MU4055: MUSIC, REPRESENTATION AND CULTURAL ENCOUNTERS (2024-2025)

As different cultures and nations have come into contact through European colonialism and globalisation, so too have their musics. Music is an inherently human activity; it is a vehicle for social interaction, and it enables group identities to be formed. But music is also a way of representing other cultures, of shaping perceptions about other cultures and at times can even be employed as a way of controlling other cultures. From 19th-century opera to jazz and popular music, western musical canons have had a long and complex relationship with non-western cultures and musical systems. Moreover, the development of music studies itself (both in terms of music history and ethnomusicology) is also implicated in the legacies of European colonialism and cultural encounter. In this course, we will approach the issue of cultural encounter through the prism of music, and music’s ability to represent and to bring into dialogue different cultural identities.

‘Music, Representation and Cultural Encounters’ will adopt a cross-disciplinary approach examining current scholarship in musicology, ethnomusicology and popular music studies. In the course, we will encounter a number of familiar (and not so familiar) repertoires and genres, including opera/western art music, jazz, popular music, Mediterranean and North African genres. We will also be unpacking key theoretical concepts in postcolonial studies through classic writers such as Edward Said, Gayatri Spivak and Homi Bhabha, and consider how such theories might apply to music. In so doing, the course will seek to address questions such as: how is music caught up with issues of power, control and empire? How have non-western musics been represented and in turn how have they influenced European repertoires? In what ways does music facilitate cultural encounter between nations and between different ethnic or religious communities? How might we re-consider the history of western art music from a global (and not purely European) perspective?

Topics covered on the course will include:

• Music and representation: from Carmen to Coldplay in musical constructions of the ‘Other’
• Music, power and colonialism
• Audible empires through radio and the recording industry
• Music and resistance: anti-colonialism and nationalism
• Musical diplomacy in international relations
• Music, migration and cultural hybridity
• The history of ‘world music’: colonial legacies, neoliberal markets
• Towards a global music history: decolonising music studies and the European canon

Information on contact teaching time is available from the course guide.

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There are no assessments for this course.