TOPICS IN MUSIC AND ETHNICITY IN THE UNITED STATES

MUSIC 297

Exploration of wide-ranging topics in music history, music performance, music theory or music education.

MUSIC 497

Exploration of wide-ranging topics in music history, music theory or music education.

AFRICAN 409

Introduces the phenomenon of "musical blackness" as a US-based, transnational cultural form and practice. Explores (topics will vary) how US-based, racially specified black musical forms, together with global forms also identified as "black," were constituted as part of the legacies of European colonial encounter and US imperial expansion; the categories of "traditional" music and popular style took shape and have been experienced as something part and parcel of this historical process. Gives close consideration to genre, style, and performance practice, in order to understand the many ways in which musical sound and social/political ideas are inextricably linked.

MUSIC 419

Explores a variety of genres within their social and historical contexts including folk songs and ballads, the Native American Pow Wow, New England psalmody, popular song repertories, musical theater and opera, concert music, blues and jazz.

MUSIC 203

Examination of the role played by popular song in the formation of ethnic and racial identities in the United States with particular emphasis placed on both music's role in the perpetuation of racism and its use as a form of protest and anti-racist activism.