Érudit's RSS Feed

From the Editor / Mot du Rédacteur en Chef

Gordon E. Smith

Introduction: Archives, Access, and Ethnomusicology

Laura Risk and Janice Esther Tulk

Dirna arrun “We Hold It”: Rematriating Junba with Archival Collections and Living Knowledge in the Kimberley, Northwest Australia

Pete Myadooma O’Connor, John Nyunjuma Divilli, Rona Goonginda Charles and Sally Treloyn
Since 2009–2010, practioner-custodians from Wanjina-Wunggurr First Nations in the Kimberley region of northwestern Australia have drawn upon archival materials relating to the multimodal performance-storytelling form Junba to renourish the practice and strengthen social and emotional well-being of young people in their communities. Numerous dance-songs that have not been performed for many years, some as long ago as the 1930s, others the 1960s, have re-entered the local canon. What has unfolded is a process of rematriating Junba (a process of reclaiming authority and agency over how Junba is held) from the archives of collecting institutions to the dynamic archives of knowledge in people and Country: dirna arrun (in Ungarinyin, “we hold it”). This article provides a written version of a lecture-recital presented and prepared by practitioner-custodians of Junba, O’Connor, Divilli, and Charles, together with collaborating ethnomusicologist, Treloyn, who are collectively engaged in this process of rematriation.

Heterophonic Mayhem in the Archive: The Poetics, Surprises, and Disruptions of Animating the Arab Musical Diaspora

Anne K. Rasmussen, Jared Holton, Anne Elise Thomas and Albert Agha
This article describes the musical reinterpretation of Arab music, originally recorded one hundred years ago for a transnational industry of Arab, Arab American, and international record labels and recently released into the public domain. Inspired by colleagues at the Loeb Library at Harvard University, who highlight the recent American Music Modernization Act, the writers are university-based directors of Arab music ensembles who delve into this musical public domain to research, transcribe, study, practise and perform covers of these “golden oldies.” This article narrates the process and evaluates the work of re/animating musical archives.

Digital Ethnomusicological Research Data and the Institutional Repository

Farzaneh Hemmasi and Hannah M. Brown
As governments and funding agencies increasingly embrace Open Science and FAIR data principles, both qualitative and quantitative researchers are encouraged to deposit and share their data via institutional repositories. How suitable are repositories and data sharing for ethnomusicologists? This article chronicles a pilot project using the Canadian institutional data repository Borealis focused on digital ethnomusicological research data related to the defunct Toronto punk and metal venue Coalition TO. The article includes recommendations relating to digital ethnomusicological research data management and considerations for those contemplating storing and sharing their digital research data collections, whether via institutional repositories or other means.

Archival Knowledge, Indigenous Knowledge, and Challenges in Collection Management: An Australian Case Study

Peter Toner
This article examines the Daymbalipu Mununggurr Collection of Yolngu music, made in northern Australia in the late 1970s and early 1980s and lodged at the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS), as an example of the intersection of partially incommensurable systems of knowledge. When Indigenous recordists and collectors do not share with archives and archivists fundamental premises about the nature of sound recordings and their associated management practices, this can result in diminished or problematic access to their collections but also can suggest new possibilities for archive-community co-management.

Epistemologies of Access: Hugh Tracey’s Organizing Principles at the International Library of African Music (ILAM)

Nicole Madeleine Pooley
Hugh Tracey’s classification and codification strategies have laid the foundation for enhanced access to archived living heritage in the International Library of African Music (ILAM). This article considers how Tracey’s episteme in developing these organizing principles, introduced as epistemologies of access, enables stakeholders access to accurate information with fidelity to its context of origin. The ethical dimensions of enhanced access are contextualized within South Africa’s transition to a constitutional democracy. Translating catalogue entries into source languages and, in turn, translating the metadata, which is derived from those catalogue entries, into source languages and making it accessible online is suggested as an ethically responsible action and a practical measure toward enhancing access for stakeholders.

Cultures of Sound Network: The Genesis of an International Alliance

Marcia Ostashewski, Harris M. Berger, Darrell Bernard Sr., Logan E. Clark, Michael Frishkopf, Judith Klassen, Maureen Loughran and Graham Marshall
The Cultures of Sound Network is an international alliance of cultural institutions that develops public engagement projects around music and sound. Since its inception in 2018, the network has used collaborative inquiry to mobilize music and sound knowledge across North America and beyond, serve diverse communities, including Indigenous ones, and bridge divides between museums, universities, cultural organizations, and publics. This article discusses examples of the network’s modus operandi and examines the value, significance, and prospects for sound initiatives of this kind in the 2020s.

Finding What Is Lost: The Intangible Archive of València’s Falles Festival

Rachel Horner
What remains in the archive when its material objects are constructed with the aim of destruction? Scholarly approaches to the “self-destructive archive” have emphasized ways to manipulate the archive to circumvent its inevitable drive toward loss. The Falles Festival of València, Spain, offers a different perspective: through the burning of the monumental artworks that give the festival its name, an “intangible archive” of behaviours, feelings, and beliefs comes into being, one that structures and is structured by social life during and beyond the festival. This archive affords ethnomusicologists a means to reconceptualize the material nature of ephemeral phenomena like sound.

Canadian Music Studies and/under the Second Trump Presidency

Robin Elliott
This talk explores the evolving landscape of Canadian music studies in the context of intensifying cross-border cultural and political pressures. Drawing upon historical reflections and contemporary developments, the presentation examines how Canadian music scholarship navigates questions of national identity, academic autonomy, and cultural preservation. It considers the influence of dominant U.S.-based institutions and academic societies on Canadian music studies and reflects on the challenges posed by shifting geopolitical dynamics, including threats to Canadian sovereignty and academic freedom. The talk highlights the resilience and diversity of Canadian musical traditions and underscores the importance of sustaining a distinct Canadian musical identity. Through case studies, historical parallels, and current responses from artists and scholars, the talk invites a broader conversation about the role music studies might play in affirming cultural sovereignty and fostering inclusive, forward-looking scholarship.

Twerking, Alcohol, Ordination: Rethinking Sacred and Secular with Rot Hae’s Mobile and Participatory Performances in Thailand

Nattapol Wisuttipat
This article examines the mobile and participatory aspects of rot hae รถ แห่, a musical performance on a moving vehicle, such as a truck or a cart. Despite its popularity, rot hae is criticized for instigating alcohol consumption and sexually provocative dance moves in public, particularly during Buddhist ordination parades. I argue that the mobility and participatory nature of rot hae performances allows it to challenge the established social order and their participants to seek otherwise prohibited sensual pleasures. Such encounters reveal the vernacular practices of Buddhism that cannot be easily mapped onto the sacred-secular dichotomy.

Developing a Community-Engaged Research-Creation Methodology through the Resonance Project

Ellen Waterman and Gale Franklin
In this article, we outline an emergent community-engaged research-creation (CE-RC) methodology that builds on principles from performative ethnography, community engagement, and care-full improvisation. CE-RC was developed through the Resonance Project (2020-23), in which we tested, reflected on, and refined our ideas in collaboration with musicians from marginalized communities. Drawing on both ethnographic data and analysis of collaborative artistic creations, we argue that CE-RC has high potential as a participatory applied methodology through which researchers and community collaborators together can advocate for positive social change.

Navigating Power and Positionality in Ethnographic Spaces

Tracey Mia Stewart
This article examines the influence of power and positionality in music research. I use key ethnographic moments of music making in Jamaican Maroon communities, the insights of a range of scholars, and my intersecting perspectives to investigate the following questions: How is access to cultural knowledge predicated on who we are, and who we are not? What does power sound like, and with whom and in what contexts does it reside? In what ways do histories of colonial domination and legacies of resistance reverberate through music and performance traditions, and how are those histories felt and heard in the present day?

Stock, Jonathan P. J., with Chou Chiener. 2021. Everyday Musical Life among the Indigenous Bunun, Taiwan

Tangmuyang Zhang

Martin, Denis-Constant. 2020. Plus que de la musique… Musiques, sociétés et politique, Caraïbes, États-Unis, Afrique du Sud

Marie-Christine Parent

Stanbridge, Alan. 2023. Rhythm Changes: Jazz, Culture, Discourse

Robbie MacKay

Donaghy, Joseph Keola. 2024. Mele on the Mauna: Perpetuating Genealogies of Hawaiian Musical Activism on Maunakea

Kati Szego

Pilzer, Joshua. 2023. Quietude: A Musical Anthropology of “Korea’s Hiroshima”

Benjamin Tausig

Jacobsen, Kristina. 2024. Sing Me Back Home: Ethnographic Songwriting and Sardinian Language Politics

Felicia K. Youngblood

Retro: Popular Music in Canada from the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s

Chris Greencorn

Yamaima Hilwa: As sung by Salim Doumani with Takht Naim Karakand

Daoud Husni, Muhammad Younis Al-Kady, Anne K. Rasmussen and Anne Elise Thomas

Il-Ḥilwa Dī ("This Beautiful Girl")

Badi‘ Khayri, Sayyid Darwish and Jared Holton

Yā Ghazālan ("Oh Gazelle"): موشّح (muwashshaḥ)

Jared Holton