Download or read book Current Directions in Ecomusicology written by Aaron S. Allen and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-09-25 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: AWARD WINNER OF THE 2018 SOCIETY OF ETHNOMUSICLOGY ELLEN KOSKOFF PRIZE This volume is the first sustained examination of the complex perspectives that comprise ecomusicology—the study of the intersections of music/sound, culture/society, and nature/environment. Twenty-two authors provide a range of theoretical, methodological, and empirical chapters representing disciplines such as anthropology, biology, ecology, environmental studies, ethnomusicology, history, literature, musicology, performance studies, and psychology. They bring their specialized training to bear on interdisciplinary topics, both individually and in collaboration. Emerging from the whole is a view of ecomusicology as a field, a place where many disciplines come together. The topics addressed in this volume—contemporary composers and traditional musics, acoustic ecology and politicized soundscapes, material sustainability and environmental crisis, familiar and unfamiliar sounds, local places and global warming, birds and mice, hearing and listening, biomusic and soundscape ecology, and more—engage with conversations in the various realms of music study as well as in environmental studies and cultural studies. As with any healthy ecosystem, the field of ecomusicology is dynamic, but this edited collection provides a snapshot of it in a formative period. Each chapter is short, designed to be accessible to the nonspecialist, and includes extensive bibliographies; some chapters also provide further materials on a companion website: http://www.ecomusicology.info/cde/. An introduction and interspersed editorial summaries help guide readers through four current directions—ecological, fieldwork, critical, and textual—in the field of ecomusicology.

Download or read book The Musical Human written by Michael Spitzer and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2021-04-01 with total page 481 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK 'Full of delightful nuggets' Guardian online 'Entertaining, informative and philosphical ... An essential read' All About History 'Extraordinary range ... All the world and more is here' Evening Standard 165 million years ago saw the birth of rhythm. 66 million years ago came the first melody. 40 thousand years ago Homo sapiens created the first musical instrument. Today music fills our lives. How we have created, performed and listened to music throughout history has defined what our species is and how we understand who we are. Yet it is an overlooked part of our origin story. The Musical Human takes us on an exhilarating journey across the ages – from Bach to BTS and back – to explore the vibrant relationship between music and the human species. With insights from a wealth of disciplines, world-leading musicologist Michael Spitzer renders a global history of music on the widest possible canvas, from global history to our everyday lives, from insects to apes, humans to artificial intelligence. 'Michael Spitzer has pulled off the impossible: a Guns, Germs and Steel for music' Daniel Levitin 'A thrilling exploration of what music has meant and means to humankind' Ian Bostridge

Download or read book Harnessed written by Mark Changizi and published by BenBella Books, Inc.. This book was released on 2011-08-02 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The scientific consensus is that our ability to understand human speech has evolved over hundreds of thousands of years. After all, there are whole portions of the brain devoted to human speech. We learn to understand speech before we can even walk, and can seamlessly absorb enormous amounts of information simply by hearing it. Surely we evolved this capability over thousands of generations. Or did we? Portions of the human brain are also devoted to reading. Children learn to read at a very young age and can seamlessly absorb information even more quickly through reading than through hearing. We know that we didn't evolve to read because reading is only a few thousand years old. In Harnessed, cognitive scientist Mark Changizi demonstrates that human speech has been very specifically “designed" to harness the sounds of nature, sounds we've evolved over millions of years to readily understand. Long before humans evolved, mammals have learned to interpret the sounds of nature to understand both threats and opportunities. Our speech—regardless of language—is very clearly based on the sounds of nature. Even more fascinating, Changizi shows that music itself is based on natural sounds. Music—seemingly one of the most human of inventions—is literally built on sounds and patterns of sound that have existed since the beginning of time. From Library Journal: "Many scientists believe that the human brain's capacity for language is innate, that the brain is actually "hard-wired" for this higher-level functionality. But theoretical neurobiologist Changizi (director of human cognition, 2AI Labs; The Vision Revolution) brilliantly challenges this view, claiming that language (and music) are neither innate nor instinctual to the brain but evolved culturally to take advantage of what the most ancient aspect of our brain does best: process the sounds of nature ... it will certainly intrigue evolutionary biologists, linguists, and cultural anthropologists and is strongly recommended for libraries that have Changizi's previous book." From Forbes: “In his latest book, Harnessed, neuroscientist Mark Changizi manages to accomplish the extraordinary: he says something compellingly new about evolution.… Instead of tackling evolution from the usual position and become mired in the usual arguments, he focuses on one aspect of the larger story so central to who we are, it may very well overshadow all others except the origin of life itself: communication."

Download or read book People and Places of Nature and Culture written by Rod Giblett and published by Intellect Books. This book was released on 2014-05-27 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Using the rich and vital Australian Aboriginal understanding of country as a model, People and Places of Nature and Culture affirms the importance of a sustainable relationship between nature and culture. While current thought includes the mistaken notion—perpetuated by natural history, ecology, and political economy—that humans have a mastery over the Earth, this book demonstrates the problems inherent in this view. In the current age of climate change, this is an important appraisal of the relationship between nature and culture, and a projection of what needs to change if we want to achieve environmental stability.

Download or read book The Anthropology of Music written by Alan P. Merriam and published by Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press. This book was released on 1964 with total page 382 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book was written in the belief that while music is a system of sounds, an assumption that provides the point of departure for most studies of music in culture, it is also a complex of behavior which resonates throughout the whole cultural organism--social organization, esthetic activity, economics, religion. This book is to be distinguished from other studies by its model of music as human action, making this work of interest not only to the ethnomusicologist and anthropologist, but also to those concerned with the nature of music, the nature of man, and the nature of music in human culture. Specifically, this model for the study of ethnomusicology is equally applicable to the study of visual arts, dance, folklore, and literature. --Adapted from dust jacket.

Download or read book The Study of Folk Music in the Modern World written by Philip V. Bohlman and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 1988-06-22 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "[This book] is a contribution of considerable substance because it takes a holistic view of the field of folk music and the scholarship that has dealt with it." -- Bruno Nettl "... a praiseworthy combination of solid scholarship, penetrating discussion, and global relevance." -- Asian Folklore Studies "... successfully ties the history and development of folk music scholarship with contemporary concepts, issues, and shifts, and which treats varied folk musics of the world cultures within the rubric of folklore and ethnomusicology with subtle generalizations making sense to serious minds... " -- Folklore Forum "... [this book] challenges many carefully-nurtured sacred cows. Bohlman has executed an intellectual challenge of major significance by successfully organizing a welter of unruly data and ideas into a single, appropriately complex but coherent, system." -- Folk Music Journal Bohlman examines folk music as a genre of folklore from a broadly cross-cultural perspective and espouses a more expansive view of folk music, stressing its vitality in non-Western cultures as well as Western, in the present as well as the past.

Download or read book Clouds written by Richard Hamblyn and published by Reaktion Books. This book was released on 2017-05-15 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Clouds have been objects of delight and fascination throughout human history, their fleeting magnificence and endless variety having inspired scientists and daydreamers alike. Described by Aristophanes as “the patron goddesses of idle men,” clouds and the ever-changing patterns they create have long symbolized the restlessness and unpredictability of nature, and yet they are also the source of life-giving rains. In this book, Richard Hamblyn examines clouds in their cultural, historic, and scientific contexts, exploring their prevalence in our skies as well as in our literature, art, and music. As Hamblyn shows, clouds function not only as a crucial means of circulating water around the globe but also as a finely tuned thermostat regulating the planet’s temperature. He discusses the many different kinds of clouds, from high, scattered cirrus clouds to the plump thought-bubbles of cumulus clouds, even exploring man-made clouds and clouds on other planets. He also shows how clouds have featured as meaningful symbols in human culture, whether as ominous portents of coming calamities or as ethereal figures giving shape to the heavens, whether in Wordsworth’s poetry or today’s tech speak. Comprehensive yet compact, cogent and beautifully illustrated, this is the ultimate guidebook to those shapeshifters of the sky.

Download or read book Music as Culture written by Marcia Herndon and published by . This book was released on 1980 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Jukebox in the Garden written by David Ingram and published by Brill Rodopi. This book was released on 2010 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the rise of the contemporary ecology movement in the 1960s, American songwriters and composers, from folk singer Pete Seeger to jazz saxophonist Paul Winter, have lamented, and protested against, environmental degradation and injustice. The Jukebox in the Garden is the first book to survey a wide range of musical styles, including folk, country, blues, rock, jazz, electronica and hip hop, to examine the different ways in which popular music has explored American relationships between nature, technology and environmental politics. It also investigates the growing link between music and philosophical thought, particularly under the influence of both deep ecology and New Age thinking, according to which music, amongst all the arts, has a special affinity with ecological ideas. This book is both an exploration and critique of such speculations on the role that music can play in raising environmental awareness. It combines description and analysis of American popular music made during the era of modern environmentalism with a consideration of its wider social, historical and political contexts. It will be of interest to undergraduates and post-graduates in music, cultural studies and environmental studies, as well as general readers interested in popular music and the environment.

Download or read book People and Places of Nature and Culture written by Rodney James Giblett and published by Intellect (UK). This book was released on 2011 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Using the rich and vital Australian Aboriginal understanding of country as a model, "People and Places of Nature and Culture "affirms the importance of a sustainable relationship between nature and culture. While current thought includes the mistaken notion perpetuated by natural history, ecology, and political economy that humans have a mastery over the Earth, this book demonstrates the problems inherent in this view.In the current age of climate change, this is an important appraisal of the relationship between nature and culture, and a projection of what needs to change if we want to achieve environmental stability."

Download or read book The Culture of Nature written by Alexander Wilson and published by Between the Lines. This book was released on 2019-10-10 with total page 474 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since it was first published in 1991, few books have come close to capturing the depth and breadth of Alexander Wilson’s innovative ecocultural compendium The Culture of Nature. His work was one of the first of its kind to investigate the ideology of the environment, to critique the future according to Disney, and illustrate that the ways we think, teach, talk about, and construct the natural world are as important a terrain as the land itself. Extensively illustrated and meticulously researched, this edition is exquisitely revised and reissued for the Anthropocene.

Download or read book Music and the Child written by Natalie Sarrazin and published by . This book was released on 2016-06-14 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Children are inherently musical. They respond to music and learn through music. Music expresses children's identity and heritage, teaches them to belong to a culture, and develops their cognitive well-being and inner self worth. As professional instructors, childcare workers, or students looking forward to a career working with children, we should continuously search for ways to tap into children's natural reservoir of enthusiasm for singing, moving and experimenting with instruments. But how, you might ask? What music is appropriate for the children I'm working with? How can music help inspire a well-rounded child? How do I reach and teach children musically? Most importantly perhaps, how can I incorporate music into a curriculum that marginalizes the arts?This book explores a holistic, artistic, and integrated approach to understanding the developmental connections between music and children. This book guides professionals to work through music, harnessing the processes that underlie music learning, and outlining developmentally appropriate methods to understand the role of music in children's lives through play, games, creativity, and movement. Additionally, the book explores ways of applying music-making to benefit the whole child, i.e., socially, emotionally, physically, cognitively, and linguistically.

Download or read book Nature and Culture in the Northern Forest written by Pavel Cenkl and published by University of Iowa Press. This book was released on 2010-03-15 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nearly 30 million acres of the Northern Forest stretch across New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine. Within this broad area live roughly a million residents whose lives are intimately associated with the forest ecosystem and whose individual stories are closely linked to the region’s cultural and environmental history. The fourteen engaging essays in Nature and Culture in the Northern Forest effectively explore the relationships among place, work, and community in this complex landscape. Together they serve as a stimulating introduction to the interdisciplinary study of this unique region. Each of the four sections views through a different lens the interconnections between place and people. The essayists in “Encounters” have their hiking boots on as they focus on personal encounters with flora and fauna of the region. The energizing accounts in “Teaching and Learning” question our assumptions about education and scholarship by proposing invigorating collaborations between teachers and students in ways determined by the land itself, not by the abstractions of pedagogy. With the freshness of Thoreau’s irreverence, the authors in “Rethinking Place” look at key figures in the forest’s literary and cultural development to help us think about the affiliations between place and citizenship. In “Nature as Commodity,” three essayists consider the ways that writers from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries thought about nature as a product and, thus, how their conclusions bear on the contemporary retailing of place. The writers in Nature and Culture in the Northern Forest reveal the rich affinities between a specific place and the literature, thought, and other cultural expressions it has nurtured. Their insightful and stimulating connections exemplify adventurous bioregional thinking that encompasses both natural and cultural realities while staying rooted in the particular landscape of some of the Northeast’s wildest forests and oldest settlements.

Download or read book The Age of Capitalism Consumer Culture and the Collapse of Nature in the Anthropocene written by Jack Thornburg and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2024-10-02 with total page 341 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Age of Capitalism, Consumer Culture, and the Collapse of Nature in the Anthropocene argues that the stability of post-industrial, postmodern society is threatened by the convergence of three distinct, yet interrelated, crises: environmental degradation, capitalist economic development, and the primacy of consumption and self-absorption as the basis for economic development at the expense of community and social relationships. Jack Thornburg contrasts advanced modern society with indigenous cultures in terms of nature and conceptions of the communal self. The complex nature of capitalist-oriented society has influenced how individuals conceptualize themselves. The outcome, the author contends, is a competitive society in which individuals are alienated living in uncertain times. One consequence of these crises (all of which derive from the Enlightenment and the concomitant appearance and evolution of capitalism) has been the destruction of a worldview balancing and connecting well-being with prosperity of the natural world. Money and materialism cannot buy happiness as capitalist narrative asserts. Thornburg claims that the happiness sought by individuals seeking meaning through consumption can only be realized by reintegrating nature with the human spirit.

Download or read book The Musical Times written by and published by . This book was released on 1904 with total page 846 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Methodological Challenges in Nature Culture and Environmental History Research written by Jocelyn Thorpe and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-11-10 with total page 495 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the challenges and possibilities of conducting cultural environmental history research today. Disciplinary commitments certainly influence the questions scholars ask and the ways they seek out answers, but some methodological challenges go beyond the boundaries of any one discipline. The book examines: how to account for the fact that humans are not the only actors in history yet dominate archival records; how to attend to the non-visual senses when traditional sources offer only a two-dimensional, non-sensory version of the past; how to decolonize research in and beyond the archives; and how effectively to use sources and means of communication made available in the digital age. This book will be a valuable resource for those interested in environmental history and politics, sustainable development and historical geography.

Download or read book Nature Culture and Gender written by Carol MacCormack and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1980-12-31 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: No Aboriginal content.