Music and Institutions

2017
This essay extends an open philosophy with a philosophy of music education on soil. An open philosophy emerges from analysis of Kafka's parable " Before the Law. " I explore what " the law " might be, what it could mean for how people relate to " the law, " and how critiquing " the law " allows music teachers and learners to challenge the institutionalization of musical values. Extended with a metaphor of soil, music educators recognize " the law " is unsustainable and deserving skepticism. Institutions require continual skepticism. Through skepticism, ways of being and musicking together emerge.

This paper traces the various steps of the redefinition process implemented by Arab musicians performing in France and in the United States. The assembling of Arabic music groups outside their institutional and national borders reveals new patterns and raises several questions: (1) While most Arabic countries do not share the same institutional music traditions, or the same repertoires (Arab-Andalusian vs. maqamat), how can Arabic musicians from different countries assemble outside their institutional and national borders? (2) How can we understand the heterogeneity of repertoires (scholarly and popular) when the musicians come from different traditions and institutions? Can musicians pursue the legacy—and legitimacy—of classical repertoires or do they necessarily have to embrace Arabic pop culture? Finally, (3) while they were part of the elite in their home countries, how are Arab musicians considered outside their musical institutions, in their new countries such as France and the United States? Have they remained elite musicians in the eyes of their new audiences? Or have they simply become ‘popular’ musicians, regardless of the repertoire they play?

There is no evidence that the constructed figure that we call Hildegard of Bingen wrote any of the 77 songs in her name, or wrote them for her nuns to sing at daily service. This music, too, appears capricious and uncontrolled, especially in its word setting. Unsettling, too, is the failure of various Hildegard biographers to place the abbess in a clear ecclesiastical or political context. This papers questions the modern cult for Hildegard in the context of recordings by nine ensembles of 'her' work.

The story of The Fall helps us to understand the post-war history of Manchester where the story of Factory falls short of it. Yet in the five years between 2002 and 2007 there has been a concerted attempt to fix a stiff narrative frame around that city’s musical life. It has been applied by a cartel associated with Factory and keen to raise their ‘heritage’ status in the city’s cultural profile.
They have done so in order to delimit general sequences of events around the specificities of Factory Records.  By constructing and advancing a received post-punk narrative they have swept bands like The Fall out of that history. Yet the stories provided by practitioners and resources such as The Fall provide much richer accounts of impacts, scenes, activities, realisations and conflicts than the monochrome frame tightly set around Factory.
This chapter examines films, books and statements that construct a particular narrative, one which disregards the modernist project  by which postwar Manchester set its mark. In doing so it traduces the experimentation and radicalism epitomised by The Fall.

In his text "Technology and the Composer" Pierre Boulez writes about new technologies emerged in the 20th century, primarily created for the purposes of music recording and reproduction, but also established as a mean of innovation in the electronic and electro-acoustic music practices. Boulez points out two directions when there are technology and music in question: conservative historicism and progressive technology enabling development of new music material and innovation. By using Boulez’s text(s) as a point of departure, author considers roles those new technologies had in the development of some musical institutions and questions how institutionalized discourse moulds ideas on the roles music technology should have. The aim of the paper is to discuss how the music of the past was ‘conserved’ and how the music of the future was created in particular types of music institutions thanks to the new technological possibilities.

"The story of The Fall helps us to understand the post-war history of Manchester where the story of Factory falls short of it. Yet in the five years between 2002 and 2007 there has been a concerted attempt to fix a stiff narrative frame around that city’s musical life. It has been applied by a cartel associated with Factory and keen to raise their ‘heritage’ status in the city’s cultural profile. They have done so in order to delimit general sequences of events around the specificities of Factory Records. By constructing and advancing a received post-punk narrative they have swept bands like The Fall out of that history. Yet the stories provided by practitioners and resources such as The Fall provide much richer accounts of impacts, scenes, activities, realisations and conflicts than the monochrome frame tightly set around Factory. This chapter examines films, books and statements that construct a particular narrative, one which disregards the modernist project by which postwar Manchester set its mark. In doing so it traduces the experimentation and radicalism epitomised by The Fall. "

L’évocation des musiques du Pacifique fait surgir encore aujourd’hui des images exotiques et stéréotypées. Qu’il s’agisse du tamouré, du pilou, ou bien encore du haka, certaines danses et musiques qui les accompagnent ont abondamment imprégné les études musicales menées au sein de la région. En revanche, la Pan Pacific pop, les string bands, le kaneka ou la jawaiian music demeurent peu documentés dans la littérature francophone. Il en est de même du hip-hop comme du reggae du Pacifique, pourtant très en vogue dans la région depuis plusieurs décennies.
Dans cet ouvrage, les musiques servent de point de départ pour interroger des dynamiques sociales actuelles telles que les moyens de création et de production musicales, le rôle des technologies numériques pour leur circulation et leur diffusion, la professionnalisation ou la commercialisation et finalement leur transformation en enjeux socio-politiques.
Avec les musiques océaniennes comme fil conducteur, les auteurs font dialoguer, des approches et des situations  variées, dans des espaces tels qu’à Guam, en Nouvelle-Calédonie, en Papouasie-Nouvelle-Guinée, à Tonga et au Vanuatu.