random update

Thank you to everyone who still checks back here occasionally in the hope that I might update. I appreciate hearing from you, and I'm glad that even though I update rather infrequently these days, you still consider me worth reading.
At least part of the reason for my infrequent updates is that I now keep up with most of the friends I used to update via this blog on facebook, and just because of the type of network that is I'm finding it more of a satisfyingly two-way street. But that doesn't completely invalidate this blog, as I originally started it as a site for keeping track of my online research, and it's still really useful for that purpose. I often keep research posts private these days, just because they're kind of quickly dashed-off rather than carefully written, thoughtful posts, and the knowledge that people actually read what I write makes me a little more careful about what I put out there. I want to make reading worth your efforts after all.
Another reason this is a little slow these days is because I'm spending so much time writing that when I want to relax, I often want to do it away from my computer. So knitting, sewing and crochet, cooking, walking around New York City and eating my way through the city have taken preference over blogging.
Nonetheless, writing is still my job, and one that I really love, and I have been doing lots of it recently. My dissertation adviser challenged me to turn out a dissertation chapter for lent, and so I'm frantically working on my "Karen Zoid as national icon" chapter. Right now that involves a lot of reading Afrikaans history (lots of it in non-standard late 19th century Afrikaans), and trying very hard to write like someone you might actually want to read, and not like a late 19th century Afrikaans historian, or worse, a critical theorist!!!!
Also, since late last year I have been working on two articles, one of which has been accepted for a special issue of the journal of Soccer and Society that will be coming out later this year. Unfortunately it does read much more like a piece of critical theory than I had originally hoped, but as it's about music at the upcoming soccer world cup, you may find it interesting nonetheless. Check back for updates.

Who sings the nation state?

If you haven't already heard the rendition of the South African National Anthem currently getting a lot of online attention, listen to the video below. But be warned: your ears may bleed.
I am currently working on a paper on the musical marketing of the upcoming soccer world cup in South Africa, and while this incident isn't directly related, I think I may try to find some way to work it in there. Funny and scary all at once.



Here is the Mail and Guardian report on current responses

links for a guest lecture on my work

Did I mention before that I put together and taught a course this past summer called "The Music of New York"? If not, I should blog about that sometime.
Right now, though, that is long over, but I've been asked to do a guest-lecture for my friend Rachel's Art of Listening class on Thursday, and so this post is just to gather in one place some of the videos and etc that I plan to use.
World Map
Drakensberg Boys' Choir

Lebo M Rainmaker

Lebo M Power of One

Ladysmith Black Mambazo

Ladysmith Black Mambazo and Paul Simon

Paul Simon Father and Daughter (from the Wild Thornberries movie soundtrack)

Johnny Clegg and Juluka Impi

The Lion Sleeps Tonight (Tokens)

Solomon Linda's Evening Birds Mbube

Pete Seeger and the Weavers

Freshly Ground I'd Like

Karen Zoid Kaapstad

Karen Zoid Small Room

The Parlotones Colourful

Bok Van Blerk De La Rey

Klopjag Nie Langer (for the students who asked about this, this is an angry post apartheid song. I couldn't find the angry apartheid-era song I played in class today online, but I'll keep looking and post it, or something similar, when I find it.)

Comps reading

I'm reading at the moment. Reading nearly every second. And when I'm not reading, I'm listening to every piece of South African music I own. But mostly to Karen Zoid. I finally own Chasing the Sun (courtesy of iTunes), and I keep discovering new things that fascinate me.
Have you ever heard "Danville Diva"? I can't find it in preview anywhere online, so my suggestion is that you listen to it on iTunes. There is a wonderful moment in that where Karen imitates an Afrikaans Diva accent (I think I prefer "princess" to "diva", because of the connection between "diva" and camp sensibility, but they mean roughly the same thing). I spent several hours listening to that today, thinking about how I might describe that sound, specifically to a non-South African. And then when I was searching for the song on YouTube for the purposes of this blog, I came across the wonderful recently added video from Karen's February performance in London.

The accent imitation is fascinating, but I'm also delighted by the moments of what Gary Tomlinson would call (if I remember the article I studied years ago correctly) "signifyin(g)", where she sings a fragment of a Malaika number (the final moments of "Destiny"), and Mary Mary's "Shackles". I have heard both songs often enough (if you have watched South African television station SABC 1 after about 23:00, you have probably heard them too), but don't know much about these groups. Whenever I hear the name Malaika I'm reminded of the Kenyan song by the same name, though I would hesitate to suggest that the group are deliberately referencing that. It is, however, interesting to me to hear Karen Zoid singing a gospel number about slavery in an RnB style within a "Kwaito style" (as she says at the beginning of the video clip) song. There's so much going on there!

My most recent intellectual obsession has been with describing vocal timbre, and in a recent writing exercise for Suzanne Cusick's 'Feminist and Queer Musicology' class, I discovered that language and accent are particularly good areas from which to approach this task. So that delightful litttle Karen moment got me very excited.

Then earlier I read an article by Cornelia Fales that Jason Stanyek recommended to me (if you have access to JSTOR, the link above will work, if not, you won't be able to access this particular article, and will just have to take my word on it). It's on timbre alright, and is a concerted effort to write (ethno)musicologically about timbre. But while I think the author's attempt to focus strongly on timbre rather than other aspects of music analysis is interesting, I was a bit disappointed by what I read as a collapse into references to the strongly visual. She uses spectographs to represent much of what she describes, and in the end doesn't really achieve much. I agree that the lack of vocabulary makes it impossible to talk directly on the topic, but I think that a more productive strategy, and one that I think Louise Meintjes exercises particularly effectively in Sound of Africa involves listening to how musicians (in her instance, studio technicians) talk about the sounds they're working with. It works, I think, because the writing focuses on a purpose beyond itself. She isn't writing about timbre for its own sake. She is writing about it to explain how a particular set of South African identities are constituted musically, and it works. I'm not entirely uncritical of her broader project (I think the collapsing of Zuluness, South Africanness and Africanness is the most troubling fault) but I do think she is doing the most exciting work of this nature I have encountered yet. Other related projects include Gage Averill's Four Parts, No Waiting and Aaron Fox's Real Country.

I love having an excuse to do all this good reading and listening!

More exam readings

Below is list number 2 for my comps. This one focuses on issues of voice and race. There is a huge amount of material on race and music, but in the interests of producing a list I can actually get through by April 11, I am focusing explicitly on singing voices. The anomaly, then, occurs at the final two entries on the list, which deal with speaking voices, but in such a literalist, hard-science way, that I couldn't resist adding them. I did a vaguely tongue-in-cheek experiment with my students last semester, playing them the same piece of music sung by a counter tenor, a female soprano, a treble and a digitally constructed combination voice, and asking them to guess which was which. I once joked that a similar experiment with singers of various races would be interesting. And now I find someone has done it! And written a PhD thesis on it!!

And just because I think it is worth saying, the article by Grant Olwage called "The Class and Colour of Tone" is, in my opinion, the strongest writing on this topic available at present. Well worth a read.

Racialized voices bibliography

Antelyes, Peter. “Red Hot Mamas: Bessie Smith, Sophie Tucker and the Ethnic Maternal Voice in American Popular Song.” In Embodied Voices: Representing Female Vocality in Western Culture, ed. Leslie C. Dunn and Nancy A. Jones, 212–29. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.

Averill, Gage. Four Parts No Waiting: A Social History of American Barbershop Harmony. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.

Hardy, Sarah Madsen, and Kelly Thomas. “Listening to Race: Voice, Mixing, and Technological ‘Miscegenation’ in Early Sound Film.” In ClassicHollywood, Classic Whiteness, ed. Daniel Bernardi, 415–41. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001.

Lavitt, Pamela Brown. “First of the Red Hot Mamas: ‘Coon Shouting’ and the Jewish Ziegfeld Girl.” American Jewish History 87/4 (December 1999): 253–90.

Leonard, Neil. Jazz and the White Americans: The Acceptance of a New Art Form. London: Jazz Book Club, 1964.

Lhamon, W. T. Raising Cain: Blackface Performance from Jim Crow to Hip-Hop. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998.

Mann, Geoff. 2008. “Why does country music sound white? Race and the voice of nostalgia” in Ethnic and Racial Studies Vol. 31 No. 1 January 2008 pp. 73_100

Olwage, Grant. 2002. “Scriptions of the choral : the historiography of black South African choralism” in SAMUS: The South African Journal of Musicology Vol. 22, pp. 29-45.

___. 2004a. Music and (post)colonialism : the dialectics of choral culture on a South African frontier. PhD Thesis, Rhodes University. Grahamstown: South Africa.

___. 2004b. “The Class and Colour of Tone: An Essay on the Social History of Vocal Timbre” in Ethnomusicology Forum Vol. 13, No. 2, pp. 203-226.

Michael Rogin. 2002. “Blackface, White Noise: The Jewish Jazz Singer Finds His Voice” in Critical Inquiry, Vol. 18, No. 3. (Spring, 1992), pp. 417-453. http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0093-1896%28199221%2918%3A3%3C417%3ABWNTJJ%3E2.0.CO%3B2-5

Rubio, Phil. “Crossover Dreams: The ‘Exceptional White’ in Popular Culture.” In Race Traitor, ed. Noel Ignatiev and John Garvey, 148–61. New York: Routledge, 1996.

Stras, Laurie. 2007. “White Face, Black Voice: Race, Gender, and Region in the Music of the Boswell Sisters” in Journal of the Society for American Music Vol. 1, No. 2, pp. 207–255

Walton, Julie H. 1992. Speaker race identification from acoustic cues in the vocal signal. Ph. D. Thesis, Memphis State University.

Walton, Julie H. and Robert F. Orlikoff. 1994. “Speaker Race Identification From Acoustic Cues in the Vocal Signal” in Journal of Speech and Hearing Research Vol.37 738-745 August 1994.

Comps lists

My comprehensive exams are on the weekend of the 11th of April. Of course I'm feeling a little nervous, but I'm also relishing the opportunity to do some of the reading I usually do for myself, as part of my work. Over the next little while, I plan to post my reading lists and some of my notes to this blog (it was intended for work, originally, after all).
So here is list 1:
The topic is "Afrikaans Music", and I am adding items as I access them (NYU interlibrary loan is working overtime, but wonderfully efficiently). But here, for now, is the start. Any other suggestions are much appreciated.

Bezuidenhout, Andries. 2007. “From Voëlvry to De La Rey: Popular music, Afrikaner Nationalism and lost irony” on LitNet http://www.litnet.co.za/cgi-bin/giga.cgi?cmd=cause_dir_news_item&news_id=11123&cause_id=1270 28 February 2007. Accessed 14 January 2008.

Bosman, Martjie. 2004. “Die FAK Fenomeen: Populêre Afrikaanse Musiek en Volksliedjies” in Tydskrif vir Letterkunde Vol. 41, No. 2. (2004), pp. 21-46.

Byerly, Ingrid Bianca. 1996. The Music Indaba: Music as Mirror, Mediator and Prophet in the South African Transition From Apartheid to Democracy. PhD Dissertation, Department of Cultural Anthropology, Duke University.

Currin, Brian and Stephen Segerman (eds). 1996-2007. South African Rock Encyclopedia. http://www.rock.co.za/. Accessed 14 January 2008.

Grobbelaar, Pieter W. 1999. Kommandeer! Kommandeer!: Volksang uit die Anglo-Boereoorlog. Pretoria: J. P. van der Walt.

Grundlingh, Albert. 2004. “"Rocking the Boat" in South Africa? Voëlvry Music and Afrikaans Anti-Apartheid Social Protest in the 1980s” in The International Journal of African Historical Studies, Vol. 37, No. 3. (2004), pp. 483-514.

Hamm, Charles. 1985. “Rock 'n' Roll in a Very Strange Society” in Popular Music, Vol. 5, Continuity and Change, pp. 159-174.

Hopkins, Pat. 2006. Voelvry: The Movement That Rocked South Africa.

Jury, Brendan. 1996. “Boys to Men: Afrikaans Alternative Popular Music 1986-1990” in African Languages and Cultures, Vol. 9, No. 2, Gender and Popular Culture, pp. 99-109.

Ludemann, Winfried. 2003. “Uit Die Diepte Van Ons See: An Archetypal Interpretation of Selected Examples of Afrikaans Popular Music” in South African Journal of Musicology/Suid-Afrikaanse Tydskrif vir Musiekwetenskap, Vol. 23, pp. 13-41

Dinner with the President

I have been feeling a little down about the project of the research university for a while, partly because I've seen, through teaching, what a raw deal so many students (particularly, or specifically, undergrads) get when they enter a high-profile research university like NYU, and partly because I've realized that my commitment to education, and my understanding of the goals of the academic project more broadly, are not commensurate with the goals of a large number of my peers and seniors. Before I expand on that, though, let me say that my experiences tonight, to my surprise, have given me fresh hope and new energy.

So here is the full story: About a week ago, I received an invitation to have dinner with the President of NYU, John Sexton. The opportunity was intriguing. I have become disillusioned with the conflicts between the NYU mission to be a university of New York in New York, and what, from the inside, at least, looks like a quest to gain status and rank at the expense of an engagement with the lived reality of this city, which is cosmopolitan in the best and worst ways. NYU, it seemed, was riding the elitist ivory tower image right up there with the most iconoclastic of the ivy league, attracting well-resourced undergrads in order to finance the graduate students who would teach them, while the big-name tenured faculty got on with the business of research. It isn't a terrible model, particularly if you are among the big-name tenured faculty, but for the students, particularly undergrads, who expect to have life-changing, though-altering experiences through their interaction with the best thinkers in the world, finding out that your intellectual heroes have little or no interest in teaching, or worse, great interest, but no time, due to the demands of the tenure track, can be somewhat disappointing. No wonder the academy and its discourse has such a bad reputation in the world out there. You need to be taught academic speak in order to understand the work being produced, but the people most qualified to teach you that would rather be talking to each other than to you, even if you are paying huge amounts of money for the privilege of their attention.

Don't get me wrong, this is not a critique of the faculty themselves. I have benefited immensely from a large number of outstanding intellectuals who have gone above and beyond to help me get to where I am. And I'm also benefiting greatly from the financial management of a university that can afford to fund my education for five years, in exchange for a few semesters of teaching. Heck, I'm one of the biggest beneficiaries of the system. But I'm also critical of that system because it encourages a view of education, the practice of teaching, that labels it the unfortunate baggage of an academic career. Teaching is the despised responsibility. Research and publication are the goal.

Quite frankly, as far as I can tell, there is no point in doing research and publishing work if one has no intention of teaching it. Knowledge is only as good as the use it is put to, and there are only two ways that the knowledge we produce can be put to good use: through our own application of it (i.e. "advocacy" or "public sphere work", both second-class considerations in the academy, and non-entities in the tenure process), or through our teaching of it to others, who will apply it. And we should be publishing so that our insights are available to those who we cannot teach directly.

One clarification here. I don't mean teaching according to the classical model of students sitting at the feet of the master. I mean teaching in the way that it works in a graduate seminar, or in the undergraduate sections I've been lucky enough to work with this semester. Teaching becomes about providing a set of materials and interpretive tools, and then letting the magic that is learning happen. Sometimes, that means that students make use of those tools right there with you, and all of you come away with something from the classroom encounter, and sometimes it means you demonstrate a few ways of using them, and let the students take that away and work their magic, either in private, or, if you're lucky, in the work you get to grade. Either way, no one is the end point of knowledge. It's all a great set of endless possibilities. How exciting!

A while ago, I read this document, published my John Sexton on the university website, in which he proposes a role for "university teachers", as distinct from research faculty. I agree with a lot of what he says, but I find myself opposing the document as a whole on the basis of his caveat that

[the university teacher] will be capable of appreciating and of participating in
the research enterprise. But he or she will have chosen to tilt the
personal mix of research and teaching more dramatically in the direction of
teaching than would be appropriate for one seeking tenure. The university
teacher will dedicate a full professional life to the university as an active
participant in the institution and a premier participant in the education of
students. The university teacher will not be given the lifetime position we
associate with tenure, but the possibility of remaining with the institution for
a whole professional career will be very real

So my big question is: why is it not appropriate for a faculty member who "tilts the mix" of research and teaching more strongly toward the side of teaching, not to get tenure? Why is teaching valued less strongly? What is the mission of the thinking individual if not to disseminate their thoughts? And how, other than through teaching, do we do that?

I didn't get to ask that question tonight, though I'm going to ask it via email once this crazy semester is at an end, in a few weeks time. But I did hear a whole lot from our university president that suggested to me that his goals for the production and dissemination of knowledge line up more strongly with my own than I had previously thought. At the very least, I encountered an openness to conversation about these matters that I had not expected, and that gives me some hope. I still think teaching is undervalued, but I no longer think that the university is all about money and prestige. And that is a big relief.

Why students drop out

The Mail and Guardian published an article reporting the findings of a recent study on the reasons behind the high university drop-out rate in South Africa. Top of the list is lack of funds, but more worrying to me is that on that list is: “My lecturers were so inaccessible that I did not think I could approach them for help”.
I think it's wonderful that the MAP program at NYU ensures that students have weekly sections with TAs in small groups, where they can get some individualized attention, but it does concern me that really the only individual attention they get is from graduate students. The classes are just too big, and the faculty under too much pressure (especially if they are on the tenure track) to be able to get to know their students, and without that students really are going to find it difficult to get into graduate programs, and in certain instances, even to find jobs. References are such an important part of the application process, and before that, the mentorship of a faculty member who cares about and believes in the academic project is so important to the process of entering higher education. If it is also, as the survey suggests, important that lecturers be available to students, just to ensure that they finish their degrees, then I'm not sure how effective this system is. I guess I'm just questioning, once again, the state of the academy that deprioritizes teaching, when it is that, in the end, that funds (and should motivate) all other aspects of the University program.

Reading and work

I just spent three weeks essentially wasting my time, reading a huge, difficult and incredibly dense book that in the end doesn't seem to go anywhere. I get the academic project of theorizing for the sake of challenging assumptions. That is the only way that we stand any chance of making our thinking more effective. But some ways of "doing theory" involve little more than mixing and matching the theoretical (and hence, unproven/unprovable) observations of other theorists, and rapidly moving further and further away from the real world. I'm here to talk about music and what people do with it, for goodness sake, and not what is left if all history is memory, and all memory is (theoretically) unethical.
I guess I'm just frustrated with my coursework, at the moment, which feels like a hinderance to my learning process, rather than the support I think it should be. It will get better, though, if for no other reason than that next semester I get to be more specific about my project, and spend my time doing a whole lot of reading that I've selected for myself. I guess I'm just beginning to judge my reading time as more precious the more other things I have to do, and so I'm resentful of things that don't make productive use of this time.
Alright. Rant over. I'm going to listen to a talk by a scholar who did her research in South Africa, this evening, and then I'm going to go home and read Jeannette Winterson, just because I want to. And then on Wednesday, the Thanksgiving holiday starts! I can't wait.

InaDWriMo

I just pledged 10 000 words on InaDWriMo. Of course, I'm not at dissertation writing point yet, but that conference paper I just finished needs to be turned into a publishable piece, and I have a few other bits of writing to pull together by December. I wonder whether I'll be able to stick to it?

P.S. I was asleep about an hour ago, but the Halloween partying is in full swing on the street below, and so I won't be getting much more sleep for a while, at least. There are some disadvantages to living in the village. Not enough to make me want to move, but they're there, nonetheless.

Columbus, here I come.

I am headed for Columbus, Ohio, tomorrow, for SEM. I can't believe Hawaii was nearly a year ago! I'm excited, and a little nervous, but mostly just looking forward to seeing friends and colleagues again. I always enjoy conferences, even without the beaches and warm weather. My paper is on Saturday morning, fairly early, but hopefully there will be a few die-hard attendees who aren't completely wiped out by then, and who will have some useful feedback. I don't know what internet access I'll have, but as we are in the conference hotel, I'm sure there will be something, so I'll blog as I have the opportunity.

Seattle, and academic technique.

Wow, New York is beautiful. Summer is really upon us, and I'm loving the warm weather and green things.
Seattle was beautiful, too, though in a rather different way. The natural beauty around the city is spectacular. We spent a little time after the conference sitting on a patch of lush grass near the Pike place market, eating our lunch, and watching the boats in the sound, and the sense of absolute, simple luxury overtaking me was so memorable. And there were several occasions when, walking around the city I caught sight of a sliver of silvery moon hanging in the sky beside the space needle, or the lights of the residential areas on the hillsides around us, and was delighted by the beauty of it. The flowers in the Pike place market, and the carnivalesque atmosphere around the fish stalls were really appealing, too, and I was really happy to see all of that. But there was something about Seattle that didn't sit well with me, and while I can't articulate it very clearly, I think it had something to do with the rather obscene displays of money that abound, not least at the Experience Music Project. I'm afraid the museum did not impress me. Very high-tech, and I'm sure great fun for the children who were milling around most of the weekend, but there is very little real thought about music and the way it works, sociologically, politically, or just in a very mundane practical sense. The conference, however, more than made up for the museum's inadequacies. There were a whole lot of super panels, and I heard some really high-quality papers that made me think in all the right ways, and I met some super people.
Our panel went really well, though I did realize that I have become a little too blaze about conference presentations. It's one thing to write a paper that people will pick through and dissect, and that you know you need to be rigorous with, but it is a whole other to know what you are talking about well enough to do more than simply read it. I tried to talk through this paper, rather than reading it, and I realized rapidly that I have become too reliant on the notes in front of me. I do think that there are some things that are best read, simply because it can be difficult to be concise and artistic with words in a live moment, but in general really being able to present a paper like this means being so deeply engaged with the vocabulary that you can pull it together coherently on the spot. It's a bit like knowing a musical instrument well enough to improvise on it. Doing it well means really knowing it. So I'm applying to a couple of South African conferences at the end of the summer, and I'm going to spend some time over the break getting that in touch with my data again.
In the mean time, the end of the semester looms. Three papers, two abstracts, two presentations and one more conference (at which, thankfully, I am not giving a paper this time) left, and some smaller scale stuff in between, and then I'm back to the airport for that much anticipated trip home. Can you believe my first year of grad school is nearly over? I can't.

Another conference, hey?

Ben, his girlfriend Serena and I are off to Seattle tomorrow for the Experience Music Project Conference, where Ben and I are giving a joint paper. I'm very excited, not least because my collegues who have spent time in Seattle have given us lots of suggestions for places to eat, and things to see and do while we are there. More than that, though, I'm excited by the prospect of our talk, which is on online representations of music scholarship, and involves, along other things, this blog. Wish us luck. We're talking on Sunday.

Learning to be a grad student

I'm sure I've said it before. I've certainly thought it before. Either way, it bears repeating. Student/advisor relationships are hard.
I had a meeting with my advisor today to talk about work, and also about both of our recent travels, and while it went really well in many ways, and she was great and supportive and very helpful, I still found it really difficult to talk sense. I guess I'm still in the early stage of this setup, where I'm still trying to make a good impression, and I really am trying desperately to convince her that I am a student that she could want to work with. And so I feel like everything I say is over-eager and self-promoting, but at the same time lacking the substance that comes with experience and reading. I have so much to read before I can do good work. I have often thought about the process of becoming an academic as a sort of apprenticeship, where we learn from great scholars by watching them work, and working alongside them, and absorbing some stuff by osmosis, and other stuff through direct tutoring. But really, it isn't much like that at all. Our professors give us reading that they have done already, and have to re-read much of it themselves in order to lead discussion, despite the fact that it may not fit particularly well with their own work. They then have to read our efforts, and spend time helping us improve our work, and somewhere in amongst all that, they have to fit in their own work, much of which we as students are unlikely to hear about, because we are too busy with our own concerns. I feel a bit like I have to be more together and smart and productive, just to give my advisor a motivation to work with me in the first place.
I do have a super advisor, though. And that is worth a whole lot.

A weekend in Virginia

I'm home, and well-rested after a good night's sleep, and an unintended sleep-in this morning (At least class is only this afternoon).
The weekend was wonderful. I had a bit of a bumpy start on Friday morning, when security at JFK spent so long checking all my paperwork to validate the authenticity of my South African passport and US visa, that I missed the plane, and had to wait on standby for the next one, but I caught that one without a problem, and T very sweetly waited for me in Richmond. It was wonderful to step off the plane in Virginia and take off my jersey.
The weather was beautifully warm, and it was wonderful to wonder around Colonial Williamsburg in short sleeves, with someone who really knows the area. I'm sure T will blog about that a little herself, but she spent several years in the town, and knows the ins and outs. We bought kitchy souvenirs, photographed buttercups and violets in the grass, hurled magnolia pods, and watched lambs hopping about in a way I would never have believed possible, had I not actually seen it myself. We also watched a parade of men and boys (and a few girls) enacting military manouvers, were followed up the oyster-shell lined street by a fife and drum band, and wondered around the kitchen garden of one of the establishments.
Finally, in the early evening, another friend joined us, and we spent a little time touring the college campus before the conference reception. T played some tunes with one of the folklorists who was there, and it was wonderful to hear her play (the first time I have). Finally, a group of us headed out to one of the few restaurants that was open at 22:00 (Williamsburg is not New York!) to grab some dinner (and chocolate raspberry cake for pudding. So good), before making our way back to the hotel.
Saturday started with cinnamon buns and orange juice at the university, before the panels started. We missed the first paper, but everything else I heard was superb. There was a really great range of topics, and I was very impressed with how polished and clear so many student papers were. The keynote speaker gave a really wonderful reference to the work of my advisor that made me very proud, and I spent a lot of time thinking how happy I was to be there. My paper was in the afternoon, and despite some technology fumbles in the morning (we couldn't connect my computer to the sound system, and I had to write a new CD, instead), it went well. I always feel like the inevitability of race issues in my work mean that I risk losing some of my audience before I even start (another white girl speaking about black music. sigh) and I got at least one of the type of question that makes it apparent that it was read that way by at least one person, but in general, I was happy with the outcome. And I enjoyed the intersections between my paper and the one that followed it.
The conference day ended on Saturday with a really long concert that showcased a huge selection of performers from among the conference attendees. I heard gamelan for the first time, and was really impressed by many of the departmental ensembles. Afterwards, T and finished up the evening at our hotel talking about everything and anything until the early hours of the morning. There is nothing like traveling with a friend to get to know them really well.
Sunday morning began with a joint panel between MACSEM (the organization whose conference we were there for), and MAFA, the Mid-Atlantic Folklife Association, who had parallel panels to ours all weekend. It was really interesting to hear both groups converse, though I wish I had had time to attend a full panel from the MAFA group. T gave the last paper of the weekend, which went really well, and ended things on a high note, and then a group of us went to a smart French restaurant for lunch. We had eaten every meal of the weekend in one particular restaurant, and so it was nice to have a change, and to have time to chat to people I am only just getting to know.
T and I then had a few hours to kill before we needed to catch our plane, and so we drove toward the airport via a particularly picturesque route so that I could see some of the countryside. Virginia looks so lovely, and I really hope I will have another opportunity to visit. T suggested a winter break there sometime next year, and the idea is really appealing.
And just to round off my set of new experiences for the weekend, we went shoe shopping at an outlet mall (which, for my South African readers, is an open-air shopping complex with a series of name-brand shops with significantly lower prices than in New York), and stopped at a self-service petrol garage (gas station) on our way to the airport. To my delight, my South African drivers license got me through security far more easily than my passport does, and before I knew it, we were in the air, and on our way back to New York.
It has been such an amazing weekend. I am really glad to have had the break from my routine, and the fact that it was in a beautiful place, with lovely people, made it all the better. Thank you, T, for a super weekend. I wouldn't even have applied were it not for you, and I am really glad I did.

The joys (I think) of grant writing

This is a new experience for me, but trying to convince someone to spend money on something I think is a good idea certainly forces me to clarify my ideas. I'm not too sure about the extent that it may also be shaping my ideas in a direction that could be suitable for the grant, but not necessarily entirely in line with the original idea, but perhaps that will force me to be relevant, or something. And hey, if someone wants to put money out there, it should at least be going to something relevant. No?

Congratulations Steph!

When I started this Blog in 2004 (is it really that long ago), I had recently returned from my first ever academic conference, which was held in Helsinki, Finland. My stay there, and my first ever academic publication were the result of my having won the first SIDA essay competition. In 2005, the prize was won by a young woman from Rhodes University, and now I have just heard that my dear friend Steph, who completed her BMus at Wits at the end of last year, has won the 2006 competition!

Congratulations, Steph! that is such good news. You really deserve this. I remember how hard she worked on this paper, so I can say that with every confidence.

And just because that little detail makes me happy, too, I must add...

Girls Rock!

ensemble

I had my first ethnomusicology ensembe class last night. I am taking Afrocolombian Marimba this semester. Such fun. There is a very vibrant marimba ensemble at Wits, but I didn't have the time for that. Being able to take this one for credit makes a lot of difference.

Last night we began with a bit of background on the styles we will be playing (one of which is Currulao), before listening to the music a little. Our instructor is a fellow grad student who is quite far along in his PhD on this music, and so the examples we heard, and videos we saw are all from his fieldwork.
At first, the music sounded impossibly complex, and way beyond what I expected to ever be able to play. While I really love working with music, I am by no means confident in my musical instincts, and I have too little background in rhythmically complex music to feel at ease with the prospect of playing it. Gradually, though, we broke the music down into its component parts, listening for instruments, clapping different parts of the cross-rhythms, and learning to move in time, and even (rather hesitantly) to dance. By the end of the evening, it was feeling much more maneagable, even more exciting, and very accessible and enjoyable.

The whole experience got me thinking about the way we teach and learn music. I guess a big part of what was important here was seeing how easy it is to simplify things when you know what to listen for. Untill our instructor pointed out the two different rhythmic patterns, and indicated that they were cross-rhythms, all I heard was an impossibly complex rhythmic gesture that I couldn't pin down. As soon as I knew what I was listening to, though, it became two fairly straight-forward rhythms that are just juxtaposed. The effect is something similar to hearing the individual parts of a choral piece played on the piano, singing them separately, and learning them as independent lines, before putting them together in the complete sound. Now, after working with vocal harmony for so long, I find it generally easier to sing when I can hear the other parts, but sometimes it still is helpful to break the whole thing down again, and check notes and lines, and hear things on their own, before putting them in relation to the whole.

I'm beginning to realize how important being a student is to being a teacher. Far more than content, learning to teach is about figuring out how I learn.

And who knows. Perhaps in future years, we'll have a South African choral ensemble class in the department.

an expensive education

I just spent $200 on coursework books. And I still need to get another five book in the next few weeks. I'm just hoping that by spreading them out over two months, I at least won't feel quite so drained. I really love buying books, but this hit a little hard. Hope they are all worth it.