Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2005. / Supervisor: Veit Erlmann. Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Dept. of Music, Dec. 2003. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

The purpose of this study was to examine the interaction between substance use messages in music media and how it impacts perception of substance and current substance use for different ethnicities. Four hundred and eighty four participants were recruited from a large southeastern university. Participant ethnicities included Caucasian, Hispanic, African American and Asian. This study examined frequency of substance use messages in popular music lyrics and music videos, along with participant self-reported ethnicity and, rates of substance use and perceived risk from substance use. Differences in perception of risk and current substance use were indicated between Caucasian and African American participants. Interestingly, an inverse relationship between exposure to substance use messages and perception of risk of harm from substance use was noted, with more frequent exposure being correlated with greater perceived risk and lower current substance use. Regression analysis indicated that ethnicity predicted frequency of substance use messages in music media, and exposure to substance use messaged predicted both perception of risk of harm from substance use and current substance use, supporting the hypothesized role of music as a mediator between ethnicity and substance use.

From the 1970s through the early 1990s numerous critics commented on an apparent “rebirth” of American opera. Subsequent scholarship has increasingly sanctioned a consensus view holding up Philip Glass and John Adams as the central figures in this opera resurgence. Although I do not dispute the importance of (post-)minimalism in these decades, my gambit in this dissertation is to reframe the idea of a late twentieth-century operatic renaissance by tracing a long relationship between jazz and the concept of American opera. The jazz genealogy of American opera that I develop in this study is intended not only to draw attention to a body of work that has been largely ignored but also to unfold antinomies of postmodern historical consciousness that were manifest in the operatic resurgence more generally. Although my inquiry extends as far back as the 1920s, this dissertation by no means presents a continuous history of opera from 1924 to 1994, as the subtitle might imply. The weight is squarely placed on the 1970s through the early 1990s. Chapter 1 explores racial dimensions of the concept of “modernity” through a study of Harlem Renaissance composer H. Lawrence Freeman’s never-performed “jazz opera” American Romance (1924-1929). Chapter 2 chronicles the Harlem Opera Society’s abandonment of its former European repertory and subsequent reinvention as the Afro-American Singing Theater/Jazz Opera Ensemble during the late 1960s and 1970s. Chapter 3 tracks the transformation of jazz in the 1980s into an increasingly historicist—or possibly posthistoricist—music through a series of works that I call “jazz-historical operas.” Chapter 4 works through a tension between “actuality” and allegory in Robert Ashley’s television opera trilogy (1978-1994) about American history. The name of Duke Ellington winds through the four chapters as a kind of red thread. “Ellington” functions as a multivalent trope, alternatively signifying hypermodern America, the black cultural tradition, composition, and improvisational “actuality.” In a brief epilogue I identify another figure whose name has somewhat more furtively shadowed my study: Richard Wagner. I suggest that the idea of an “Ellington-Wagner matrix” in American opera both symbolizes a tradition of cultural hybridity and identifies a problematic concerning history and sonic materiality (roughly, the distinction between “event” and “representation”) expounded in the preceding chapters. In some ways, my analysis of the deeply ambiguous status of historicity and modernity in twentieth century American culture will prove consonant with many previous discussions of the topic. But I hope that in certain fundamental respects my study may also be understood as a novel, even interventionist foray into historical theory. Race has scarcely been an overlooked topic in critical inquiry and cultural theory of the last three decades, but it is hard to ignore the Eurocentric—or Euro-American—thrust of much of the canonical discourse on postmodernity and historicity, some of which was surveyed above. My attempts to interpret transformations in historical consciousness through shifting relationships between two culturally and racially supercharged signifiers—“jazz” and “opera”—might be taken as a challenge to this tendency.

Forging connections across the fields of American, French, and African diaspora history, this dissertation traces the emergence of the Hip Hop cultural movement in New York City's African American and Latino neighborhoods in the 1970s and its globalization to a postcolonial France. Drawing on previously untapped archival sources in the U.S. and France, as well as dozens of original, in-depth oral histories with key figures (including musicians, journalists, dancers, visual artists, deejays, and businesspeople), "Between New York and Paris" uncovers the roots and routes of this trans-Atlantic history. Organized around a series of transnational encounters, the study examines how Hip Hop's various cultural practices (rapping, deejaying, graffiti, breakdancing) traveled first from New York's outer boroughs to the downtown Manhattan arts scene at the turn of the 1980s, and then spread to and became rooted in the disproportionately immigrant, working-class suburbs of France. This dissertation argues that the globalization of this (African)American cultural movement radically altered the terrain on which postcolonial Afro-French youth's national and diasporic membership was lived, contested, policed, and performed. Over the course of the last quarter of the twentieth century, as France was becoming home to the largest African-descended population in Europe as well as the second largest market for the production and consumption of Rap music in the world (behind only the United States), Hip Hop fostered a deep, transnational engagement--both by the movement's adherents and its critics--with the meanings of (African)Americanness and Frenchness, of citizenship and belonging, and of diaspora and democracy.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Nevada, Reno, 2008. / "August, 2008." Includes bibliographical references. Online version available on the World Wide Web.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2000. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [269]-307). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2000. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [269]-307). Also available on the Internet.

The extreme metal subculture is a collective of musical genres that are generally more sonically aggressive and experimental than heavy metal. This dissertation argues that extreme metal and its accompanying culture can be beneficial to young Black musicians and fans, as it allows for more creative freedom for artists to express themselves within a music culture that on the surface, is concerned more with the music than the visual aesthetics that drive mainstream music genres. However, through my own experience as a Black woman metal fan, I also believe that anti-black racism can be a distinct detractor in active participation within this music culture that because of its absence in mainstream popular music culture, is dependent on its listening audience to stay even more independent.With each chapter, I look at various issues to demonstrate these ideas while also acknowledging that extreme metal shares some of the same sociocultural complications as heavy metal, such as racism, misogyny, anti-Semitism, and homophobia. I explore how black participants who are currently involved in their respective scenes find freedom and individualism despite the challenges they could face. This dissertation is interdisciplinary in nature, as I refer to scholarship from several disciplines to explore how, despite the reluctance from scholars to properly acknowledge the contributions of African American within heavier variations of rock n’ roll, there are sonic, lyrical, and philosophical correlations between the freedom expressed within the music and lyricism of blues music, as well as in Avant Garde jazz stylings, and extreme metal. My methodological process was grounded on providing the “subaltern” a voice: It was crucial to offer space to Black musicians within extreme metal genres to document not just their musical experiences, but their abilities to work within a music culture that has been historically marked as “white-centric” in its music and its aggression. This is no easy feat, but I argue that with each year, there are more Black artists getting involved within their respective extreme music scenes as musicians, fans and industry workers who work behind the scenes as journalists, photographers, and tour managers. I also provide anecdotes from my own experiences as a longtime fan, a music journalist and my knowledge that was gained through my previous work researching and writing a book on the experiences of Black women within the heavy metal, hardcore and punk scenes. Through interviews and examples from my experiences covering extreme heavy metal concerts and festivals, this dissertation effectively blends scholarship and real-life examples that I believe encapsulates the issues that Black extreme metal participants are presently experiencing. I conclude my dissertation with suggestions about the ways in which Black fans can participate within a music culture that is marked with the current political and social climate. By noting that extreme metal genres have been used as a vehicle by White Nationalist groups to recruit members, as well as in sharing disinformation, I provide ideas that participants can use to ensure their safety to enjoy the music they are passionate about. Overall, my philosophy is that extreme metal is not only an enjoyable music but can also be a vehicle for progressive change: The aggression and the energy has been a lifesaver for myself and all my interlocutors as a method to acknowledge and release the frustrations and anger that we feel in living in an unjust society. I am especially concerned with Black youth, as expressions of anger omitted within public spaces could potentially lead to violence enacted on their bodies. Extreme metal allows Black youth to express these emotions within spaces that are shared with a myriad of people from various backgrounds, but we must find productive ways to deter Black youths from internalizing their pain and anger and exploring and advocating for healthy ways they can express these emotions with others who share the same feelings. While these extreme metal scenes come with their own complications, I hope this dissertation serves as a beginning in exploring alternative ways to express our own individuality in whatever manner we choose to.

Music education policy and administration attempts to shape the musical sensibilities of young people. Yet the logics of music education from a socioeconomic standpoint are inadequately understood. This dissertation focuses on the relationship between music education nonprofits and public schools and on the public and private policies that have shaped the formation and perpetuation of these relationships. I analyze the logics of policy documents alongside the discourses and narratives of private organizations that support music education within the specific contexts of New Jersey, a state that mandates music education access for all students, and the COVID-19 pandemic, which has exacerbated societal inequalities, to illuminate how policy makers and administrators shape student experiences in the proto-democratic space of the classroom. I use policy analysis and institutional ethnography, approaching data primarily through the lenses of neoliberal critiques of marketization, critical whiteness studies, and analyses of the intersection of class and race, which I outline in chapter one. I also consider the design of music education programs within the theoretical framework of culturally relevant pedagogy. Education systems are adapting to shifting racial discourses as schools continue to construct citizens within racialized and classed hierarchies. Music historically has been invoked in the construction of societal stratifications to mark ethnic and cultural boundaries. In chapter two, I examine these narratives that have shaped the formation of music education in the United States as a culturally hegemonizing force and persist in debates around the purpose of music education in under-resourced schools that mainly serve students from minoritized communities. Music education remains a site at which policy makers, administrators, educators, and community members negotiate the role of culture in shaping new citizens. State music education policy in New Jersey specifically struggles to support the progressive vision it professes as it continues to suggest a strongly hegemonic curriculum and perpetually underfunds music programs in schools. Within this context, the third chapter considers how funders and advocacy groups are so frequently focused on short-term funding needs that they persistently struggle to address systemic issues in music education, such as issues with administrations that do not represent the communities being served, colonial content and pedagogy, and unsustainable funding solutions. As such, the limited services and non-democratic leadership of privately funded music education programs in public schools reinforce the role of public schools as gate-keepers of exclusionary citizenship norms. At the same time, privatization has also opened opportunities for non-normative, anti-oppressive forms of music pedagogy to enter public schools. In the fourth chapter, I investigate how, though their very existence reinforces the marketizing trends that rank and exclude, some nonprofits do attempt to serve students in culturally relevant ways within this environment, and can even work in ways that support publicly funded programs. Altogether, my research provides insight into the role that the privatization of public spaces within neoliberalism plays in the formation and reproduction of classed and raced citizens, as policy makers, funders, and program administrators determine which young people are given access to which forms of education.