Sonic Politics

Sonic Politics PDF Author: Olaf Kaltmeier
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429753489
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 246

Get Book

Book Description
This volume analyses the narration of the social through music and the seismographic function of music to detect social problems and envision alternatives. Beyond state-driven attempts to link musical production to the official narrative of the nation, mass musical movements emerged during the 20th century that provided countercultural and alternative narratives of the prevailing social context. The Americas contain numerous examples of the strong connection between music and politics; Woody Guthrie’s "This Land is Your Land" envisioned a socialist transformation of the U.S., the Chilean Nueva Canción created a narrative and affective frame for the recognition of popular culture as a central element of the cultural politics of the Chilean way to socialism, and Reggae emerged as a response to British colonialism, drawing inspiration and guidance from the pan-Africanist visions of Marcus Garvey. Providing a significant contribution to the study of music and politics/social movements from an inter-American perspective, this book will appeal to students and scholars of U.S. and Latin American Cultural Studies, Transnational Studies, History and Political Studies, Area Studies, and Music Studies.

Sonic Politics

Sonic Politics PDF Author: Olaf Kaltmeier
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429753489
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 246

Get Book

Book Description
This volume analyses the narration of the social through music and the seismographic function of music to detect social problems and envision alternatives. Beyond state-driven attempts to link musical production to the official narrative of the nation, mass musical movements emerged during the 20th century that provided countercultural and alternative narratives of the prevailing social context. The Americas contain numerous examples of the strong connection between music and politics; Woody Guthrie’s "This Land is Your Land" envisioned a socialist transformation of the U.S., the Chilean Nueva Canción created a narrative and affective frame for the recognition of popular culture as a central element of the cultural politics of the Chilean way to socialism, and Reggae emerged as a response to British colonialism, drawing inspiration and guidance from the pan-Africanist visions of Marcus Garvey. Providing a significant contribution to the study of music and politics/social movements from an inter-American perspective, this book will appeal to students and scholars of U.S. and Latin American Cultural Studies, Transnational Studies, History and Political Studies, Area Studies, and Music Studies.

The Sonic Color Line

The Sonic Color Line PDF Author: Jennifer Lynn Stoever
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1479835625
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 352

Get Book

Book Description
The unheard history of how race and racism are constructed from sound and maintained through the listening ear. Race is a visual phenomenon, the ability to see “difference.” At least that is what conventional wisdom has lead us to believe. Yet, The Sonic Color Line argues that American ideologies of white supremacy are just as dependent on what we hear—voices, musical taste, volume—as they are on skin color or hair texture. Reinforcing compelling new ideas about the relationship between race and sound with meticulous historical research, Jennifer Lynn Stoever helps us to better understand how sound and listening not only register the racial politics of our world, but actively produce them. Through analysis of the historical traces of sounds of African American performers, Stoever reveals a host of racialized aural representations operating at the level of the unseen—the sonic color line—and exposes the racialized listening practices she figures as “the listening ear.” Using an innovative multimedia archive spanning 100 years of American history (1845-1945) and several artistic genres—the slave narrative, opera, the novel, so-called “dialect stories,” folk and blues, early sound cinema, and radio drama—The Sonic Color Line explores how black thinkers conceived the cultural politics of listening at work during slavery, Reconstruction, and Jim Crow. By amplifying Harriet Jacobs, Frederick Douglass, Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield, Charles Chesnutt, The Fisk Jubilee Singers, Ann Petry, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Lena Horne as agents and theorists of sound, Stoever provides a new perspective on key canonical works in African American literary history. In the process, she radically revises the established historiography of sound studies. The Sonic Color Line sounds out how Americans have created, heard, and resisted “race,” so that we may hear our contemporary world differently.

Sonic Agency

Sonic Agency PDF Author: Brandon Labelle
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 1912685957
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 191

Get Book

Book Description
A timely exploration of whether sound and listening can be the basis of political change. In a world dominated by the visual, could contemporary resistances be auditory? This timely and important book from Goldsmiths Press highlights sound's invisible, disruptive, and affective qualities and asks whether the unseen nature of sound can support a political transformation. In Sonic Agency, Brandon LaBelle sets out to engage contemporary social and political crises by way of sonic thought and imagination. He divides sound's functions into four figures of resistance—the invisible, the overheard, the itinerant, and the weak—and argues for their role in creating alternative “unlikely publics” in which to foster mutuality and dissent. He highlights existing sonic cultures and social initiatives that utilize or deploy sound and listening to address conflict, and points to their work as models for a wider movement. He considers issues of disappearance and hidden culture, nonviolence and noise, creole poetics, and networked life, aiming to unsettle traditional notions of the “space of appearance” as the condition for political action and survival. By examining the experience of listening and being heard, LaBelle illuminates a path from the fringes toward hope, citizenship, and vibrancy. In a current climate that has left many feeling they have lost their voices, it may be sound itself that restores it to them.

Sonic Rebellions

Sonic Rebellions PDF Author: Wanda Canton
Publisher: CRC Press
ISBN: 1040022561
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 150

Get Book

Book Description
Sonic Rebellions combines theory and practice to consider contemporary uses of sound in the context of politics, philosophy, and protest, by exploring the relationship between sound and social justice, with particular attention to sonic methodologies not necessarily conceptualised or practiced in traditional understandings of activism. An edited collection written by artists, academics, and activists, many of the authors have multidimensional experiences as practitioners themselves, and readers will benefit from never-before published doctoral and community projects, and innovative, audio-based interpretations of social issues today. Chapters cover the use of soundscapes, rap, theatre, social media, protest, and song, in application to contemporary socio-political issues, such as gentrification, neoliberalism, criminalisation, democracy, and migrant rights. Sonic Rebellions looks to encourage readers to become, or consider how they are, Sonic Rebels themselves, by developing their own practices and reflections in tandem to continue the conversation as to how sound permeates our sociopolitical lives. This is an essential resource for those interested in how sound can change the world, including undergraduates and postgraduates from across the social sciences and humanities, scholars and instructors of sound studies and sound production, as well as activists, artists, and community organisers.

The Sonic Color Line

The Sonic Color Line PDF Author: Jennifer Lynn Stoever
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1479889342
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 348

Get Book

Book Description
"Race is a visual phenomenon, the ability to see "difference." At least that is what conventional wisdom has lead us to believe. Yet, The Sonic Color Line argues that American ideologies of white supremacy are just as dependent on what we hear-voices, musical taste, volume-as they are on skin color or hair texture. Reinforcing compelling new ideas about the relationship between race and sound with meticulous historical research, Jennifer Lynn Stoever helps us to better understand how sound and listening not only register the racial politics of our world, but actively produce them. Through analysis of the historical traces of sounds of African American performers, Stoever reveals a host of racialized aural representations operating at the level of the unseen-the sonic color line-and exposes the racialized listening practices she figures as "the listening ear."" --New York University Press.

Singing Gandhi's India - Music and Sonic Nationalism

Singing Gandhi's India - Music and Sonic Nationalism PDF Author: Lakshmi Subramanian
Publisher: Roli Books Private Limited
ISBN: 819429598X
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 127

Get Book

Book Description
Here is the first ever and only detailed account of Gandhi and music in India. How politics and music interspersed with each other has been paid scanty, if not any, attention, let alone Gandhi’s role in it. Looking at prayer as politics, singing Gandhi’s India traces Gandhi’s relationship with music and nationalism. Uncovering his writings on music, ashram Bhajan practice, the Vande Mataram debate, Subramanian makes a case for a closer scrutiny of Gandhian oeuvre to map sonic politics in twentieth century India.

The Sound Studies Reader

The Sound Studies Reader PDF Author: Jonathan Sterne
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 113576235X
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 578

Get Book

Book Description
The Sound Studies Reader blends recent work that self-consciously describes itself as ‘sound studies’ along with earlier and lesser-known scholarship on sound from across the humanities and social sciences. The Sound Studies Reader touches on key themes like noise and silence; architecture, acoustics and space; media and reproducibility; listening, voices and disability; culture, community, power and difference; and shifts in the form and meaning of sound across cultures, contexts and centuries. Writers reflect on crucial historical moments, difficult definitions, and competing accounts of the role of sound in culture and everyday life. Across the essays, readers will gain a sense of the range and history of key debates and discussions in sound studies. The collection begins with an introduction to welcome novice readers to the field and acquaint them the main issues in sound studies. Individual section introductions give readers further background on the essays and an extensive up to date bibliography for further reading in sound studies make this an original and accessible guide to the field. Contributors: Rick Altman, Jacques Attali, Roland Barthes, Jody Berland, Karin Bijsterveld, Barry Blesser, Georgina Born, Michael Bull, Adriana Cavarero, Michel Chion, Kate Crawford, Richard Cullen Rath, Jacques Derrida, Mladen Dolar, John Durham Peters, Kodwo Eshun, Frantz Fanon, Lisa Gitelman, Gerard Goggin, Steve Goodman, Stefan Helmreich, Michelle Hilmes, Charles Hirschkind, Shuhei Hosokawa, Don Ihde, Douglas Kahn, Friedrich Kittler, Brandon LaBelle, James Lastra, Richard Leppert, Michèle Martin, Louise Meintjes, Mara Mills, John Mowitt, R. Murray Schafer, Ana María Ochoa Gautier, John Picker, Benjamin Piekut, Trevor Pinch, Tara Rodgers, Linda-Ruth Salter, Jacob Smith, Jason Stanyek, Jonathan Sterne, Emily Thompson, Frank Trocco, Michael Veal, Alexander Weheliye

Composing for the Revolution

Composing for the Revolution PDF Author: Joshua H. Howard
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824885732
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 297

Get Book

Book Description
In Composing for the Revolution: Nie Er and China’s Sonic Nationalism, Joshua Howard explores the role the songwriter Nie Er played in the 1930s proletarian arts movement and the process by which he became a nationalist icon. Composed only months before his untimely death in 1935, Nie Er’s last song, the “March of the Volunteers,” captured the rising anti-Japanese sentiment and was selected as China’s national anthem with the establishment of the People’s Republic. Nie was quickly canonized after his death and later recast into the “People’s Musician” during the 1950s, effectively becoming a national monument. Howard engages two historical paradigms that have dominated the study of twentieth-century China: revolution and modernity. He argues that Nie Er, active in the leftist artistic community and critical of capitalism, availed himself of media technology, especially the emerging sound cinema, to create a modern, revolutionary, and nationalist music. This thesis stands as a powerful corrective to a growing literature on the construction of a Chinese modernity, which has privileged the mass consumer culture of Shanghai and consciously sought to displace the focus on China’s revolutionary experience. Composing for the Revolution also provides insight into understudied aspects of China’s nationalism—its sonic and musical dimensions. Howard’s analyses highlights Nie’s extensive writings on the political function of music, examination of the musical techniques and lyrics of compositions within the context of left-wing cinema, and also the transmission of his songs through film, social movements, and commemoration. Nie Er shared multiple and overlapping identities based on regionalism, nationalism, and left-wing internationalism. His march songs, inspired by Soviet “mass songs,” combined Western musical structure and aesthetic with elements of Chinese folk music. The songs’ ideological message promoted class nationalism, but his “March of the Volunteers” elevated his music to a universal status thereby transcending the nation. Traversing the life and legacy of Nie Er, Howard offers readers a profound insight into the meanings of nationalism and memory in contemporary China. Composing for the Revolution underscores the value of careful reading of sources and the author’s willingness to approach a subject from multiple perspectives.

Racial Mixture and Musical Mash-ups in the Life and Art of Bruno Mars

Racial Mixture and Musical Mash-ups in the Life and Art of Bruno Mars PDF Author: Melinda A. Mills
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1793619832
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 155

Get Book

Book Description
This book argues that Bruno Mars is uniquely positioned to borrow from his heritage and experiential knowledge as well as his musical talent, performative expertise, and hybrid identities (culturally, ethnically, and racially) to remix music that can create "new music nostalgia." Melinda Mills attends to the ways that Mars is precariously positioned in relation to all of the racial and ethnic groups that constitute his known background and argues that this complexity serves him well in the contemporary moment. Engaging in the performative politics of blackness allows Mars to advocate for social justice by employing his artistic agency. Through his entertainment and the everyday practice of joy, Mars models a way of moving through the world that counters its harsh realities. Through his music and perfomance, Mars provides a way for a reconceptualization of race and a reimagining of the future.

Joss Whedon's Big Damn Movie

Joss Whedon's Big Damn Movie PDF Author: Frederick Blichert
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476671990
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 243

Get Book

Book Description
When Joss Whedon's television show Firefly (2002-2003) was cancelled, devoted fans cried foul and demanded more--which led to the 2005 feature film Serenity. Both the series and the film were celebrated for their melding of science fiction and western iconography, dystopian settings, underdog storylines, and clever fast-paced dialogue. Firefly has garnered a great deal of scholarly attention--less so, Serenity. This collection of new essays, the first focusing exclusively on the film, examines its depictions of race, ableism, social engineering and systems of power, and its status as a crime film, among other topics.