North America

Archived Posts from this Category

April 19, 2010

Public, Private; Contemporary, Traditional: Intersecting Dichotomies and Contested Agency in Mainline Protestant Worship Music

Posted by folkpub under Belief, Music, North America
Leave a Comment 

Public, Private; Contemporary, Traditional: Intersecting Dichotomies and Contested Agency in Mainline Protestant Worship Music

Deborah Justice
Indiana University

Abstract:

The current ‘contemporary’/’traditional’ worship music controversy, although cloaked in the guise of novelty, illustrates how the historical  interplay between embracing and abandoning black-and-white oppositions is unfolding within post-millennial Western Christianity. Over the past forty years, mainline Protestant churches have used worship music to negotiate a culturally-relevant space for themselves within the contemporary reconfiguration of American religious practice. As such, many North American and Western European Christians have come to conceptualize their current religious practices through the ‘traditional’/'contemporary’ dichotomy. Praise-band-led ‘contemporary’ worship contrasts with organ-and-choir-based ‘traditional’ worship in visible and audible ways: musical style, text, instrumentation, dress, and physical space. This ‘contemporary’/’traditional’ binary’s pervasive themes resonate with previous dichotomous models applied to religious study, such as Weber’s routinized/charismatic, Benedict’s Apollonian/Dionysian, Sachs’ logogenic/pathogenic, and sociologist Mark Chaves’ intellectual/emotional. Yet, while current mainline Protestant organizational and expressive behavior resonates with these historical dichotomies, it also moves beyond explanation by any of these theories alone (as well as moving beyond the fundamentally group-defining “us” versus “them” opposition). This paper suggests the public/private opposition as an analytical tool to cut in a slightly different direction against the grain of the oft-dichotomized sphere of mainline Protestant religious musical practice. While no single dichotomy can explain current mainline Protestant practice – subjectively, emergently employing overlapping dichotomies to create and negotiate meaning – the public/private binary probes fundamental points of differentiation. (more…)

 

March 29, 2010

Lovesick Blues: Music and Nostalgia on Lower Broadway, Nashville, Tennessee

Posted by folkpub under Music, North America
1 Comment 

Lovesick Blues: Music and Nostalgia on Lower Broadway, Nashville, Tennessee

Timon Kaple
Indiana University

Abstract:

There are a handful of city blocks in Nashville, Tennessee, that constitute the area known as “Lower Broadway” on Broadway Avenue. Known as the city’s premier hotspot for live music, this area attracts a wide variety of patrons: regulars, locals, and tourists.  What brings them together is a mental concept of “Old Nashville,” rooted in feelings of nostalgia and romanticization for the city’s golden era, which I broadly define as the mid-1920s through mid-1960s.

The most important reason why I chose Lower Broadway as a research area, and the one that is most relevant to this study, is that it is a crossroads for listeners’ musical and bodily interpretations of authenticity in country music.  In other words, Lower Broadway is site where it is important for performers to look and sound like the real thing.  What is the real thing, and how does one perform this ideal authenticity?  Additionally, who is in search of this Nashville authenticity? (more…)

 

May 1, 2009

“Ten Little Niggers”: The Making of a Black Man’s Consciousness

Posted by folkpub under African American, Children's Folklore, North America, Race
[4] Comments 

“Ten Little Niggers”: The Making of a Black Man’s Consciousness

Tiffany M.B. Anderson
The Ohio State University

Abstract:

During Reconstruction in the 1860s, the proud Confederate states found themselves in a place of subordination.  Forced to concede their free slave labor, the former citizens of the Confederacy refused to fold their ideology of the inferiority of the freed slaves.  A “comic” song titled “Ten Little Niggers” circulated through the United States in Minstrel shows and children’s nursery rhyme books in keeping with this ideology.

This paper explores how the ballad shapes social and cultural race consciousness. While the purpose of its widespread popularity was to refute the competency and human qualities of the black freedmen to white audiences, the ultimate legacy that the rhyme leaves behind is the mental conditioning of following generations of black males. The white population who circulated the song intended to define the black freedmen as barbaric and ignorant, yet the song also connected the white-constructed definition of ‘nigger’ to the black man’s consciousness. (more…)

 

January 14, 2009

The Dynamics of Tradition and Folk Groups in the Role-Playing Game

Posted by folkpub under Jokes, North America, Performance
Leave a Comment 

The Dynamics of Tradition and Folk Groups
in the Role-Playing Game

B. Grantham Aldred
Indiana University

Abstract
In this article, B. Grantham Aldred explores the multifaceted nature of folk groups through the examination of jokes told as part of a role-playing game.  Exploring the way in which various types of humor appeal to the cultural frames of reference of multiple concentric folk identities, this article posits that folk groups exist in both a macro- and micro- condition, based on shared systems of meaning and functioning through performance. (more…)

 

November 24, 2008

All Mixed Up: A Cultural Exploration of Mixed Tapes and CDs

Posted by folkpub under Music, North America
[8] Comments 

All Mixed Up:
A Cultural Exploration of Mixed Tapes and CDs

Don Stacy
University of Oregon

Abstract
This article examines the mixed tape/CD phenomenon in the socio-historical context of lyrical play to show how it functions in our society as an important conduit for the free exchange of information and culture.  Mixes are viewed as a form of “Do It Yourself” (DIY) material culture to show how they serve as ideological playgrounds where the players encounter an infinite number of worldviews and develop the skills needed to construct and express their own worldviews and cultural models.  Interviews with mix-makers and numerous examples of mix cover artwork are used to explore the folkloric process of mix-making, focusing on individual content, style, and production techniques while discussing cultural aspects of mixes in relation to ever-changing technologies and the copyright debate. (more…)

 

November 5, 2008

Sydney Hutchinson. From Quebradita to Duranguense: Dance in Mexican American Youth Culture

Posted by folkpub under Book Review, Cultural Performance, Dance, Immigrant Communities, Music, North America
Leave a Comment 

Sydney Hutchinson. From Quebradita to Duranguense: Dance in Mexican American Youth Culture. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2007. 240 pages. $24.95 softcover.

Gustavo Ponce
Independent Scholar


Sydney Hutchinson’s From Quebradita to Duranguense: Dance in Mexican American Youth Culture is a riveting and award-worthy study. This book is simply brilliant. Hutchinson takes on the quebradita/tecnobanda dance craze of the mid 1990s. This dance style was particularly popular among Latino youth in Los Angeles and Tucson and, by 2006, it evolved into pasito duranguense in Chicago. Hutchinson presents an insightful social and critical analysis of how mainstream American culture has repeatedly failed to incorporate these subaltern groups into its political, social, and economic apparatus. (more…)