MUSIC IN THE UNITED STATES

FOLKLORE/MUSIC 103

An introductory ethnomusicology course providing a variety of ways to approach musics typically not covered in music history courses. Active engagement with these musics within their larger world contexts.

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 101

Musical genres -- songs, opera and musical theater, chamber and orchestral music, and jazz -- in the context of social and cultural history.

MUSIC 319

Explores music of ethnic groups in the U.S., including that of marginalized minorities, in its cultural context. Topics may include the music of African American, Asian American, Native American and Jewish communities.

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.