Keynote Speakers

Temple University

University of Alberta

Noriko Manabe

June 17th - The Intertextuality of Protest Music

Noriko Manabe was Assistant Professor of Music at Princeton University and is now Associate Professor of Music Studies at Temple University (as of January 2016). She also holds an affiliation with the music department of the School of Oriental and Asian Studies as Research Associate. Her first monograph, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised: Protest Music After Fukushima, has just been released from Oxford University Press (November 20). Her article on antinuclear demonstrations won the Waterman Prize from the Society for Ethnomusicology. Her second monograph, Revolution Remixed: Intertextuality in Protest Songs, is forthcoming from Oxford University Press. She has published articles on Japanese hip-hop, the mobile internet, the music business, children’s songs, and Cuban music in Ethnomusicology, Popular Music, Latin American Music Review, Oxford Handbook of Children’s Musical Cultures, Oxford Handbook of Mobile Music Studies, the Cambridge Companion to Hip-Hop, and other publications. She is co-editing Sonic Contestations of Nuclear Power (with Jessica Schwartz) and The Oxford Handbook of Protest Music (with Eric Drott). Her research has been supported by fellowships from NEH, Kluge, Japan Foundation, and SSRC/JSPS. She serves on the editorial board of Twentieth-Century Music and is a contributing editor for the Asia-Pacific Journal.

 

 

The Intertextuality of Protest Music

 

Black Lives Matter, pro-democracy in Hong Kong, the Japanese antinuclear movement—the music of social movements, both recent and historical, share the use of intertextuality. This intertextuality captures listeners’ attention with a familiar song or genre, which a wholly new song would not have; reduces the hurdles of creation, allowing political songs to be written in a timely manner; and fuses listeners’ feelings about the contexts the song references with current issues (Turino). Starting from Genette and Lacasse, I formulate a typology of intertextuality in protest music: hypertextual approaches including covers (sometimes with changed lyrics), hip-hop remakes, mash-ups, remixes, and allegories; shorter quotations; paratextual practices, such as advertising; and architextual style adoption. This typology helps us not only to identify the methods used in protest, but also to understand the circumstances in which some methods are more effective than others. To illustrate, I compare examples from several recent movements, examining intertextual technique against political usage. Cover songs with changed lyrics receive broad distribution on the internet and inspire mass participation in protests (e.g., “Do You Hear the People Sing,” Hong Kong). Quotations are emotion-provoking indexes, like the Ferguson witnesses in J. Cole’s “Be Free.” Allegories are favored for recordings in censorial or dictatorial environments (e.g., Japan, Brazil). Musicians adopt musical genres for their associations (e.g., festival dance by Japanese antinuclear musicians). These intertextual methods build solidarity and allow communication when direct protest is inadvisable. Through this typology, I aim to develop a deeper understanding of music’s roles in political movements.  

Michael Frishkopf is Professor of Music, Associate Director of the Canadian Centre for Ethnomusicology, and folkwaysAlive! Research Fellow at the University of Alberta. His research focuses on the music and sounds of Islam, the Arab world, and West Africa. Research interests also include music for development, social network theory, digital music repositories, and music in cyberworlds. A SSHRC-funded collaborative project, Music and Architecture in the Muslim World, centers on intersecting soundscapes and landscapes of the Muslim world. Recent productions include an edited collection, Music and Media in the Arab World, a collaborative video, Songs of the New Arab Revolutions, two music CDs supporting West African development, a series Songs for sustainable development and peace, and numerous articles and book chapters, including the forthcoming “Venerating Cairo’s saints through music and monument.” Frishkopf has received major research grants from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSRHC), the Canadian Heritage Information Network, the American Research Center in Egypt, the Social Science Research Council (USA), the Fulbright Program, the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

 

 

Chant in music, sport, ritual, and politics: tracing the power of protest song, in Egypt's 2011 revolution, and beyond

 

On the eve of Egypt's 2011 Revolution singer Ramy Essam transformed political chant into protest song.  Later, Football Ultras transformed sports chants into political chants, and Ramy transformed these into song as well.  Chanted religious slogans likewise are empowered in the political arena. My paper addresses the following questions:  What is the essence of chant?  Why are chants so powerful across multiple domains - including music, sport, religious ritual, and politics? How were they activated in the Egyptian Revolution of 2011? Searching for the essence of this power at the intersection of these domains, each one rule-bound in theory yet highly emotive in performative practice, I contend that the power of chant derives from its liminal status, situated between rule and performance, language and sound, individual and group, repetition and change...life and death. Chant carries deeply felt values, but also sacrifices stable existence for social power. Chants are powerful, I argue, because they exist at the cusp of rule and instance, of object and process, of being and becoming; they serve, like the Sufi dhikr (the chant of remembrance), to catalyze the emergence of social formations that are evanescent, yet concrete and emotional, while pointing to values, at once more permanent and more abstract. Chants thus underscore the contradiction between what is fleeting, and what endures.  And they become all the more powerful when multiple domains--politics, sport, music, religion-- overlap, commingling in combustible admixtures. This is what happened in Egypt's 2011 revolution and its aftermath, as illustrated by the music of Ramy Essam. The talk will be amply illustrated with audiovisual examples, from Egypt and elsewhere. 

Michael Frishkopf

June 16th - Chant in music, sport, ritual, and politics:

                   tracing the power of protest song, in Egypt's 2011 revolution, and beyond

Indiana University

David McDonald

June 15th - My Voice is My Weapon:

                   Protest Song in the Palestinian National Movement

David Anthony McDonald is Associate Professor of Ethnomusicology and Anthropology at Indiana University. Since 2000 McDonald has worked closely with Palestinian refugee communities dispersed throughout Israel, Jordan and the Occupied Territories. Specifically, his research involves understanding the cultural dynamics of protest songs, violence, trauma, and masculinity.  His most recent book, My Voice is My Weapon (2013 Duke University Press), was awarded the prestigious Chicago Folklore Prize, recognizing the best book-length work of folklore scholarship.  He is also co-editor of Palestinian Music and Song: Expression and Resistance since 1900 (2013 IU Press).  In 2013 his article, "Imaginaries of Exile and Emergence" was awarded the Jaap Kunst Prize by the Society for Ethnomusicology recognizing the best article in the discipline.  Currently he is writing an ethnography of contemporary Palestinian-American experiences post-911, focusing on the trial of the Holy Land Foundation and its impact on the Palestinian community of Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas.

 

My Voice is My Weapon:

Protest Song in the Palestinian National Movement

 

For the last 60 years ethnomusicologists have been fascinated by the dynamics of music performance and political engagement.  Yet, despite widespread interest in so-called “resistance arts” a broadly understood and widely applicable theory on the dynamics and efficacy of political protest song has yet to fully emerge.  In this talk I critically investigate the conventional history of the Israeli-Palestinian crisis through an ethnographic analysis of music and musicians, protest songs, and other popular cultural practices.  Based on this history I argue that a broadly construed theorization of political protest song is badly needed not only to advance thinking on the dynamics of music performance and political engagement, but also to further our understanding of the larger pro-social and group-forming capacities of musical thought and behavior.  Drawing insight from the work of several Palestinian artists and activists, I conclude by investigating the contemporary uses and functions of popular protest song in the Palestinian national movement, addressing the larger discourse of resistance as well as the performative dynamics of transgressive political engagement.