Thesis (M.A.)--University of Maryland, College Park, 2008. / Adviser: John Lawrence Witzleben. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Indiana University, 1979. / Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (p. [298]-308).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Indiana University, 1979. / Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (p. [298]-308).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2008. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

This research explores the interplay between culture and politics from a musical ethnography of the <i>Kaapse Klopse</i> carnival in Cape Town, South Africa. This cultural expression can be traced to colonial slavery when Cape slaves were given a day off on 2 January. Since the early 20th century, carnival troupes have gathered in football stadiums as a medium of socialisation to perform and compete against each other for trophies, profit, status, and bragging rights. The research is divided into four parts. In the first part, I discuss the impact of violence in township areas, the locus of carnival and where the majority of participants live, where I examine the role of carnival in the mitigation of physical and emotional distress, and the legacy of klopse music as symptoms of deeper divisions rather than historical imperatives. In part two, I discuss the functions and characteristics of klopse competitions, seeking to understand the reward scheme, motives and strategies for enticing players, as well as the effects of winning and losing, team work and pride on the individual and group. Part three focuses on the more negative aspects of competition, drawing on notions of persuasion, control and manipulation, as well as empirical discussion of how individuals compete for positions of power and status, and on how their quest for success in carnival reflects their position in the formal economy. Finally, in the last part, I examine the music of the <i>Kaapse Klopse</i> and explore its place within a rapidly changing South Africa, in which carnival and the political mainstream are moving in opposite directions, focusing on notions of ethnicity, entrainment, and solidarity, and the effects of power and money on the social field. Specifically, I use Durkheim's concept of collective consciousness to explain how the conscience collective is imperative to establishing moral order and the continuity of parades and competitions.

No description available.

This thesis explores the past and current roles that female bluegrass musicians achieve within the music industry in the United States. Using sociological concepts by Judith Butler, Simon Frith, Mavis Bayton, and, importantly, Thomas Turino’s ideas of participatory and communal versus performative and individual, I demonstrate women’s complex musical, social, and cultural positions in bluegrass culture. While women continue to make strides in achieving recognition in the bluegrass genre, society still hinders them from finding complete acceptance alongside male musicians. As bluegrass music is based on patriarchal foundations set by its creator, Bill Monroe of the Blue Grass Boys, female bluegrass musicians constantly struggle to variously actualize and resist this gendered model. Even as bluegrass women achieve success through manipulation of the traditional rules set before them, they continue to struggle against patriarchal foundations and women’s historical association with the voice. Through historical research, personal observations, and in-depth interviews with three female bluegrass musicians, I show that even as these women find acceptance within their own bands, they recognize the unequal musical acknowledgement they receive. With regard to communal and individual performance realms, women, unlike men, have trouble fulfilling positions in both areas. In order to achieve success, some bluegrass women embrace their sexuality and present an overtly feminine image to their audiences. Notions of tradition, authenticity and hybridity help frame my discussion of women’s roles. While the power of tradition and authenticity hinder women’s progress in the genre, concepts of hybridity allow them to branch out from conventions set down by first generation male bluegrass performers like Bill Monroe and the Stanley Brothers.

This thesis explores how the study of culture can benefit from Western technology by reviewing anthropological theoretical and methodological processes and issues concerning reciprocity between the ethnographers and research subjects. In this case I am exploring the process of digitizing and dissemination of 400 hours of Kiowa song recordings. New digitizing equipment has made audio preservation and access relatively easy and affordable. These issues are most critical to groups like the Kiowa whose songs I have already started digitizing. In this thesis I closely examine existing collaborative theory and methodology in order to demonstrate the balance that can and should be maintained when using technology to preserve traditional music. In general, applying audio technology to an anthropological problem can enhance or inhibit the ethnographic process. My thesis focuses on how audio technology can contribute to this process without inhibiting, complicating, or distorting the way ethnomusicologists, folklorists, and anthropologists practice go about recording sound. / Department of Anthropology

<p>The cross-cultural study of music is important to our understanding of the evolution of human biological and cultural diversity. Early comparative musicologists failed to develop rigorous scientific methods for studying this, and the modern-day fields of music cognition and ethnomusicology still lack such methods. In this thesis, I describe our attempts to design new methods for classifying and quantifying cross-cultural musical diversity and to apply these methods to the study of musical evolution and migration. Using a new method of classifying songs, we analyzed 421 songs from 16 indigenous tribes in Taiwan and the Philippines. We found striking parallels between musical and genetic diversity, both in the degree of diversity found within each culture and in the patterns of similarities between cultures. These findings suggest that music may be subject to similar processes of evolution and migration as are genes. A new, multidisciplinary, and scientifically-grounded comparative musicology may thus provide a new line of evidence to complement and integrate existing research into the complex relationship between music, biology, and culture.</p> / Master of Science (MSc)

No description available.