Towards an Application of Globalization Paradigms to Modern Folk Music Revivals

This chapter maps out central globalizing perspectives that have influenced discourses on revival and related transformational processes of traditional forms of musical expression. Focusing on the Latvian groups Skandinieki and Iļģi and on electric folk in England, the chapter analyzes the extent to which meta-perspectives can help elucidate the impact of global flows on music revivals. As Held et al.’s 2003 globalization study indicates, revival situations can be interpreted from different meta-perspectives. Equating globalization with homogenization, a sceptic perspective perceives revival as an important means of preservation. A hyperglobal approach regards globalization not as a threat, but as a possible access to Western market structures. A transformationalist perspective perceives increasingly dense global networks as the basis for developing new structures, approached from an open perspective. Although supporting a transformationalist perspective, this chapter argues that an adequate modern approach toward revival requires the combination of all three perspectives.

Germanic Mythology in Music: Cultural Memory and Conflict within the Framework of Modern Globalization

The multi-layered enactment of a national past in music has been strongly intertwined with the usage of mythological elements. Having often been compiled as a coherent narrative during the emergence of the European nation-states (like the Finnish Kalevala), the mythological material has often been perceived as a form of historical truth and national justification. This focal role is also apparent in various music genres ranging from folk revival to metal in post-1989 Europe. Within the globalized context, however, local-national interpretations can collide with earlier nationalist appropriations. This complex and sometimes politically conflicting situation becomes particularly evident with groups falling back on symbols and narrations that had previously been employed by Nazi-Germany. While Nazi-Germany had, among others, tried replace the Christmas tradition with elements and songs from Germanic (and other) mythological sources, modern Neo-Nazi music groups often employ central mythological names (like Odin or Tyr) and iconic elements (like Vikings and warriors) in song lyrics and CD cover designs. However, while many covers and lyrics are legally forbidden in Germany, Scandinavian and Baltic groups (like the Faroese Viking metal group Tyr and the Latvian pagan metal band Skyforger) employ similar elements of Norse mythology, which are often combined with traditional material. Discussing selected case studies, this paper highlights central discursive points of colliding historical-national associations and individual interpretations of the mythological elements in musical contexts. How far can the material be disassociated from the earlier historical political usage and instrumentalization? Is this necessary ? And how can the specific global-local conflict points be approached by a theoretical framework ?

Folk Music in the Baltics at the Age of Digital Globalization

Shaped by factors like global outreach and immediacy, particularly the internet represents the multi-layered nature of contemporary globalization (cf Held et al. 2002). How have digital newspapers, social media and other internet platforms altered the situation of smaller music microcultues, especially in regions that have been on the fringes of global networks? This paper analyses the situation of the Latvian postfolklore band Ilgi between 2001 and 2008. Focusing on the group’s label UPE, the paper highlights how the internet became a significant means of existence during this specific period. Having established a local niche with a sound studio and CD shops, UPE combined this physical basis with outreach strategies, such as marketing and direct internet sales, which guaranteed the survival of the independent label. This strategy was also taken up by the band itself who started to develop a strong presence on social media like MySpace. At the same time, Ilgi has been using the internet as a central means of communicating with diasporic communities in the U.S. and Canada – hereby creating structures that were described as « intercultures » by Slobin (1993). This indicates that the local-global dichotomy can no longer be sufficiently addressed by a horizontal or vertical two-dimensional perception. Falling also back on the fieldwork experiences gained in Latvia, the paper finally addresses the question of how internet representation relates to the actual local situation – and how this has been altering the fieldwork perception. With regard to this situation – how useful are the approaches that have been developed within the context of « Media Anthropology » that investigates mass media items as multi-layered, densified symbolic objects?

The emotional power of music: How music enhances the feeling of affective pictures

Music is an intriguing stimulus widely used in movies to increase the emotional experience. However, no brain imaging study has to date examined this enhancement effect using emotional pictures (the modality mostly used in emotion research) and musical excerpts. Therefore, we designed this functional magnetic resonance imaging study to explore how musical stimuli enhance the feeling of affective pictures. In a classical block design carefully controlling for habituation and order effects, we presented fearful and sad pictures (mostly taken from the IAPS) either alone or combined with congruent emotional musical excerpts (classical pieces). Subjective ratings clearly indicated that the emotional experience was markedly increased in the combined relative to the picture condition. Furthermore, using a second-level analysis and regions of interest approach, we observed a clear functional and structural dissociation between the combined and the picture condition. Besides increased activation in brain areas known to be involved in auditory as well as in neutral and emotional visual-auditory integration processes, the combined condition showed increased activation in many structures known to be involved in emotion processing (including for example amygdala, hippocampus, parahippocampus, insula, striatum, medial ventral frontal cortex, cerebellum, fusiform gyrus). In contrast, the picture condition only showed an activation increase in the cognitive part of the prefrontal cortex, mainly in the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. Based on these findings, we suggest that emotional pictures evoke a more cognitive mode of emotion perception, whereas congruent presentations of emotional visual and musical stimuli rather automatically evoke strong emotional feelings and experiences.

Modulation of corticospinal activity by strong emotions evoked by pictures and classical music: a transcranial magnetic stimulation study.

Using transcranial magnetic stimulation and skin conductance responses, we sought to clarify if, and to what extent, emotional experiences of different valences and intensity activate the hand-motor system and the associated corticospinal tract. For that purpose, we applied a newly developed method to evoke strong emotional experiences by the simultaneous presentation of musical and pictorial stimuli of congruent emotional valence. We uncovered enhanced motor-evoked potentials, irrespective of valence, during the simultaneous presentation of emotional music and picture stimuli (Combined conditions) compared with the single presentation of the two modalities (Picture/Music conditions). In contrast, vegetative arousal was enhanced during both the Combined and Music conditions, compared with the Picture conditions, again irrespective of emotional valence. These findings strongly indicate that arousal is a necessary, but not sufficient, prerequisite for triggering the motor system of the brain. We offer a potential explanation for this discrepant, but intriguing, finding in the paper.

The Application of Digital Rights Management Systems in the Music Industry - An Empirical Investigation

Technology advances in hardware, software and IP-networks such as the Internet or peer-to-peer file sharing systems are threatening the music business. The result has been an increasing amount of illegal copies available on-line as well as off-line. With the emergence of digital rights management systems (DRMS), the music industry seems to have found the appropriate tool to simultaneously fight piracy and to monetize their assets. Although these systems are very powerful and include multiple technologies to prevent piracy, it is as of yet unknown to what extent such systems are currently being used by content providers. We provide empirical analyses, results, and conclusions related to digital rights management systems and the protection of digital content in the music industry. It shows that most content providers are protecting their digital content through a variety of technologies such as passwords or encryption. However, each protection technology has its own specific goal, and not all prevent piracy. The majority of the respondents are satisfied with their current protection but want to reinforce it for the future, due to fear of increasing piracy. Surprisingly, although encryption is seen as the core DRM technology, only few companies are currently using it. Finally, half of the respondents do not believe in the success of DRMS and their ability to reduce piracy.

The Church Music Program: The Effect of Moving from Performance-based to Education-based Emphasis in a Church Music Program

This research project sought to answer the primary research question: What occurs when the music program in a church changes its emphasis from performance to education? This qualitative study of a church choir included participant observation of Wednesday evening and Sunday morning rehearsals over a 12 week period, individual interviews, group interviews, written responses, and written and visual assessment of musical skills. The goal was a rich description of the participants and emerging themes resulting from the shift in emphasis. Analysis of data occurred through inductive processing. Data was initially coded and then the codes were categorized into sub-themes, and finally into major themes. Early analysis of the data began with reflection in a researcher journal. Following the completion of the study the journal was entered into a word processor, as were transcriptions of videotaped rehearsals, and written reflections from the participants. After all data had been reviewed repeatedly and entered into the word processor, it was coded, reexamined, and finally categorized into sub-themes and themes. After coding and identification of major themes and sub-themes the finding were challenged by looking for disconfirming evidence. Finally, after the completion of the analysis stage, member checks were conducted. The results of the analysis of data revealed themes that could be associated either with the choir or the director. The key themes primarily associated with the choir were: Response to the change in rehearsal format; Attitude toward learning; Appropriateness of community learning model; and, Member's perceptions of the results of the program. The key themes associated with the director were identified as: Conductor assuming the role of educator; Conductor recognizing the choir as learners; Conductor treating rehearsals as a time for teaching and learning; and, Conductor's perception of the effectiveness of the change in focus. The study concluded that a change in focus from performance to education did not noticeably improve the sound of the choir after twelve-weeks. There were however, indications that improvements were being made by the individual members. Further study of the effects over a longer period of time is recommended.

A comparison of open-source segmentation architectures for dealing with imperfect data from the media in speech synthesis

Traditional Text-To-Speech (TTS) systems have been developed using especially-designed non-expressive scripted recordings. In order to develop a new generation of expressive TTS systems in the Simple4All project, real recordings from the media should be used for training new voices with a whole new range of speaking styles. However, for processing this more spontaneous material, the new systems must be able to deal with imperfect data (multi-speaker recordings, background and foreground music and noise), filtering out low-quality audio segments and creating mono-speaker clusters. In this paper we compare several architectures for combining speaker diarization and music and noise detection which improve the precision and overall quality of the segmentation.

An Evening with Janks Mortons, Actor, Educator, Activist

Janks Morton is a creator of media and entertainment for African Americans and consumers of Black culture. These projects challenge audiences to make a difference in their lives and communities with a series of thought-provoking pro-social initiatives through music, film, traditional and alternative media outlets.

Potential Benefit of Singing for People with Parkinson’s Disease : A Systematic Review

Acknowledgements including sources of support This study was not supported by any particular grant or funding source. The senior author MSB, an epidemiologist with research experience in PD, wishes to thank clinician authors JB, RAA and SMB for their invaluable contributions. JB is a retired health professional with long-standing experience in community health. RAA and SMB are qualified and practising speech and language therapists and RAA specialises in adult neurological disorders. Additionally, we thank Dr Katherine Deane of the University of East Anglia for expert input regarding the Threats to Validity quality tool, on which she was the lead developer.

A quantitative assessment of students’ experiences of studying music: a Spanish perspective on the European credit transfer system (ECTS)

The purpose of this investigation is to evaluate whether or not the allocation of time proposed in the Music Study Guide, adapted from the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) guidelines, is consistent and adequate for students with minimal musical knowledge. The report takes into account the importance of students’ previous knowledge and the relation this has to the time and effort expended by students in acquiring appropriate knowledge and skills. This is related also to the adequacy of the course specification to meet the demands of university study and the labour market. Results show that those students who enrolled at university without any previous musical knowledge are likely to experience significant difficulty in the acquisition of certain musical and professional competences. This highlights a need to reinforce the music curriculum, or establish zero-level courses, in order to enable such students to succeed in the subject.

Human-computer interaction for optical music recognition tasks

The need to digitise music scores has led to the development of Optical Music Recognition (OMR) tools. Unfortunately, the performance of these systems is still far from providing acceptable results. This situation forces the user to be involved in the process due to the need of correcting the mistakes made during recognition. However, this correction is performed over the output of the system, so these interventions are not exploited to improve the performance of the recognition. This work sets the scenario in which human and machine interact to accurately complete the OMR task with the least possible effort for the user.

Recognition of online handwritten music symbols

Paper submitted to MML 2013, 6th International Workshop on Machine Learning and Music, Prague, September 23, 2013.

Music and movement: A comparative study between the BAPNE and Suzuki Methods

The aim of this article is to compare the Suzuki and BAPNE methods based on bibliography published for both approaches. In the field of musical and instrumental education and especially for the childhood stage, the correct use of the body and voice are of fundamental importance. These two methods differ from one another; one principally musical and instrumental, which is the Suzuki method, and one non-musical, the BAPNE method, which aims at stimulating attention, concentration, memory and the executing function of the pupil through music and body percussion. Comparing different approaches may provide teachers with a useful insight for facing different issues related to their discipline.

A collection of the most approved pieces of music from various authors: transcribed while member of Harvard University, from July 1789 to July 1793

John Pierce kept this journal while he was a student at Harvard College. It consists of manuscript musical scores with annotations indicating the occasions at which the music was performed. These occasions included commencements, public exhibitions and Dudleian lectures. A note indicates that one anthem was prepared by Samuel Holyoke at Pierce's request, to be performed at Pierce's class commencement exercises, held on July 13, 1793. Several annotations were made in May 1794, the year following Pierce's graduation. There is a table of contents on the last page.