One could call «industrial musicology» the study of the musical life in factories and workshops. Unlike agrarian societies, there are very few works about industrial workers’ musical activity, neither at the Catalan Countries nor Europe. Based on British and Catalan scholars’ few theoretical works, our research Música popular i indust…[Read more]

Baltasar Samper i Marquès (1888-­1966), from Majorca, was one of the most promi­nent musicians of the first third of the 20th century, forming part of the musical elite of Catalonia until the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War. A long exile, first in France and later in Mexico, from where he was never to return, pushed him into the background an…[Read more]

Shipibo indigenous people perform a sophisticated array of vocal musical genres, including short ‘laughing songs’ called osanti. These song-jokes make fun of certain non-humans, mostly animals. They are by definition sung from within the non-humans’ perspective. Osanti are only performed by trained specialists in indigenous medicine and sorce…[Read more]

Previous theories emphasize tonal jazz’s undeniable continuity with European tonality. Here, I argue that some of its features are better understood as developments of the African-American musical tradition. As a simple example, consider the gesture ^3–1 to end a phrase. Schenkerian theory would explain this as an elided ^3–2–1, a gesture commo…[Read more]

In this article, I examine the nonfunctional harmony of three tunes from the mid-1960s by Wayne Shorter from the perspective of transformational theory. While some transformational approaches to jazz have taken the seventh or ninth chord as the basic unit, I use the more inclusive and abstract concept of a “chord scale” to encompass more of the…[Read more]

This article discuss the ways rhythm changes can be used in music theory instruction.

This chapter proposes an application of topic theory to jazz improvisation. It introduces the concept of a “groove topic” and defines the expressive correlations of a variety of common jazz grooves. The chapter then traces the unfolding groove topics in Miles Davis’s celebrated 1964 solo on “My Funny Valentine.”

This paper explores the role of mobile telecommunication and technology firms (MTTs) in the distribution of recorded music in Ghana and Kenya. These countries both have vibrant music markets with weak formal distribution networks. Limited enforcement of copyright regimes and weak market regulation created new entrepreneurial business models. While…[Read more]

An essay written for the catalog for the exhibition, “Benga: Kenyan Kaleidoscope” (Bureau Sepän). Originally written in English; French translation by Gabriella Seemann.

Abstract from the catalog:
Se référant à une performance musicale à laquelle il a assisté et impliquant l’un des musiciens les plus en vue du Kenya, Dan Aceda, dans cet ess…[Read more]

In this paper we attempt the beginning of a critical study of Amir Khusrau’s contributions to Indian music. A very important book Hazrat Amīr Khusro kā ‘ilm-e-musīqī (The Music of Amir Khusrau), by Rashid Malik, exists in Urdu, which deals extensively with this subject. Unfortunately it is still unavailable in English. This paper draws heavily…[Read more]

In this article we propose to reignite a debate regarding the origin shawm (śahnāī or surnā) that had been started by Nazir Jairazbhoy in 1970 , and taken up by him again in 1980, in response to interesting suggestions by Deva and Dick.