The University of Southern Mississippi The Aquila Digital Community Dissertations Summer 8-1-2015 A Jamaican Voice: The Choral Music of Noel Dexter Desmond A. Moulton University of Southern Mississippi Follow this and additional works at: https://aquila.usm.edu/dissertations Part of the Composition Commons, Ethnomusicology Commons, Music Education Commons, Musicology Commons, Music Pedagogy Commons, Music Performance Commons, Music Practice Commons, Music Theory Commons, and the Other Music Commons Recommended Citation Moulton, Desmond A., "A Jamaican Voice: The Choral Music of Noel Dexter" (2015). Dissertations. 112. https://aquila.usm.edu/dissertations/112 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by The Aquila Digital Community. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations by an authorized administrator of The Aquila Digital Community. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. The University of Southern Mississippi A JAMAICAN VOICE: THE CHORAL MUSIC OF NOEL DEXTER by Desmond Moulton Abstract of a Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Southern Mississippi in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Musical Arts August 2015 ABSTRACT A JAMAICAN VOICE: THE CHORAL MUSIC OF NOEL DEXTER by Desmond Moulton August 2015 As we approach the 21st-century, the world generally is moving away from the dominance of the European aesthetic toward a world music that owes much to the musical resources of the African-American tradition. Jamaica’s social and philosophical music belong mainly to that tradition, which includes the use of rhythms, timbral, and melodic resources that exist independently of harmony. Already in this century, Jamaicans have created two totally new music - nyabinghi, which performs a philosophical function and reggae, which performs a social function.