740-323 Topics in Ethnomusicology

Credit Points

Coordinator

Prerequisites

BMus Year 2.

Semester

Contact

Subject Description

Students will have a thorough knowledge of the major musical structures and their social contexts; be able to identify aurally and critically the musical genres studied; will have acquired familiarity with the main musical terminology of the areas; have understood a variety of styles and methodologies of ethnomusicological research and be able to evaluate critically writings in this field.

Study will be in one of the following areas: the music of Java and Bali; music in rainforest societies; North Indian classical music; North Asian music.In 1998 the area of study will be Music in Rainforest Societies. Details of content will be available prior to the commencement of the subject.

Assessment

An essay of up to 3000 words (50% each) and class assignments (50%)

Prescribed Texts

• Fels, S, Sound and Sentiment: Birds, Weeping, Poetics and Song in Kaluli Expression. 2nd ed. Philadelphia Univ of Pennsylvania Press 1990.
• Olsen, Dale A, Music of the Warao of Venezuela: Song People of the Rainforest. University Press of Florida, 1996.
• Roseman, Marina, Healing Sounds from the Malaysian Rainforest. Univ. of California Press, 1991.
• Seeger, A, Why Suya Sing: A Musical Anthropology of an Amazonian People. Cambridge CUP, 1987.
• Turnbull, C, The Forest People. London Pan Books, 1976.