Sound Expertise – Détails, épisodes et analyse

Everybody's studying Taylor Swift these days, from Swifties decoding her vault to YouTubers decoding her harmonies to right-wing conspiracists decoding her plot against America. But what does it mean to study Taylor Swift as a musicologist? Christa Bentley, Kate Galloway, and Paula Harper know: they're co-editing Taylor Swift: The Star, the Songs, the Fans, a book of essays out next year. This week: a conversation about what it means to study the cultural phenomenon that is Taylor Swift, and what Taylor can tell us about musicology today.

Show notes and more over at soundexpertise.org!

Questions? Thoughts? Email soundexpertise00@gmail.com or tag Will on Instagram/Twitter @seatedovation

ALSO, we're going to be at the American Musicological Society conference in Chicago soon!

Friday, Nov 15, 11:45am: Sound Expertise LIVE! The American Composer and the Future of the Conservatory with Jonathan Bailey Holland.
What does it mean to compose in America today, while overseeing a major cultural institution in flux? For this special live taping of the podcast Sound Expertise, host Will Robin interviews composer Jonathan Bailey Holland, dean of the Bienen School of Music at Northwestern University, to answer these crucial questions. (Accessible only to those registered for the conference)

Friday, Nov 15, 8pm: A hang for friends and fans of the pod, at 2Twenty2 Tavern right by the conference hotel. Come by anytime between 8 and 9:30 or so and say hi, and also goodbye!

Election Day is approaching, and both presidential candidates have been foregrounding music, from Kamala Harris walking out Beyoncé's "Freedom" to Donald Trump...dancing for 30 minutes to "Memory" from Cats. It's been a weird, and terrifying, campaign season. But music can help us make sense of it, according to musicologist Dana Gorzelany-Mostak, who runs the project "Trax on the Trail." In this conversation, we discuss the sound and spectacle of this turbulent moment: how do Harris's playlists and Trump's dance parties define the candidates to voters, and what do they say about the state of American democracy?

Dana Gorzelany-Mostak is an Associate Professor of Music at Georgia College & State University.

Show notes and more over at soundexpertise.org!

Questions? Thoughts? Email soundexpertise00@gmail.com or tag Will on Instagram/Twitter @seatedovation

ALSO, we're going to be at the American Musicological Society conference in Chicago soon!

Friday, Nov 15, 11:45am: Sound Expertise LIVE! The American Composer and the Future of the Conservatory with Jonathan Bailey Holland.
What does it mean to compose in America today, while overseeing a major cultural institution in flux? For this special live taping of the podcast Sound Expertise, host Will Robin interviews composer Jonathan Bailey Holland, dean of the Bienen School of Music at Northwestern University, to answer these crucial questions. (Accessible only to those registered for the conference)

Friday, Nov 15, 8pm: A hang for friends and fans of the pod, at 2Twenty2 Tavern right by the conference hotel. Come by anytime between 8 and 9:30 or so and say hi, and also goodbye!

In 2018, Douglas Shadle tweeted about systemic discrimination in American orchestral programming. His thread went viral, and he soon found himself doing what became known, around then, as public musicology. In this conversation, he talks about presenting his work outside the academy through advocating for marginalized composers, and what the Florence Price revival has meant for his scholarship (and, more troublingly, how Schirmer's acquisition of her music may actually prevent it from being heard).

Douglas Shadle is associate professor of musicology at Vanderbilt University.

Show notes and more over at soundexpertise.org!

Questions? Thoughts? Email soundexpertise00@gmail.com or tag Will on Instagram/Twitter @seatedovation 

In his long career as a scholar and conductor, Joshua Rifkin has done a lot: arranged for Judy Collins, performed in the first-ever marathon of "Vexations," helped lead the ragtime revival and, perhaps most importantly, totally upended the conventional wisdom about Bach's choral music. This is a conversation about all of that, and more: rich, insightful, and scandalous stories about one of the most fascinating lives a music scholar can lead. (Including: getting tipsy with John Cage, playing in a jug band, and fighting an entire generation of Bach scholars.)

Joshua Rifkin is an acclaimed conductor and scholar.

Show notes and more over at soundexpertise.org!

Questions? Thoughts? Email soundexpertise00@gmail.com or tag Will on Instagram/Twitter @seatedovation 

Bossa nova is everywhere –– from a dance craze in the '60s to elevator music today -- but it's also from somewhere. Kaleb Goldschmitt studies how bossa nova moved from a specific musical tradition grounded in Brazilian culture to an international phenomenon, and what that means for how we understand jazz history. A conversation about all that and more, including how queer and trans musicians and scholars are navigating post-Bolsonaro Brazil.

Kaleb Goldschmitt is Associate Professor of Music at Wellesley College

Show notes and more over at soundexpertise.org!

Questions? Thoughts? Email soundexpertise00@gmail.com or tag Will on Instagram/Twitter @seatedovation 

When classical composers incorporate indigenous music into their work, it's more than just cultural appropriation, because indigenous songs are more than just songs: they serve as medicine, law, and history. So what would it mean to redress such misuses, and to bring an indigenous worldview into Western art music? A conversation with Dylan Robinson about appropriation, repatriation, and his path towards becoming a scholar. (And, yes, we talk about Roomful of Teeth.)

Dylan Robinson is Associate Professor, School of Music at the University of British Columbia

Show notes and more over at soundexpertise.org!

Questions? Thoughts? Email soundexpertise00@gmail.com or tag Will on Instagram/Twitter @seatedovation 

"Music and philosophy" is often about Nietzsche and Wagner, or Kant and Mozart. But, in Robin James's work, it can also be about pop, and feminist theory, and Peloton playlists. A conversation about Dr. James's approach towards philosophy, with a focus on her new project on the musical and cultural implications of our contemporary focus on "vibes."

Robin James is Editor for Philosophy & Media Studies, Palgrave Macmillan

Show notes and more over at soundexpertise.org!

Questions? Thoughts? Email soundexpertise00@gmail.com or tag Will on Instagram/Twitter @seatedovation 

There are approximately one bajillion biographies of Beethoven: do we need really another one? In fact, we do, because Laura Tunbridge has written an engrossing, provocative, and genuinely fresh book about Beethoven's life and times. A conversation about what it means to write about one of the most well-trodden composers in music history, and the rich new perspectives that Dr. Tunbridge brings to our understanding of Beethoven.

Laura Tunbridge is Professor of Music and Henfrey Fellow and Tutor at St Catherine's College, University of Oxford.

Show notes and more over at soundexpertise.org!

A new call to action: tell us why you listen to the show! Tag Will on Instagram/Twitter @seatedovation or email our inbox, soundexpertise00@gmail.com

What does it mean to search for music-making in the archives of slavery?  Maria Ryan studies African-descended musicians and listeners in the colonial Caribbean, and her research is fraught with ethical and logistical challenges. A conversation about fully imagining the lives of enslaved musicians, when the evidence of those lives is   documented almost entirely by their oppressors.

Maria Ryan is assistant professor of musicology at Florida State University's College of Music.

Show notes and more over at soundexpertise.org!

A new call to action: tell us why you listen to the show! Tag Will on Instagram/Twitter @seatedovation or email our inbox, soundexpertise00@gmail.com

What does it mean to be a scholar when the culture you study is under attack? Maria Sonevytsky and Oksana Nesterenko work on Ukrainian music, and their lives have changed profoundly in the last year. A conversation about the Ukrainian avant-garde and pop worlds, how wartime changes research agendas, and much more.

Maria Sonevytsky is Associate Professor of Anthropology & Music at Bard College; Oksana Nesterenko teaches at Union College.

Show notes and more over at soundexpertise.org!

A new call to action: tell us why you listen to the show! Tag Will on Instagram/Twitter @seatedovation or email our inbox, soundexpertise00@gmail.com