CONFERENCE ABSTRACTS / RÉSUMÉS DE LA CONFÉRENCE Keynote Plenary 1 / Séance plénière principale 1 Blowin' Up: Rap Dreams in South Central Jooyoung Lee, University of Toronto Blowin' Up is a long-term ethnography of aspiring rappers from Project Blowed, South Central Los Angeles’ most storied hip-hop open mic workshop. Drawing on five years of ethnographic research, in-depth interviews, and videos, Lee traces the lives of young Black men who grow up in the shadows of Crips, Bloods, and a glittering entertainment industry. Specifically, Lee shows how hip-hop culture becomes a ‘creative alternative’ to the gang life, which is a routine rite of passage into manhood for young men in South Central. He also shows how Project Blowed shields these young men from the dangers of the streets and how the surrounding industry – a world where everybody knows ‘somebody’ in the business – sustains these aspirations. In the end, Blowin’ Up takes the reader deep into the world of underground hip-hop in-the-making and makes a compelling case for nurturing the creative lives of at-risk youth. Blowin' Up est une ethnographie à long terme d’aspirants rappeurs de Project Blowed, l’atelier micros ouverts (open mic) hip-hop le plus légendaire de South Central Los Angeles. Faisant fond sur cinq années de recherche ethno- graphique, d’entrevues approfondies et de vidéos, Lee retrace la vie de jeunes Noirs qui ont grandi dans l’ombre des Crips, des Bloods et d’une industrie du divertissement scintillante. Il montre plus particulièrement comment la culture hip-hop devient une voie de rechange créative au gang, rite de passage courant pour les jeunes hommes de South Central. Il montre également comment Project Blowed protège ces jeunes contre les dangers de la rue et comment l’industrie environnante – un monde où chacun connaît «quelqu’un » du domaine – alimente ces aspirations. En fin de compte, Blowin’ Up invite le lecteur à pénétrer dans le monde souterrain du hip-hop en développement et fait valoir de manière convaincante l’importance de cultiver l’élément créatif chez les jeunes à risque. Session/Séance 1a: CSTM Panel 1 Perspectives on Song as Pedagogy and Praxis 1. Constituting Sung Language in Experience Kati Szego, Memorial University of Newfoundland Like many ethnomusicologists working in the North American academy, I teach courses in “world music” to undergraduate students. Most of my students are unilingual Anglo-Canadians, who are frequently asked to listen to sung texts that are unintelligible to them. Like most world music pedagogues, I provide students with glosses on the general meanings of a vocal performance and text translations whenever possible. Still, I have often wondered how students make meaning out of incomprehensible semantic materials. To this end, I examined the responses of three former students to songs sung in Hawaiian and Armenian. In this paper, I address three questions: How does sung language that is beyond denotative grasp, emerge in the experience of listeners, moment by moment? How are listeners’ multiple sensory modalities engaged in the process of constituting language sounds in experience? And how do listeners’ general disposition toward lyrics – their language ideologies – shape their listening practices? 2. Chante ton accent, sauvegarde ton identité! Acadian Music Revival in Nova Scotia’s Baie-Sainte-Marie Monique McGrath, Memorial University of Newfoundland Speaking French in Nova Scotia is perceived as a political gesture. After a long history of assimilation into the province’s dominant anglophone community, French-speaking Acadians in Nova Scotia are pressured to assimilate further by abandoning their regional Acadian accents and adopting Standard French. This paper discusses two waves of Acadian music revival in Nova Scotia’s Baie-Sainte-Marie, and how Acadians singing in both Standard French and Acadian French can be interpreted as a form of resistance from cultural assimilation. Whereas the 1990s saw groups like Grand Dérangement sing in Standard French to resist assimilation into the anglophone majority, contemporary groups like Radio Radio and Cy currently sing in Acadian French as a way of resisting assimilation into the Standard French community. 3. The Egyptian Singer and International Icon Umm Kulthum in the Eyes of Iranians Mahsa Pakravan, University of Alberta Nearly forty years after her death, the famous Egyptian singer Umm Kulthum is still loved by many. The older generation of Iranians still remember Umm Kulthum and compare her with respected Iranian singers. These comparisons are not simply about her music but have to do with her political views and ethical values. I focus on the position of a legendary non-Iranian female musician in Iranian society to better understand the double standards that affect the life and reputation of female musicians. I attempt to answer the following questions: What socio-cultural and spiritual meanings do Iranians assign to Umm Kulthum’s artistic character? How do these meanings reflect the challenges female musicians face in male-dominated societies? I also study the historical and cultural factors contributing to the iconic role of Umm Kulthum in Iranian society and highlight the restrictions around the participation of female musicians in the cultural scene of Iran. 27 Session/Séance 1b: CSTM Panel 2 Sound Sources for Intercultural Empowerment and Social Justice 1. Critical Ethnomusicology Pedagogy with Migrant Youth: Negotiating “Multicultural” Belonging in Edmontonian Schools Rana El Kadi, University of Alberta This paper draws on the experiences of 35 culturally diverse migrant youth that participated in my doctoral praxis at two junior high schools in Edmonton, Alberta. Through Critical Ethnomusicology Pedagogy (CEP), these students used participatory music-making and ethnomusicological research in order to explore their peers’ migrant identities as well as their own, while negotiating their senses of belonging within a multicultural context through relational terms. In my paper, I argue that CEP provides a performative-discursive space for migrant youth to: (a) contest the discourse of official Canadian multiculturalism, which reinforces cultural stereotypes and reproduces social inequities within schools; (b) express and negotiate their fluid musical identities and interests with peers of various cultures; and (c) (re)define what it means for migrant youth to “belong” in a multicultural context such as Canada. 2. (Be)longing and Activating (Be)longing: A Musical Intervention in the U.S. Gun Debate Eric Hung, Rider University In March/April 2017, as part of the 10-year memorial of the Seung-Hui Cho shootings, Virginia Tech will premiere (Be)longing, an oratorio by composer Byron Au Yong and writer Aaron Jafferis. Connected with this performance is Activating (Be)longing, which includes town forums, exhibits, and workshops that encourage participants to create artworks and activities based on the issues brought out by the piece. Au Yong and Jafferis believe that, in order to move forward in enacting more effective public policies about guns and gun violence, we need to go beyond the polarizing national debate by building community through the use of personal stories. My paper first discusses how (Be)longing mirrors conversations and arguments that occurred between the survivors, victims’ families, and the larger Virginia Tech community. Afterwards, I explore just how difficult moving beyond the national debate is, as demonstrated by a four-week workshop on (Be)longing in March/April 2016. 3. Beyond (dis)ability: Alternatives of Belonging Through Music, Theatre, and Garden Louise Wrazen, York University This paper considers the role of music in normalizing difference and (re)constructing the (dis)abled body. Each summer at Spiral Garden, children participate in an integrated program built around creative play and performance in an outdoor setting. Through music, theatre, and arts within a garden setting, the program creates an alternative space for children and youth with and without disabilities. Staff and participants build an inclusive environment rich in imaginative possibilities based on interdependence and belonging to contrast with the social exclusion many experience elsewhere. Following work on music and disability (Bakan) and acknowledging a theoretical framework that understands the body as the source of knowing (Johnson) and disability as a constructed minority identity (Siebers), this paper suggests that Spiral Garden models a relational way of being together and of being part of the natural environment that reinforces the normalcy of the incomplete subject (Davis) within a larger ecology of being. Session/Séance 1c: IASPM Panel 1 From the Hip to the Square: Canadian Celebrations, and Popular Music Nations 1. “We Are Not the Country We Think We Are”: Canada 150, Colonial Legacy and Gord Downie’s The Secret Path Susan Fast, McMaster University In October, 2016, Gord Downie released his fifth solo album. Titled The Secret Path, the album, along with an accompanying graphic novel by Downie and Jeff Lemire, tells the heart-wrenching story of Chanie Wenjack, an eleven year old Anishinaabe boy from the Marten Falls First Nation in Northen Ontario, who escaped from a residential school in 1966 and died while trying to walk the 600 kilometres back home. Downie’s purpose in telling Chanie’s story is both to bring attention to the horrors of Canada’s residential school system and to raise money for his fund to support the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation. On the project’s website, Downie writes: “Chanie’s story haunts me. His story is Canada’s story. This is about Canada … We are not the country we think we are.” In fact, in the same statement, and also in an interview Downie gave to the CBC, he admits that thinking of – or rather feeling – Canada as a country is difficult for him, which he now recognizes as stemming from the ongoing legacy of colonization. For this reason, Downie concludes that the last 150 years “aren’t as much worth celebrating as we think.” For Downie, the telling of Chanie’s story serves as a metaphor for this legacy.