Music 0311: Introduction to World Music

This class is a flexible exploration of music in terms of its cultural, aesthetic, political, and economic dimensions--all concerns of Ethnomusicology. Musical genres include, but are not limited to, folk, court, ritual, popular, art/classical and narrative traditions from selected music cultures of the world. The course has five objectives: 1) to broaden our understanding of the scope of human musical activity throughout the world; 2) to develop listening skills and a vocabulary that will enable us to talk about and write about music; 3) to study music in culture as the relationship between ideas, sound, and behavior; 4) to understand the ways in which music and identity are linked within social and cultural formations, particularly along axes of race, gender, class, and ethnicity; 5) to set up the classroom as a place to question the validity of established canons and categories conventionally employed to study music, and their usefulness for cross-cultural analysis.

Resources for the course include lectures, concerts, readings (textbook), audio- and videotapes. Listening to music is essential for this course but formal music education is not necessary. All students are required to attend lectures and discussion sections, to do the assigned readings, to listen critically to all the listening CD/tapes, to attend the concert, to turn in the written assignments on time, and to take the exams.

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Music 0690: University Gamelan Ensemble

Students of this ensemble class will learn to play traditional music on various instruments of the Javanese Gamelan, an ensemble consisting mainly of tuned gongs and gong-chime instruments.

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Music 1358: Music in South Asia

The course this term introduces students to the musical cultures of India; historical, social and cultural background of music, music theory, instruments, and selected musical genres from different regions. Prerequisites: Graduate standing in Music or special approval of instructor. No language requirement.

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Music 1352: Music in Southeast Asia

This course is designed for graduate and upper-level undergraduate students interested in the performing arts and cultures of mainland and insular Southeast Asia. The course will focus on selected genres of music, dance, and theater of the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam. Genres include, but are not limited to, folk, court, ritual, popular, art/classical, and narrative traditions. Students explore problems, issues, and topics that crosscut regional or national boundaries. For example, the history of external cultural influences--from India, China, Western Europe, and the United States--are examined in relation to music and performance. The course satisfies the undergraduate international studies requirement.

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Music 2121: Introduction to Ethnomusicology

Introduction to Ethnomusicology is one of four core courses for music graduate study at the University of Pittsburgh, required of all entering candidates for graduate degrees. The course examines the formation of the discipline through a survey of its history, theory, and methodology. We will read and discuss the works of major scholars in the field. We will also examine the interdisciplinary nature of ethnomusicology, particularly its relationship with historical musicology, anthropology, folklore, linguistics, communication, and cultural studies. A few special projects will complement theoretical discussions, and technical aspects of research activities commonly associated with the field such as fieldwork and transcription will be briefly covered.

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Music 2442: Field and Lab Methods

This course examines various approaches to the ethnography of music in relation to culture and society. Students will examine generic aspects of ethnographic writing, and its characteristic tropes of authority and modes of representing the self and other. Particular emphasis will be placed on theories, methods, and practices developed within the fields of ethnomusicology and anthropology. The course has a strong practical component. Students will conduct exploratory fieldwork projects in the Pittsburgh area. The course will present methods and techniques related to three main components of field research: 1) preparation (research design and grant writing); 2) fieldwork (studying and documenting musical life in situ) and 3) ethnography (interpreting fieldwork experience). Students will learn to develop practical skills including interviewing and eliciting techniques, the use of audio and video technology, and archiving and storage techniques.

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Music 2621: Advanced Methods in Cutural Theory and Musical Practice (Ethnomusicology Seminar)

This seminar is designed to explore the ways in which the concept of culture has emerged as a focal point for interdisciplinary scholarship in ethnomusicology in both the humanities and the social sciences. We will explore the ways in which contemporary scholars study culture as social practice, the social relations of knowledge, and the roles of symbolic, subjective, and expressive practices in constituting as well as reflecting social relations. At the same time, we will examine the ways in which contemporary scholars connect cultural texts to social and historical contexts, trace the origins and evolution of cultural practices as social forces, and relate the aesthetic properties and the uses and effects of culture to social structures. Finally, we will address global displacements of social relations in the present era to examine how they affect the past, present, and future of ethnomusicological scholarship.

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Music 2621: The Study of Popular Culture (Ethnomusicology Seminar)

The goal of this seminar is to provide a critical survey of the major issues addressed and methodologies used in the study of popular music. Traditional approaches in music scholarship have proved inadequate for the study of mass-mediated musics. Readings for this course include works from a wide range of disciplines including musicology, ethnomusicology, sociology, anthropology, communications, cultural studies, history, political science, economics, and music journalism. Our main objective will be to examine ways in which the insights and methods of structuralism, poststructuralism, semiotics, critical theory, feminist criticism, and psychoanalytical theory have been applied to the problem of understanding how meanings are produced, mediated, negotiated, subverted, and celebrated in popular music.

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Music 2494: Music and Communication

Music and Communication is a team-taught, interdisciplinary graduate-level seminar on cultural studies approaches to music and communication. The course will be divided into two parts; the beginning of the course will map out some of the key intellectual and methodological issues arising at the intersection of music and communication studies: what notions of communication are latent in the way we talk about music? How does a consideration of music force us to rethink key communication concepts like meaning, memory, and participation? How does a broader understanding of the cultural dimensions of communication and media inform the analysis of music as a cultural practice or text; conversely, how does an understanding of music change the way we study media? What methodological tools are available--and what is missing--for the study of musical production, distribution, and consumption? After this theoretical introduction, the second part of the course will consider recent scholarship that has attempted to address these concerns.

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