Alan Burdette is an ethnomusicologist who has studied and taught American vernacular musics for 20 years. He is currently the Director of the Archives of Traditional Music and the EVIA Digital Archive Project as well as an adjunct professor in the Folklore and Ethnomusicology Department. He has taught courses in world music, American music, folklore, and the history of ethnomusicology. He recently served as Executive Director of the Society for Ethnomusicology for seven years. His own research has focused on American vernacular musics, particularly a German American singing society in southern Indiana. He is also a banjo player and singer who has performed with local bluegrass and old time musicians.
Courses
The Global Roots of American Music
Ever wonder how a Portuguese instrument, reinvented by native Hawaiians, exploited as a novelty by the New York music industry, and adopted by a white blues-singing vaudeville performer, became part of the signature sound of a powerfully re-imagined country music after World War II? Or how former African slaves, Caribbean immigrants, poor French-speaking farmers and German settlers created one of the most vibrant music and dance scenes in the United States? American musics have a dynamic history of cultural exchange. While it is often said that our world is becoming more global, this seminar will demonstrate the global connections that have always been a part of American musical history and explore the intensely local experiences that are just as important. Music scenes across the U.S. are about both the building of cultural bridges and establishing borders that define them. Through active listening and a variety of activities, this course will explore a variety of North American musical communities and styles such as zydeco, blues, bluegrass, Cajun, string band, shape-note, Tex-Mex, klezmer, gospel and steelband music, and the connections between them. In addition we will examine issues of ethnicity, style, revival and the commercialization of local musics.
The goals of the course are threefold:
- develop a familiarity with the diversity of American music,
- understand the stylistic borrowing and innovation that has created these musics, and
- consider the roles these musics play in the lives of the people who make it.
The symbolic uses of place, group identity, and cultural revivalism will figure prominently among the issues we will discuss.
The overriding approach to the subject matter comes from the field of ethnomusicology, a discipline that merges the concerns of cultural anthropology and musicology. Students will not only learn key principles of musical style and musical history relative to the course subjects but will also develop an analytical framework that seeks to understand how symbolic meaning, group affiliations, and social identity are constructed. The course content forms the basis for a broader historical understanding of American cultural life in the 20th and 21st century.
Listening and active participation in the music will be a key component of the class. Not only will active listening and writing about music form a significant portion of the class activity but students will also engage the music more directly through guest performances, field trips, and in-class exercises. Students will be given a tour of the Archives of Traditional Music and the history of sound recording. A comprehensive set of audio and video examples for study, reference, and writing have been created by the instructor and integrated into the course expectations. Students will also be introduced to several new online resources such as the EVIA Digital Archive Project, Folkstreams, INHarmony, Variations, and the American Memory site of the Library of Congress. Several local live music events during the course of the seminar will be visited.
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