This dissertation proposes a framework for analyzing musical interculturality—the processes through which musicians weave together multiple musical and cultural identities through performance—in twenty-first-century music. By attending to the specific sociopolitical contexts of the intercultural environment in which each performer takes part, I challenge multiculturalist assumptions of cultural purity, homogeneity, and authenticity that often undergird music theoretical analyses of non-Western music. My analysis of interculturality centers on musicians whose work risks being excluded from nation-state-based conceptions of cultural authenticity that have dominated music theoretical work on non-Western music. Through three case studies of active Japanese musicians, I explore how a collaborative project between shamisen player Honjoh Hidejirō (本條秀慈郎) and composer Fujikura Dai (藤倉大), performances by shō player Miyata Mayumi (宮田まゆみ), and the music of mixed-race Japanese American singer-songwriter Mitski present heterogeneous possibilities of national and cultural identity. Through close readings of musical recordings, videos, and scores, as well as through interviews and archival work, I demonstrate how cultural and musical identities are constructed through the particular historical and sociopolitical contexts within which performers operate. Focusing on how Honjoh, Miyata, and Mitski complicate and challenge strict dichotomies between Japanese and non-Japanese cultural, national, and musical affiliations, I pay close attention to how intercultural meanings are constructed through their performances, dialogues, and collaborations. In each case study, I argue that an analysis of interculturality necessitates a flexible, interdisciplinary, and transnational methodology that is tailored to the precise historical and sociopolitical circumstances in which the music is being created, performed, and interpreted. By understanding characterizations of Japanese, Western, and Japanese American as contingent categorizations that do not exist a priori but materialize through musical performance, I draw attention to the distinctive ways in which Honjoh, Miyata, and Mitski engage in intercultural music-making. This dissertation challenges essentialist narratives that continue to assume a rigid and homogeneous view of Japanese culture while fetishizing traditional music as a singular marker of authenticity. Given that oppositional binaries between the West/non-West and cultural insider/outsider continue to shape the interpretation of music by non-white non-Euroamerican musicians, I argue that it is crucial for music analysis to confront and complicate—rather than uncritically affirm—these narratives. First, I problematize monolithic and essentialist conceptions of Japanese music. Through analyses of performers who deviate from these narratives, I disconnect expressions of musical identity from ethno-nationalist assumptions and situate ethnicity as one of many factors that shape cultural identity. Second, I interrogate the underlying epistemological frameworks that produce reductive misrepresentations of Japanese music. This dissertation disrupts the underlying Eurocentric epistemological framework that essentializes—and therefore exerts control over—non-Western cultures. I therefore conceive of interculturality not only as an issue of representation, but also as a strategy for challenging the imposed authority of Western systems of knowledge. Third, by analyzing the agency of performers in negotiating and contesting dominant narratives of Japanese ethnic, cultural, and musical identity, I approach interculturality as an embodied and lived phenomenon rather than as only an intellectual analytical endeavor.

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A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Arts in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Music in the Department of Music at the University of Zululand, South Africa, 1997. / The aim of this study is to investigate the relationship between music and worship in contemporary African society. Since there are various forms of activities that constitute the African society, the study will focus on the Zionists' Church music and worship from an ethnomusicological point of view.

Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of IsiZulu Namagugu at the University of Zululand, 2007. / Music plays a vital role in African cultures and permeates all the spheres of life. Music is part and parcel of culture in African societies. Music informs culture, and culture also informs music. The study of African music using the comparative approach was fraught with numerous pitfalls and shortcomings. Music was studied in isolation, which led to a misconstrued picture of African music. This study has thus employed the ethnomusicological approach. The ethnomusicological approach ensures that music is analysed taking into consideration the cultural context of music. This study looks at mbaqanga music as culture and in culture. The history of mbaqanga music is, thus, analysed taking into account all the factors that impacted on its evolution. The first chapter serves as a background to this study. It deals with the aims of this research and the definition of terms. It also deals briefly with the research methodology employed in this study. The second chapter focuses on a literature review and analytic models. It also looks at the emergence of ethnomusicology as a discipline. It focuses on music as culture and music in culture, and, moreover, it looks at the types of popular music. The third chapter deals with the historical background of mbaqanga music. Genres such as marabi and kwela music are briefly discussed. The political and socio-cultural context of mbaqanga music is discussed. The role of musicians and the media in the development of mbaqanga music is also discussed. The fourth chapter deals with research methodology in detail. This chapter also focuses on the details related to data collection. The fifth chapter deals with the analysis and interpretation of data. It looks at findings from interviews conducted and the analysis of song texts. The sixth chapter offers recommendations and a summary of the findings.

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This dissertation explores the way Kotiria/Wanano (E. Tukanoan, Kotiria hereafter) women of the Brazilian Alto Rio Negro (ARN) contrive (McDowell 1990) kaya basa ‘sad songs’ using linguistic and musical resources to construct songs that express loneliness and other private emotions, while also creating alliances and separations from other women in their lives. A central concept is the practice of linguistic exogamy, in which Kotiria marry speakers of other languages, creating a multilingual and multivocal, cacophonic sound during po’oa exchange ceremonies. I compare these songs to mythological narratives depicting the beginnings of Kotiria society and the roles of men and women within it, as well as men’s ceremonial forms of speech and unmarried women’s joking songs as a way to think about the resonances of sound and meaning married women create in their songs. Drawing on resources from linguistic anthropology, ethnomusicology, semiotics, and intersectional feminism, I demonstrate that the singing of – and listening to – kaya basa is a fundamental social structuring event. Despite previous works (e.g., Brüzzi 1962) that saw men’s expressive practices like shamanic chanting or ritual instrument playing as those upholding the social order, I argue that the social order owes its stability equally to women’s public participation in musical practice. Following Hill’s formulation of musicalizing the other (1993, 2009, 2011, 2013), I demonstrate that kaya basa reflect on inter- and intra-community relations on the macro level, while also giving women the chance to comment on important life transitions on the micro level. Moreover, my combined linguistic and spectrographic analyses of the sounds of these songs illustrate the intricate relations between the sounds of language and the sounds of music, the methods by which one understands something is true or false, and how individual singers can contrive differently within the same genre to create a well-formed song. I propose further work on this genre, and on genres that seem to be related which are produced by other groups in the area. I extend Beier, Michael, and Sherzer’s (2002) conception of the greater Amazonian discourse area to one of a greater Amazonian soundscape in which sonic ways of producing and gathering meaning (acoustemologies, Feld 1996) have been and are a major driving force in the arraying of social life across language families in the ARN.

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