Musical Ethnography: Instruments, Ethics, Affect

Question 1

Who is Anne Rasmussen and what did she write about?

Answer 1

An American educator and ethnomusicologist who wrote about women in Indonesia learning to recite the Qur’an. This has been underwritten from a female perspective - so important!
Re-maps presumptions about non-Arab forms of Islam
Explores how sonic arts are used to cultivate ‘Islamic Feminsim’
Focus on Haijah Maria Ulfah - an important female reciter in Indonesia

Question 2

Who is Jane Sugarman and what is her focus?

Answer 2

An ethnomusicologist that focuses on how gender practices are bound up in Prespa Albanian Weddings - interpretative study of local traditions - wedding songs both reflect and reproduce societal norms

Question 3

Who is Virginia Danielson and how does she influence the field?

Answer 3

A writer that grew up reciting the Qur’an
Focused gonna single, major musician, Mum Kulthum - an Egyptian singer/composer/actor
Situates her life in Egyptian musical culture of 20th century while showing how she shaped the culture

Question 4

Whose music/live are not accessible to ethnographers?

Answer 4

Male scholars studying Muslim men, women studying Muslim men’s music?

Question 5

What is included in the writing ‘Why Suyá sing?

Answer 5

Focus on indigenous Suyá of Mato Grosso Brazil
120 people in total tribe
Focus on single ceremony
Based on two years of continuous research and ca. 20 years of ongoing contact

Question 6

What is Organology? What are two problems with this idea?

Answer 6

The science of musical instruments and their classifications. Hornbostel and Sachs system was one attempt at this
Emphasis on naming, measuring, documenting but nit interpreting or putting in context
Problems
1) To name a non-western instrument by relating it to western instruments you are politicising your writing
2) You should think about the social aspects of the instrument too

Question 7

What is affect? and what is then affect theory?

Answer 7

Feeling outside (or prior to) emotio, emodied intensities, felt ways of being in the world, states that exceed our conscious awareness, moods
Theorising these ways of feeling and being - Spinoza, Delueze and Dossier

Question 8

What does ‘somatic infrastructure mean?

Answer 8

Physical embodiment and unconscious process

Requires a certain physical conformity to the instrument