New Riffs on the Old Mind-Body Blues: “Black Rhythm,” “White Logic,” and Music Theory in the Twenty-First Century

Perchard, Tom

doi:10.1017/s175219631500019x

Cited by 4 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 36 publications

(6 reference statements)

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“…These can be accessed through outer bodily contractions, extensions, and flexions in action of, and reaction to a rhythmic pattern/ thought. We see this manifesting in the music styles (especially Jazz and Blues), that have over decades developed in, from, or as part of African diasporic communities (Perchard, 2015;Pressing, 2002). The rhythmic phenomenon in jazz, for instance, fronts imitation and practical practitioner-to-practitioner/student rhythmic interaction in time drawing on a natural rhythmic intellect, personal habituation, and interaction.…”

Section: Community Encounters Experiences Research and Other Interact...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Dance-Musicking: Non-prescriptive dance, music, and dance-music engagement in cross-sectoral collaborative teaching and learning

Kibirige

2023

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This article explores dance-musicking as a non-prescriptive process of interdependent engagement with dance and music in their teaching and learning contexts. The author asks how this engagement challenges and disrupts uneven institutional hierarchies, and how it cultivates a more holistic understanding of, and access to the knowledge embedded in the dancing and dance-musicking processes. The discussion is informed by the author's dance, music, and dance-music practice oscillating between formal and non-formal settings, and continuous research on the same in East Africa. It is premised on a critical observation that within the twentieth century, dance and music knowledge has continued to grow more into an institutionalized form than it has into a communal one. The article pivots the dance-musicking process as a cross-sectoral collaborative engagement for teaching and learning dance, music, and dance-music discussed on both micro and macro levels of artistic (co)existence. As such, it highlights core elements of 'communitarian' teaching and learning approaches, which have not favourably evolved alongside formal education. This situation is attributed to a lack in cross-sectoral complementarity between the formal and non-formal dance, and music knowledge bases —complementarity that works well in transforming higher education institutions into intellectual resources that positively influence, and that are influenced by their communities.

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Section: Community Encounters Experiences Research and Other Interact...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Dance-Musicking: Non-prescriptive dance, music, and dance-music engagement in cross-sectoral collaborative teaching and learning

Kibirige

2023

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“…Marie Thompson explains Cage's views as being down to 'whiteness', which 'enables Cage to become an objective arbiter of aesthetic value', a criticism that suggests Cage misuses a privileged position by playing the part of cultural gatekeeper on behalf of the dominant culture (2017:272). Cage is a common target when criticising Eurocentric views on music, but although decades have passed since the publication of his essay and interview referenced by Lewis, the dismissal or misconception of African American music is something that survives in modern scholarship, and there is a tendency even for some twenty-first century studies to 'stumble over similarly racialized faultlines' by creating a distinction between 'sensory' music and 'intelligent' music (Perchard, 2015).…”

Section: B Du Bois In An Essay From His Bookmentioning

confidence: 99%

Motown Grooves: Rhythmic and Experiential Reimagination in Collaborative Composition

Henderson¹

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The recordings produced by Motown Records in the mid-1960s are widely recognised for their compositional influence, and as archetypes of quintessential stylistic R&B performances and exemplary grooves. However, traditional methods of compositional analysis rooted in Western Art Music tend to focus on compositional materials produced by the composer. This risks a failure to acknowledge the collaborative nature of Motown, where a collective, often improvisatory approach captures the input of performer, composer, and producer. Traditional analyses also tend to be based on notation, which fails to articulate the nuances of groove and other performative aspects of recordings. My thesis investigates the performative—or experiential—elements of Motown and uses these as bases for my compositional practice. These experiential elements owe a great deal to the Motown house band, the Funk Brothers, who improvised arrangements and accompaniments for Motown hits to a prolific degree during this period. Groove forms a central theme throughout my practice, and I investigate rhythmic composition methods that evolve from rhythmic approaches found both on Motown recordings, and a range of Motown-influenced music. I employ collaborative compositional approaches in a variety of contexts (chamber, large jazz ensemble, and solo saxophone with electronics), each of which challenge composer-performer hierarchies.

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Whiteness and the Problem of Colourblind Listening: Revisiting Leonard Feather's 1951 Blindfold Test with Roy Eldridge

VAD

2024

Twentieth-Century Music

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‘I couldn't tell who was colored and who was white’, admitted the African American trumpet player Roy Eldridge after being submitted to a so-called blindfold test by the white critic Leonard Feather in 1951. Feather was happy that the blindfold test duped a prominent Black musician, because it proved his point about the fundamental colourblindness of music and listening. Through close reading of the source material, this article provides the full context for this infamous case and shows how the blindfold test was a product of transnational discourses of colourblindness, primitivism, ‘reverse racism’, and technological mediation. Building on current research in racialized practices of listening in musicology and sound studies, and mobilizing interventions from critical race studies, the article contends that acousmatic techniques of listening often promote a colourblind ideology invested in whiteness, which remains hegemonic in music culture.

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New Riffs on the Old Mind-Body Blues: “Black Rhythm,” “White Logic,” and Music Theory in the Twenty-First Century

Abstract: Contemporary music historians have shown how taxonomic divisions of humanityconstructed in earnest within

Cited by 4 publications

References 36 publications

Dance-Musicking: Non-prescriptive dance, music, and dance-music engagement in cross-sectoral collaborative teaching and learning

Dance-Musicking: Non-prescriptive dance, music, and dance-music engagement in cross-sectoral collaborative teaching and learning

Motown Grooves: Rhythmic and Experiential Reimagination in Collaborative Composition

Whiteness and the Problem of Colourblind Listening: Revisiting Leonard Feather's 1951 Blindfold Test with Roy Eldridge

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