How does history sound? What kind of historical document is music? What does it mean to study past music as music, and what do we learn when we think of past music as sound? In this seminar, we will take up these questions together, applying them to the sounds of Europe—musical and otherwise—in the two centuries between 1550 and 1750. While mus…[Read more]

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). French translation by Gabriella Seemann.

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 essai, ce professeur de la New York Univers…[Read more]

What were the sounds of war in the early modern period? What were the sounds of peace? The period between 1570 and 1750—roughly coincident with the cultural era known in Western contexts as “the Baroque”—was characterized by almost continual conflict in Europe. Whether caught up in the French Wars of Religion, the English Civil War, the Thirty…[Read more]

Review Essay of Hamilton: An American Musical

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