MUSI 103 Exam 2 Review

U Tin Yi

Burmese musician featured prominently in World Music recordings studied by Douglas.

World Music and World Beat

Genres categorizing non-Western music for commercial marketing in Western markets.

Authenticity

The contested concept of a genuine, uncorrupted traditional cultural expression.

Major Actors and Edits in "De Pya Ne Pya"

Producers, editors, and musicians who altered recordings to appeal to Western audiences.

Sufi Hadra

A ritual gathering involving collective chanting, music, and movement.

Middle Eastern languages

Major language families include Arabic, Persian, Turkish, and Hebrew.

Takht ensemble

Traditional Arab instrumental ensemble featuring oud, qanun, nay, and percussion.

Oud

A short-necked, fretless lute central to Middle Eastern musical traditions.

Melodic mode

A system of pitches and melodic rules guiding composition and performance.

Improvisation

Spontaneous musical creation within established modal and rhythmic frameworks.

Music, healing, and affect

The psychological, emotional, and physical therapeutic impacts of music.

Umm Kulthum

Iconic Egyptian singer renowned for her vocal power and emotional resonance.

Tarab

A deeply emotional, transcendent state of mutual inspiration between the musicians and the audience

Music and religion

The complex intersections of sacred spiritual practices and musical expression.

Qur'anic recitation

Vocal chanting of the Qur'an, treated distinctly from secular music.

Maqam

The Arab system of melodic modes.

Dastgah

The Persian system of melodic modes.

Popular music and Otherness

How popular music exoticizes, marginalizes, or essentializes non-Western cultures.

Arab Spring

Wave of protests and revolutions across the Middle East starting in 2011.

Discourse

The sum total of ideas, connotations, and vocabulary that a social

group associates with a person, place, or thing, along with the

rules, possibilities, and limitations these ideas set for experience

A society’s working ideas about somebody or something, which

frame up, or set the boundaries for that person or thing’s lived

reality

Characteristics of discourse

It is socially constructed, shapes knowledge, and is linked to power.

The Other in Western psychology and cultural theory

A social identity against which the self is defined

Orientalism

1) A small but persistent set of images and ideas by which Western writers have imagined and represented non-Western peoples

2) A tradition of academic writing that has helped to shape these images, and

3) Government policies that are shaped by the (mis)understandings laid out in these representations, and that give these representations real consequences in the world.

Key themes of Orientalism

1.Assumption of Ancientness: The “Orient” is perceived as equivalent with the European past

2.Assumption of Stasis/Timelessness: The very possibility of development, transformation, human development

3.Authority/Power to Represent: Orientalism depends for its strategy on this flexible on this flexible positional superiority

4.Orientalism relies on and reproduces specific tropes: “It was a dark and stormy night.”

Common features of African Music

Call-and-response, polyrhythm, cyclic forms, and percussive dominance.

Anlo-Ewe Agbekor

A traditional war dance and drumming style of the Anlo-Ewe people.

Gankogui

Double iron bell used as a structural timekeeper in Ewe music.

Axatse

Horn shaker used alongside drumming in Ewe music.

Shona spirituality

Religious practices involving ancestral spirit possession and mbira music.

Mbira

African thumb piano used in ceremonies to communicate with ancestors.

Hosho

Rattle played alongside the mbira in traditional Shona music.

Central African Forest Peoples

Indigenous forest-dwelling groups often subjected to outsider stereotypes and exoticization.

Makala

A song and performance tradition associated with BaAka forest peoples.

Global representations of Africa

The ongoing tension between harmful myths and actual lived realities in Africa.

Musical Africas

Stereotypical, monolithic images of African music created by outsiders.

Positionality

How a creator's background and social standing shape their perspective ("whose Africa?").

The Lion's Griot

African musician perspective critiquing Western ownership and misrepresentation of African stories.

Merriam's three-part model

Model conceptualizing music through sound, behavior, and ideas about music.

Cultural evolutionism

Discredited theory that societies progress through fixed stages from primitive to civilized.

Cultural relativism

The proposition that there are no specific, or objective ways of evaluating musical or cultural.

Power of affirmation

How discourse reinforces social structures and validates lived experiences.

Insider vs. outsider representations

Differences in perspective based on whether creators belong to the culture being described.

Byzantine Empire -> Islamic Empire -> Ottoman Empire

History of the Middle East Region

In literature, music, film, etc., representations of non-Western peoples and places are often reduced to iterations of “the Other,”

A set of short-hand symbols of difference whose main purpose is to define the self/primary/non-Other character.

Othering Discourses

Strains of discourse that create a false sense of conflict between social groups and treating specific groups of people different or “Other”