SEMESTER AT SEA COURSE SYLLABUS Colorado State University, Academic Partner Voyage: Spring 2020 Discipline: Music/Anthropology Course Number and Title: MU/ANTH 232 Soundscapes-Music as Human Practice Division: Lower Faculty Name: Dr. Shumaila Hemani Semester Credit Hours: 3 Meeting: B day, 1540-1700 in Adlon Prerequisites: None COURSE DESCRIPTION The official CSU catalog description is: Musical communities and soundscapes from around the world provide exploration points for how music and sound inform human life. Study everything from playlists to music of distant lands. Ability to read notated music not required. Additional description: Do you recall the sounds of the town or city you grew up in? Are your memories of hometown associated with specific sounds of traffic, church bells, call to prayer (azan), farm animals or birds? What makes a soundscape of a city different from that of another and how does movement of people from rural to urban areas or processes such as colonialism shift the soundscapes? Is the difference in class and status of a neighborhood reflected in its soundscape? How do people who inhabit the city influence its soundscape and in what ways do states and government seek to control the soundscape of a city? We will explore these broad range of questions connecting soundscapes with city-life by studying music ethnographies that document sonic cultures of a city. With a particular emphasis on understanding modernity and its impact on pre-industrial cultures within cities, we will learn about circulation of western music and jazz in Japan and South Africa and indigenization of western instruments such as violin and guitar in South India and Ghana. From the contemporary use of Rap music for political protest in Morocco to Mao’s Cultural Revolution that banned western music in China, we will learn how the cities’ soundscapes have shifted as a result of cultural policy and movement of people. In order to hone our theoretical tools to study soundscapes, we will examine Habermas’ concept of “public sphere,” Nancy Fraser’s work on gender and public sphere, Arjun Appadurai’s work on global cityscapes, Akhil Gupta and James Ferguson’s work on culture as power and resistance; John Thompson’s work on media and the internet, and music scholarship that differentiates “musical scenes,” and music sub-cultures or “micro-music” of urban cities (Mark Slobin). From the call to prayer (azaan) in Muslim cities to coffee houses in old Morocco, and from devotional sounds to street parades and festivals, we will study how the city deals with its 1 past and continues its traditions in modernity while investing in cultures that reflect its present. The course follows the voyage while giving students tools to analyze sonic practices within a city as a reflection of the political and social life of the city dwellers. Throughout the course, the students will maintain sound diaries—expressive and reflective journals that combine their reflections on the readings with their experiences of cities they visit. The final project of this course requires designing a creative soundscape composition that combines the sensory experience of the city’s sonic culture with analytical reflections about its politics, culture, and identity of the sounds from an intersectional perspective using live recording samples from the voyage. LEARNING OBJECTIVES Analyze the role of music in modern formations of locality within cities on the voyage. Recognize the phenomena of multiple/alternative modernities and how it influences the musical formations in the non-west. Discuss shifts in soundscapes of cities historically as a result of colonialism, musical exchanges, and globalization. Facilitate ethnographic sensibility with critical reflection and deep listening with soundwalks Assist students in developing a creative expression to describe soundscapes they encounter on the voyage with what they have discussed in class. Cultivate critical tools to address the following questions and raise new questions: What are the different musical genres and cultures in the west that impacted the soundscapes of the region? How lasting was this impact? What is the author’s position on the question: How senses of place are spatially defined by subcultural identities, and how these are experienced and created through music? In what ways does modernity bring ruptures/disjunctures in the soundscapes of a place? How does one city’s experience of modernity may differ from another within the country and region; how do sonic markers insinuate that difference? REQUIRED TEXTBOOKS None TOPICAL OUTLINE OF COURSE Depart Ensenada, Mexico — January 4 2 Module 1: Soundscapes of the Oceania Learning Objectives Understand the different approaches to studying “soundscape” including ethnographic, historical, and ecological. Understand the study of “sound markers” as a tool to analyze everyday life within urban spaces and challenge cultural essentialism. Understand ways in which processes of modernity bring about shifts in the soundscapes of urban spaces Apply the concept of “soundscape” in the study of Hawaiian music and its evolution from pre-colonial past to present Sons of Hawaii, a renowned band that shaped Hawaain music of the 20th century B1—January 7: Defining Approaches to Study Soundscapes: Ethnomusicology, Sound Studies and Soundscape Composition Readings: Erlmann, Veit. 2004. "But What of the Ethnographic Ear? Anthropology, Sound, and the Senses." Hearing Cultures: Essays on Sound, Listening, and Modernity. Ed. Veit Erlmann. London: Bloomsbury Academic. 1–20. Bohlman, Philip. 2015. “Introduction: World Music’s Histories.” In The Cambridge History of World Music. 1-20. B2—January 9: Colonialism and Soundscapes of the Oceania Question: How does Schaefer define “sound markers”? What is the relevance of this term in the study of everyday life within these urban spaces? Readings: Murray, Schaefer R. “From Town to City.” In The Soundscape: Our Sonic Environment and the Tuning of the World. Agnew, Vanessa. 2015. “Encounter Music in Oceania: Cross-Cultural Musical Exchange in the 18th and 19th century voyage accounts. The Cambridge History of World Music. pp 183- 201 B3—January 11: Globalization of Hawaiian music Question: How does Appadurai theorize the impact of globalization on culture? How would you apply the concept of “disjuncture and difference” to the shifts in the soundscapes of Hawaii? Readings: Appadurai, Arjun. 1990. “Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy.” In Theory, Culture, Society. 7 (295). Retrieved: http://www.arjunappadurai.org/articles/Appadurai_Disjuncture_and_Difference_in_the_Glo bal_Cultural_Economy.pdf Carr, James Revell. 2014. “Introduction: Setting Sail;” “Chapter 4: “Hale Diabolo”: e Royal Hawaiian eatre and the Rise of Popular Music in Honolulu.” “Chapter 5: Honolulu Hula Hula Heigh”: The Legacy of Maritime Music in Hawai‘i.” 1-17; 126-158; 159-188. Due: Critical Reviews from Module 1 3 Honolulu, Hawaii, USA – January 12 Reflection & Study Day — January 13 (No Class) Module 2: Soundscapes of the Ports of the Pacific: Modernity and Nationalism in East Asia Japanese political graphics from the 1920s and 1930s, focusing on leftwing political parties, labor-union and tenant-farmer organizations and protests, and proletarian social and cultural movements that opens a window on the domestic conflict and turbulence during Imperial Japan. (Ohara Institute for Social Science Research at Hosei University in Tokyo1) Learning Objectives Analyze the impact of modernity, in particular, inter- war years on Osaka’s soundscapes Discuss the impact of Western Art music within the sonic cultures of pre-war and inter-war Osaka Relate the historical connections in music between Hawaii, China, Japan, and the west and how it shifted the soundscapes of these cities. B4—January 15: Sonic Ecologies of Urban Space Question: How senses of place and/or spatially circumscribed subcultural identities in music are experienced and created through music? Readings: Atkins. 2007. “Ecology of Sound: The Sonic Order of Urban Space.” Urban Studies. 44 (10) Habermas, Jurgen. “Introduction” in The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society. Cambridge: MIT Press. Retrieved at: https://pages.uoregon.edu/koopman/courses_readings/phil123- net/publicness/habermas_structural_trans_pub_sphere.pdf International Date Line Crossing — January 16 (Lost Day) B5—January 18: Soundscapes of Pre-War Osaka Question: In what ways did the soundscape of Osaka transform during the inter-war years? What are the different western musical genres and cultures that impacted the soundscapes of pre-war Osaka? Reading: “Locating the Music of Modern Osaka.” 2016. Music, Modernity and Locality in Prewar Japan: Osaka and Beyond. Edited by Alison Tokita, Hugh de Ferranti. New York: Routledge (Chapter 1) “Aural Osaka: Listening to the Modern City.” 2016. Music, Modernity and Locality in Prewar Japan: Osaka and Beyond. Edited by Alison Tokita, Hugh de Ferranti. New York: Routledge (Chapter 2) 1 Retrieved from: https://apjjf.org/2014/12/37/Christopher-Gerteis/4159/article.html 4 Study Day — January 19 (No Class) B6—January 21: Musical Subcultures Within the Kansai Region during the Inter-War Years Question: What have been the musical exchanges with Okinawan musicians from Hawaii within the Kansai region? Sterne, Jonathan. 2013. “Soundscape, Landscape, Escape.” Soundscapes of the Urban Past: Staged Sound as Mediated Cultural Heritage Ed. Karin Bijsterveld.