Explore every episode of the podcast Sound Expertise
| Title | Pub. Date | Duration | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Musicology and Repair with William Cheng | 17 déc. 2024 | 01:00:07 | |
Well, it's our final episode, and we have the exact right guest to help say goodbye to a podcast that focuses on music scholarship, and why it matters: William Cheng, whose work fundamentally reconsiders what musicology can be, by laying out a philosophy of care and repair. This conversation covers a large swath of Dr. Cheng's scholarship, including his foundational writing on music and video games, his public-oriented social justice advocacy, and his scrutiny of ethical questions around musical taste. It's a rumination on the present and future of the field. And it's our finale. | |||
| Sound Expertise Reflections with Will Robin and D. Edward Davis | 10 déc. 2024 | 00:46:30 | |
Well, we're almost done: this is the penultimate episode of our fourth and final season. In our final weeks, host Will and producer Eddie take some time to reflect back on what it's meant: the origins of the podcast, the community we've built, and the legacy of Sound Expertise. | |||
| A Feminist Musicological Life with Suzanne Cusick | 03 déc. 2024 | 01:08:51 | |
Musicology today could not exist without feminist musicology, and feminist musicology could not exist without Suzanne Cusick. Dr. Cusick's revolutionary work has scrutinized gender and sexuality in musical life for decades, and is foundational to musicology as we know it today. In this profound conversation, she reflects on her arc through the field, and what still needs to change. Show notes and more over at soundexpertise.org! | |||
| Music and Eugenics with Alexander Cowan | 26 nov. 2024 | 00:48:59 | |
From its beginnings, the eugenics movement has looked to music: for foundational figures like Francis Galton and contemporaries like Charles Murray, the child-prodigy composer or violinist could serve to demonstrate that talent was innate and inherited, and thus could be bred. The horrendously racist implications of such a vision have long been understood, but the relationship between music and eugenicist thought has received scant attention. In this dark but important conversation, musicologist Alexander Cowan reveals the central role of music to eugenicist philosophy, and how myths of musical talent have undergirded myths of racial supremacy. | |||
| Sound Expertise LIVE with Jonathan Bailey Holland | 19 nov. 2024 | 01:01:12 | |
We did it! Sound Expertise recorded its first-ever live episode at the American Musicological Society conference in Chicago. It was a super-fun event with a raucous crowd. Please enjoy this thoughtful conversation with Jonathan Bailey Holland, dean of Northwestern's Bienen School of Music, about his path as a composer and what it means to oversee a music school at a transformative moment. | |||
| Engaging Black Opera with Naomi André | 12 nov. 2024 | 00:49:55 | |
Naomi André is one of the most important scholars of opera today, best known for her landmark 2018 book Black Opera: History, Power, Engagement. But the study of opera and race is not where Professor Andre’s career began: her path through musicology has been incredibly fraught, because of who she is, and what she wanted to do as a scholar. This week's conversation is difficult but necessary, for registering how exclusionary the field of musicology once was, and what work still has to be done. ALSO, we're going to be at the American Musicological Society conference in Chicago this week!! 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! | |||
| Taylor Swift Studies with Christa Bentley, Kate Galloway, and Paula Harper | 05 nov. 2024 | 01:00:41 | |
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. ALSO, we're going to be at the American Musicological Society conference in Chicago soon! 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! | |||
| Listening to the 2024 Election with Dana Gorzelany-Mostak | 29 oct. 2024 | 00:50:41 | |
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? ALSO, we're going to be at the American Musicological Society conference in Chicago soon! 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! | |||
| Florence Price's Chicago with Samantha Ege | 22 oct. 2024 | 00:45:14 | |
Florence Price was exceptional, but she was not singular. In the fascinating new book "South Side Impresarios," musicologist Samantha Ege situates Price amidst multiple generations of Black women who transformed Chicago into a Black classical metropolis. In this conversation, we discuss the city and community that built Price, including the pivotal figures Nora Holt and Maude Roberts George, as well Dr. Ege's own work as a scholar, pianist, and advocate for this powerful lineage. | |||
| The Future of Opera with Yuval Sharon | 15 oct. 2024 | 00:48:45 | |
Welcome to Season 4 of Sound Expertise! Opera is a four-hundred-year-old genre, and it often looks and sounds that way: despite opera's revolutionary merging of artistic disciplines, its administrators and musicians are often stuck in the past. But in his visionary productions, the director Yuval Sharon has imagined many potential futures for the art form; this conversation, about his new book, reveals where he thinks opera needs to go next, and why. Plus, a discussion of his highly-anticipated Ring cycle for the Metropolitan Opera! | |||
| Season 4 Trailer!! | 08 oct. 2024 | 00:02:37 | |
WE'RE SO BACK. Our fourth and final season begins October 15. Seeya then! | |||
| Music Theory's Racism Problem with Philip Ewell | 29 août 2023 | 00:58:22 | |
Philip Ewell has, in recent years, become the most controversial music scholar on the planet. After his incisive work on music theory's white racial frame was unfairly attacked by fellow academics, he was suddenly thrust into the national spotlight, as right-wing news outlets targeted him as part of a broader backlash. A discussion about what it means to be caught up in the Culture Wars, racism in music scholarship, and how Dr. Ewell has grappled with it all. | |||
| The Science of Silence with Chaz Firestone | 22 août 2023 | 00:35:58 | |
Do we hear silence? John Cage certainly thought so, and so does Chaz Firestone, a scientist whose laboratory's recent study revealed that yes, we do hear silence. In this conversation, we discuss his new findings, what they mean for the fields of perception studies and philosophy, and how science and the humanities can work together to provide new answers to longstanding questions. | |||
| Curating Black Musical History with Dwandalyn Reece | 15 août 2023 | 00:43:40 | |
In curating music and the performing arts at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, Dwandalyn Reece has one of the most important jobs one can have as a music scholar: providing a framework for the public to understand African-American culture, at a moment in which Black history is under a nationwide assault. In this conversation, Dr. Reece discusses her work at the Smithsonian, the process of acquiring important artifacts of Black musical life, and the museum's significance today. | |||
| Hip-Hop and Friendship on Death Row with Alim Braxton and Mark Katz | 08 août 2023 | 00:55:12 | |
Mark Katz is John P. Barker Distinguished Professor of Music at UNC Chapel Hill; Alim Braxton is a rapper on death row, who has been incarcerated in Central Prison in North Carolina since 1993. In 2019, they struck up a correspondence, and then a friendship, and are now writing a book. This is their story. Show notes and more over at soundexpertise.org! | |||
| Reviving Julius Eastman with Mary Jane Leach | 01 août 2023 | 00:38:53 | |
The revival of Julius Eastman's work has transformed the world of avant-garde music, and in many ways can be attributed to a single individual. Since the late 1990s, the composer and performer Mary Jane Leach has collected manuscripts and recordings of Eastman's music, and helped bring about the current wave of "Eastmania." But the politics of Eastmania have become increasingly complicated, and Leach has found herself enmeshed in controversy around who can make claim to his legacy. A conversation about all that, and more. Mary Jane Leach is a composer, performer, scholar, and co-editor of "Gay Guerrilla: Julius Eastman and His Music." | |||
| Doing Public Musicology with Douglas Shadle | 25 juil. 2023 | 00:51:13 | |
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). | |||
| Bach Scandals, Jug Bands, and Vexations with Joshua Rifkin | 18 juil. 2023 | 01:16:24 | |
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.) | |||
| What Bossa Nova Means with Kaleb Goldschmitt | 11 juil. 2023 | 00:49:03 | |
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. | |||
| Appropriation and Indigenous Music with Dylan Robinson | 04 juil. 2023 | 00:48:27 | |
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.) | |||
| Philosophy and Vibes with Robin James | 27 juin 2023 | 00:43:53 | |
"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." | |||
| Retelling Beethoven's Story with Laura Tunbridge | 20 juin 2023 | 00:39:24 | |
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. | |||
| Music in Slavery's Archives with Maria Ryan | 13 juin 2023 | 00:49:49 | |
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. | |||
| Music, War, and Ukraine with Maria Sonevytsky and Oksana Nesterenko | 06 juin 2023 | 00:56:43 | |
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. | |||
| Soviet Sounds (But Not Shostakovich) with Gabrielle Cornish | 30 mai 2023 | 00:52:05 | |
The story of music in the Soviet Union isn't just about Shostakovich and Stalin -- sometimes, it's not about composers at all. Gabrielle Cornish writes about a different kind of socialist sound: noise abatement policy, pop music, and even an aborted plan to put a synthesizer in every Soviet home. A conversation about socialist noise, studying abroad in Siberia, what the war in Ukraine has meant for research, and more. | |||
| The Paradoxes of Black Classical Music with Kira Thurman | 23 mai 2023 | 00:54:39 | |
The African-American pianist Hazel Harrison played with the Berlin Philharmonic in 1904, and was promptly forgotten. But Kira Thurman remembers. Her incredible book Singing Like Germans tells the rich, textured stories of Black classical musicians who performed in Germany, which provided a safe haven from American segregation, even though they still faced racism. A conversation about the paradoxes of race and colorblindness in classical music, and much, much more. | |||
| Approaching Joni Mitchell with Ann Powers | 16 mai 2023 | 00:59:37 | |
Writing a biography isn't easy, especially when it's of a living person, and especially when that living person is an epochal, oft-mythologized musician like Joni Mitchell. But Ann Powers, one of my absolute favorite music critics, has been doing the work. For our Season 3 debut, a deep conversation with Ann about her in-progress Joni Mitchell book, the complexities and anxieties behind thinking through Joni's life alongside her own, and what it means to write about women making music. | |||
| Season 3 Trailer!!! | 09 mai 2023 | 00:02:18 | |
Finally, Sound Expertise returns! Season 3 begins on May 16, and it's our biggest and most ambitious to date: a full summer of interviews with music scholars about their research, and why it matters. | |||
| Talking Minimalism with Kerry O'Brien and Will Robin | 18 avr. 2023 | 00:51:30 | |
We're almost back -- Season 3 will debut in just a few weeks! Before then, one final bonus episode: our great producer D. Edward Davis interviews Will and co-author Kerry O'Brien about their new book "On Minimalism: Documenting a Musical Movement," which University of California Press will release on April 25. We talk about our histories with musical minimalism, putting the book together, expanding the narrow canon of minimalism beyond white dudes, and more! | |||
| The Impossibility of Opera with Matthew Aucoin | 11 janv. 2022 | 00:41:59 | |
Another bonus episode! A conversation with composer Matthew Aucoin, whose opera Euridice had a run at the Met last month, and who just wrote a new book about the history and culture of opera, The Impossible Art: Adventures in Opera. | |||
| R. Murray Schafer's Legacy with Phantom Power | 07 déc. 2021 | 00:36:19 | |
Check out this episode of the great podcast Phantom Power, on the life and work of composer R. Murray Schafer. You can check out more info on the episode here, and its second part here. We'll have another bonus episode up before the end of the year, and Season 3 will happen at some point in 2022! | |||
| Our Pandemic Year | 13 juil. 2021 | 00:57:57 | |
Eighteen music scholars describe their experiences of the pandemic. "On the Banks of the Wabash" was arranged and performed by D. Edward Davis. | |||
| The Musicologist as Contrarian with Richard Taruskin | 22 juin 2021 | 00:58:39 | |
For our Season 2 finale, a wide-ranging conversation with the eminent musicologist Richard Taruskin. We talk about his trajectory, from playing early music and studying Russian opera to writing the Oxford History of Western Music and penning polemics in the New York Times; his deep-set belief that musicologists should be skeptics and contrarians; what he hopes for the future of music scholarship; and why he believes it's necessary to make people angry. | |||
| Cold War Money and New Music with Eduardo Herrera and Michael Uy | 15 juin 2021 | 01:00:37 | |
How did Cold War money shape the musical avant-garde? What were the roles of experts, elites, and the Rockefeller Foundation in shaping the cultural politics of new music––in the era of serial tyranny and Milton Babbitt's "Who Cares If You Listen?" An interview with musicologists Michael Uy and Eduardo Herrera about their research on funding new music in the Sputnik moment, in both the U.S. and Latin America. | |||
| Ethnography and Queer Intimacies on the Dance Floor with Luis Manuel Garcia-Mispireta | 08 juin 2021 | 00:51:17 | |
How does one come to study a topic that is on the margins of an academic discipline? What does it mean to do ethnographic fieldwork amidst the intimacies of the dance floor––and what are the challenges of doing so in queer spaces? A wide-ranging conversation with ethnomusicologist Luis-Manuel Garcia, on his scholarly journey from early music to rave culture to gay fetish parties in Berlin. | |||
| Cracking Algorithmic Recommendation with Nick Seaver | 01 juin 2021 | 00:46:33 | |
Algorithms run our lives these days, from Netflix binges to predictive policing. And that includes algorithmic recommenders––like Spotify's Discover Weekly and Pandora––that shape how we consume music. How does algorithmic music recommendation work and, perhaps more importantly, who makes it work? After all, algorithms are made and tweaked by people, who work at tech companies and have their own ideas and values. An interview with anthropologist Nick Seaver, who has conducted years of ethnographic fieldwork to understand who creates algorithmic recommenders, and why they do what they do. | |||
| Britten's Operas and British Identity with Imani Mosley | 25 mai 2021 | 00:51:41 | |
When a modern opera debuts, normally the stakes aren't very high. But when it's composed by Benjamin Britten and premieres in England after World War II, that's a different story. Britten's high-profile operas––whose performances were attended by Queen Elizabeth II––were seen as a reflection of British postwar identity. An interview with musicologist Imani Danielle Mosley on how a series of strange operas by queer, modernist composer became a referendum on what it meant to be British––and why that matters. | |||
| Finding Music in Renaissance Manuscripts with Laurie Stras | 18 mai 2021 | 00:43:59 | |
Since pretty much the beginnings of our field, musicologists have gone digging for lost music, bringing old pieces back into the world after centuries of neglect. But it's not just about finding some new scores: it's also about building an understanding of the culture that created and preserved them. When we find music in Renaissance manuscripts, what meaning can, and should, we make from it? An interview with musicologist Laurie Stras about what she has uncovered in the archives––including a major work by the Renaissance composer Antoine Brumel––what it means for music to be anonymous, what to do when you realize your research might actually be wrong, and a lot more. Laurie Stras is Research Professor of Music at the University of Huddersfield and Emeritus Professor of Music at the University of Southampton. | |||
| Handel and the Slave Trade with David Hunter | 11 mai 2021 | 00:41:18 | |
In 2013, the music librarian David Hunter found the name George Frideric Handel in a printed list of investors in one of Britain's official slave trading companies. Since then, Dr. Hunter has researched Handel and his patrons' investments in the slave trade, as well as the broader relationship between slavery and the history of classical music. What does it mean that profits from the brutality and horror of the Middle Passage benefitted the career of the composer who wrote the "Messiah"? And what should we do with our knowledge of this today? | |||
| Rebecca Black's "Friday" and Viral Music with Paula Harper | 04 mai 2021 | 00:47:11 | |
Way back in 2011, Rebecca Black's music video "Friday" went viral because it was widely considered to be one of the worst songs of all time. But what does that actually mean––for music to "go viral," and for music to be so widely criticized as "bad"? A conversation about gender, genre, and musical virality in the 2010s with musicologist Paula Clare Harper. | |||
| Freedom Singing at the March on Washington with Tammy L. Kernodle | 27 avr. 2021 | 00:52:52 | |
Though often overlooked in mainstream histories, the voices of Black women were central to the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in August 1963. And those voices included some of the greatest musicians of the time: Odetta, Mahalia Jackson, Camilla Williams. These women, and the political significance of the spirituals they sang, are the subject of this week's episode: a conversation with the musicologist Tammy L. Kernodle about the wide-ranging role of music, and the fractious political coalitions it represented, at the 1963 March on Washington. | |||
| Expert Listening and d/Deaf Culture with Jessica A. Holmes | 20 avr. 2021 | 00:36:09 | |
When we think about music and deafness, it's often through the lens of Beethoven: the mythological figure who overcomes his hearing loss to compose great music. But members of the d/Deaf community often talk less about hearing loss than about deaf gain. And we can gain a lot from understanding the wide range of methods through which d/Deaf people engage with, create, and listen to music. A conversation with musicologist Jessica A. Holmes, who researches the relationship between music and disability, including the listening expertise found in d/Deaf culture. | |||
| Teaching Music History with Sara Haefeli and Andrew Dell'Antonio | 13 avr. 2021 | 01:05:30 | |
Maybe you teach music history, and maybe you don't, but pedagogy is a part of your life: we have all been teachers, and we have all been students. This conversation, with musicologists Andrew Dell'Antonio and Sara Haefeli, is about how they have innovated in their classrooms, but it is also about teaching itself as a practice, as an art, and as a form of research. What does it mean to abandon traditional lecturing and traditional grading, and empower students to see themselves as creators of music history? | |||
| Diversifying Music Theory with Ellie Hisama | 06 avr. 2021 | 00:56:19 | |
Music theory has long been a space in which white male scholars analyze music by white male composers. But many music theorists are actively trying to change that, and our guest today, Professor Ellie Hisama, is foremost among them. In this conversation, we discuss her pioneering work on women modernist composers; diversifying the music theory classroom; her recent scholarship on gender discrimination in music theory, including sexist and homophobic comments made by Milton Babbitt; and a lot more. | |||
| The Gospel Imagination with Braxton D. Shelley | 30 mars 2021 | 00:41:44 | |
What happens, musically and spiritually, when a congregation sings gospel ? How can we analyze music that moves not just the mind, but also the body and the soul? A conversation with Braxton D. Shelley, whose scholarship fuses theology and musicology to understand how musical techniques like vamps and "tuning up" lead to transcendent religious experiences. | |||
| Making Sense of Music with Susan McClary | 23 mars 2021 | 00:58:05 | |
We're back! The first episode of Season 2 features Susan McClary: one of the most influential, and controversial, musicologists of our time. We talk about her lifelong pursuit of analyzing music in its cultural context, from madrigals to Madonna; the early rejections that set her on a path towards becoming a groundbreaking feminist scholar; the intense criticism to which her scholarship has been subjected; the infamous Beethoven 9 controversy; and much more. | |||
| Season 2 Trailer! | 16 mars 2021 | 00:02:16 | |
We're back next week! Season 2 of Sound Expertise begins on Tuesday, March 23. | |||
| Bang on a Can and New Music with Will Robin | 16 févr. 2021 | 00:56:04 | |
And we're back! Well, kind of. Season 2 of Sound Expertise launches on March 23, but for now here's a bonus preseason episode. Our intrepid producer, D. Edward Davis, interviews host Will Robin (University of Maryland) about his book "Industry: Bang on a Can and New Music in the Marketplace," out with Oxford University Press next week. We talk about the role of the festival Bang on a Can in shaping the broader world of new music, the institutions and politics of contemporary classical in the '80s and '90s, research methods, and more! And stick around until the end of the episode to hear a teaser for Season 2! | |||
| Jazz Manouche and Cultural Citizenship with Siv B. Lie | 29 sept. 2020 | 00:47:10 | |
What does it mean to create music that is valued as a national emblem, but also be part of a community that is marginalized within that nation? What is jazz manouche, and how does this musical tradition reflect the complicated status of its Romani creators in France? A conversation with Siv B. Lie, assistant professor of ethnomusicology at the University of Maryland. | |||
| Capitalism and the Value of Music with Timothy Taylor | 22 sept. 2020 | 00:40:57 | |
How can ethnomusicology help us understand the value of music in a capitalist society? When we view music as a commodity, what might it reveal about how people make meaning (and money) from art across different cultures? A conversation with Timothy Taylor, professor of ethnomusicology at UCLA's Herb Albert School of Music. | |||