Music

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    ILE AIYE: PERFORMING AFRO-BRAZILIAN IDENTITY THROUGH MUSIC
    (2011) Mills, Gisèle-Audrey; Witzleben, J. Lawrence; Music; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    Originating in Salvador, Bahia, the musical genre and carnival performance known as "bloco afro" combines rhythms based on Afro-Brazilian ritual music played on percussion instruments with lyrics that highlight themes of black pride and resistance. The term `bloco' refers to groups that parade together during carnival, and `afro' describes the emphasis on manifestations of African and Afro-Brazilian culture. At its founding in 1974, the first bloco afro, Ile Aiye, inspired a cultural movement by establishing a visible and intentionally black bloco afro in Liberdade, a historically black community in Salvador. Performed by large collectives of drummers and dancers dressed in brightly colored African clothes, many performers with intricately braided hairstyles or dreadlocks, the music was initially linked to a growing movement of Afro-Brazilian activists in black neighborhoods of Bahia promoting racial consciousness and organizing political interventions to combat racism. This study explores bloco afro as a musical movement within the broader context of the contemporary Movimento Negro (Black Movement) in Brazil, and its role in constructing racial identity among black Brazilians. Primarily an ethnomusicology-based study, a trans-disciplinary approach using cultural studies and performance studies is applied toward developing an analytical framework for bloco afro performance, with a focus on identifying specific factors and processes that create and promote musical meaning and the role they play in constructing black identity.
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    KOREAN DANCE AND PANSORI IN D.C.: INTERACTIONS WITH OTHERS, THE BODY, AND COLLECTIVE MEMORY AT A KOREAN PERFORMING ARTS STUDIO
    (2009) Ash-Morgan, Lauren Rebecca; Provine, Robert C.; Music; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    This thesis is the result of seventeen months' field work as a dance and pansori student at the Washington Korean Dance Company studio. It examines the studio experience, focusing on three levels of interaction. First, I describe participants' interactions with each other, which create a strong studio community and a women's "Korean space" at the intersection of culturally hybrid lives. Second, I examine interactions with the physical challenges presented by these arts and explain the satisfaction that these challenges can generate using Csikszentmihalyi's theory of "optimal experience" or "flow." Third, I examine interactions with discourse on the meanings and histories of these arts. I suggest that participants can find deeper significance in performing these arts as a result of this discourse, forming intellectual and emotional bonds to imagined people of the past and present. Finally, I explain how all these levels of interaction can foster in the participant an increasingly rich and complex identity.
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    Music, Ritual, and Diasporic Identity: A Case Study of the Armenian Apostolic Church
    (2004-04-26) McCollum, Jonathan Ray; Pacholczyk, Jozef; Music
    This study examines the relationships between music, music-making, and ritual performance in the Armenian Apostolic Church. By looking at music-making as a ritual liturgical symbol of faith, I explain the meaning of liturgical music practice and its function in teaching the fundamentals of faith. Drawing upon the fields of ethnomusicology, theology, and ritual studies, I explore the theoretical orientations and methodological strategies that assist in the interpretation of music in ritual contexts. By examining various theories of symbol and ritual combined with fieldwork, I interpret Armenian Apostolic liturgical music using a theoretical methodology that investigates the operation of liturgical music within ritual contexts. Because "faith" is not empirically observable, I focus on "the conception of faith" as it is performed by participants in the Divine Liturgy. In addition to looking at these aspects, I also extend my search past that of the "official" Christian Armenian community by asking what purpose the Armenian Apostolic Church serves in the community as a whole, even amongst non-Christians or non-practicing Armenian Christians. There is a discourse that runs through Armenian literature and politics that to be "Armenian" is to be "Christian." Is this the reality of the situation? Is Armenian Christianity perceived as faith, heritage, or both, and to what extent does the Divine Liturgy play a role in realizing Armenian identity? The purposes of this study are to interpret ritual in light of our physical, social, political, moral, aesthetic, and religious existence, to analyze and interpret liturgical music, to contribute to the development of a critical theory of music as a ritual symbol, and to address issues of identity. I conclude that if the symbolic activity of ritual performance evokes participation that is empirically observable, as an outward performance and transformation or "rite of intensification" of a deeper display of the conception of faith, liturgical music-making becomes integral to the liturgical rite itself. Also, in terms of Armenian identity, the Armenian Apostolic Church is essential to the negotiation of cultural identity outside of their historic homeland of Armenia, even amongst Armenians who do not actively perform the Divine Liturgy.