not only the way Moradi’s music has been categorized but also the connotations the same category may evoke among different demographics within and outside Iran. In this study, I use participant observation and unstructured interviews with artists and facilitators during and after the events, as well as investigating the labels used for Moradi’s previous recordings in online music streaming databases. This study shows how a seemingly innocuous concert series can serve as a lens for understanding Iran's complex sociopolitical landscape, ethnic/national factions, and ideological perspectives.

 

Bio: Kajwan Ziaoddini is a Ph.D student in ethnomusicology at the University of Maryland. His research focuses on the role of music in shaping ethnic identities among Kurds in Iran. Kajwan's research interests also include relationships between music, ethnicity, politics, and religion. He received his Master's and Bachelor's degree in Iranian classical music from the University of Tehran, Iran. He also specializes in Persian Radif repertoire and santur performance.

Name:  Tom Zlabinger

Society Membership: SEM

Institutional Affiliation: York College/CUNY

Title: In Search of Our “True Academy”: Reflections on Modern Band, Open Jams, and the Purpose of Popular Music Education

Abstract:

In a 1959 Esquire article, writer Ralph Ellison stated that “the jam session is…the jazzman’s true academy, ” referring to the legendary jam sessions at Minton’s Playhouse in Harlem during the early 1940s. Ellison explained that at the time, jam sessions were where jazz musicians learned “tradition, group techniques, and style.” Jam sessions have continued to exist since then and have branched out into other styles, like blues, classic rock, and funk, but are now better known as “open jams.” But unlike jazz in the 1940s, musicians can now learn popular music at a school. I have witnessed the powerful transformations that occur during open jams and believe they are fertile ground for musicians to hone their skills and talents. But recently, I have wondered how current popular music pedagogies could benefit from lessons learned at open jams. How do we best connect modern band, open jams, and popular music education? This paper will draw on my experiences as a frequent attendee of open jams and as a popular music educator. I will describe where open jams and popular music education align, where they conflict, and suggest strategies on how they can complement one another to create a better “true academy.”

Bio: Dr. Tom Zlabinger is an Associate Professor of Music at York College, where he teaches popular music performance and directs the York College Band. Dr. Zlabinger holds a B.A. in music from Grinnell College, an M.A. in jazz performance from Queens College, and a Ph.D. in ethnomusicology from the CUNY Graduate Center. Dr. Zlabinger has written about music in and around media franchises, such as The Big Lebowski, Peanuts, Neil Gaiman’s Sandman, The Simpsons, Star Trek: The Next Generation, and Star Wars. Additionally, his scholarly interests include improvisation, telematic performance, and the relationships between blues, jazz, and psychedelia.