Bluegrass is a music form often considered to be necessarily or uniquely connected to Appalachia. Significant popular and scholarly discourses (Malone, Negus, etc.) support the sense of a homological relationship (Middleton, Born, Murphy) linking certain rural spaces with country musics. At the same time, bluegrass has a broad and varied global appeal. Abroad, bluegrass is often a part of "Americanism," the negotiation of cultural elements from the United States--and is subject to an array of different cultural politics. This presentation presents an analysis and contextualization of three Czech bluegrass-related songs to indicate some ways in which bluegrass music makers can create a sense of place far afield from the music's putative geographic roots. During their long history of Americanism Czechs have inscribed "real imaginary" elements of Americana on their environment, laying a foundation for the current interest in bluegrass music. Czech articulations of this imagined "Amerika" in translated, newly-created, and recontextualized bluegrass songs reveals a playful ambiguity. Czechs have cultivated this music and sense of place through Americanisms that blur boundaries between what is American and what is Czech. These cases challenge homologies of sound and geography, and provide new ways to consider music and place in Appalachia.

No description available.

Excerpt: Proc ty housle? ("Why the fiddle?") - "Fiddlers are all bad here - Why not write about the banjo or something else that Czechs are good at?"These questions about my ethnographic fieldwork came from musician colleagues with whom I working in researching bluegrass music in the Czech Republic, during a jam circle around a table. While these colleagues were mainly banjo and guitar players, these critiques of Czech fiddling are common even among Czech fiddlers, who are in many cases not as accomplished (in technical skill or musicality) as are their banjo-playing and mandolin-picking compatriots.

Performances of old time string band and bluegrass music today often include participants' sense of a deeply "emplaced" sensibility, often with specific place references to Appalachia. How do people outside the United States perform versions of these spaces as they engage in these Appalachia-related music making practices? To address this question I draw mainly on my long-term ethnographic research on bluegrass-related music-making in the Czech Republic, including insights I have gleaned from encounters with musical participants in similar scenes from other countries. I start my inquiry in my own identity as an outsider in Appalachia, and frame issues of genre and regional identity using ideas about place and country music from Negus (1999) and Murphy (2014). The sense of in-between-ness and ambiguity that my field colleagues have expressed challenge homological linkings of place and country music (Carney 1974, 1996), leading me to conclude by posing these views with ideas about"place" as a flexible concept from geographer Doreen Massey (2005).

No description available.

Banjo Romantika introduces the musicians who play this unique bluegrass hybrid. Czechs first heard bluegrass during World War II when the Armed Forces Network broadcast American music for soldiers. The music represented freedom to dissatisfied Czechs living in a communist state. Czechs’ love for the music was solidified when Pete Seeger visited and performed in 1964. Inspired by classic American bluegrass sounds, an assortment of musicians from across the formerly communist Czech Republic have melded the past, the political and the present into a lively musical tradition entirely its own.Screening and discussions occurred on the following dates and places: Czech and Slovak Cultural Association / Minnesota Bluegrass and Old Time Music Association, St. Paul, MN (11/18/2017) William King Museum Speaker Series, Birthplace of Country Music Museum, Bristol, VA (02/07/2017)Mid-Atlantic Chapter of the Society of Ethnomusicology Annual Conference, Charlottesville, VA (03/05/2016)Appalachian Studies Association, Johnson City (03/27/2015)Society for Ethnomusicology, Pittsburgh, PA (11/13/2014)IBMA World of Bluegrass Business Conference, Raleigh, NC (09/28/2014)International Country Music Conference, Nashville, TN (05/24/2014)Colgate University, (9/20-21/2016)Merlefest, Wilkesboro, NC (4/24/2015)College of Charleston (3/19/2015)West Virginia University (11/12/2014)University of Virginia Dept. of Music, Charlottesville, VA (11/8/2013)Walker Arts and History Center, Cary, NC (9/26/2013)Fulbright Distinguished Scholar Series, American Center at the U.S. Embassy, Prague, Czech Republic (6/20/2013)Banjo Jamboree Bluegrass Festival, Čáslav, Czech Republic (6/21/2013, 6/22/2013)Jerome College of Prague, Prague, Czech Republic (6/24/2013)Moravská Zemská Knihovna, Brno (6/27/2013)White Stork Bluegrass Festival, Luka nad Jihlavou (7/8/2013)

abstract: This thesis examines the jazz jam session’s function in the constitution of jazz scenes as well as the identities of the musicians who participate in them. By employing ritual and performance studies theories of liminality, I demonstrate ways in which jazz musicians, jam sessions, and other social structures are mobilized and transformed during their social and musical interactions. I interview three prominent members of the jazz scene in the greater Phoenix area, and incorporate my experience as a professional jazz musician in the same scene, to conduct a contextually and socially embedded analysis in order to draw broader conclusions about jam sessions in general. In this analysis I refer to other ethnomusicologists who research improvisation, jazz in ritual context, and interactions, such as Ingrid Monson, Samuel Floyd, Travis Jackson, and Paul Berliner, as well as ideas proposed by phenomenologically adjacent thinkers such as Gilles Deleuze, Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Karen Barad. This thesis attempts to contribute to current jam session research in fields such as ethnomusicology and jazz studies by offering a perspective on jam sessions based on phenomenology and process philosophy, concluding that the jam session is an essential mechanism in the ongoing social and musical developments of jazz musicians and their scene. I also attempt to continue and develop the discourse surrounding theories of liminality in performance and ritual studies by underscoring the web of relations in social structures that are brought into contact with one another during the liminal performances of their acting agents. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Music 2019

Anthropologists, folklorists and popular writers have, in general, neglected to describe. the social contexts in which traditional Irish music is played. Although the dance was probably the most important context for traditional Irish music in Rochester, as elsewhere in the United States and Ireland, interest among Irish-born Americans and Irish- Americans in traditional dancing has waned. At present, the most important social contexts for Irish music in Rochester are the session, the Feis, and various representational contexts. The session is by far the most important, and has developed as interest in the dance has declined. Unlike the dance, it is musician-focused and music-oriented; few members of the community attend. The Feis is an institutionalized dancing competition for young people that many musicians dislike. Representational contexts are events, such as folk festivals, at which the musicians present their national music to people of other ethnic groups. There seems to be sufficient interest in the session and in Irish music in general so that the music will continue its popularity in Rochester.

In this study, the author examines the development of country music in the area surrounding Bowling Green and Glasgow, Kentucky, from approximately 1930 to 1960 and its relation to the newly emerging medium of radio. Emphasis is placed on several performers whose careers were linked to the radio stations which began to broadcast in Bowling Green and Glasgow during the 1940s. In the past, country music scholarship has tended to focus on phonograph records as a source of material for study and as the primary means of musical transmission. As a result, the careers of many of the lesser known artists were overlooked simply because they never made a record. The writer looks at country music as a local phenomenon with live radio broadcasts and personal appearances as the primary mode of transmission. Data were collected from tape recorded interviews and written sources, including various archival sources - old newspapers, fan magazines, and assorted ephemera - and used to outline the careers of several performers associated with WLBJ and WKCT in Bowling Green and WKAY in Glasgow.

Janelle Monáe is a pop superstar whose Afrofuturist art is paving the way for a new revolution of popular music. An investigation into her oeuvre reveals an artform that ­relies on technological aesthetics and science-fiction narratives as a critical lens through which capitalism and its racist, sexist, homophobic, and hegemonic tendencies are clearly revealed. Monáe displays a masterful understanding of social hierarchy and power imbalances, and uses her music as a form of resistance to those heterosexist, white-supremacist institutions that attempt to reduce Monáe to the profitability of her body and culture. Situating herself as a visible and celebrated queer black musician and activist, Monáe uses her voice to provide political commentary on present-day America, through imagined future dystopias. Her seamless synthesis of black music genres and aesthetics allows for a unified musical project that is accessible, socially informed, powerful, and impactful.