An Imaginary Musical Road Movie

2019

The aims of this paper are three: (1) To explain the structure of my epistemological critique of traditional musical analysis and draw its consequences, (2) to show how a musical analysis that focus on a sonic praxis and aims to generate knowledge on and through music can benefit from sound studies and (3) to outline the program of musical analysis as the analysis of sonic mediated processes of subjectivation. The structure of this paper is the following one: In the first part I'll explain the method of my epistemological critique of musical analysis and draw its consequences. I hope to reveal problems of musical analysis and show the motivations for, if not the necessity to, transform the concept of music and the purposes of analysis in mainstream musical analysis. In the second part I'll discuss two key concepts of sound studies from which musical analysis can benefit: Relationality and Materiality. I argue here that musical analysis should involve the analysis of a historical, cultural and media specific sonic praxis, in which techniques and technologies are constitutive to what music is. In the third part I'll outline my project of musical analysis as the analysis of sonic mediated processes of subjectivation.

Journal of Comparative Literature and Aesthetics, 2023

The difficulty of capturing or deciphering music in words is largely why the same questions continue to be asked and the same tensions continue to be explored. Contributors to this special issue add fresh perspectives and new insights to these enduring themes and inquiries, looking at music in both the general sense and examining specific musical pieces, movements, and moments. Each article has its own focus, makes its own arguments, and occupies its own branch(es) of philosophy: ethics, epistemology, metaphysics, politics, and, of course, aesthetics. Beyond the centralizing subject of music, what ties them together and into the best of philosophical traditions is that they not only ask big questions but also, in seeking to answer them, add more questions to the ongoing discourse.

New Sound, 2012

The Oxford Handbook of the Phenomenology of Music Cultures, 2024

A source of profound insights into human existence and the nature of lived experience, phenomenology is among the most influential intellectual movements of the last hundred years. The Oxford Handbook of the Phenomenology of Music Cultures brings ideas from the phenomenological tradition of Continental European philosophy into conversation with theoretical, ethnographic, and historical work from ethnomusicology, anthropology, sound studies, folklore studies, and allied disciplines to develop new perspectives on musical practices and auditory cultures. With sustained theoretical meditations and evocative ethnography, the book’s twenty-two chapters advance scholarship on topics at the heart of the study of music and culture today—from embodiment, atmosphere, and Indigenous ontologies to music’s capacity to reveal new possibilities of the person, the nature of virtuosity, issues in research methods, the role of memory, imagination, and states of consciousness in musical experience, and beyond. Thoroughly up-to-date, the handbook engages with both classical and contemporary phenomenology, as well as theoretical traditions that have drawn from it, such as affect theory or the German-language literature on cultural techniques. Together, these essays make major contributions to fundamental theory in the study of music and culture.

2013

2019

Announcing the Call for Proposals for the 12th UPM International Colloquium for Music Research (ICMus19) to be held at Universiti Putra Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur – Serdang, Malaysia on 31 October - 2 November 2019. This year, we warmly invite local and international academicians to gather in Kuala Lumpur and dedicate their papers and audiovisual works which will be presented and discussed as research outcomes of broad topics in music and also music-related fields. Keynote Speakers: Yu Hui Professor, Yunnan University, China Eddin KHOO Director-Founder, PUSAKA, Malaysia We welcome panel and individual paper proposals, as well as proposals of acoustic/ electroacoustic/ audiovisual work, that allows discussions and presentations revolving the main theme of "Music and the Cosmos". Exploration into the designated sub-themes below is highly encouraged: 1. Interpreting an organised sound in a world-system: A world-system, in the general sense, has established or been establishing cultural, social, economic, political and techno spheres. The expression from music practices in the system delivers to the spheres a defining landscape illustrated with senses, order, reasoning and ideas that reflect the kind of the world the music exists. In this context, we question how an organised sound can be linked to the world it is meant to belong to, and how the carriers of the music practice connect themselves to the world, the universe, or the cosmos. Within this universal view, we encourage discussions on the scientific, cultural, or philosophical observation on the music in macrocosmos or microcosmos and its nature or reasons in existence, or on an intellectual discourse of a typical system as observed in such an organised sound. The discussion can also stretch into connecting ideas in organised sounds, as well as interpretations of interconnectivity of things with music or sound in a world-system. 2. Cosmopolitanism as a way of knowing about music: In the narratives of musicological scholarship, frameworks based of facts on obligatory affiliations, such as culture and nation in particular, are difficult to avoid or refrain from. However, from cosmos to cosmopolitanism with ‘localisation’, ‘globalisation’ and ‘glocalisation’ of music practices in mind, we look into the alternatives in the narratives of music across the dimension of space or time that embrace views of cosmopolitanism as a way of knowing about music. How is the knowledge on certain music practices constructed through the world view of carriers and practitioners with the status of ‘world citizen’? How does the approach of decolonisation influence ways of knowing music scientifically and artistically? And how difficult is it to achieve this notion? We welcome discussions on methodological strategies or a reconstruction of scholarship frameworks in light of the idea of cosmopolitanism. 3. Musicking in the digital age: Humans claim to have been advancing into a ‘new’, digital age when almost every single act in life involves a digital element. Living in a digital world and time, modern people seem to be universally driven with the phenomenal idea of ‘digitalisation’, and musicking in this age and time seems no different. When almost everything about music is digitalised, how obscure have all geographical boundaries in the world become? And what impact does time still have on music and the act of musicking? From electronica, electrophones, electroacoustic enhancements, digital workstations to the act of digital documentation of the musicking process including the application of computer-mediated communication and ‘cloud’ computing tools, we would like to hear about the research findings in light of a seemingly new and unchartered puzzle on the problematisation of the subject matter. 4. New Research: Any music- or sound-related investigations, projects, new findings of individual research or interdisciplinary fields within the broad area of ‘new research’ are welcomed. We encourage scholarship of novel research frameworks, methodologies, analysis and interpretation of the topic on music studies in line with the wide coverage of the theme of this colloquium. Limit of abstract length: max. 250 words (individual paper or compositional work)/ max. 300 words (panel proposal) The DEADLINE of proposal submission has been extended to July 15, 2019, 23:59 (UTC+8), and the notification of proposal acceptance will be announced via email by August 15, 2019. All proposals should be submitted via email in a word document attachment to icmus.upm@gmail.com. Please find in the attachment for submission criteria, instructions of submission, fees details and other related information.