Thesis (Ph.D.)--Aberdeen University, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (D.C.A.)--University of Western Sydney, 2008. / A thesis presented to the University of Western Sydney, College of Arts, in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Creative Arts. Includes bibliographies.

This thesis examines the transformations of music circulation and consumption brought about by new media platforms. Specifically, it shows how the social and technical design of online music platforms link the consumption of music immanently to its circulation. The thesis makes contributions to ethnomusicology, media studies, and digital anthropology, as well as to the study of music's technical cultures. It is based on a comparative ethnographic study of music circulation and consumption within two field sites: the commercial streaming service Spotify and the extralegal, unlicensed peer to peer platform 'Jekyll'. Governance comes to the fore in both sites: the study shows how practices of music curation, collection and consumption are regulated by the technical design of these platforms. Surprisingly, music consumption and circulation on Jekyll generates a variety of social relations, including pronounced social hierarchies. This is far less apparent on Spotify, due to the platform's individuated mode of address. The subjectivities of online music consumers are mediated by both their personal histories and by the broader technical genealogies of the platforms they use. The thesis illuminates the mutual interdependencies of the licensed and extralegal spheres, two domains often portrayed as not only separate but antagonistic. It also provides insight into the hybrid modes of exchange that generate digital music platforms. Through examining the entailments of circulatory participation, the study offers new insights into digital polymedia and to labour, exchange and governmentality online, as well as providing nuanced understandings of the ownership and collection of music in digital environments. Moreover, it advances new concepts to identify core aspects of digital music cultures, namely 'circulatory maintenance' and 'circumvention technology'. The thesis shows overall how Spotify and Jekyll are not merely emblematic of emergent consumption practices engendered by new media, but are bound up in the mutual co-creation of culture, engendering novel musical subjectivities, practices, socialities and ideologies. The complex musical, technical and social assemblages formed around music circulation online point to the affective potentials of music itself, producing inalienable attachments to the objects through which music is formatted, experienced, and circulated.

402 f. / Submitted by JURANDI DE SOUZA SILVA (jssufba@hotmail.com) on 2013-03-08T14:49:55Z No. of bitstreams: 2 Tese Angelo Cardoso parte 2.pdf: 2635837 bytes, checksum: f0979ecdc17fe6108db8950c50bae6e6 (MD5) Tese Angelo Cardoso parte 1.pdf: 6176809 bytes, checksum: 86c9fab43e8f74f8fdaf2922e235415b (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Rodrigo Meirelles(rodrigomei@ufba.br) on 2013-03-22T14:17:19Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 2 Tese Angelo Cardoso parte 2.pdf: 2635837 bytes, checksum: f0979ecdc17fe6108db8950c50bae6e6 (MD5) Tese Angelo Cardoso parte 1.pdf: 6176809 bytes, checksum: 86c9fab43e8f74f8fdaf2922e235415b (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2013-03-22T14:17:19Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 Tese Angelo Cardoso parte 2.pdf: 2635837 bytes, checksum: f0979ecdc17fe6108db8950c50bae6e6 (MD5) Tese Angelo Cardoso parte 1.pdf: 6176809 bytes, checksum: 86c9fab43e8f74f8fdaf2922e235415b (MD5) Previous issue date: 2006 / Candomblé pode ser entendido como um nome genérico empregado para designar algumas religiões afro-brasileiras. O presente trabalho tem como foco a música de uma dessas religiões, conhecida como candomblé de queto ou nagô. Nos rituais dessa religião, a música é um componente tão essencial que em quase todas as cerimônias ela está presente. Em seus rituais públicos a música se mantém o tempo todo, ela inicia, acompanha e termina junto com o ritual. No candomblé de queto, a música não possui um estilo único, as suas particularidades são bem variadas. Porém, embasado em uma pesquisa de campo e bibliográfica, pude encontrar um denominador comum em todas as emissões musicais dentro dessa religião: a função comunicativa. No candomblé nagô a música é utilizada como uma forma de linguagem, um meio pelo qual o fiel transmite as mensagens desejadas. A música é a fala oficial dentro dos rituais de candomblé. A função comunicativa não se restringe ao texto associado à música, mas, como dito, a qualquer emissão musical, seja uma cantiga ou uma música instrumental. De fato, esta tese focaliza a música instrumental dessa religião, principalmente, a música originada dos atabaques. Analisando a música desses instrumentos, que são tipos de tambores, procuro mostrar como os seus sons são utilizados como um meio de comunicação, ou seja, como se efetua a linguagem dos tambores. Para realizar tal intento, questões periféricas são abordadas, tais como: a descrição física e simbólica dos instrumentos musicais característicos da religião; informações sobre as formas de aprendizagem do candomblé; além de uma releitura de conceitos da musicologia ocidental sob a ótica da música dessa religião afro-brasileira. / Salvador

The double-pipe reed woodwind known as the aulos was the most pervasive instrument in ancient Greek life. Despite recent attention to affect and the senses and advancements in ancient musicology, there remains no comprehensive study of this cultural phenomenon. Bringing the burgeoning field of sound studies to bear on the diverse range of evidence, this dissertation offers the first cultural history of aulos performance, focusing on a crucial period of its activity spanning the sixth through fourth centuries BCE. I propose an interpretive model that works across textual and material sources to account for the ineffable, affective ways in which the instrument acts upon the embodied listener. When we consider the aulos as a sonic medium that works beyond the structural and semantic boundaries of music and language, we can identify how the instrument communicates across contexts through certain structures of feeling its sound. By exploring the world-building capacities of the instrument’s sound effects and harmonics, I chart the history of these embodied ways of knowing its sound. I argue that the aulos operates through a culturally conditioned interface with the body, exerting an agency that impacts social and civic identity, drives musical innovation, and poses a cultural threat to discursive ways of knowing and rational persuasion. The five chapters identify the interplay of tradition and innovation across the contexts of aulos performance, between musical and theatrical genres as well as civic practices involving corporate movement. Meanwhile, with the rise of prose, the emerging critical discourse on the aulos analyzes its effect on the body specifically and aims to expose how the listener is tricked into the “enchanting” soundworlds it constructs. This interdisciplinary media-based approach to ancient Greek performance thus presents a new register of meaning-making that articulates unexplored aspects of the artistic, literary, and philosophical works that preserve this culture.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

This thesis undertakes an examination of the branding and sponsorship practices of the Vic Firth Drumstick Company, and explores some of the ways that percussion music broadly, and percussionists specifically, may be impacted by the Vic Firth Company’s strategic marketing and sponsorship efforts. The thesis investigates some of the specific methods Vic Firth uses to interact with percussionists and consumers, presenting the methods and the motivations behind them as compatible with neoliberal economic ideas and policies. Vic Firth’s branding strategies reflect myriad economic factors facing individual percussionists; emphasis on personal branding and artistic authenticity, the necessity of entrepreneurial skills to create economic viability, and the desire for personal connection, networking, and alliance with other percussionists are all part of the zeitgeist the company is attempting to tap into. By examining some of the specific ways Vic Firth crafts and curates their brand, including the creation of signature sticks and mallets, a tiered sponsorship program, aggressive media production, and direct marketing to percussionists through social media, I bring into focus the scope of Vic Firth’s brand and its potential effects on the larger percussive and musical landscape.

Drawing from scholarship on play, ritual, and performance, I propose that Czech bluegrass thrives – as does my fieldwork – in a state of in-betweenness, in a territory that is between work, play, here and there, self and other. Being comfortable with this kind of in-between state is important for fieldwork, and for music-making – play, I find, is both a central activity and metaphor in both. The bluegrass play I discuss in this essay can become a response to the encroachment of Americanization in economic and cultural globalization, but also a way of being “Americanist” – and entirely Czech.