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Listening in the Living Room: The Pursuit of Authentic Spaces and Sounds in Dallas/Fort Worth (DFW) Do-It-Yourself (DIY) Punk Rock
In the Dallas/Fort Worth (DFW) do-it-yourself (DIY) punk scene, participants attempt to adhere to notions of authenticity that dictate whether a band, record label, performance venue, or individual are in compliance with punk philosophy. These guiding principles champion individual expression, contributions to one's community (scene), independence from the mainstream music industry and consumerism, and the celebration of amateurism and the idea that everyone should "do it yourself." While each city or scene has its own punk culture, participants draw on their perceptions of the historic legacy of punk and on experiences with contemporaries from around the world. For this thesis, I emphasize the significance of performance spaces and the sonic aesthetic of the music in enacting and reinforcing notions of punk authenticity. The live performance of music is perceived as the most authentic setting for punk music, and bands go to great lengths to recreate this soundscape in the recording studio. Bands achieve this sense of liveness by recording as a group, rather than individually for a polished studio sound mix, or by inviting friends and fans into the studio to help record a live show experience. House venues have been key to the development of the DFW scene with an emphasis on individual participation through hosting concerts in their homes. This creates a stronger sense of community in DIY punk performance. Through participation observation, interviews, analysis of source materials, as well as research in previous Punk scholarship, questions of authenticity, consumerism, and technology and sound studies, this thesis updates work on the experience of sound, listening, and the importance of space in DIY punk communities today.
Negotiating Decades of Change in America: The Houston Chinese Traditional Music Group
For over two hundred years, Chinese immigrants have brought ancient customs and musical traditions to their new homes in America. As in many immigrant communities, a new heritage that embodies and exhibits both the quintessential features of American culture and genuine Chinese heritage have come together to form new expressive cultures that are uniquely "Chinese American." As the youngest of the major American Chinese immigrant centers, the city of Houston, Texas provides an exemplary example of a distinct cultural cohesion that, in part, resulted from significant cultural and political upheavals in the latter half of the twentieth century. During this era of political unrest, many Chinese people's attitudes towards their traditional culture changed drastically. The Houston Chinese Traditional Music Group (HCTMG) is a Chinese orchestra comprised of amateur and professional musicians ranging in age from 13 to over 60 years old. Performing regularly for the Chinese immigrant population in Houston, HCTMG's take on traditional Chinese music deviates greatly from that of older, more established immigrant communities on the East and West Coasts and in some parts of mainland China. Via participant observation, interviews, and analysis of source materials, this paper examines how changing political and economic climates in China during the 1960s to the 1990s—when the majority of HCTMG musicians lived in China –are reflected in the musical decisions of HCTMG and the greater Houston Chinese immigrant community at large.
The Otha Turner Family Picnic: Occupying Musical and Social Space In-Between Saturday Night and Sunday Morning
This thesis concerns African-American fife and drum band music, a pre-blues genre that was a fixture at summer picnics in the Mississippi hill country from the late nineteenth century through most of the twentieth century. The picnics held a unique place in African-American life, a crossroads of juke joints and churches, blues and gospel, individuality and family. Using the African-American paradigm of a Saturday night / Sunday morning people, I describe the Otha Turner Family Picnic, the last picnic to feature fife and drum band music, locating it and the music in-between the secular and sacred aspects of African-American life from both a musical and a social standpoint.
Performing the “Classical”: the Gurukula System in Karnatic Music Society
Recent scholarship has revealed that the representation of Karnatic music as a “classical” art form in South Indian society was a complicated process bound to the agendas of larger early twentieth-century nationalist projects in India. This thesis explores the notions of classicalness as they are enacted in Karnatic music society through the oral transmission process from guru to shishya, or disciple. Still considered one of the most important emblems of the “classical,” the gurukula (lit. “guru-family”) system has been transformed to accommodate more contemporary lifestyles and reinscribed within many other social and musical processes in South Indian classical music society. This thesis examines the everyday interactions between members of Karnatic music society, particularly the clapping of t?la during a Karnatic music concert and the musical exchanges between percussionists onstage during the tani ?vartanam (Karnatic percussion solo), as public performances reminiscent of the relationship between guru and shishya.
Sing Rāga, Embody Bhāva: The Way of Being Rasa
The rasa theory of Indian aesthetics is concerned with the nature of the genesis of emotions and their corresponding experiences, as well as the condition of being in and experiencing the aesthetic world. According to the Indian aesthetic theory, rasa ("juice" or "essence," something that is savored, that is tasted) is an embodied aesthetic experienced through an artistic performance. In this thesis, I have investigated how the aesthetics of rasa philosophy account for creative presence and its experiences in Karnatik vocal performances. Beyond the facets of grammar, Karnatik rāga performance signifies a deeper ontological meaning as a way to experience rasa, idiomatically termed as rāga-rasa by South Indian rāga practitioners. A vocal performance of a rāga ideally depends on a singer's embodied experience of rāga and rāga-bhāva (emotive expression of rāga), as much as it does on his/her theoretical knowledge and skillset of a rāga's svaras (scale degrees), gamakas (ornamentation), lakṣhaṇās (emblematic phrases), and so on. Reflecting on my own experience of being a Karnatik student and performer for the last two decades, participant observation, interviews, and analysis of Indian aesthetic theory of rasa, I propose a way of understanding that to sing rāga is to embody bhāva opening the space that brings rasa into being. Reflecting on the epistemology of rāga theory, particularly its smaller entities of svaras and gamakas, and through a phenomenological description of the process through which a vocalist embodies rāga (including how a guru transmits this musical embodiment to his shishya [disciple]), I argue that the notion of rāga-rasa itself has agency in determining the nature of svaras and its gamakas in a rāga performance. Additionally, focusing on the relationship between performers and rasikas (drinkers of the juice), this thesis examines how the embodiment of rāga-bhāva and the experience of rasa open the possibility for …
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