Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2003. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references. Available also from UMI Company.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2003. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 366-374). Available also from UMI Company.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2003. / Vita. "Publisher's no.: UMI 3118043." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 366-374). Also issued online.

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Gospel singing is a musically sophisticated and culturally influential vocal performance style. Yet, its pedagogy is often expressed through the lens of formal/classical training or a Contemporary Commercial Music (CCM) umbrella for all non-classical styles. This is problematic because classical training does not produce gospel singing, and most CCM styles are derivatives of the black vernacular singing practices that are foundational to gospel music. It follows that Gospel singing should be foundational to the study of CCM styles. However, in the absence of formal vocal training, little is known about how gospel singers actually develop and maintain healthy gospel singing voices. The purpose of this study is to explore with 12 professional gospel singers, their perceptions of how they have developed and maintain a vibrant and successful gospel singing voice and what role, if any, formal voice training played in that development. The exploration revealed that professional gospel singers are often not only formally trained, but gospel is a key part of their formal training. Their gospel upbringing taught them key cultural practices that both align with and expand the conversation around traditional, CCM, and the growing Gospel voice pedagogy. Their stories offer a different perspective about how gospel singers learn and how they should be taught.

The aim of this study has been to locate a subcultural aspect of neotraditional music performance, and relate this to the broader historical, social, political, economic, and cultural processes of lived experience. In looking at the performance and compositional output of three township neotraditional musicians, I have attempted to focus on the individual construction and articulation of this lived experience. I have sought to link individuals to aspects of social and historical circumstance, perhaps to account for the undeniably social basis of performance generally. In this respect I have also recognised a common, overriding perception by the three township neotraditional performers, namely that of their pursuits as straddling a continuum of performance experience and epoch. In this way I have been led to examine elements which characterise this continuum in the urban black social experience. Thus, the bulk of the second chapter has been informed by existing archival documentary materials, scholarly studies of the socioeconomic, political, cultural and social performance developments among urban Africans in and around Durban prior to 1960. Several interviews with neotraditional performers of this era have also gone towards augmenting a backdrop for the emergent social performance practice of the townships since their consolidation from about the late 1950s onwards. It is from this melting pot of experience that I have attempted to pick up the threads that link the present subjects with what had unfolded before their time. However socially and culturally disjunctive the advent of the townships might be construed, it is as well the dynamics of such conjunctive and disjunctive experience in social performance practice which stand out clearly as symptoms in the course of urban black performance development. I have viewed the experience of the township as manifest in the lives of its citizens, here typified by the three subjects. I have sought the processing of the elements of the environment and its articulation in their individual compositional and performance styles. In the third chapter is delineated the influential aspect of learning and its effect upon the total expressive potential of the individuals. From a close scrutiny of contributing factors in the formative experiences of individual musicians, there emerge elements which highlight the intertextual and coeval nature of lived experience of the three subjects. The inclusion in the first chapter of my early musical consciousness acknowledges both the individual and the shared, social aspect of the musical performance experience. It is also in the intertwined careers of individual musicians that one of the most pertinent theoretical assumptions of this study finds resonance - namely the potential to be changed by, as well as to change, the experience of others (Jackson 1989). Chapter 4 seeks to account for the widespread employment of the guitar, especially in Natal and KwaZulu, as a primary instrument of neotraditional performance expressivity. The section on the tin-guitar exemplifies a general, grassroots understanding of the intervallic possibilities and rudimentary harmonies potentiated by neotraditional musical experiences. Chapter 5 deals with the stylistic approaches of the three subjects to performance and composition. An attempt is made to highlight their individual manipulation and understanding of the elements of form and structure, melody, harmony and rhythm. Chapter 6 focusses attention on the reproduction and representation of the music of the three subjects on records, radio, live performance and the print media. / Thesis (M.Mus.)-University of Natal, 1998.

This dissertation uses multi-sited ethnography to explore how the technological manipulation of sound in live jazz performance conditions the meanings, feelings, and politics of racial difference. Situated primarily in two multi-room jazz venues, Jazz at Lincoln Center (JALC) and the Montreux Jazz Festival, I analyze three years of participant observation with musicians, audio technicians, acousticians, and sound system designers. I analyze four main categories of technology: (1) physical acoustics; (2) sound isolation, (3) sound reinforcement (amplification); and (4) digital measurement, prediction, and manipulation technologies. My overarching goal is to provide new ways to understand live performance with more attention to the technologies, architectural designs, and human labor crucial to any sonic event. I show not only how the built physical spaces and technologies I observed are inscribed with human judgments about music and sound, but how the spaces themselves exhibit their own agentive force in conditioning social behavior. I thus rethink live performance as a dynamic network of materials, technologies, and human and nonhuman practices and meanings. My second intervention uses the figure of jazz—and, more specifically, the sound of jazz—to investigate how the intersection of technology and sound exposes new ways to think through questions of human difference. Focusing primarily on race, I show how ideals of scientific objectivity and “pure and clean” aesthetics challenge racial tropes of Black sound as “noisy” or disordered while complicating jazz’s political force as an agent of oppositional energy and Black cultural distinctiveness. Chapter one, “‘Some Rooms Make You Shout’: Physical Acoustics and the Sound of Jazz,” shows how the designers of JALC’s Rose Theater, a prestigious 1,300-seat concert hall, acoustically encoded musical and social values into the physical materials of the room and the building that surrounds it. Namely, I show how particular aspects of the hall’s physical acoustics reveal overlapping investments in western aesthetic values and Afro-diasporic priorities, including call and response, participatory interaction, and heterogenous timbral palettes. Chapter two, “‘Some Rooms Make You Whisper’: The Art of Isolation and the Racial Politics of Quiet,” focuses on Rose Theater’s acoustic isolation, accomplished through a rare and expensive “box-in-box” construction that physically disconnects the hall from any vibratory connection with the outside world. This unique architecture fosters an uncannily quiet, sequestered aural environment that counters a range of histories of racist white listening that associate Blackness, Black bodies, and Black spaces with various forms of “noisy” sonic excess. The hall’s extraordinary quietness also reinforces a culture of attentive listening that enmeshes the sound of jazz with western ontologies of aesthetic musical autonomy. Relatedly, chapter three, “‘Make Yourselves Invisible’: Transparency, Fidelity, and the Illusion of Natural Sound,” demonstrates how ideals of fidelity and transparency are embedded within electroacoustic sound systems, and how my interlocutors design and operate such systems to foster a “pure and clean” aural environment. I show how my interlocutors aspire to an illusion of a “natural,” technology-free sonic experience but deploy an array of technological systems to do it. My analysis challenges traditional notions of fidelity—and sonic mediation itself—by revealing musical experience as a constellation of vibrant interactions between acoustic vibrations, amplified sound energy, and physical human bodies. Chapter four, “Tuning the Room: On the ‘Arts’ and ‘Sciences’ of Sound and Space,” analyzes how my interlocutors design and calibrate sound systems using state-of-the-art digital equipment to foster what they call a neutral, “colorless” sonic environment with “the same sound everywhere.” This process of “tuning the room” conjures novel ontologies of sound and space as objects of detached observation and technoscientific manipulation. In chapter five, “Black Boxes, Pink Noise, and White Listening: Rationalizing Race, Gender and Jazz,” I demonstrate how the objectification of sound and space is entangled with raced and gendered epistemologies of scientific knowledge production. I further analyze these approaches to sound and space for their underlying entanglements with what Lipsitz calls a “white spatial imaginary”: an ostensibly neutral environment conducive to discriminatory systems of capital accumulation. These and other entanglements complicate the oppositional, counter-hegemonic potential of jazz and other forms of Black performance.

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.

A research report submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts (Sociology) / Can there ever be a space for radical Black performativity, by which I mean, a type of Black performance that is a challenge to, and not just a reiteration of (including in others’ enjoyment of it) the anti-Blackness of the world? This project – film and conceptual essay - investigates the limits and boundaries of this question and it does so through kwaito: a uniquely South African post 1994 musical and cultural phenomenon that is specifically born from the experiences of township life and of Blackness in South Africa. It does so as a way to think about the validity of the proposition put forward by Black Studies (mainly in Afro-pessimism) that violence in the modern world underwrites the Black person’s capacity to think, act, and exist spatially and temporally, this is in opposition, say, to Fred Moten’s Black Optimism, that holds that ‘objects’, that is to say Blacks, can and do resist and they do so through performance. This project then enters the debate in Black Studies through a questioning of the ‘authenticity’ of Black radical performativity and cultural practices and it reads kwaito as a Black cultural performative practice that is a form of fugitivity. This paper looks at some of the more hopeful, humanistic interpretations of Black aesthetics and proposes as a challenge that we rather think about and read kwaito as something close to a deranged apocalyptic response to anti-Blackness, that does not offer answers, and is a movement that operates as a form of fugitivity that unveils the quotidian and banal subjectivity of Black township life in South Africa post 1994. / NG (2020)

This dissertation is an analysis of Elaine Mitchener’s structurally improvised work SWEET TOOTH, initially devised in 2017 and 2018 for an ensemble of four. I focus on the February 22, 2018 London premiere at St George’s Church in Bloomsbury, where Mitchener, an experimental vocalist and movement artist, performed the piece with Sylvia Hallett (accordion, violin and voice), Mark Sanders (percussion), and Jason Yarde (saxophones). I have previously examined this piece in a co-authored essay with Mitchener entitled, “‘Water long like the dead’: The interruption and flow of time in Elaine Mitchener’s SWEET TOOTH,” as part of the volume Composing While Black: Afrodiasporic New Music Today, edited by Harald Kisiedu and George E. Lewis. This essay concentrated on how, with its improvisatory performance style, SWEET TOOTH’s structure, including harmonic and pitch content, emulates the simultaneous interruptions and flow of what Antonio Benítez-Rojo refers to as the “Plantation Machine”: the mechanics of transatlantic slavery that have continued to repeat and reveal themselves in renewed but connected ways as part of an expanded framework, where the Caribbean exists as what Benítez-Rojo describes as a “meta-archipelago,” a de-centered, multidimensional nexus without boundary that is also realized through SWEET TOOTH. In this thesis, I argue that the air is as vital to the Caribbean’s borderless flow as the sea, in that its vibrational qualities also repeat and oscillate through space and time. Specifically, I explore what Ashon T. Crawley describes as the “choreosonics” of SWEET TOOTH: how the combination of movement and sound together displace the air, making the work multi-sensory, and enabling travel between the interconnected histories, time zones, and dimensions that form the conditions of the Machine: the hold of a slave ship, the deep seas of the Atlantic Ocean, a Caribbean sugar plantation, spiritual realms and unknown worlds. Furthermore, I consider how “in-between,” or “blue” zones are formed, which facilitate these connected sites to simultaneously exist and be disrupted, as well as how aural triggers conjure these spaces in the present through memory, real and imagined. Finally, I analyze the means through which the Afro-Jamaican religion kumina is incorporated and practiced as part of SWEET TOOTH in the hope of transcending into an otherworldly realm: an act of defying the Machine. Ultimately, I demonstrate that whilst SWEET TOOTH replicates, and even belongs to the Plantation Machine complex, the work simultaneously finds ways to cut through and resist it: to frustrate its repetitions with the desire to completely disrupt it in perpetuity. shouting forever into the receiver (2022), a musical composition for large ensemble, attempts to recreate the repetitious condition of the Plantation Machine. This is achieved primarily through auxiliary instruments and their resulting effects on the work’s overall sound world and temporal state. A two-way walkie-talkie device introduces feedback and radio interference into the soundscape symbolizing the Machine’s persistent looping system, also simulating the cries of the plantations. Furthermore, a confluence of separate time zones is created through a chorale-like section of massed harmonicas and seven wind-up music boxes playing well known pre-programmed melodies by Beethoven, Mozart and Strauss composed during the establishment of the Plantation. Thus, not only is the past connected to the present through these aural memories, the ties between Europe and the plantations are purposefully emphasized. Eight players play two harmonicas simultaneously, breathing independently, each creating their own time zone with every repeat of the exhale-inhale action. The music boxes wind down at their own rate generating additional cyclical layers of time, thus emulating the eccentric situation of the Caribbean, which is without center or axis. A “blue” space is formed as a result, an expansive new site of connectivity where it is possible for transformation to occur or to, indeed, transcend out of the Machine.