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MUSICOLOGY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF AMSTERDAM

25/09/2014

Voicing, Listening, and Public Feeling: from fado to canção de protesto in Lisbon, Portugal

Colloquium Muziekwetenschap
Lila Ellen Gray

October 16, 15:30-17:00
Universiteitstheater, Nieuwe Doelenstraat 16, room 3.01

For many participants in Lisbon’s fado worlds, the term fadista refers to both one who sings and one who knows how to listen; through listening one enters into the affective, poetic, and performative sound world of fado, mind, body and soul. In Lisbon’s fado scenes, speech and song, performances of the everyday (like telling a story), heightened performances (like getting up to sing a fado during an amateur fado session), and mediatized performances, interanimate one another. Listening can also be considered as a type of performance signaled on its own continuum of markedness, by its own rituals and repetitions.  This continuum of the voice sounding and its relationship to forms of public listening and public feeling as manifest in the Portuguese musical genres of fado and canção de protesto (or protest song), forms the focus of this presentation.  The first part of the presentation draws on ethnographic research I conducted on fado performance and reception in Lisbon, Portugal during the first decade of the 2000s, some of which is the basis for my book, Fado Resounding: Affective Politics and Urban Life (Duke University Press, 2013)This research spanned diverse and overlapping Lisbon sites and social worlds (museums and archives, professional fado venues, tourist restaurants and small amateur bars, fans of the late fado diva Amália Rodrigues) but it is primarily grounded in ethnographic work on amateur fado practice and sociality. The final section of the talk draws on a portion of my current research, which examines the musical and cultural responses to the financial crisis in Portugal, focusing on a re-emergent register of voicing (and participatory listening) through the highly politicized genre of canção de protesto. I position this in relation to the stereotypical complaint register of the fado voice, historicizing these registers, while asking questions about their labors and viabilities in the present.

21/09/2014

A Tool of Remembrance: The Shofar in Modern Music, Literature and Art

Colloquium Muziekwetenschap
Kees van Hage

September 25, 15:30-17:00
Universiteitstheater, Nieuwe Doelenstraat 16, room 3.01

The shofar or ram’s horn, like the menorah and the Star of David, is a central symbol of Judaism. In the Hebrew Bible, it is the most mentioned instrument: it announces the revelation of the Ten Commandments, it calls for religious rituals, it is heard in the exhortations of prophets and it gives the signal for battle. In the Bible, however, the shofar is only rarely a musical instrument. In the prayer books for Rosh Ha-Shanah (the Jewish New Year) and Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement), the shofar produces a wordless continuation of prayer, and therefore is considered a ritual instrument instead of a musical instrument.

By the end of the 19th century, writers, composers and artists changed their way of looking at the shofar and thanks to their work, the venerable ram’s horn was given a second youth; it made an artistic turn to music, literature and art, revealing its unexpected artistic abilities, without forgetting its religious past.

A Tool of Remembrance, the first scholarly monograph on the shofar, explores the use and meanings of the shofar as a traditional religious symbol in the new, secular context of modern music, literature and art, where the instrument is no longer subject to restrictions of place (the synagogue), time (the liturgical year) and authority (halakhah), and where it is directed to general, not exclusively Jewish audiences of listeners, readers or viewers, who are not aroused to action or repentance, but invited to experience the artists’ personal interpretations of Jewish traditions.

02/09/2014

Jazz Beyond Borders congres, 4-7 september

4-7 September vindt het driedaagse Jazz Beyond Borders congres op het conservatorium van Amsterdam; de derde in een serie grootschalige internationale jazz-congressen georganiseerd door de Rhythm Changes onderzoeksgroep, met keynotes van Steven Feld (Jazz cosmopolitanism in Accra) en John Gennari (Blowin' Hot and Cool: Jazz and its Critics) en maar liefst 95 presentaties.

Voor meer informatie over het programma en registratie, zie www.rhythmchanges.net.

Balinese Gamelan Semar Pagulingan speelklaar in Universiteitstheater


Vanaf 1 september 2014 is de Opleiding Muziekwetenschap van de Universiteit van Amsterdam de trotse gebruiker van een zeldzame zeventoons Gamelan Semar Pagulingan van het Indonesische eiland Bali. De gamelan is onlangs opgesteld in de kelder van het Universiteitstheater aan de Nieuwe Doelenstraat met uitzicht op de Amstel. 

De gamelan zal ingezet worden voor reguliere onderwijsactiviteiten van de Opleiding Muziekwetenschap en voor workshops. Balinese gamelans zijn in tegenstelling tot Javaanse gamelans nauwelijks tot niet aan Europese instellingen voor hoger muziekonderwijs te vinden. De opleiding Muziekwetenschap zal zich dus sterk maken voor de mogelijkheid om wetenschappers, musici en studenten van Balinese muziek uit andere delen van de wereld toegang te geven tot de gamelan. De wereldwijde reputatie die de UvA geniet op het gebied van onderzoek naar muziek in de Indonesische archipel kan hiermee gecontinueerd en versterkt worden. 

Semar Pagulinganorkesten waren belangrijke statussymbolen voor Balinese vorsten – ze zijn vernoemd naar Semara, de god van de liefde, en dienden bespeeld te worden in een speciaal daarvoor ontworpen hof binnen het paleis, de semarabawa, wanneer een vorst bij zijn eega sliep. Het is niet verwonderlijk dat de specifieke samenstelling van instrumenten die een Gamelan Semar Pagulingan kenmerkt, geroemd wordt om haar milde en verfijnde klank.