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Title: Musical Change and Contunuity of Huayin: The Essence of Chinese Zheng Music.
Creator: Deng, Haiqiong, Koen, Ben, Gunderson, Frank, Clendinning, Jane Piper, College of Music, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: In this thesis, I use huayin (the left-hand bending techniques on the zheng) as a tool to discuss the evolution and continuity of modern zheng music. My focus is on bringing out ancient aesthetic and philosophical meanings that are embedded within traditional zheng music, and comparing these meanings to the multi-faceted cultural and social changes of the modern world. Moreover, modern zheng musicians' thoughts become my focal point while discussing the transformation of the contemporary...
Show moreIn this thesis, I use huayin (the left-hand bending techniques on the zheng) as a tool to discuss the evolution and continuity of modern zheng music. My focus is on bringing out ancient aesthetic and philosophical meanings that are embedded within traditional zheng music, and comparing these meanings to the multi-faceted cultural and social changes of the modern world. Moreover, modern zheng musicians' thoughts become my focal point while discussing the transformation of the contemporary zheng tradition. I also integrate my own reflections along with the selected interviews. By reexamining the use and transformation of the zheng tradition through the lens of the huayin, I aim to reflect the essential aesthetic and philosophical meanings in Chinese zheng musical culture, and reemphasize the value of these meanings when dealing with the ever-changing modern tradition.
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Date Issued: 2006
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-0765
Format: Thesis

Title: The Case of "Big M" Musicology at Florida State University: A Historical and Ethnographic Study.
Creator: Clapper, Laura M., Eyerly, Sarah, Seaton, Douglass, Gunderson, Frank D., Florida State University, College of Music
Abstract/Description: The Florida State University musicology program comprises a community of like-minded individuals in both the faculty member and student cohorts. The umbrella concept of “Big M” Musicology is valued and central to creating identity and cohesion among FSU’s musicology community members. This thesis serves to understand the FSU musicology program’s history and how community members understand, define, and embody “Big M” Musicology based on their lived experiences in the program. This thesis...
Show moreThe Florida State University musicology program comprises a community of like-minded individuals in both the faculty member and student cohorts. The umbrella concept of “Big M” Musicology is valued and central to creating identity and cohesion among FSU’s musicology community members. This thesis serves to understand the FSU musicology program’s history and how community members understand, define, and embody “Big M” Musicology based on their lived experiences in the program. This thesis examines FSU’s musicology program through historical and ethnographic study. I first provide an institutional history of Florida State University’s musicology program by examining the institutional structures, administrative involvement, and the influence of faculty member research areas and relationships on the program’s development. I recount how the ideal of “Big M” Musicology was born out of the FSU School of Music’s desire for comprehensive programming through the establishment of an ethnomusicology program, the implementation of a terminal degree in musicology, and an emphasis on applied musicology and performance. I also argue that the collegiality among faculty members contributed to the program’s growth and to the musicology department’s shared “Big M” vision. In the subsequent chapters of this thesis, I analyze survey data that I collected from current students, alumni, and current and former faculty members affiliated with the program from the years 1988–2018 to understand individual community members’ experiences of “Big M” Musicology. First, I synthesize the definitions of “Big M” provided by FSU musicology affiliates, and I explore their perspectives on how this philosophy manifests in FSU’s program. I then analyze individual community members’ experiences in the program in order to reconcile the policy of “Big M” with its implementation and practice. I conclude by placing “Big M” Musicology in the context of contemporary trends in the field to demonstrate how the inclusivity inherent in this ideal might foreshadow a future path for musicology and its subdisciplines.
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Date Issued: 2019
Identifier: 2019_Spring_Clapper_fsu_0071N_15048
Format: Thesis

Title: The Kabaka's Royal Musicians of Buganda-Uganda: Their Role and Significance during Ssekabaka Sir Edward Frederick Muteesa II's Reign (1939-1966).
Creator: Kafumbe, Damascus, Gunderson, Frank, Seaton, Douglass, Hellweg, Joseph, College of Music, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: This thesis illuminates the role and significance of the Kabaka's royal musicians of Buganda during Ssekabaka Sir Edward Frederick Muteesa II's reign (1939-1966). To provide the necessary backdrop for appreciating changes that occurred in the role and significance of royal musicians under Muteesa II, and to show how the institution of Muteesa II's royal musicians was rooted in preceding reigns, the study first surveys this topic before Muteesa II's reign. It then proceeds to define the...
Show moreThis thesis illuminates the role and significance of the Kabaka's royal musicians of Buganda during Ssekabaka Sir Edward Frederick Muteesa II's reign (1939-1966). To provide the necessary backdrop for appreciating changes that occurred in the role and significance of royal musicians under Muteesa II, and to show how the institution of Muteesa II's royal musicians was rooted in preceding reigns, the study first surveys this topic before Muteesa II's reign. It then proceeds to define the expression "Kabaka's royal musicians" during Muteesa II's reign by describing the musicians' learning and training procedures, appointments and qualifications, privileges and remunerations, musician types, categories, and labels and ensembles. The thesis further clarifies the musician's political and social role by shedding light on how they influenced policy, magnified the institution of the Kabaka, and influenced change inside and outside the lubiri. It also illustrates various roles of the royal musicians in part by translating and analyzing songs they performed. Based on archival and library research, oral history, fieldwork, participant observation, and performance, this study offers new insights into the role and significance of royal musicians. Through interviews with the former Kabaka's royal musicians, who are the last remaining living repositories of this unique history, the study captures their recollections and interpretations of a bygone era. Advancing Kubik's (2002: 311) idea, one can argue that the lubiri functioned like a sponge that absorbed musical influences and innovations from outside its walls and then in turn exuded musical innovations of its own to the outside of the lubiri (both within Buganda and beyond). Cued by Dumont's definition of hierarchy, one can also argue that the Kabaka – who was the apex of Buganda's monarchical hierarchy and representation of the very identity of Buganda – encompassed every being within the kingdom, including his musicians, who articulated his identity through the songs they performed. Dumont's definition of hierarchy is also relevant to the delineation of the hierarchical relationships among the royal musicians themselves, particularly the relationships between the different musician-types, musician-categories and -labels, and ensembles. This research furthermore sheds some light on what became of those elite royal musicians and their indigenous musical practices after the dissolution of the long-standing historical institution of the Kabaka's royal musicians of Buganda, which occurred in May 1966 on the attack of Muteesa II's lubiri by Apolo Milton Obote's troops under the command of Idi Amin.
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Date Issued: 2006
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-3383
Format: Thesis

Title: Music, Memory, and the Re-Constitution of Place: The Life History of an Ecuadorian Musician in Diaspora.
Creator: Lara, Francisco, Olsen, Dale A., Gunderson, Frank, Uzendoski, Michael, College of Music, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: Building on literature dealing with memory and hermeneutics as they relate to music and musical experience, this thesis explores the role of music and memory in the negotiation of place within the context of displacement through the life history of Eulogio Leonidas Lara (Leo), an Ecuadorian immigrant musician currently residing in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Active as a musician, social activist and educator alongside his spouse, Kathy, since the early 1970s, Leo maintains a strong connection to...
Show moreBuilding on literature dealing with memory and hermeneutics as they relate to music and musical experience, this thesis explores the role of music and memory in the negotiation of place within the context of displacement through the life history of Eulogio Leonidas Lara (Leo), an Ecuadorian immigrant musician currently residing in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Active as a musician, social activist and educator alongside his spouse, Kathy, since the early 1970s, Leo maintains a strong connection to his homeland through music and his use thereof despite his estrangement. Through his work as a musician, he not only bridges his life and experiences within Ecuador and the United States, but with the greater community as well. In so doing, he manages to fashion a unique sense of place that, while fundamentally rooted in his experiences as a musician within Ecuador, traverses both worlds. In the end, I argue that it is through music and memory, as they inform perception and understanding, that Leo negotiates his sense of being and place as an individual living in diaspora.
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Date Issued: 2005
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-3280
Format: Thesis

Title: Sonic Fixtures and Drifting Buskers: Soundmarks of New Orleans and the Street Musicians Who Construct Them.
Creator: Adomaitis, Danielle, Gunderson, Frank, Bakan, Michael B., Brewer, Charles, College of Music, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: In the public spaces of New Orleans, street musicians construct soundmarks, or sonic landmarks, in the locations where they commonly perform. The maintenance and preservation of New Orleans music is often achieved through performance processes by musicians in these spaces who exist as sonic fixtures (residents) and drifting buskers (migrants) in heavily trafficked areas of the city, most notably the French Quarter. This street music circulates and amalgamates the music of New Orleans with...
Show moreIn the public spaces of New Orleans, street musicians construct soundmarks, or sonic landmarks, in the locations where they commonly perform. The maintenance and preservation of New Orleans music is often achieved through performance processes by musicians in these spaces who exist as sonic fixtures (residents) and drifting buskers (migrants) in heavily trafficked areas of the city, most notably the French Quarter. This street music circulates and amalgamates the music of New Orleans with that of other cultures, often creating unique hybrid genres and neo-traditional styles. In addition to drawing from this hybridity, my thesis will address performers' relationships to each other, and music in urban geography, tourism, and migrant communities. Ultimately, by mapping soundmarks I converse with this enigmatic musical community and those vested in it, which results in the recognition of distinctive hotspots of outdoor musical activity in the French Quarter. Landmarks in this and other cities are often demarcated as distinguishing features in the landscape that function to guide tourists, and act as tourist attractions themselves. This thesis will map and investigate eight of these sonic landmarks and document the presence and experiences of the street musicians who construct them. I argue that in New Orleans landmarks and soundmarks are synonymous. I hope to expand the current scholarly awareness of New Orleans music outside the exploitation of jazz, and to urge for the inclusion of music making on urban streets in ethnomusicological discourse. This thesis is divided into six sections. The introductory chapter provides a contextualization of the French Quarter as it relates to this topic as well as associated literature. The second chapter reveals my theoretical framework, defines my appropriation of "soundmark," and discusses the relationship of music to place as illustrated with an example of battling brass bands. The third chapter sets the stage for busking with a discussion of locale, architecture, and city ordinances. Chapter Four builds upon the knowledge of what it is like to be a busker in New Orleans. Chapter Five harbors the data gleaned from a summer and several autumn/winter weekends worth of fieldwork, designating the location and broad description of eight soundmarks as mapped 10 throughout the French Quarter. This chapter also contextualizes the impact of each soundmark as relative to the individual performers that construct it, and its relationship to the surrounding environment. The concluding chapter offers a summary and my reflexive responses to this project while delving into the relationship of buskers to the community around them. I finish by elaborating on the potential implications of mapping soundmarks, including ideas for the future use of this research. In sum, this project represents an ethnomusicological case study of musicians existing on the streets of New Orleans between May of 2011 to February of 2012 while addressing larger issues on the relationship between these musicians, their shared public space, and the community they represent.
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Date Issued: 2012
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-5311
Format: Thesis

Title: Performing Neurodiversity: Musical Accommodation by and for an Adolescent with Autism.
Creator: Marrero, Elyse, Bakan, Michael B., Woods, Juliann, Gunderson, Frank, College of Music, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: Research in disability and music is a recent movement within musicology that is comprised of scholars who have an interest in the various ways disabilities and bodily/ability differences intersect with music. These music scholars differ from past researchers on disability due to their focus on people with disabilities as musicians who embody musical differences and not deficits. The disability known as autism has been one of the most discussed bodily/ability differences amongst musicologists...
Show moreResearch in disability and music is a recent movement within musicology that is comprised of scholars who have an interest in the various ways disabilities and bodily/ability differences intersect with music. These music scholars differ from past researchers on disability due to their focus on people with disabilities as musicians who embody musical differences and not deficits. The disability known as autism has been one of the most discussed bodily/ability differences amongst musicologists with interests in disability; these scholars choose to discuss people with autism as neurodiverse musicians. In this thesis, I explore how a fifteen year old girl with autism, named Lyra, creates, practices, and performs music on her own terms. Lyra's musical experience occurs at her home, in which she practices and composes on surfaces and objects in her kitchen. In addition, Lyra rehearses and performs with a local Tallahassee musical ensemble called the ARTISM Ensemble. Her neurodiverse musical life is an example of disability accommodation that is created by herself (at home in her kitchen) and is provided by other musicians in the ARTISM Ensemble. This thesis is divided into four chapters. In the first chapter, I provide background on autism, neurodiversity, and the application of disability studies to this project and to musicology. The second chapter discusses Lyra's musical self-accommodation through the way she creates and practices her music. Chapter Three focuses on how Lyra's first musical ensemble, the ARTISM Ensemble, has accepted and accommodated her musical style and performance. The final chapter concludes the thesis with discussions on the importance of accommodation and, the inclusion of musicians who possess varying abilities and bodies, and ending with a section that looks towards the future of the musicology of disability.
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Date Issued: 2012
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-5017
Format: Thesis

Title: "Kiss Me I'm Not Irish, but I Wish I Was": The Cultural Adoption of Irish Music in America.
Creator: Nyers, Kristen, Gunderson, Frank, Koen, Benjamin, Brewer, Charles E., College of Music, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: Ethnomusicological works often examine music as an expression of identity. In these studies, music is seen as the product of culture and ethnicity. This thesis reverses this approach and instead explores how musical experiences, rather than only reflecting identity, can produce identity. Within the context of the United States of America, a multicultural society, the Irish music tradition is generally understood to belong to the community of the Irish diaspora. This music is closely...
Show moreEthnomusicological works often examine music as an expression of identity. In these studies, music is seen as the product of culture and ethnicity. This thesis reverses this approach and instead explores how musical experiences, rather than only reflecting identity, can produce identity. Within the context of the United States of America, a multicultural society, the Irish music tradition is generally understood to belong to the community of the Irish diaspora. This music is closely associated with a specific population that is delineated by both a common ethnicity and culture. However, this work considers the resulting impact upon identity construction when individuals from outside of this community participate in its music. This thesis examines how and why individuals in the United States, regardless of their ethnic background, incorporate an Irish-American cultural identity into their personal identity through participation in the Irish-American music-culture. This work demonstrates that membership in the Irish-American music community is determined more by musical participation, personal interactions between individual members, and a respect for the tradition than by an Irish ethnic connection. It also shows how Irish music in an American context is uniquely suited for the construction and reconstruction of identity by its participants.
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Date Issued: 2009
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-2473
Format: Thesis

Title: ¡Casinando!: Identity, Meaning, and the Kinesthetic Language of Cuban Casino Dancing.
Creator: Martinez, Brian, Gunderson, Frank, Bakan, Michael, Brewer, Charles, College of Music, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: A genre of Cuban music known as timba and a genre of Cuban social dance known as casino have often been mistakenly categorized as styles of salsa music and dance. Because of this association, along with political relations between the United States and Cuba, these genres have been marginalized in favor of mainstream salsa. In this thesis, I argue that casino and timba must be understood as distinct genres from an historical perspective. Additionally, I examine casino from a linguistic...
Show moreA genre of Cuban music known as timba and a genre of Cuban social dance known as casino have often been mistakenly categorized as styles of salsa music and dance. Because of this association, along with political relations between the United States and Cuba, these genres have been marginalized in favor of mainstream salsa. In this thesis, I argue that casino and timba must be understood as distinct genres from an historical perspective. Additionally, I examine casino from a linguistic perspective and apply principles of linguistic relativity to create a linguistic analogy for social partner dance. By understanding casino and timba as separate from the international salsa phenomenon, they can be studied and appreciated as the unique cultural forms that they truly are.
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Date Issued: 2012
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-5020
Format: Thesis

Title: Music, Dance, and Kinship: Baile as Shared Substance Among Diasporic Mexicans in Quincy.
Creator: García, León, Olsen, Dale A., Gunderson, Frank, Hellweg, Joseph, College of Music, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: In this thesis I argue that a weekly baile (dance) in Quincy, Florida, constitutes a symbolic process of unification in the Mexican diaspora and that music functions as a symbol of shared substance in the creation of kinship. I examine the lives of some of the people who make up the Mexican diasporic community of Quincy and musical performance and social issues found in the community. I also discuss processes of reciprocity involved in the creation of musical symbolism, which creates a shared...
Show moreIn this thesis I argue that a weekly baile (dance) in Quincy, Florida, constitutes a symbolic process of unification in the Mexican diaspora and that music functions as a symbol of shared substance in the creation of kinship. I examine the lives of some of the people who make up the Mexican diasporic community of Quincy and musical performance and social issues found in the community. I also discuss processes of reciprocity involved in the creation of musical symbolism, which creates a shared substance on which new kin relationships are established.
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Date Issued: 2008
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-4361
Format: Thesis

Title: An American Song Book?: An Analysis of the Flower Drum and Other Chinese Songs by Chin-Hsin Chen and Shih-Hsiang Chen.
Creator: Talley, Jennifer, Seaton, Douglass, Gunderson, Frank, Brewer, Charles E., College of Music, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: The Flower Drum and Other Chinese Songs is a book of Chinese folk songs and culture that was created by Chih-Hsiang Chen, Chin-Hsin Yao Chen and published in 1943. This thesis is comprised of three major chapters, each dealing with a different aspect of the Chens' book and their lives and an introduction and conclusion. Chapter 2 presents information regarding American's treatment of Chinese immigrants and stereotypes of the Chinese. The Chens immigrated to America during a time of political...
Show moreThe Flower Drum and Other Chinese Songs is a book of Chinese folk songs and culture that was created by Chih-Hsiang Chen, Chin-Hsin Yao Chen and published in 1943. This thesis is comprised of three major chapters, each dealing with a different aspect of the Chens' book and their lives and an introduction and conclusion. Chapter 2 presents information regarding American's treatment of Chinese immigrants and stereotypes of the Chinese. The Chens immigrated to America during a time of political turmoil in China and strong anti-Chinese sentiments in America. Between 1850 and 1940, Americans were known for treating the Chinese poorly and had passed a variety of anti-Chinese laws that culminated with the Chinese Exclusion act in 1881, which was renewed until its repeal in 1943. In addition to anti-Chinese legislation there were also a variety of Chinese characterizations present in the American media, of which Pearl S. Buck's The Good Earth, the Fu Manchu novels by Sax Rohmer and the Charlie Chan novels by Earl Biggers are examples. Of these three examples, the latter two mostly contain negative stereotypes of the Chinese. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the United States entering into World War II, American attitudes and sentiments towards the Chinese began to change since China was now an American ally. The Chens book was published soon after America entered into World War II, and during the war-time years Americans became interested in learning about the cultures of their allies and their foes. The John Day Company, the publishers of the Chens' book, during this time became one of the foremost publishers of books on the Far East, and a brief history of The John Day Company is part of the next chapter in this thesis. Chapter 3 also contains information regarding the events surrounding the publishing of the Chens' book, ideas for marketing the book, biographical information about the authors, and an examination of the collaborative efforts were part of the creation of this book. The Chens, who were both well-educated, were able to make many connections with prominent literary figures like John Hall Wheelock and Padraic Collum and important musicians and composers like Charles and Ruth Seeger, Nadia Boulanger, Henry Cowell, Harrison Kerr, and Hanns Eisler. Chapter four contains an analysis of the music, art, and cultural and historical sections present in the Chens' book. The Chens' book is split into five major sections, and each section contains a piece of art and cultural and historical information about the pieces contained within. Each of the folk songs presented in The Flower Drum and Other Chinese Songs has been arranged for voice and piano with both English and Romanized Chinese texts below. Mrs. Chen states in her preface that she has tried to imitate the various Chinese instruments that would usually accompany these songs in her accompaniments. A variety of musical examples are presented and compared to both Mrs. Chen's descriptions of the original accompaniments and modern performances of these folk songs. The conclusion also discusses these modern performances as well as the importance of this book in American musical history.
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Date Issued: 2010
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-1721
Format: Thesis

Title: Cakalak Thunder: The Meaning of Anarchy, Value, and Community in the Music of Greensboro's Protest Drum Corps.
Creator: Bright, Crystal Dawn, Gunderson, Frank, Koen, Benjamin, Uzendoski, Michael, College of Music, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: This thesis presents the meaning of anarchism, punk, and DIY anarchism in relation to Cakalak Thunder, a radical protest drum group in Greensboro, North Carolina. The author presents the history of Cakalak Thunder and its influences, such as the Infernal Noise Brigade and various Brazilian samba groups. She presents the history of anarchist communities and certain anarchist individuals in America, as well as the history of one of the collective houses in which many of Cakalak's members reside...
Show moreThis thesis presents the meaning of anarchism, punk, and DIY anarchism in relation to Cakalak Thunder, a radical protest drum group in Greensboro, North Carolina. The author presents the history of Cakalak Thunder and its influences, such as the Infernal Noise Brigade and various Brazilian samba groups. She presents the history of anarchist communities and certain anarchist individuals in America, as well as the history of one of the collective houses in which many of Cakalak's members reside. Notions of value and exchange in anthropology have influenced this study, in that the members of Cakalak have created alternate notions of value and modes of exchange that rebel against capitalism. The role of community in the formation and music of Cakalak Thunder is of prime importance. The author presents the many levels of local and global musical activity that informs the music of Cakalak, which is influenced by Slobin's spheres of cultural exchange. Also, how the synechdocal relationship between music and culture has been approached in ethnomusicology is presented, as well as an analysis of how Cakalak's musical and social structures inform each other.
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Date Issued: 2006
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-3040
Format: Thesis

Title: Memetics, Media, and Groove: Musical Experience in Two Florida Steelbands.
Creator: Kerg, Kayleen, Gunderson, Frank, Koen, Benjamin, Van Glahn, Denise, College of Music, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: In this thesis, I adopt the musical concept of "groove" to characterize the experience of steelband in local contexts and the related ideas circulating within broader cultural contexts. Each chapter is an ethnographic portrait and exploration of a specific context in which people interact by participating in steelband. I examine the role of individual directors in shaping their steelband's groove. Employing elements of memetic theory, I identify specific memes and complexes used by directors...
Show moreIn this thesis, I adopt the musical concept of "groove" to characterize the experience of steelband in local contexts and the related ideas circulating within broader cultural contexts. Each chapter is an ethnographic portrait and exploration of a specific context in which people interact by participating in steelband. I examine the role of individual directors in shaping their steelband's groove. Employing elements of memetic theory, I identify specific memes and complexes used by directors as they facilitate their own group's experience to include: "master narrative," "professional performance," and "pan appreciation." I also use the meme hypothesis to evaluate how directors act as agents in the transmission of musical and cultural knowledge. I will focus on the function of the steelband-related media and materials used in rehearsal by the directors of Lion Steel and Space Coast Steel to communicate musical and cultural information to members. I am interested in understanding the ways individuals encounter and use this information in the course of their participation in steelband and how this process contributes to the groove in their local contexts. In this thesis, I will also explore the ways that individual pannists at the Mannette Steel Drums "Festival of Steel" workshop in West Virginia interact with other players and exchange information beyond distinct local contexts. I examine the ways that the exchange of music-cultural information among different sources shapes the manner in which people "groove" in steelbands and how it connects the experiences of pannists in broader musical and cultural contexts.
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Date Issued: 2008
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-3166
Format: Thesis

Title: "Chant and Be Happy": Music, Beauty, and Celebration in a Utah Hare Krishna Community.
Creator: Black, Sara, Koen, Benjamin, Gunderson, Frank, Uzendoski, Michael, College of Music, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: One of the primary aspects of Hare Krishna worship is the practice of kirtan, or the musical chanting of sacred texts with particular emphasis on the Maha Mantra, a mantra composed of names for Krishna. Devotees teach that chanting Krishna's name constitutes a literal communion with him. Adding music to the chanting of these sacred words adds a dimension of beauty and celebration reflective of the personality of Krishna, who is known as "the All-Attractive." This thesis explores three aspects...
Show moreOne of the primary aspects of Hare Krishna worship is the practice of kirtan, or the musical chanting of sacred texts with particular emphasis on the Maha Mantra, a mantra composed of names for Krishna. Devotees teach that chanting Krishna's name constitutes a literal communion with him. Adding music to the chanting of these sacred words adds a dimension of beauty and celebration reflective of the personality of Krishna, who is known as "the All-Attractive." This thesis explores three aspects of Hare Krishna kirtan. First is the theological aspect of kirtan, the system of beliefs which give purpose to the practice of chant. Next is the personal, experiential aspect of kirtan, including the emotional intensity of the music, its ability to develop a sense of relationship between devotee and deity, and its potential as a transformative experience, lifting the devotee from the mundane physical world to the realm of spiritual experience. Last is the social aspect of kirtan, as chanting is used to spread the message of Krishna Consciousness and to provide opportunities for members of different social and religious groups to celebrate together. I will focus on the musical activities at the Sri Sri Radha Krishna temple in Spanish Fork, Utah, in order to demonstrate the power of music as a catalyst for religious experience and an agent of transformation for individuals and communities.
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Date Issued: 2008
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-3710
Format: Thesis

Title: Muzikmafia: Community, Identity, and Change from the Nashville Scene to the Popular Mainstream.
Creator: Pruett, David B., Gunderson, Frank, Faulk, Barry, Olsen, Dale A., College of Music, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: In this dissertation I examine the MuzikMafia, a distinct musical community that developed from a stylistically diverse Nashville scene into a social collective and commercial enterprise, both of which emphasize musical excellence and promote musical and artistic diversity. In order to understand the MuzikMafia more deeply, I explore three of its defining structures: community, identity, and change. Analysis of each aspect provides insight into what the MuzikMafia actually is, the role of...
Show moreIn this dissertation I examine the MuzikMafia, a distinct musical community that developed from a stylistically diverse Nashville scene into a social collective and commercial enterprise, both of which emphasize musical excellence and promote musical and artistic diversity. In order to understand the MuzikMafia more deeply, I explore three of its defining structures: community, identity, and change. Analysis of each aspect provides insight into what the MuzikMafia actually is, the role of music in the lives of its members, and the reasons behind the MuzikMafia's period of commercial growth and development from 2001 through 2005. I observe how a shared musical and social ideology created a bond between several marginalized Nashville artists and how that bond, or rather its commodification, transformed the MuzikMafia into a significant part of the commercial mainstream. The dispossessed interact with the dominant structures of capitalist society in a variety of ways. Music serves as a medium of expression and often as an agent of social change through individual and group action. The MuzikMafia is an example of one such dispossessed group that eventually gained national and international popularity. I argue that, despite its numerous anti-establishment sentiments, the MuzikMafia confirms if not supports the existing hegemony of Nashville's commercial music industry. Based upon participant observation, oral history fieldwork, and behind the scenes experiences among several platinum-selling artists, this research provides new insight into the study of popular music, presenting evidence that, not only is ethnomusicological fieldwork in the popular mainstream possible, but such research contributes much to the ongoing development of ethnomusicology and popular music studies.
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Date Issued: 2007
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-0425
Format: Thesis

Title: Bakhtin and Genre: Musical-Social Interaction at the Cape Breton Milling Frolic.
Creator: Woods, Bret D., Gunderson, Frank, Galeano, Juan Carlos, Bakan, Michael B., Brewer, Charles E., College of Music, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: This dissertation explores a Bakhtinian approach to genre and musical-social interaction, and the ways in which they serve the invention of various categories of identity, as evident in the milling frolic. The milling frolic is a social musical gathering where people celebrate their cultural heritage through the singing of a body of Scottish Gaelic songs, while reenacting a labor tradition. The genres consist of an ever-growing and ever-changing repertoire of songs that ebb and flow in a...
Show moreThis dissertation explores a Bakhtinian approach to genre and musical-social interaction, and the ways in which they serve the invention of various categories of identity, as evident in the milling frolic. The milling frolic is a social musical gathering where people celebrate their cultural heritage through the singing of a body of Scottish Gaelic songs, while reenacting a labor tradition. The genres consist of an ever-growing and ever-changing repertoire of songs that ebb and flow in a continuum of music that perpetually reinvents and rediscovers concepts of tradition. In music, genres provide a tangible connection among people and place through communication and interpretation. The cultural traditions, real and invented, emerge and are made evident through dialogic performance. Bakhtin observed that people communicate through genres—contextually defined and articulated expressions that negotiate perception and interaction. I further this notion in that, beyond a simple taxonomic classification of varying styles of music, genres constitute the communicative framework through which all musical-social distinction is made relevant. If language is one type of communicative social interaction, then Bakhtin's literary genre model can be applied to other social interactions in the same theoretical sense; specifically with music and other performative social situations, genre is a pragmatic link that brings together text and context, form and function, performer and audience—genre networks—in varying hierarchical dimensions of both communication through music and speech utterances about musical experience and reception. Essentially, genre makes all communication possible in the social dimension. In understanding the various ways in which Gaelic song genres are important for Cape Bretoners, a more fundamental understanding of Cape Breton Gaelic identity can be achieved. I use genre theory to articulate the social distinctions regarding the traditional music of Cape Breton as performed at the milling frolic, and within these hierarchies articulate the way in which genres allow people to identify with themselves, their environment, and each other. Such a framework will provide a fitting metaphor for the negotiation of Gaelic and Celtic identity in Cape Breton, through varying dimensions. Indeed, genre theory and social anthropology can be applied to many popular interdisciplinary concepts in the field of ethnomusicology, such as invented tradition, imagined communities, and the link between changing contexts and changing ideas about textual meaning.
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Date Issued: 2011
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-0775
Format: Thesis

Title: Industrial Music for Industrial People: The History and Development of an Underground Genre.
Creator: Woods, Bret D., Gunderson, Frank D., Bakan, Michael B., Clendinning, Jane Piper, College of Music, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: Industrial music was born in 1976 in London, England with the creation of Industrial Records. Originally, "industrial music" referred to the musical output of the label, which included a variety of experimental, electronic, often noise-oriented compositions, altered instruments, and music-accompanied performance art. The first artists that recorded at Industrial Records were Throbbing Gristle, Non (Boyd Rice), Cabaret Voltaire, The Leather Nun, Surgical Penis Klinik, and Clock DVA; each...
Show moreIndustrial music was born in 1976 in London, England with the creation of Industrial Records. Originally, "industrial music" referred to the musical output of the label, which included a variety of experimental, electronic, often noise-oriented compositions, altered instruments, and music-accompanied performance art. The first artists that recorded at Industrial Records were Throbbing Gristle, Non (Boyd Rice), Cabaret Voltaire, The Leather Nun, Surgical Penis Klinik, and Clock DVA; each sharing a similar anti-bourgeois rejection of mainstream culture and social order. Since those early days (often deemed the "first wave," 1976–c.1982) industrial music has come to represent any underground electronic music either directly tied to or influenced by Industrial Records as well as those musicians who share in the cultural and musical aesthetic of industrial. In the second decade as the genre grew in relative popularity (referred to as the "second wave," c.1982–c.1990), several sub-genres emerged and many bands began to change the shape, sound, and style of the genre as the fan base became more populous and diverse. This thesis examines the elements that comprise this broadly-encompassing music genre, the influence it has had throughout history, and its current concepts and practice in order for a well-informed and contextually working definition to become evident. What follows is a look into the history of industrial music since its inception three decades ago, as well as a genre-based approach to music. The focus of this study is three-fold. First, the ambiguity of industrial music will be addressed by discussing the history and development of the genre. Second, the textual versus contextual aspects of industrial culture, and of the music itself, will be explored. Lastly, the nature of genre in music will be addressed. This thesis will look at genre in the theoretical sense, as it represents communication in culture. In communication about music–stylistic elements, genre classification, influences, history, and sound–generalized speech become part of a dialogue which consists of shared understanding about issues of text and context concerning the music. In industrial culture we can see an example of how these issues can generate debate regarding the nature of genre, as well as how genre studies can reveal an understanding of the music not only through its purely musical features, but through communicative elements of culture.
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Date Issued: 2007
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-0781
Format: Thesis

Title: The Synthesis of Taiwanese and Western Musical Elements: A Case Study of the Zheng Concerto—Dots, Lines, and Convergence by Chihchun Chi-Sun Lee.
Creator: Yiu, Shih-Chen, Shaftel, Matthew, Gunderson, Frank, Jones, Evan Allan, College of Music, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: A quintessential example of the synthesis of Taiwanese and Western musical elements can be found in the Zheng Concerto--Dots, Lines, and Convergence by Chihchun Chi-Sun Lee.
Date Issued: 2004
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-0675
Format: Thesis

Title: "It's Not My Imagination, I've Got a Gun on My Back!": Style and Sound in Early American Hardcore Punk, 1978-1983.
Creator: Easley, David B., Clendinning, Jane Piper, Gunderson, Frank, Kraus, Joseph, Shaftel, Matthew, College of Music, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: Despite being the focus of studies in fields such as ethnomusicology, cultural studies, philosophy, and history, punk rock—and American hardcore punk rock in particular—has yet to fall under the analytical gaze of music theorists. In this dissertation I aim to fill this gap by examining some typical stylistic practices in hardcore punk, a repertoire described as aggressive, reflecting energy and intensity, and driven by an impulse toward brevity of song forms. In order to capture these...
Show moreDespite being the focus of studies in fields such as ethnomusicology, cultural studies, philosophy, and history, punk rock—and American hardcore punk rock in particular—has yet to fall under the analytical gaze of music theorists. In this dissertation I aim to fill this gap by examining some typical stylistic practices in hardcore punk, a repertoire described as aggressive, reflecting energy and intensity, and driven by an impulse toward brevity of song forms. In order to capture these elements, I examine instrument-specific items, such as drum patterns and guitar/bass riffs, as well as how repetitions of these play into creating form. Further, as the primary texts of hardcore are recordings, I also delve into matters of recording attributes. I argue that each of these items is integral in defining hardcore as a musical genre. While the first incarnation of hardcore took place from the late-1970s to the mid-1980s and included a number of bands, I focus on early hardcore (roughly 1978–1983) and on four main bands: Black Flag, Bad Brains, Minor Threat, and the Dead Kennedys. I begin the dissertation by examining previous studies of hardcore music, of which there are very few. Following this, I briefly outline some of the main characteristics of the genre before presenting a history of each main band, via their discography. Chapter Two turns to the construction of drum patterns and what I call "riff schemes": patterns of physical motion on the guitar that form the basis of several types of riffs. Further, this type of kinesthetic focus also informs my examination of common melodic and harmonic features of hardcore riffs, as I engage these patterns on a guitar's fretboard. Chapter Three moves to larger aspects of form and addresses the components of individual formal sections, such as verses and choruses. Previous literature devoted to form in popular music supplies definitions, but many are too restrictive for application to hardcore; thus, I frame my own understandings by seeking out the main elements of each section—as identified by others—and shape them to reflect hardcore practice. Chapter Four examines recording attributes; in particular, I discuss the spatial aspects of recordings, with a brief foray into timbre. Recordings reflect several dimensions, including width (the placement and total spread of instruments on a horizontal plane); depth (the placement and total spread of instruments on a receding plane, as well as their placement in a performance environment); and height (the placement of instruments on a vertical plane, which measures high to low and is based upon frequency spectra). I address each attribute as it is reflected in hardcore before ending the chapter with a discussion of texture, specifically relating the creation of texture to these three dimensions. Chapter Five provides four in-depth analyses that address all of the previous musical elements examined in the dissertation, but also seeks to identify how certain metaphors of hardcore are signified in the music. While aggression is found in rhythmic and textural practices, energy and intensity are reflected in the construction of riffs, their deployment throughout a song, and the tempo at which they are performed. Brevity is present in all musical parameters, from formal constructions to recording attributes. The dissertation ends with a series of conclusions and prospects for future research.
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Date Issued: 2011
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-0606
Format: Thesis

Title: "Sound of Praise": Reflexive Ethnopedagogy and Two Gospel Choirs in Tallahassee, Florida.
Creator: Arthur, Sarah Kathleen, Gunderson, Frank, Olsen, Dale A., Koen, Benjamin, College of Music, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: This thesis is an ethnomusicological study of gospel music as performed and experienced by the Florida State University Gospel Choir and the Youth, Collegiate, and Young Adult Choir at Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Tallahassee, Florida. Gospel music has become an increasingly important form of artistic expression for understanding the roots of American music. Unfortunately, it has been marginalized as an area of study in universities and colleges for decades. This thesis...
Show moreThis thesis is an ethnomusicological study of gospel music as performed and experienced by the Florida State University Gospel Choir and the Youth, Collegiate, and Young Adult Choir at Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Tallahassee, Florida. Gospel music has become an increasingly important form of artistic expression for understanding the roots of American music. Unfortunately, it has been marginalized as an area of study in universities and colleges for decades. This thesis emphasizes gospel music as a musical genre worthy of study in educational institutions. Its rich history, cultural significance, and pedagogical value make it an important part of American music. This thesis also explores how the ethnomusicological study of pedagogy in culture, or what I call ethnopedagogy, provides a deeper understanding of the gospel music tradition and culture. This thesis provides educators, choral directors, and ethnomusicologists with a resource for teaching African American gospel music traditions, and it will serve as a model for ethnopedagogy and its applicability to the social sciences.
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Date Issued: 2004
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-0034
Format: Thesis

Title: Pan in Japan: Cultural Adoption and Adaption of Trinidad and Tobago's National Instrument.
Creator: Gormandy, Mia K. (Mia Krystal), Bakan, Michael B., Ueno, Koji, Gunderson, Frank D., Jackson, Margaret R., Florida State University, College of Music
Abstract/Description: The steelpan was invented in the late 1930s, became the national instrument of Trinidad and Tobago by mid-century, and now enjoys international popularity, especially in countries with large populations of Trinidadian immigrants. However, in Japan, a country with few Trinidadian immigrants, pan constitutes a thriving niche market for music and musicians. Over 30 steelbands have been established since the instrument first made an appearance here in 1960. Notably, some of these groups were...
Show moreThe steelpan was invented in the late 1930s, became the national instrument of Trinidad and Tobago by mid-century, and now enjoys international popularity, especially in countries with large populations of Trinidadian immigrants. However, in Japan, a country with few Trinidadian immigrants, pan constitutes a thriving niche market for music and musicians. Over 30 steelbands have been established since the instrument first made an appearance here in 1960. Notably, some of these groups were formed in the 1990s, during a Golden Age of pan in Japan, but many were created at the turn of the new century as well. In this dissertation, I examine the history of pan in Japan from the pre-pan decade (1950s) through the Golden Age (1990s), and then explore the Japanese steelpan culture from 2000 to present. To construct this timeline, I have drawn from interviews conducted with both Japanese pannists and Trinidadian musicians living in Japan, examined the creation and significance of several major Japanese steelband festivals, and surveyed the ways pan is and has been used for educational purposes. Additionally, I discuss patterns of cultural exchange between Japanese pannists and Trinidadian players during the annual, national Panorama competition in Trinidad and Tobago, including the impact of the murder of Japanese pannist Asami Nagakiya during the 2016 Carnival season. In order to highlight its uniqueness, I propose and present analyses of six important issues related to Japanese steelband culture and its history: gender relations, economic structures, rehearsal spaces, pan tuning, iitoko-dori, and improvisation. Throughout the dissertation, I use iitoko-dori – the tradition of adopting elements from abroad and using them within a Japanese cultural context – as a tool for understanding how the steelpan has been adopted from Trinidad and Tobago and adapted for use within Japanese steelband communities.
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Date Issued: 2017
Identifier: FSU_FALL2017_Gormandy_fsu_0071E_14217
Format: Thesis

Title: To and Through the Doors of Ocha: Music, Spiritual Transformation, and Reversion Among African American Lucumí.
Creator: Beckley-Roberts, Lisa Michelle, Gunderson, Frank D., Jones, Maxine Deloris, Bakan, Michael B., Von Glahn, Denise, Florida State University, College of Music
Abstract/Description: This dissertation asserts that members of Ile Asho Funfun, the Lucumí spiritual house at the center of the research, is comprised of members who have undergone the process of converting to the spiritual practice of Lucumí and, as such, have experienced tremendous personal transformation. The author argues that the religious practice of Lucumí was introduced to African Americans through music and dance traditions in the 1940s by performing artists and that since that time music has been one of...
Show moreThis dissertation asserts that members of Ile Asho Funfun, the Lucumí spiritual house at the center of the research, is comprised of members who have undergone the process of converting to the spiritual practice of Lucumí and, as such, have experienced tremendous personal transformation. The author argues that the religious practice of Lucumí was introduced to African Americans through music and dance traditions in the 1940s by performing artists and that since that time music has been one of the foremost tools of conversion. Among the theories asserted herein, the author develops the theory of reversion to describe the process of conversion from Christianity to Lucumí. Borrowed from Islamic traditions that use the term to refer to a return to the natural state of awareness of the one true God, reversion here is viewed as a return to the religion of practitioners' ancestors and to a set of practices that are innately a part of human understanding of the cosmos and Creator as well their place within the cosmos and with the Creator. Furthermore, the author contends that process of reversion is ongoing, informed by Afrocentricity, and impacted by the constant expansion and contraction of the religion. These occur as individuals and the community adjust to life events while negotiating their identity as both African and American. This dissertation establishes the theories of expansion and contraction as the processes by which African practitioners of Yoruba-derived religions have always adapted their practices to the situation and environment. The author introduces these concepts as a more precise description of processes of adaptation than the more commonly cited concept of syncretism. The author both observed and practiced the religion for ten years prior to undertaking the research and did field work and ethnographic research for six years while studying for and writing this dissertation using a reflexive approach.
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Date Issued: 2016
Identifier: FSU_2016SP_BeckleyRoberts_fsu_0071E_13164
Format: Thesis

Title: Celebrating and Preserving Music of Jewish Pasts: The Holocaust Survivor Band.
Creator: Allen, Emily Ruth, Gunderson, Frank D., Bakan, Michael B., Seaton, Douglass, Florida State University, College of Music
Abstract/Description: This thesis explores the experiences of a South Florida klezmer ensemble known as the Holocaust Survivor Band. The group was co-founded by Saul Dreier, then an 89-year-old resident of Coconut Creek, Florida, and Reuwen "Ruby" Sosnowicz, 85 years old at the time, a Delray Beach, Florida, resident, in April 2014. Dreier was inspired to form a musical ensemble of Holocaust survivors after reading about the death of pianist and fellow Holocaust survivor Alice Herz-Sommer. Ruby's daughter Chana...
Show moreThis thesis explores the experiences of a South Florida klezmer ensemble known as the Holocaust Survivor Band. The group was co-founded by Saul Dreier, then an 89-year-old resident of Coconut Creek, Florida, and Reuwen "Ruby" Sosnowicz, 85 years old at the time, a Delray Beach, Florida, resident, in April 2014. Dreier was inspired to form a musical ensemble of Holocaust survivors after reading about the death of pianist and fellow Holocaust survivor Alice Herz-Sommer. Ruby's daughter Chana Sosnowicz joined the band as lead singer, and Holocaust survivor descendant Jeff Black joined as a guitar player. In sum, I tell the story of the Holocaust Survivor Band, a contemporary musical ensemble representative of a historically significant era. I emphasize the group's ability to represent the Holocaust era to present-day audiences. To demonstrate this, the ensemble's experiences are portrayed through statements and information from the band members themselves, through descriptions in various articles and media, through my observations of their performances and rehearsals, and through my interpretations of all these source materials. Based on this content, I present some generalizations about the band's significance. One of my more obvious conclusions is that the band serves as musical witnesses to the Holocaust by using their performances to remind people of the period and to share their life stories. As a result, the group contributes to the historical and collective memory of the Holocaust. This in turn can evoke nostalgic feelings within the band and audience, thus further establishing connections to the past. In addition, the band seeks to prevent genocide from happening again by promoting a message of peace in their music, particularly through their song "Peace for the World." Most importantly, Dreier and Sosnowicz are finding joy in music again after not playing or performing for a long time. All of this exemplifies how the ensemble has impacted both its members and those around them.
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Date Issued: 2016
Identifier: FSU_2016SP_Allen_fsu_0071N_13071
Format: Thesis

Title: From Grief and Joy We Sing: Social and Cosmic Regenerative Processes in the Songs of Q'Eros, Peru.
Creator: Wissler, Holly, Olsen, Dale A., Uzendoski, Michael, Gunderson, Frank, Koen, Benjamin D., College of Music, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: The Quechua community of Q'eros in the Andes of southeastern Peru is renowned in the Cusco region and within various circles (layman, scholarly, esoteric, tourist). The Q'eros are also known nationally and internationally for their continued practice of indigenous customs such as musical rituals that other Andean communities no longer maintain. This dissertation shows how the Q'eros' two principal indigenous song genres, Pukllay taki (Carnaval songs) and animal fertility songs, serve as...
Show moreThe Quechua community of Q'eros in the Andes of southeastern Peru is renowned in the Cusco region and within various circles (layman, scholarly, esoteric, tourist). The Q'eros are also known nationally and internationally for their continued practice of indigenous customs such as musical rituals that other Andean communities no longer maintain. This dissertation shows how the Q'eros' two principal indigenous song genres, Pukllay taki (Carnaval songs) and animal fertility songs, serve as active forms of social and cosmic renewal, regeneration, and reproduction. Regenerative processes through musical performance occur on many levels: the revitalization of relationship with the cosmological spirit powers, the Apu (mountain spirits) and Pacha Mama (Mother Earth); the renewal and reinforcement of social ties and women's and men's roles; and the re-creation and reproduction of cosmological worldview. This dissertation shows how the Q'eros actively regenerate, re-create, and reproduce social and cosmic relationships and cosmological perceptions through their music-making. Three Andean concepts that the Q'eros specifically name and describe show how music serves in the regenerative processes of social and cosmic relationships, and in cosmological worldview: animu, yanantin, and ayni. Animu is the animated essence that is in every person, object, and invisible spirit, which propels the life-governing concepts of yanantin (complementary duality) and ayni (reciprocity). Yanantin is the union of two contrasting and interdependent parts that are in movement with one another, in continual search of equilibrium, and with a meeting and overlap in a center. The Q'eros articulate the reproduction of the cosmological worldview of yanantin in performance roles and instrument pairs. I argue that yanantin is also expressed on the micro level of relationship between vocal and pinkuyllu (flute) melodies in song structure and between songs, as well as on the macro level of communally sung expressions of joy and grief. Ayni is the most fundamental and life-sustaining form of reciprocal exchange in Q'eros, and many other, Andean communities. The Q'eros give offerings in many forms (food, drink, special ingredient bundles, and songs) to the Apu and Pacha Mama in exchange for the well-being of the people and their animals. Q'eros' singing and flute playing are active forms of ayni, in that they are musical offerings that are sent out through samay (breath, life essence and force) in propitiation. To ensure receipt of the songs by the spirit powers, the Q'eros employ a vocal technique they call aysariykuy ("to pull"): ends of phrases are sung in prolonged, held tones with a final, forced expulsion of air. This is the Q'eros' active way to send the song out so that it will reach the spirit powers. Once the spirit powers successfully receive a song, the powers will be able to reciprocate beneficially. The tension caused by the desired necessary, successful reciprocation from the spirit powers to the people, and remembrance of times when that has not been the case, often result in the sung expression of grief and anxiety. The singing of grief and anxiety rebuilds sociability that loss and death have disrupted. By contrast, the joyful communal singing in the annual Carnaval celebration serves to re-establish social ties and renew social relationships in the community, a practice that balances the communal singing of grief during animal fertility. This dissertation shows that the regular and expected release of joy and grief through music contributes to individual and communal balance and healing. The dissertation details the social and cosmic regenerative processes throughout in the form of detailed ethnographic description; insight from the author's participation; interviews; analyses of musical detail and aesthetics of specific audio examples; musical transcriptions (both in five-line staff and alternative transcription design to show cosmological view imbedded in song structure); and transcriptions, translations, and analyses of song texts.
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Date Issued: 2009
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-0921
Format: Thesis

Title: Food for the Soul: A Case Study of Two Food-Activist Musicians.
Creator: Quarles, Melissa, Gunderson, Frank D., Jackson, Margaret R., Peres, Tanya M, Florida State University, College of Music, College of Music
Abstract/Description: In this thesis, I investigate how music and food intersect. I juxtapose two musicians whose relationship with music and food is integral to their world-view and social activism: the swamp-funk/blues guitarist and gumbo-cooker, Bill “Sauce Boss” Wharton and vegan rapper, running coach, and “fit hop” artist, Stic.man of Dead Prez. I examine each artist’s relationship to music and food via five themes: 1) Content – consisting of the aspects of music and food that are physical “texts” or “objects...
Show moreIn this thesis, I investigate how music and food intersect. I juxtapose two musicians whose relationship with music and food is integral to their world-view and social activism: the swamp-funk/blues guitarist and gumbo-cooker, Bill “Sauce Boss” Wharton and vegan rapper, running coach, and “fit hop” artist, Stic.man of Dead Prez. I examine each artist’s relationship to music and food via five themes: 1) Content – consisting of the aspects of music and food that are physical “texts” or “objects,” including lyrics, form, instruments, ingredients, and utensils; 2) Communication – symbolic representation of ideas or identities (ethnic, gender, regional or otherwise), especially through metaphor; 3) Process – music and food as performance; 4) Space and place; and 5) Consumption/embodiment, especially in relation to health and wellness. Independent of one another, studies of food culture or music are well-established areas of scholarly interest. As Edmundo Murray notes, “Reflection on the relation between music and food has weak roots. The literature on food culture is abundant and growing almost daily. At least the same can be said of texts about music. However, books about food and music represent a surprisingly untapped field.” This thesis addresses the intersection of these two unique cultural domains.
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Date Issued: 2018
Identifier: 2018_Su_Quarles_fsu_0071N_14576
Format: Thesis

Title: On Un-Silencing Voices: Tarantism and the Gendered Heritage of Apulia.
Creator: Youngblood, Felicia K. (Felicia Kailey), Eyerly, Sarah, Caputi, Celia R., Bakan, Michael B., Gunderson, Frank D., Florida State University, College of Music
Abstract/Description: Derivatives of a thousand-year-old music and healing ritual from Italy’s Salentine peninsula, known as tarantism, are recognized in different forms and appear in various locations throughout the world. Tarantism was designed to heal women, known as tarantate, from spider-bite poisoning through the repetitive rhythms and sonorous melodies of pizzica music. This project seeks to understand the importance of the tarantate and their voices to the tarantism ritual and to the people of Apulia,...
Show moreDerivatives of a thousand-year-old music and healing ritual from Italy’s Salentine peninsula, known as tarantism, are recognized in different forms and appear in various locations throughout the world. Tarantism was designed to heal women, known as tarantate, from spider-bite poisoning through the repetitive rhythms and sonorous melodies of pizzica music. This project seeks to understand the importance of the tarantate and their voices to the tarantism ritual and to the people of Apulia, Italy. In previous scholarship, the voices of these women were often overlooked in favor of more tangible items, such as the ritual’s music instruments. In spite of this underrepresentation, my ethnographic and archival research reveals that the tarantate are valued as cornerstones of Apulian cultural heritage. In analyzing the efforts of the Club per l’UNESCO di Galatina to preserve tarantism through festivals and reenactments, I demonstrate how modern-day cultural sustainability efforts can be used to reclaim voices that are essential to local traditions yet traditionally underrepresented in scholarly literature. Documenting the importance of the tarantate and analyzing their roles in local heritage reclamation efforts requires an inherently multi-disciplinary lens. At the center of this study lies ethnographic research that catalogs the activities of the Club per l’UNESCO di Galatina and the perspectives of the Apulian people as local practices develop to preserve tarantism. A theoretical framework in gender studies, cultural heritage, and voice studies is necessary to problematize the role of the women at the center of the ritual. Knowledge of history, social systems, and religion are required to understand the setting and impetus for tarantism in Apulia. Finally, my background in musicology informs analysis of the ritual’s sound-based foundation. Research and analysis in each of these areas contributes to a holistic reinterpretation of how sonic cultural heritage can be sustained and how underrepresented voices can be understood in traditions around the globe.
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Date Issued: 2019
Identifier: 2019_Spring_Youngblood_fsu_0071E_15024
Format: Thesis

Title: The Soundscapes of Underprivileged Youth: A Study of Kidznotes After-School Music Program in Urban North Carolina.
Creator: Alfonso, Elisa Glen, Gunderson, Frank D., Jackson, Margaret R., Reynolds, John R., Florida State University, College of Music
Abstract/Description: Kidznotes is a non-profit organization that provides free after-school music education for underserved populations in urban North Carolina. Kidznotes bases its organizational model on El Sistema; a state-funded music education program started in Venezuela by economist and educator José Abreu in 1987. Kidznotes provides free instruction, a daily snack, instruments, and transportation, all funded by corporate sponsors, concerts performed by Kidznotes’ students, and Kidznotes fundraising events...
Show moreKidznotes is a non-profit organization that provides free after-school music education for underserved populations in urban North Carolina. Kidznotes bases its organizational model on El Sistema; a state-funded music education program started in Venezuela by economist and educator José Abreu in 1987. Kidznotes provides free instruction, a daily snack, instruments, and transportation, all funded by corporate sponsors, concerts performed by Kidznotes’ students, and Kidznotes fundraising events put on by corporate sponsors. As a former employee of the program, and through the fieldwork I conducted at Kidznotes’ Raleigh and Durham summer camps, I gained an immersion and acute awareness to the content and structure of Kidznotes’ soundscapes. The students of Kidznotes are predominately elementary-age, come from low-income neighborhoods in Raleigh and Durham, and attend either Title I or non-profit charter schools in the area. They come to Kidznotes three days during the school week for two hours after a 7-hour school day, and for two hours in the morning on Saturdays. The short time spent in the Kidznotes environment was just a glimpse of what their students experience daily with those that are intended to help them. I theorize that the distinctive aural space of Kidznotes allows for compartmentalization in the minds of underprivileged children, separating their everyday lives from their lives at Kidznotes so that they are given the mental space and sonic authority to assert themselves into the soundscape. This assertion, I propose, is a metaphorical way of challenging the convoluted soundscapes of the outside world, filled with overlapping and contradictory messages children hear that shape their self-perception. This study will then illuminate the ways in which intimacy and music-making as they present themselves within the sonic space of underprivileged youth, make programs like Kidznotes in the North Carolinian context potentially useful for helping minority and low-income children form a healthier sense of self.
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Date Issued: 2019
Identifier: 2019_Spring_Alfonso_fsu_0071N_15202
Format: Thesis

Title: Listening to Bi-Musical Blackness: Towards Courageous Affirmation of Black String Musicians in Predominantly White Institutions.
Creator: Davis, Danielle, Gunderson, Frank D., Bakan, Michael B., Bugaj, Kasia, Punter, Melanie, Florida State University, College of Music
Abstract/Description: This project investigates Black American string players’ experience of racism, bi-musicality, and multi-musicality in their musical and personal lives within the context of higher education. The project brings into focus the identities and experiences of Black string students leading to the development of nigrescence, racial contextualization, and code-switching in predominantly white institutions. I argue that the bicultural experiences of Black American string musicians at Florida State...
Show moreThis project investigates Black American string players’ experience of racism, bi-musicality, and multi-musicality in their musical and personal lives within the context of higher education. The project brings into focus the identities and experiences of Black string students leading to the development of nigrescence, racial contextualization, and code-switching in predominantly white institutions. I argue that the bicultural experiences of Black American string musicians at Florida State University generate a bi-musicality that is complicated by marginalization, isolation, and racism in college music programs. Using ethnographic fieldwork, bi-aural analysis, and interviews with students, this project gives voice to Black string musicians who may not have had the courage or awareness to recognize and address this phenomenon. I apply methodologies from music education, ethnomusicology and other disciplines using ethnography, archived materials, visual media, print, and web sources to help professors and students foster a broad sense of Black musical identity. I advocate for a pedagogy that constructs culturally affirming worlds of musical experience–e.g., Old Time, Indian (Hindustani and Carnatic), and Afro-Peruvian musics– for Black string musicians to navigate using their bi-musical Blackness.
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Date Issued: 2019
Identifier: 2019_Spring_Davis_fsu_0071N_15213
Format: Thesis

Title: It's Especially to Protect Her Because a Woman Is a Tree of Production: Musical Narratives of Female Genital Cutting in Senegal and the Diaspora.
Creator: Rosner, Elizabeth, Gunderson, Frank D., Hellweg, Joseph, Jackson, Margaret R., Bakan, Michael B., Florida State University, College of Music
Abstract/Description: Conversations concerning the highly controversial subject of female genital cutting (FGC) often present women and girls at risk of mutilation caused by unchanging, violent traditions. In this dissertation, I examine the global nature of these conversations and the ways Senegalese women vocalize their position to ultimately establish ethical boundaries through musical narratives. Within this study, I demonstrate the spectrum of worldviews embedded within the songs from both activists and from...
Show moreConversations concerning the highly controversial subject of female genital cutting (FGC) often present women and girls at risk of mutilation caused by unchanging, violent traditions. In this dissertation, I examine the global nature of these conversations and the ways Senegalese women vocalize their position to ultimately establish ethical boundaries through musical narratives. Within this study, I demonstrate the spectrum of worldviews embedded within the songs from both activists and from a community of women who continue to practice. Throughout this conversation, broader themes of ownership, power, and autonomy are revealed; however, the ways these ideas are interpreted and lived vary greatly. My study presents a much-needed dialogue concerning the global discourse on a highly controversial, extremely personal subject with the responses from one community of women in Thionck Essyl, Senegal. By presenting these case studies, I can more fully interrogate the parallels and discontinuities between individual stories left out of the conversation with those who have historically had a platform to be heard in order to complicate the discourse concerning women’s bodies.
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Date Issued: 2019
Identifier: 2019_Spring_Rosner_fsu_0071E_15020
Format: Thesis

Title: Come, Ask My Heart: Voice, Meaning, and Affect among Algerian Sha'Bi Musicians in Paris.
Creator: Orr, Christopher C. (Christopher Crandall), Jackson, Margaret R., Gaiser, Adam R., Gunderson, Frank D., Bakan, Michael B., Florida State University, College of Music
Abstract/Description: In this dissertation I explore performances of Algerian sha‘bī music in Paris as affectively powerful experiences for the Algerian migrant community. Literally meaning “popular,” sha‘bī developed as a modernized form of colloquial sung poetry among the working class of mid-twentieth century Algiers and has remained a significant mode of cultural expression in the twenty-first century. By comparing a range of formal and informal contexts of performance, I consider the interdependency of place...
Show moreIn this dissertation I explore performances of Algerian sha‘bī music in Paris as affectively powerful experiences for the Algerian migrant community. Literally meaning “popular,” sha‘bī developed as a modernized form of colloquial sung poetry among the working class of mid-twentieth century Algiers and has remained a significant mode of cultural expression in the twenty-first century. By comparing a range of formal and informal contexts of performance, I consider the interdependency of place and intimacy in the expression of authority, morality, ecstasy, tradition, and communal belonging in sha‘bī praxis. I eschew dyadic constructions of home and exile and instead explore the idea of place in multiple guises, both real and imagined, as it either constrains or enables shared ecstatic experience among listeners. During successful sha‘bī performances, participants transform physical spaces into places of intimacy by entraining with one another’s emotional states. This state of shared heightened emotion is vested in the role of the shaykh, who moves the audience through skillful execution of sha‘bī’s musical conventions and his demonstration of textual knowledge through a convincing interpretation of the musical poetry. Central to this experience is the voice of the shaykh, which imbues the text with affective power and establishes the singer as the embodiment of tradition. As evoked metaphorically in the sung refrain of a well-known song, “Come, ask my heart to share with you its news and you’ll see that you own it and you know what you’ve done to it,” the singer invites the audience into a shared ritual of ecstatic, musical interaction in which bodily co-presence and emotional entrainment bring listeners together in collective effervescence. Perhaps most importantly, singers are imbued with moral virtues by adoring devotees, which allows them to shape the emotional experiences of individual performances. Informed by interviews and participant observations, I examine how the sha‘bī singer comes to embody the weight of tradition and joins with musicians and audiences to facilitate intimacy across a range of Parisian environments. In the process, I seek to illuminate why sha‘bī continues to be such a dynamic, meaningful mode of cultural expression for France’s Algerian diasporic community.
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Date Issued: 2019
Identifier: 2019_Spring_Orr_fsu_0071E_15040
Format: Thesis

Title: Musical Commemoration of the Chinese Sent-down Movement: Narratives of Traumatic Cultural Memory in Diaspora.
Creator: Tyrrell, Mayna, Bakan, Michael B., Jackson, Margaret R., Gunderson, Frank D., Florida State University, College of Music
Abstract/Description: The sent-down youth movement (1968-1978), an initiative that grew out of the Cultural Revolution in China, mandated that youth from urban centers be reeducated in rural regions in an effort to realize Mao’s idealized vision of a communist society. This thesis investigates how traumatic memory of the Cultural Revolution and the sent-down youth movement is processed through individual narratives from the diasporic “Cultural Revolution generation.” It does so largely in the context of fieldwork...
Show moreThe sent-down youth movement (1968-1978), an initiative that grew out of the Cultural Revolution in China, mandated that youth from urban centers be reeducated in rural regions in an effort to realize Mao’s idealized vision of a communist society. This thesis investigates how traumatic memory of the Cultural Revolution and the sent-down youth movement is processed through individual narratives from the diasporic “Cultural Revolution generation.” It does so largely in the context of fieldwork-based analysis and interpretation of multiple performances of a particular large-scale work, Ask the Sky and the Earth: An Oratorio Cantata for the Sent-Down Youth, a work which shapes zhiqing (sent-down youth) memories and discourse at both individual and collective levels. My theoretical framework primarily draws from Su Zheng’s analysis of diaspora and Paul Connerton’s work with traumatic memory. Through this examination of zhiqing traumatic memory, I assert that the history and narrative of forced displacement which defines zhiqing identity amplifies the impact of its commemoration in diasporic communities. The performance of this cantata forces members of the “Cultural Revolution generation” to confront narratives outside of their own and to reinterpret their past, revealing a multiplicity of experiences and interpretations that individuals produce, experiences which do not fit neatly into either the national Chinese or resistant diasporic narratives of the movement. Through such investigation, this work contributes in a significant way not only to the ethnomusicological study of Chinese music, but more broadly to the theorization of traumatic cultural memory in contemporary Chinese diasporic culture.
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Date Issued: 2019
Identifier: 2019_Spring_Tyrrell_fsu_0071N_15223
Format: Thesis

Title: "Every Word Is a Song, Every Step Is a Dance": Participation, Agency, and the Expression of Communal Bliss in Hare Krishna Festival Kirtan.
Creator: Brown, Sara, Bakan, Michael, Erndl, Kathleen, Gunderson, Frank, Van Glahn, Denise, College of Music, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: The International Society for Krishna Consciousness, commonly known as the Hare Krishna movement, offers a highly accessible approach to Indian spirituality in contemporary American culture. Among the most intriguing facets of Hare Krishna practice are the prevalence of celebration and the use of activities such as singing, dancing, and feasting as expressions of faith. The dominant musical practice of the Hare Krishna movement is kirtan, the call-and-response performance of sacred devotional...
Show moreThe International Society for Krishna Consciousness, commonly known as the Hare Krishna movement, offers a highly accessible approach to Indian spirituality in contemporary American culture. Among the most intriguing facets of Hare Krishna practice are the prevalence of celebration and the use of activities such as singing, dancing, and feasting as expressions of faith. The dominant musical practice of the Hare Krishna movement is kirtan, the call-and-response performance of sacred devotional chants. According to Hare Krishna belief, kirtan can be a vehicle to spiritual realization and communion with the divine. In the context of public celebration, kirtan may also serve as a performance of the bliss promised by Krishna philosophy and an invitation to listeners to take part. This dissertation examines kirtan as a tool in the mediation of social encounters by considering elements of devotion, participation, and agency in musical performances at four festivals: two Rath Yatra parades in New York City and Los Angeles that take the practices of Krishna worship into public spaces; the Festival of the Holy Name in Alachua, Florida, which involves deep immersion in the process of singing kirtan; and the Festival of Colors in Spanish Fork, Utah, during which a large crowd consisting almost entirely of those not affiliated with the Krishna movement nevertheless gathers to participate in a weekend of Krishna-oriented musicking. I posit that the participatory nature of kirtan as performed in a celebratory context serves to negotiate issues of personal and social identity both within the Krishna movement and in encounters with those outside of it. I further argue that kirtan has the potential to create experiences that are perceived as being personally and spiritually meaningful not only to adherents to Krishna consciousness, but to those who ascribe to differing belief systems but nevertheless find elements of common spiritual experience within the kirtan process.
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Date Issued: 2012
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-5323
Format: Thesis

Title: Composing Civil Society: Ethnographic Contingency, NGO Culture, and Music Production in Nairobi, Kenya.
Creator: Morin, Matthew McNamara, Gunderson, Frank, Brower, Ralph, Bakan, Michael B., Seaton, Douglass, College of Music, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: A growing number of global civil society organizations commonly referred to as nongovernmental organizations, or NGOs, have proliferated throughout much of sub-Saharan Africa, and especially Kenya, since the mid-1980s. Drawing from interviews with NGO-affiliated directors, staff and musicians, observational research conducted at NGO-affiliated music performances, and participant observation with Ketebul Music, a Nairobi-based NGO music studio, this dissertation assesses the impact of NGO...
Show moreA growing number of global civil society organizations commonly referred to as nongovernmental organizations, or NGOs, have proliferated throughout much of sub-Saharan Africa, and especially Kenya, since the mid-1980s. Drawing from interviews with NGO-affiliated directors, staff and musicians, observational research conducted at NGO-affiliated music performances, and participant observation with Ketebul Music, a Nairobi-based NGO music studio, this dissertation assesses the impact of NGO culture on music production in Nairobi. The resources, signs, and social networks that operate within NGO music culture reveal a range of global to local influences and demonstrate the significance of contingency in depictions of global culture. At one end of this contingent spectrum are the neoliberal, capitalist, and primarily Western historical contexts from which NGOs arose; at the other are NGO music initiatives that draw especially from locally embedded circumstances and emphasize ties to the cultural histories of Nairobi, Kenya, and East Africa. These diametric manifestations of local and global become entangled, act in concert with one another, conflict, and converge at sites of NGO music production where Kenyan and transnational organizations organize music festivals, provide performance and marketing opportunities for Kenyan artists, and create music initiatives that advocate for a variety of social issues, including peace, women's rights, poverty reduction, and preservation of local culture. An ethnographic account of the Nairobi-based NGO music studio Ketebul Music illustrates these contingent dynamics. Ketebul Music partners with and receives funding from several international NGOs, including the Ford Foundation and Alliance Française, to construct initiatives reflecting the mission "to identify, preserve, conserve and to promote the diverse music traditions of East Africa." The geopolitics of Ketebul Music's foreign funding sources suggests that European and North American cultural influence ranks highly among the factors that shape the organization's initiatives. The sentiments expressed by those that construct these programs, however, articulate a desire to push back against foreign influence in the interest of promoting "Kenyan" culture. Presenting a contingently situated contradiction of NGO music culture, Ketebul Music receives funding from global European and North American sources to create music initiatives that promote local cultural consciousness. To address these converging influences, I offer a theory of ethnographic contingency that approaches cultural representation as an exercise in relational perspective and draws connections between the numerous industries, technologies, social spheres, and symbolic expressions that music performance in Kenya's NGO sector engages. Tracing the interactions and influences of these variables, contingency emphasizes connections between two or more processes. I examine the historical development of NGO culture in Nairobi from a temporal perspective that assesses the causes and effects of circumstances that occur at regional and global scales. Finally, drawing from Richard Rorty's use of contingency to develop a pragmatic response to postructuralist challenges to representation (1979; 1986; 1989; 1995), I argue that contingency provides a pragmatically reflexive approach to ethnographic representation by privileging perspective over reality while engaging interdisciplinary dialogue through the common use of contingency theories across the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, and formal sciences. Supplementary Audio Files: Musical Example 7.1 (Pg. 176 .mp3 format): Audio excerpt of D.O. Misiani's "Lala Salama." Musical Example 7.4 (Pg. 179 .mp3 format): Audio excerpt from introduction to Makadem's "Nyaktiti." Musical Example 7.6 (Pg. 180 .mp3 format): Audio excerpt of a nyatiti performance by Okuro Geti off of the album Luo Traditional Nyatiti. Musical Example 7.8 (Pg. 181 .mp3 format): Audio excerpt of the Ohangla and Nyatiti performers featured in Ketebul Music's documentary Retracing the Benga Rhythm (2008) and pictured in Figure 7.2 above. Musical Example 7.10 (Pg. 182 .mp3 format): Audio excerpt of Toto Guillaume's "Mba Na Na Ne." Musical Example 7.11 (Pg. 182 .mp3 format): Audio excerpt of Hoigen Ekwala's "Longue Di Titi Nika." Musical Example 7.12 (Pg. 184 .mp3 format): Audio excerpt of a nyatiti performance introduction by Oyana Obiero from the album Luo Traditional Nyatiti. Musical Example 7.13 (Pg. 184 .mp3 format): Audio excerpt of the spoken word introduction to "Ohangla Man." Musical Example 7.14 (Pg. 185 .mp3 format): Audio excerpt of the chorus to "Ohangla Man." Musical Example 7.16 (Pg. 190 .mp3 format): Audio excerpt of the song "Night Oberana" by Onyango Alemo off the album Onyango Alemo Vol: 02. Musical Example 7.17 (Pg. 190 .mp3 format): Audio excerpt of the lyrics of "Ohangla Man" that Makadem identified as Giriama and Teso influenced. Musical Example 7.18 (Pg. 190 .mp3 format): Audio excerpt of the Giriama style mungao performed by the Gonda La Mijikenda Cultural Troupe. Musical Example 7.19 (Pg. 190 .mp3 format): Audio excerpt of Teso style akisuku performed by the Iteso Traditional Dancers. Musical Example 7.21 (Pg. 195 .mp3 format): Audio excerpt of the bird call in "Awuoro." Musical Example 7.22 (Pg. 201 .mp3 format): Audio excerpt of the first verse of "Wa Mama." Musical Example 9.5 (Pg. 251 .wav format): Audio excerpt of the call and response vocals featured on "Halele." Musical Example 9.8 (Pg. 253 .wav format): Audio excerpt of the "String Ensemble" and "Chinese Erhu." Musical Example 9.13 (Pg. 256 .wav format): Audio excerpt of the repeated pattern of the sampled iron leg rattle in "Halele. Supplementary Video Files: Musical Example 7.15 (Pg. 187 .mov format): Video excerpt of Makadem performing A + B refrains. The B refrain documents the audience response. Musical Example 9.1 (Pg. 245 .mov format): Video excerpt of Gargar's Spotlight on Kenyan Music audition.
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Date Issued: 2012
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-5410
Format: Thesis

Title: Music and the Writings of the Helfta Mystics.
Creator: Savage, Christian Gregory, Brewer, Charles E., Gunderson, Frank, Seaton, Douglass, College of Music, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: In the latter half of the thirteenth century, the convent of St. Mary's at Helfta, Saxony, represented one of the greatest literary, artistic, and spiritual centers of medieval Germany. Helfta was also the site of a flowering mystical tradition, demonstrated by three of the sisters: Mechthild of Magdeburg, Mechthild of Hackeborn, and Gertrude the Great. These three mystics each wrote books that relate the quest to come to an emotional understanding of the divine. More important for the...
Show moreIn the latter half of the thirteenth century, the convent of St. Mary's at Helfta, Saxony, represented one of the greatest literary, artistic, and spiritual centers of medieval Germany. Helfta was also the site of a flowering mystical tradition, demonstrated by three of the sisters: Mechthild of Magdeburg, Mechthild of Hackeborn, and Gertrude the Great. These three mystics each wrote books that relate the quest to come to an emotional understanding of the divine. More important for the purposes of this thesis, these books also contain numerous references to music in their authors' lives. The works contain many of the same musical elements (e.g., references to liturgical chants or stringed instruments), though each mystic uses these in a slightly different way. However, in the end, all three are united in viewing music as an integral part of the mystical experience. This thesis explains the numerous ways in which the nuns of Helfta understood and described music, relating these not only to each other but also to the larger context of thirteenth-century Germany. An investigation into the musical elements of the nuns' mysticism informs recent work that has been done in the fields of sociology and gender studies: this includes arguments over whether the nuns were proto-feminists, how much they were influenced by medieval conceptions of women as inferior to men, and the extent to which they were rebelling or reinforcing a male-dominated Church hierarchy. Following a general introduction to the thesis, Chapter 1 examines the state of the medieval Catholic Church, medieval mysticism, and the monastic life at Helfta. The next three chapters consider the musical thoughts of each of these three nuns, as detailed in their spiritual autobiographies: Gertrude's Legatus memorialis abundantiae divinae pietatis (Chapter 2), Mechthild of Hackeborn's Liber specialis gratiae (Chapter 3), and Mechthild of Magdeburg's Das fliessende licht der Gottheit (Chapter 4). Reflecting the emphases of the authors, the particular details of each chapter vary: all include references to liturgical music, the presence of music in mystical visions, the use of musical instruments, and the importance of songs of praise. However, Gertrude's also considers ways in which she uses Biblical citations, Mechthild of Hackeborn's includes a more detailed consideration of Mass and Office chants, and Mechthild of Magdeburg's examines some of the poetry and love songs she composed for God. The final chapter (Chapter 5) synthesizes the preceding information and considers the implications of a varied musical life at Helfta: namely, how music is a constructive, rather than destructive force (i.e., is used to support, rather than subvert Ecclesiastical authority), and is inextricably linked to the mystical experience.
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Date Issued: 2012
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-5429
Format: Thesis

Title: Music and Queer Culture: Negotiating Marginality Through Musical Discourse at Pride Toronto.
Creator: Rosendahl, Todd J., Bakan, Michael B., Ueno, Koji, Gunderson, Frank, Van Glahn, Denise, College of Music, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: Pride festivals are both political and celebratory in nature and often include parades, marches, street fairs, musical performances, and dance club events. Many view pride festivals as spaces used to create a unified group identity. While such a view is partially accurate, the festival is also a space in which positions of centrality and marginality within the queer community are negotiated, particularly for gendered and racialized groups. With over one million participants and roughly 300...
Show morePride festivals are both political and celebratory in nature and often include parades, marches, street fairs, musical performances, and dance club events. Many view pride festivals as spaces used to create a unified group identity. While such a view is partially accurate, the festival is also a space in which positions of centrality and marginality within the queer community are negotiated, particularly for gendered and racialized groups. With over one million participants and roughly 300 musical artists performing on multiple stages, Pride Toronto is one of the largest pride festivals in the world. As a leader on the global stage, Pride Toronto has struggled in recent years to create a festival that reflects the great diversity of the larger queer community in Toronto and abroad. The organization has been accused of marginalizing particular groups within the queer community through the uneven distribution of festival resources, the lack of organizational structures and advertisements aimed at particular sections of the queer community, and the placement of music stages and other areas directed at specific groups in undesirable locations and venues within the festival space. In this dissertation, I explore the role of musical discourse at annual pride festivals in the negotiation of social power and identity within the queer community. Musical discourse, which includes not only the music and performance but also the programming and staging of musical artists, media reports, protests, and town hall meetings, was one of the primary means of initiating and sustaining dialogue on social power within the queer community in Toronto. Gendered and racialized groups used musical discourse to challenge power structures within the larger queer community, which had been highlighted by the allocation of time and space within the festival area. Using a Foucauldian theoretical model of power, this research examines the connections between music, social power, identity, and queer culture.
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Date Issued: 2012
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-5427
Format: Thesis

Title: Nylon, Nails and Playing It Again: Insider Dynamics in a Classical Guitar University Program.
Creator: Gallardo, Gonzalo, Van Glahn, Denise, Bakan, Michael B., Gunderson, Frank, College of Music, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: The Western art music ("classical") guitar tradition flourished in Europe during the mid nineteenth century. Guitarists like Andrés Segovia contributed to a revived interest in the tradition in the early twentieth century and stimulated its assimilation into the modern concert hall and the university. Historical musicologists have paid increasing attention in the last forty years to art music written for the guitar, coinciding with the resurfacing of past works. Although previous...
Show moreThe Western art music ("classical") guitar tradition flourished in Europe during the mid nineteenth century. Guitarists like Andrés Segovia contributed to a revived interest in the tradition in the early twentieth century and stimulated its assimilation into the modern concert hall and the university. Historical musicologists have paid increasing attention in the last forty years to art music written for the guitar, coinciding with the resurfacing of past works. Although previous ethnomusicological studies have considered the guitar's role in different world music traditions, this thesis constitutes a first approach towards the classical guitar through an ethnomusicological framework. In the present document I explore the insider and outsider dynamic in an American university as seen through case histories of four doctoral students at The Florida State University guitar program. Previous scholars have debated the insider/outsider dynamic primarily by considering the researcher's level of insidership in a researched population. I problematize the insider dynamic by focusing upon the experiences of informants who were born outside of the U.S., and who are either permanent U.S. residents or international students. By superimposing the exploration of insidership in the FSU guitar cultural cohort to that of being a foreign-born/international student, I set this study as a counterpoint that contemplates the tenuous nature of being an insider/outsider. I contend that shared habits constitue insidership in the cohort regardless of the member's national origin and immigration status in the U.S. I support this argument by considering the past and present habitus of four members (born in Britain, Canada, Belgium, and Romania). Moreover, my informants' musical experiences also inform how the insider/outsider dynamic operates in areas such as immigration, international study, and familial relationships. I conducted my ethnographic research considering Tim Rice's model of time, place, and metaphor (Rice 2003). I use Rice's framework to create a narrative that accounts for each informant's past and present experiences; each of the four main chapters is devoted to one musician. Having been a member of the cohort myself during the years 2005-2011, I include my own experiences and shared moments with my informants-colleagues and our professor, Bruce Holzman, within the text. Besides contributing to the discussion of insider/outsider dynamics, the present document also forms part of the relatively recent wave of ethnomusicological studies of Western musical institutions by Western musicians ("at home"). My study is informed by the sensitivities of those who are both "at home" in their musical tradition and, to varying extents, away from their "home" country of origin. I hope this study will also illuminate some of the different practices and dispositions found in one of the country's most renowned classical guitar university programs.
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Date Issued: 2012
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-5355
Format: Thesis

Title: My Bloody Valentine's Loveless.
Creator: Fisher, David R., Brewer, Charles E., Gunderson, Frank, Jones, Evan Allan, College of Music, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: Throughout the course of history, numerous works of art have stood at the forefront of their respective genres. British indie band My Bloody Valentine's Loveless is one such work. Their unique sound on the album defined a sub-genre of indie rock known as shoegaze. This thesis is the first major academic study of My Bloody Valentine and their decisive presentation of shoegazer aesthetics: Loveless. In the first chapter, I trace the origins of shoegaze as a resultant effect of the punk,...
Show moreThroughout the course of history, numerous works of art have stood at the forefront of their respective genres. British indie band My Bloody Valentine's Loveless is one such work. Their unique sound on the album defined a sub-genre of indie rock known as shoegaze. This thesis is the first major academic study of My Bloody Valentine and their decisive presentation of shoegazer aesthetics: Loveless. In the first chapter, I trace the origins of shoegaze as a resultant effect of the punk, postpunk, and indie movements that came before it. Later in the chapter, I discuss the music of several important shoegazer bands. Then, deduced from their commonalities, I imply a characterization of shoegaze. During the second chapter, I focus more specifically on My Bloody Valentine. By means of a basic biography, I present My Bloody Valentine's development and struggles as a band in order to emphasize the profundity of their final album, Loveless, on both musical and interpersonal levels. In the third chapter, I present an analysis of Loveless using both traditional and non-traditional methods. The goal of this process is to gain further insight into the new realm of sound possibilities My Bloody Valentine discovered and thus attain a better understanding of their dream-like art. The chapter stresses the significant innovations presented on the album. The final chapter offers the reception of Loveless. I accomplish this by dissecting several reviews, both official and unofficial, with the intention of highlighting its virtually unanimous positive response. Throughout the thesis, I have attempted to combine both academic and journalistic writing and research standards so that interested persons from both areas may benefit from its reading. The essential objective of this thesis is to justify My Bloody Valentine as one of the most important bands in music history while also presenting a contemporary model for popular music studies.
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Date Issued: 2006
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-4453
Format: Thesis

Title: Buying Spirituality: Commodity and Meaning in American Kirtan Music.
Creator: DelCiampo, Matthew J., Gunderson, Frank, Bakan, Michael B., Brewer, Charles, College of Music, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: The practice of call-and-response devotional chant, known as kirtan, has been transformed from its original religious contexts and has found new meaning in secular communities throughout yoga studios across North America. Participants of this American kirtan often find deep connections of internal, interpersonal, and spiritual natures through the experience of communal chant. This experience is a commodity, one that is sold to potential consumers in the marketplaces of spirituality, and...
Show moreThe practice of call-and-response devotional chant, known as kirtan, has been transformed from its original religious contexts and has found new meaning in secular communities throughout yoga studios across North America. Participants of this American kirtan often find deep connections of internal, interpersonal, and spiritual natures through the experience of communal chant. This experience is a commodity, one that is sold to potential consumers in the marketplaces of spirituality, and health and wellbeing. Within these marketplaces there is a tension between the sincerity and integrity of participants and their experiences, and their collective representation in advertisements. This thesis explores the complexity present in the relationship between participants' highly personalized experiences and the way these experiences are commodified, marketed, and sold to consumers, as well as how often there is a disjuncture between the spiritual connections felt by participants and the way they are represented in kirtan advertisements and commodities that share similar consumer bases. I propose that the most productive way to analyze the kirtan experience as a commodity is first to understand ethnographically the role of kirtan in participants' lives, and then view the kirtan experience as situated in both the marketplaces for spirituality, and health and wellbeing. From this perspective, I discuss the various forces that make the experience more or less valuable, I observe how these forces are exemplified in specific advertisements, and I critique whether such marketing is disingenuous to the personal and sincere nature of these kirtan participants' experiences. Ultimately, those that have the greatest role in promoting and selling kirtan to potential consumers often create advertisements that simultaneously are reflective of their personal beliefs and exploitive of both potential consumers' and their own notions of the idealized kirtan experience.
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Date Issued: 2012
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-4793
Format: Thesis

Title: We Are the Blues: Individual and Communal Performances of the King Biscuit Tradition.
Creator: Fry, Robert Webb, Gunderson, Frank D., Edwards, Leigh H., Bakan, Michael B., Van Glahn, Denise, College of Music, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: The rapid decline of regional American identity throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and a subsequently increasing recognition and interest in America's cultural past have resulted in the promotion of small-town America as a tourist destination. Local communities throughout the country exhibit local culture and present their homes as theatrical spaces where tourists are permitted and encouraged to experience the "real" America, believed by many to be disappearing in an...
Show moreThe rapid decline of regional American identity throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and a subsequently increasing recognition and interest in America's cultural past have resulted in the promotion of small-town America as a tourist destination. Local communities throughout the country exhibit local culture and present their homes as theatrical spaces where tourists are permitted and encouraged to experience the "real" America, believed by many to be disappearing in an increasingly homogeneous society. In this dissertation, I present an ethnography that explores the formation and continuance of Helena, Arkansas, as a tourist destination and as a music place. I illustrate that Helena's adopted blues identity emerged and has evolved through a history of complex socio-musical interactions between host and guest cultures and between individuals and institutions. More importantly, I explore the larger issue of the blues as a signifier of "tradition," arguing that, for many attendants, the blues serve as a soundtrack while the city serves as a performative space that permits the creation, performance, and remembrance of newly formed social traditions occurring within the festival space and larger musical tradition. This dissertation provides insight into the role of the fan, both local and visitor, in the establishment and realization of a music place. Through the theatrics of tourism, both Helena and its connection to the blues tradition is revitalized each October, resulting in a presentation of Helena that meets the desires of both host and guest communities. While the city during the festival is promoted as an "authentic" portrayal of the Delta and the historic blues tradition, I suggest that the personal experiences and newly formed social traditions that occur during the time and space of the festival result in the realization of an authentic tourist and local experience.
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Date Issued: 2010
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-4393
Format: Thesis

Title: Norovbanzad's Legacy: Contemporary Concert Long Song in Mongolia.
Creator: Giron, Gabrielle, Bakan, Michael B., Clendinning, Jane Piper, Van Glahn, Denise, Gunderson, Frank, College of Music, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: By looking at the life, career, and music of renowned female Mongolian long song singer Norovbanzad (1937-2003), surveying vocal principles espoused by her students, and analyzing a specific piece in the long song repertory, this thesis demonstrates how concert long song typifies traditional and modern Mongolian expressive values which forefront the Mongolian landscape. Concert long song (urtiin duu), referred to as "Mongolian classical music" by long song singers, is performed by trained,...
Show moreBy looking at the life, career, and music of renowned female Mongolian long song singer Norovbanzad (1937-2003), surveying vocal principles espoused by her students, and analyzing a specific piece in the long song repertory, this thesis demonstrates how concert long song typifies traditional and modern Mongolian expressive values which forefront the Mongolian landscape. Concert long song (urtiin duu), referred to as "Mongolian classical music" by long song singers, is performed by trained, professional soloists who declaim lyric texts and improvise ornate melismas in free-rhythm, often accompanied by the morin khuur, the Mongolian "horse-head" fiddle. Despite concert long song's rich history, musical complexity, and cultural significance, few scholars have completed research in English exploring concert long song's many social and musical ramifications. This thesis, therefore, makes a significant contribution to the literature by providing a study of an important, uniquely Mongolian tradition that combines historically-rooted and modernist cultural values. Research methods for this study include archival research of Mongolian and English resources, participant observation by the author in long song voice lessons, interviews with over twenty members of the long song community, field recordings of selected long songs, photographs of various long song contexts, and music/ textual transcription and analysis. Investigation ultimately reveals how Norovbanzad negotiated and embodied continuity and change within fluctuating musical and social landscapes of her time to shape a twentieth-century Mongolian concert tradition. Urtiin duu performs ideas of nuudlin soyol irgenshil or "nomadic civilization," a concept that pays homage to Mongol nomadic history and culture as well as modern concepts of nationalism. The current generation of long song singers continues to carry out the pivotal social function carved out by Norovbanzad. Concert long song technique and performance practice incorporate and transform multiple modern influences in order to serve longstanding Mongolian aesthetic values emphasizing sonic mimesis of the Mongolian landscape. Summarizing ideas on technique, performance practice, and aesthetics of concert long song, this work opens up myriad possibilities for creative research on the long song tradition and Mongolian music in general.
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Date Issued: 2007
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-4267
Format: Thesis

Title: Foreign Songs for Foreign Kings: The Manuscript Scorebook of Angelo Notari.
Creator: Henson, S. Matthew, Brewer, Charles, Gerber, Larry, Broyles, Michael, Desroussilles, François Dupuigrenet, Gunderson, Frank, College of Music, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: Angelo Notari (1566?-1663) was an Italian composer and lutenist to Prince Henry Stuart, King Charles I, and King Charles II of England. During his long life Notari only published one collection of music, his Prime musiche nuove of 1613. In the twentieth century, Notari's autograph was uncovered and his musical hand was established by Pamela Willetts of the British Museum. Willetts's discovery of a large English collection of Italian music in Notari's hand, GB- Lbl Add. 31440, called for a...
Show moreAngelo Notari (1566?-1663) was an Italian composer and lutenist to Prince Henry Stuart, King Charles I, and King Charles II of England. During his long life Notari only published one collection of music, his Prime musiche nuove of 1613. In the twentieth century, Notari's autograph was uncovered and his musical hand was established by Pamela Willetts of the British Museum. Willetts's discovery of a large English collection of Italian music in Notari's hand, GB- Lbl Add. 31440, called for a reexamination of Notari's place in the English courts and his role in English history. This dissertation confirms Willetts's original attribution with 40 intervening years of scholarship, and looks more closely at Notari's works. It draws parallels between his printed work and the manuscript, and it more properly contextualizes the manuscript's place in English history. It also postulates links between Notari, continental instrumental music, and the music of the English Restoration.
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Date Issued: 2012
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-5702
Format: Thesis

Title: A Spectacle Worth Attending to: The Ironic Use of Preexisting Art Music in Film.
Creator: McAllister, Matthew J., Broyles, Michael, Jones, Evan Allan, Gunderson, Frank, Seaton, Douglass, College of Music, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: Irony is an important discursive mode and literary trope. It invites a debate about meaning and significance, creates a feeling of community among perceivers (even if, on the surface, it excludes), and draws them into morally active engagement. Irony can allow for conceptual points to be perceived more quickly and to be remembered longer than do literal statements. Art music has remained relevant to the wider popular culture partly through its use in films, and ironic deployments of this...
Show moreIrony is an important discursive mode and literary trope. It invites a debate about meaning and significance, creates a feeling of community among perceivers (even if, on the surface, it excludes), and draws them into morally active engagement. Irony can allow for conceptual points to be perceived more quickly and to be remembered longer than do literal statements. Art music has remained relevant to the wider popular culture partly through its use in films, and ironic deployments of this music constitute one of its most sophisticated uses. It makes perceivers aware of the surface features of a film, its multiple, deeper contextual layers, and the complex interplay that takes place among them, which helps directors to make conceptual and narrative points that transcend their immediate filmic narratives. In the so-called "Golden Age" of Hollywood film, circa 1933-60, the narrative elements, including and especially music, were standardized in order to create a product with the clearest possible narrative. Composers during this period employed the stylistic elements of the Romantic orchestral idiom as the lingua franca of cinema due to its cultural currency and in particular its well-established emotional connotations. Throughout the 1960s however, the major Hollywood studios began to experiment with different filmic products, especially those modeled on European auteurism, which placed the control of the film in the hands of a single filmmaker and not, as was Hollywood practice, in the hands of a committee. With the success of such non-traditional films and their even less- traditional scores, the Hollywood establishment became more willing to take chances by placing the various components of films under the control of individual directors. With the music choices now in the hands of the auteur, the rules and conventions for music in films changed, and preexisting art music has had a noticeable presence in films from the late 1960s until the present. Moreover, ironically deployed art music became, if not a staple, a regularly used device by some of Hollywood's more sophisticated directors. The recognition of this irony can unmask deeper contextual layers that reveal or enhance major themes in the films and, in some cases, the ideology of the filmmaker. Moreover, music, through its association and interaction with film, can reinscribe itself and its perceived meaning within the wider culture. This means that art music continues to be relevant to our culture; music acquires renewed meaning through its significant and sophisticated participation in the Western world's most popular artistic medium.
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Date Issued: 2012
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-5025
Format: Thesis

Title: Slavi Trifonov and the Commodification of Nationalism: Popular Culture, Popular Music, and the Politics of Identity in Postsocialist Bulgaria, 1990-2005.
Creator: Kourtova, Plamena, B.Bakan, Michael, Romanchuk, Robert, Gunderson, Frank, Uzendoski, Michael, College of Music, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: This dissertation is a study of the cultural meanings ascribed to the postsocialist Bulgarian pop-folk musician and television personality Slavi Trifonov. Since the early 1990s, Trifonov's career and popularity have been intricately linked to the transition from communism to post-communism and the sociocultural experiences characteristic of that transformation. Based on audience reflections, my inquiry considers Trifonov and his music as a polarizing discourse that embodies the competing...
Show moreThis dissertation is a study of the cultural meanings ascribed to the postsocialist Bulgarian pop-folk musician and television personality Slavi Trifonov. Since the early 1990s, Trifonov's career and popularity have been intricately linked to the transition from communism to post-communism and the sociocultural experiences characteristic of that transformation. Based on audience reflections, my inquiry considers Trifonov and his music as a polarizing discourse that embodies the competing meanings generated by this shift in economic and political structure in Bulgaria. I insist that Trifonov's music and television productions purposefully create an image of the nation and sell that image as an inconspicuous element of popular music culture. The success of Trifonov within commercial music and as a polarizing cultural figure also suggests that the nation and its commercialization have a specific social capacity and are interconnected. I explore this interconnectedness and argue that it reveals the ways Bulgarian people experience and make sense of their conflicting social experiences through popular music.
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Date Issued: 2012
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-4959
Format: Thesis

Title: Leonard Bernstein's and Roger Englander's Educational Mission: Music Appreciation and the 1961-62 Season of Young People's Concerts.
Creator: MacInnis, John Christian, Broyles, Michael E., Brewer, Charles E., Gunderson, Frank D., College of Music, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: This thesis is an examination of the 1961-62 season of New York Philharmonic Young People's Concerts with special emphasis on contributions made by director/producer Roger Englander in concert with Leonard Bernstein. The Young People's Concerts are contextualized in the American tradition of orchestral concerts targeting children (especially by the New York Philharmonic), and connections between radio broadcasts of high culture content and early television programming are examined,...
Show moreThis thesis is an examination of the 1961-62 season of New York Philharmonic Young People's Concerts with special emphasis on contributions made by director/producer Roger Englander in concert with Leonard Bernstein. The Young People's Concerts are contextualized in the American tradition of orchestral concerts targeting children (especially by the New York Philharmonic), and connections between radio broadcasts of high culture content and early television programming are examined, particularly in light of the dominating media personalities of Walter Damrosch and Arturo Toscanini. Also, the Young People's Concerts are explained as a new media manifestation of American music appreciation programs and explained in the context of 1960s television. The developmental processes for the 1961-62 Young People's Concerts is explored with special emphasis placed on the collaborative professional relationships that made these programs a success. The technology for producing and televising the 1961-62 Young People's Concerts is outlined and explained. In addition, the production ideals of Leonard Bernstein and Roger Englander are clarified along with a discussion of the lasting impact of the Young People's Concerts on American culture and musicians and how the show evolved after Bernstein and Englander.
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Date Issued: 2009
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-2811
Format: Thesis

Title: Kusamira Ritual Music and the Social Reproduction of Wellness in Uganda.
Creator: Hoesing, Peter, Gunderson, Frank, Hellweg, Joseph, Bakan, Michael B., Garretson, Peter, College of Music, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: Ritual healing has fascinated ethnographers and historians for several decades. Over the last twenty-five years, ethnomusicologists have begun to examine the cognitive, performative, and phenomenological aspects of ritual and trance. Based on seventeen months of ethnographic field research over the last five years, this study examines ritual healing and spirit mediumship in two regions of southern Uganda, Buganda and Busoga. The groups living in these regions, the Baganda and Basoga, speak...
Show moreRitual healing has fascinated ethnographers and historians for several decades. Over the last twenty-five years, ethnomusicologists have begun to examine the cognitive, performative, and phenomenological aspects of ritual and trance. Based on seventeen months of ethnographic field research over the last five years, this study examines ritual healing and spirit mediumship in two regions of southern Uganda, Buganda and Busoga. The groups living in these regions, the Baganda and Basoga, speak mutually intelligible languages respectively called Luganda and Lusoga. The performance of healing rituals involves kusamira, or what this study defines as flexible personhood, which has been termed elsewhere spirit possession or trance. Through the release of a usual sense of self to spirits in kusamira ritual, practitioners called basamize and baswezi create atmospheres for social interaction with ancestral and patron spirits. These interactions not only articulate categories of illness and wellness; they also become sites for manipulating and negotiating trajectories of mediumship and healing. Ritual adepts conceive of holistic wellness in these contexts, obulamu obulungi, as crucially dependent upon blessings from the spirits, emikisa, and the eradication of negative spiritual energy, ebibi. 'Carrying spirits,' okukongojja, facilitates the kind of social interaction between humans and spirits necessary to pursue these blessings in ritual and sacrifice. This dissertation offers the first ethnographic narrative on the music of kusamira. Through linguistic and musical research, performance with project participants, and other subjective ethnographic experience, it engages kusamira adherents at the level of verbal art and performative meaning. Specific methods include analysis of song texts, assessment of the place song in ritual contexts, examination of intercontextual references, and musical analysis. These approaches to kusamira ritual redress a major gap in the literature on ritual healing in Interlacustrine East Africa: although earlier studies have often mentioned the presence of music in this kind of ritual, they have failed to account for its significance or examine its meanings beyond a cursory level. Kusamira practitioners promote and control flexible personhood through musical performance as an essential technology of ritual interaction. Their social aesthetic is one of conviviality, which they cultivate among numerous frictions at the local, national, and regional levels. The tenacity of these practices reveals something beyond an aesthetic priority: although dismissed by colonizers, missionaries, and many modern Ugandans, they constitute a valuable form of expression, a widely used form of primary health care and maintenance, and an intersubjective'even intercorporeal'mode of being-in-the-world. For these reasons, kusamira involves indigenous knowledge on the level of an African gnosis. Professional basamize and baswezi healers and musicians keep and actively maintain this gnosis through the performance of kusamira ritual, which promotes the social production and reproduction of wellness. In contrast to strongly visualist representations of ritualists in contemporary Uganda, this project approaches kusamira according to its total sensory appeal. Among these I prioritize close listening to song texts, which reveals details about Kiganda and Kisoga spirit pantheons, ways of promoting convivial social relations with them, and the benefits of performing ritual for holistic wellness. By examining the ways in which basamize and baswezi use these texts in performance, this study finds such benefits to be dependent on creative capacities, the mutual dependence of humans and their patron spirits, and the agency of both entities in the ritual production of social wellness.
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Date Issued: 2011
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-7158
Format: Thesis

Title: Kusamira Ritual Music and the Social Reproduction of Wellness in Uganda.
Creator: Hoesing, Peter, Gunderson, Frank, Hellweg, Joseph, Bakan, Michael B., Garretson, Peter, College of Music, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: Ritual healing has fascinated ethnographers and historians for several decades. Over the last twenty-five years, ethnomusicologists have begun to examine the cognitive, performative, and phenomenological aspects of ritual and trance. Based on seventeen months of ethnographic field research over the last five years, this study examines ritual healing and spirit mediumship in two regions of southern Uganda, Buganda and Busoga. The groups living in these regions, the Baganda and Basoga, speak...
Show moreRitual healing has fascinated ethnographers and historians for several decades. Over the last twenty-five years, ethnomusicologists have begun to examine the cognitive, performative, and phenomenological aspects of ritual and trance. Based on seventeen months of ethnographic field research over the last five years, this study examines ritual healing and spirit mediumship in two regions of southern Uganda, Buganda and Busoga. The groups living in these regions, the Baganda and Basoga, speak mutually intelligible languages respectively called Luganda and Lusoga. The performance of healing rituals involves kusamira, or what this study defines as flexible personhood, which has been termed elsewhere spirit possession or trance. Through the release of a usual sense of self to spirits in kusamira ritual, practitioners called basamize and baswezi create atmospheres for social interaction with ancestral and patron spirits. These interactions not only articulate categories of illness and wellness; they also become sites for manipulating and negotiating trajectories of mediumship and healing. Ritual adepts conceive of holistic wellness in these contexts, obulamu obulungi, as crucially dependent upon blessings from the spirits, emikisa, and the eradication of negative spiritual energy, ebibi. "Carrying spirits," okukongojja, facilitates the kind of social interaction between humans and spirits necessary to pursue these blessings in ritual and sacrifice. This dissertation offers the first ethnographic narrative on the music of kusamira. Through linguistic and musical research, performance with project participants, and other subjective ethnographic experience, it engages kusamira adherents at the level of verbal art and performative meaning. Specific methods include analysis of song texts, assessment of the place song in ritual contexts, examination of intercontextual references, and musical analysis. These approaches to kusamira ritual redress a major gap in the literature on ritual healing in Interlacustrine East Africa: although earlier studies have often mentioned the presence of music in this kind of ritual, they have failed to account for its significance or examine its meanings beyond a cursory level. Kusamira practitioners promote and control flexible personhood through musical performance as an essential technology of ritual interaction. Their social aesthetic is one of conviviality, which they cultivate among numerous frictions at the local, national, and regional levels. The tenacity of these practices reveals something beyond an aesthetic priority: although dismissed by colonizers, missionaries, and many modern Ugandans, they constitute a valuable form of expression, a widely used form of primary health care and maintenance, and an intersubjective—even intercorporeal—mode of being-in-the-world. For these reasons, kusamira involves indigenous knowledge on the level of an African gnosis. Professional basamize and baswezi healers and musicians keep and actively maintain this gnosis through the performance of kusamira ritual, which promotes the social production and reproduction of wellness. In contrast to strongly visualist representations of ritualists in contemporary Uganda, this project approaches kusamira according to its total sensory appeal. Among these I prioritize close listening to song texts, which reveals details about Kiganda and Kisoga spirit pantheons, ways of promoting convivial social relations with them, and the benefits of performing ritual for holistic wellness. By examining the ways in which basamize and baswezi use these texts in performance, this study finds such benefits to be dependent on creative capacities, the mutual dependence of humans and their patron spirits, and the agency of both entities in the ritual production of social wellness.
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Date Issued: 2011
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-4663
Format: Thesis

Title: The Poets of Duisburg: Risk and Hip-Hop Performance in a German Inner City.
Creator: Jackson, Margaret Ruth, Bakan, Michael B., Maier-Katkin, Birgit, Gunderson, Frank, Van Glahn, Denise, College of Music, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: This dissertation is a study of migrant youths in Duisburg, a city in the heart of Germany's industrial northern Rhine region. It draws together various threads of inquiry – an ethnographic study of the Duisburg-Bruckhausen hip-hop crew Poedra and the artists of Chillichilliwa Productions, debates regarding the primacy of an "exemplary" German culture, the social status and agency of migrant and post-migrant adolescents in a de-industrialized inner city, national German dialogues addressing...
Show moreThis dissertation is a study of migrant youths in Duisburg, a city in the heart of Germany's industrial northern Rhine region. It draws together various threads of inquiry – an ethnographic study of the Duisburg-Bruckhausen hip-hop crew Poedra and the artists of Chillichilliwa Productions, debates regarding the primacy of an "exemplary" German culture, the social status and agency of migrant and post-migrant adolescents in a de-industrialized inner city, national German dialogues addressing ethnic enclaves and ghettoization, and media assessments that place migrant youths at odds with a vulnerable German social order - in an effort to tease out the dynamic social and economic relations that define power among young people who inhabit a contemporary German inner city neighborhood. This study aims to understand how hip-hop, risk, performance, and "being Kanak" are interwoven. It takes as axiomatic the idea that hip-hop culture has played a significant role in shaping migrant behaviors, environmental perceptions, and ways of being in the world that are unique to Germany's urban communities yet maintain close aesthetic connections to hip-hop's traditional codes. Underlying the notion that hip-hop is a primary motivator of migrant and post-migrant agency is the broader question of why it has become such a pervasive cultural force among Germany's migrant populations. I believe the answer lies in an understanding of the ways risk is both perceived and manipulated throughout the ethnoscape and the mediascapes that are the primary terrains for hip-hop performativity. I theoretically place hip-hop practice among my informants within a broader cultural continuum that examines migrant youths and the musical cultures they celebrate and create through the lens of risk. Throughout Europe, violence, or threatened violence, is a constituent element of migrant life, one that shapes the ways migrants live and construct their communities in the countries that absorb them. At its core, risk is disruptive. It poses a threat to stability and weakens the roots of human relations. Within hip-hop, however, risk can also serve as a creative animus, playing a pivotal role in what Sara Thornton has dubbed "sub-cultural capital" (1996), defining behaviors, stances, and attitudes through with practitioners can gain social standing and approval among their peers.
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Date Issued: 2010
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-3753
Format: Thesis

Title: Music Scenes in America: Gainesville, Florida as a Case Study for Historicizing Subculture.
Creator: Vandegrift, Micah, Jumonville, Neil, Gunderson, Frank, Faulk, Barry, Program in American and Florida Studies, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: The history of music scenes is a topic that has been misunderstood. Scholarship has tended to focus on sociological theory as a basis for understanding how and why music scenes exist and motivate youth. While accomplishing important work and connecting the study of scenes to academia, theory has left uncovered the narrative history of music scenes. Setting scenes in their specific historical, social and cultural context allows them to be examined by a different set of research goals and...
Show moreThe history of music scenes is a topic that has been misunderstood. Scholarship has tended to focus on sociological theory as a basis for understanding how and why music scenes exist and motivate youth. While accomplishing important work and connecting the study of scenes to academia, theory has left uncovered the narrative history of music scenes. Setting scenes in their specific historical, social and cultural context allows them to be examined by a different set of research goals and methods. In this paper, I outline a historiography of music scenes, from the original implications of subcultural research to ethnography in the early 1990s. Tracing the literature on scenes, I argue that studying scenes from my position in 2009 must be accomplished with a historical point of view, not ignoring theory, but placing narrative history as the primary methodology. The growth of post-punk music scenes in America throughout the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s had extensive effects on popular culture, and through understanding the history first, I propose researchers will have a better grasp on what a scene is, why it functions in society, and how it has affected regional and national subcultural identity. I used Gainesville, Florida as an example of this method. The social characteristics of Florida and the shifts in the national subculture throughout the 1990s are two essential points I bring to bear in the case study of Gainesville. Overall, I hope to introduce Florida's scenes as anomalous instances of subcultural activity and to spur further inquiry on the topic of (re)writing music scenes into the history of youth culture, especially in the 1990s.
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Date Issued: 2009
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-4589
Format: Thesis

Title: Music, Dementia, and the Reality of Being Yourself.
Creator: Justus, Kayleen M., Gunderson, Frank, Darrow, Alice-Ann, Bakan, Michael B., Brewer, Charles E., College of Music, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: "Just be yourself." This seemingly banal platitude can mean any number of things, depending on the context in which it is to be done: I could be unique and distinguish a singular subject, I could behave as I normally would and embody "my coherent" identity, or I could intentionally express myself and the relationships that structure this in meaningful ways. I am seemingly free to dictate how I am and enact this appropriately, but this freedom hinges precisely on my conscious awareness and...
Show more"Just be yourself." This seemingly banal platitude can mean any number of things, depending on the context in which it is to be done: I could be unique and distinguish a singular subject, I could behave as I normally would and embody "my coherent" identity, or I could intentionally express myself and the relationships that structure this in meaningful ways. I am seemingly free to dictate how I am and enact this appropriately, but this freedom hinges precisely on my conscious awareness and intent to be myself. In the context of dementia, a condition characterized in terms of Self-loss, this cliché becomes increasingly significant as the status of a person's consciousness becomes more ambiguous. A common observation about an individual with dementia is that music is one of the only remaining activities through which he or she continues to appear as a recognizable Self. But, what sense can be made of these curious phenomena? In this dissertation, I use philosopher Slavoj Zizek's style of dialectical materialism and reading of Lacanian psychoanalysis in order to explore this problem of consciousness at the heart of the seeming paradox between musical activity and dementia. The purpose of adopting this approach is twofold. First, I aim to construct a parallax view of, or different ontology for, the real and virtual ways that music and dementia shape what it means to be yourself. In order to do this, I map the order of chapters according to the Lacanian triad of the Imaginary, the Symbolic, and the Real. The second aim is epistemological: by framing what was initially an ethnomusicological project in terms of psychoanalysis and philosophy, I have attempted to open up a new intellectual space for musicology, one which is based on a critical orientation to phenomenology and semiotics rather than a deliberately integrative one.
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Date Issued: 2014
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-9015
Format: Thesis

Title: Pedagogy, Performance, and Community in the Transnational Balinese Traditional Performing Arts Scene.
Creator: Clendinning, Elizabeth A., Bakan, Michael B., Erndl, Kathleen M., Gunderson, Frank, Van Glahn, Denise, College of Music, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: Gamelan music and its associated performing arts are central to the unique social structures and religious practices that define cultural life on the island of Bali, Indonesia. However, hundreds of Balinese gamelan ensembles also exist outside of the island, sustained by the collaboration of Balinese and foreign musicians, scholars, and teachers. Despite extensive scholarship on gamelan culture in Bali, little systematic scholarly attention has been paid to the Balinese performing arts within...
Show moreGamelan music and its associated performing arts are central to the unique social structures and religious practices that define cultural life on the island of Bali, Indonesia. However, hundreds of Balinese gamelan ensembles also exist outside of the island, sustained by the collaboration of Balinese and foreign musicians, scholars, and teachers. Despite extensive scholarship on gamelan culture in Bali, little systematic scholarly attention has been paid to the Balinese performing arts within an international community, especially in terms of pedagogy. Gamelan groups--Balinese and otherwise--first came to be established in North America in conjunction with institutions of higher education and formed an early part of multicultural arts education in American universities. Conversely, Indonesian arts institutions were established in response to and are still influenced by Western educational ideas. The peregrinations of and cultural interchange between American and Balinese musician-teacher-scholars form this international community of performers and pedagogues. This dissertation examines Balinese gamelan as a case study of transnational performing arts pedagogy. I focus on the career and community of one Balinese-American performer-teacher--I Madé Lasmawan--as a lens through which to examine social, cultural, musical, educational, and community issues that revolve around this transnational teacher-performer phenomenon. Through experiences gathered from observation, discussion, interviews, taking lessons, and playing and performing with Lasmawan and members of his community, I examine the impact that his teaching-in-travel has upon both his personal career and more broadly on his American and Balinese communities, particularly in developing international institutionalization of music culture. I then contextualize and compare Lasmawan's world with those of others involved in Balinese performing arts education, in turn drawing conclusions about the role of this transnational pedagogical community within the broader international Balinese performing arts scene. In that this study explores the transnational careers of Balinese musical performers, composers, and pedagogues as normative rather than exceptional, it engages current conceptions of diaspora theory, globalization, and cosmopolitanism, not only relative to the Balinese case study at hand but also more broadly in relationship to anthropology, ethnomusicology, and related disciplines. I emphasize the importance of pedagogy--specifically, within the formation and maintenance of Balinese gamelan groups that consist primarily of non-ethnic Balinese outside of Bali--as a means for not only disseminating Balinese musical culture outside of Bali, but as influencing the pedagogy and practice of Balinese traditional music and cultures within Bali. In viewing the Balinese performing arts community as one that is in large part structurally based on pedagogical, artistic, and musical kinship lineages, I position Balinese musical teaching-learning cultures within the United States as an extension of Balinese cultural systems of maintaining musical traditions. Finally, by exploring international Balinese gamelan pedagogy in terms of relationships between the individuals involved and their institutions, I offer insights into the political and social effects of academically oriented musicians and scholars not only on the shape of their own educational systems and cultural institutions, but also on systems of cultural and artistic value that exist outside of academia at both local and international levels.
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Date Issued: 2013
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-8697
Format: Thesis

Title: That's so Def: Redefining Music Through Dip Hop, the Deaf Hip Hop Movement in the United States.
Creator: Best, Katelyn E., Gunderson, Frank D., Uzendoski, Michael, Bakan, Michael B., Darrow, Alice-Ann, Florida State University, College of Music
Abstract/Description: This dissertation is a study of the Deaf hip hop movement in the United States. It examines the trajectories of major figures in the development of this movement who have been brought together by way of their expression of music from a Deaf view of the world -- one that builds on the foundation of hip hop to create a new style based on Deaf aesthetics that expand notions of music to other sensory realms of the body. While this view is informed both by an experience of deafness as well as Deaf...
Show moreThis dissertation is a study of the Deaf hip hop movement in the United States. It examines the trajectories of major figures in the development of this movement who have been brought together by way of their expression of music from a Deaf view of the world -- one that builds on the foundation of hip hop to create a new style based on Deaf aesthetics that expand notions of music to other sensory realms of the body. While this view is informed both by an experience of deafness as well as Deaf culture (a linguistic minority that uses sign language as its primary form of communication), music in Deaf culture is, and has been, in constant dialogue with the larger society in which the Deaf live, one that emphasizes the use of aural elements in expressions of music. Through the formation of the dip hop movement, dip hop artists strengthen a sense of Deafhood and address challenges presented by mainstream constructions of music that have affected the development of music in Deaf culture. Often realized as a cultural product of the hearing, music has not always been recognized or accepted in the Deaf community. After all, with cultural products like headphones with which to listen to music and concepts like "tone deaf," mainstream constructions of music emphasize aural elements that are not valued in the same way in the Deaf community. For those that are culturally Deaf, musical expression and reception is experienced and conceived through other realms of the body, which, in turn, create entirely different realizations of music based on a Deaf view of the world. Despite this, since Deaf culture exists within the context of a larger culture, hearing-centric constructions of music have permeated perceptions of music in Deaf culture, which limit what music is, and can be, for the Deaf based on hegemonic ideologies that ultimately delegitimize Deaf expressions of music and, by extension, Deaf culture. Yet through the work of dip hop artists, this research explores the ways in which the dip hop movement creates a space for artists to express music from a culturally Deaf perspective, breaks down stereotypes of deafness in society, and bridges divides between the hearing and Deaf community. In order to analyze the agency of the dip hop movement in the United States, and the ways artists negotiate a space in mainstream society for the recognition of music in Deaf culture, I employ post structuralist, deconstructionist, and Marxist theories that also function to open new spheres of discourse about music in Deaf culture. Through these and other theoretical perspectives, this work investigates the complex ways Deaf culture exists in society, examines the influence hegemonic productions of music have on Deaf culture, and explores the ways dip hop artists build on foundational elements and the culture of hip hop to create a new style of music that subverts mainstream ideologies of music while providing an outlet of expression for Deaf culture to be heard.
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Date Issued: 2015
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-9293
Format: Thesis

Music (84)	+ -
Study and teaching (11)	+ -
Dance (3)	+ -
Instruction and study (3)	+ -
Performing arts (3)	+ -

African Americans (2)	+ -
Arts (2)	+ -
Ethnology (2)	+ -
Humanities (2)	+ -
Theater (2)	+ -
Acoustics (1)	+ -
Civilization (1)	+ -
Education (1)	+ -
Folklore (1)	+ -
Food (1)	+ -
Geography (1)	+ -
History (1)	+ -
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) (1)	+ -
Human ecology (1)	+ -
Judaism (1)	+ -
Language and languages (1)	+ -
Religion (1)	+ -
Research (1)	+ -
Sociology (1)	+ -

Latin America (3)	+ -
Africa (2)	+ -
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text (90)	+ -
doctoral thesis (8)	+ -
master thesis (8)	+ -

Florida State University (90)	+ -
College of Music (87)	+ -
Gunderson, Frank (55)	+ -
Bakan, Michael B. (43)	+ -
Gunderson, Frank D. (35)	+ -

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