HU Credits: 2

Degree/Cycle: 2nd degree (Master)

Responsible Department: Musicology

Semester: 1st Semester

Teaching Languages: Hebrew

Campus: Mt. Scopus

Course/Module Coordinator: Nili.Belkind@mail.huji.ac.il

Coordinator Email: nili.belkind@mail.huji.ac.il

Coordinator Office Hours: Tuesdays 16:30-17:30 or by appointment.

Teaching Staff:
Dr. nili bellkind

Course/Module description:
Africa and its diasporas have gifted popular music(s) with numerous genres that are exhilarating, danceable, express existential pain, and are oftentimes socially, politically and racially charged. In this course we examine the musical legacies of colonialism in Africa and of the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the African diasporas that were formed in the Americas. The goal of the course is not to survey all the relevant musical heritages, but to examine a number of case studies that demonstrate what can be learned about the relationship between musical production and colonialism (as well as post-colonialsim); nationalism and cosmopolitanism in Africa; the legacies of the transatlantic slave trade; Afro-diasporic formations in the new world, and the social, ideological and cultural musical dialogues occurring between Africa and its diasporas and in inter-diasporic contexts. The course combines theoretical reading materials that elaborate on terms such as post-coloniality, cosmopolitanism, the Black Atlantic, negritude and creolité with musical ethnographies and listening to relevant musical examples.

Course/Module aims:
1. To learn how “Africa” is musically constructed, created, and resounds in the continent and in the diasporas.
2. To become acquainted with relevant genres, musics, artists, and performances.
3. To understand and be able to apply relevant terms taken from social theory (for example diaspora; Black Atlantic) or popular discourses (noírisme, creolité)
4. To learn how to analyze specific case studies from Africa and its diasporas— for example a song—as the product of historical, social, political and racialized contexts.
5. To become acquainted with ethnographic writing on relevant topics and music genres.

Learning outcomes - On successful completion of this module, students should be able to:
1. Identify and describe, using appropriate terminology, several African and Afro-diasporic musical genres.
2. Describe the relationship between post-coloniality in Africa and musical production.
3. Describe the pan-African affinities created in different Afro-diasporic contexts and how such affinities have been expressed in music.
4. Understand relevant key terms and be able to apply them to specific musical examples.

Attendance requirements(%):
100%. If you must miss a class due to an emergency you are to communicate with the instructor ASAP.

Teaching arrangement and method of instruction: - An interdisciplinary approach including theoretical, ethnographic and performative sources
- (Short) weekly student responses to homework, including readings and listenings
- Each student responsible to present a class topic, incorporate student responses to homework, and manage class discussion at least once during the semester, with instructor support.
- Instructor feedback to short research proposal and personal research project

Course/Module Content:
- Music as a colonial tool in Africa
- Between colonialism and post-colonialism: music, nationalism, and cosmopolitanism in Zimbabwe
- Music, colonialism, Apartheid South Africa
- Constructions of “Africanness” in a South African studio at a time of transition from Apartheid to democracy
- The Black Atlantic, the middle passage, and musical resonances
- Music and (Cuban) transculturation: before and after the communist revolution
- Music and the Negritude movement in Haiti, the first Black republic
- Musical hybridity – creolite: the zouk genre of Martinique as case study
- Pan Africanness (ideology, aesthetics) and Afro-American jazz
- From the diaspora back to Africa: musical dialogues between Cuba and the Senegambia region (Senegal, Mali) and also Congo (if we have time) in Africa

Required Reading:
Pay attention: The list is not final and there may be changes between the required readings and the additional reading material.

Veal, Michael. (N.D) “Musical Exchange Across the Black Atlantic.” In: Timeline of African American Music Website. NY: Carnegie Hall. https://timeline.carnegiehall.org/stories/musical-exchange-across-the-black-atlantic.

Agawu, Kofi. (2016) “Tonality as a Colonizing Force in Africa.” In Audible Empire: Music, Global Politics, Critique, edited by Ronald Radano and Tejumola Olaniyan. Durham, NC:
Duke University Press. Pp. 334-351

Agawu, Kofi. 1995. “The invention of African Rhythm.” Journal of the American Musicological Society 48 #3. Pp. 380-395.

Turino, Thomas (2000). Nationalists, Cosmopolitans and Popular Music in Zimbabwe. Chicago: Chicago University Press. selections

Coplan, David B. (2008). “Popular Music in South Africa” In The Garland Handbook of African Music, Ruth Stone, ed. Pp. 406-428.

Muller, Carol. (2004). “Chapter One.” In South African Music: A Century of Traditions in Transformation, Santa Barbara, CA: California.

Meintjes Louise. (2003). Sound of Africa! Making Music Zulu in a South Africa Studio. Durham: Duke University Press. Selections.

Thompson, Katrina Dyonne. (2014). “Casting.” In Ring South Wheel About: The Racial Politics of Music and Dance in North American Slavery. Illinois: University of Illinois Press. Selections.

Gilroy, Paul. (1993). The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. Harvard University Press. Selections.

Fernando Ortiz (1941/ 1995), Cuban Counterpoint: Tobacco and Sugar. Durham and London: Duke University Press. Selections

Benítez Rojo, Antonio. (1996). The Repeating Island: The Caribbean and the Postmodern Perspective. Durham and London: Dule University Press. Selections.

Moore, Robin. (2006). Music and Revolution: Cultural Change in Socialist Cuba. Berkeley, CA. University of California Press. Selections.

Bachir, Diagne Souleymane. (2023). “Négritude.” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2023 Edition), Edward N. Zalta & Uri Nodelman (eds.). https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2023/entries/negritude/>.

McAlister, Elizabeth. (2002). Rara! Vodou, Power and Performance in Haiti and its Diaspora. Berkeley: University of California Press. Selections

Dirksen, Rebecca. After the Dance the Drums are Heavy: Carnival, Politics, ad Musical Engagement in Haiti. New York: Oxford University Press.

Barnabé, Jean, Patrick Chamoiseau, Rafaël Confiant, Mohamed B. Taleb Khyar. “In Praise of Creoleness.” Callaloo 13 (4): 886-909

Guilbault, Jacqueline. “Creolité and the New Cultural Politics of Difference in Popular Music of the French West Indies.” Black Music Research Journal 14(2): 161-178

Monson, Ingrid. (2000). The African Diaspora: A Musical Perspective. London and New York: Routledge. Selections: “Art Blakey’s African Diaspora”

Shain, Richard M. (2018). Roots in Reverse: Senegalese Afro-Cuban Music and Tropical Cosmopolitanism. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press. Selections.

Whitmore, Aleysia. (2020). World Music and the Black Atlantic: Producing and Consuming Afro-Cuban Musics on World Music Stages. New York: Oxford University Press. Selections.

Additional Reading Material:
Agawu, Kofi. (2003). “Chapter 1 – Colonialism’s Impact.” In Representing African Music: Post-colonial Notes, Queries, Positions. London and New York: Routledge. Pp. 1-22

Matory, Lorand J. (1999). “Afro-Atlantic Culture: On the Live Dialogue Between Africa and the Americas.” In Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience. Appiah, Kwame Anthony and Henry Louis Gates, eds. London: Basic Civitas Books. PP. 36-44

Madrid, Alejandro and Robin D. Moore. (2013). Danzón: Circum-Caribbean Dialogues in Music and Dance. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Selections

Ongiri, Amy Abugo. (2009). Spectacular Blackness: The Cultural Politics of the Black Power Movement and the Search for a Black Aesthetic. Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press. Selections.

Munro, Martin and Celia Britton, eds. (2012). American Creoles: The Francophone Caribbean and the American South. Liverpool, UK: Liverpool University Press. Selections [check out music section!!!]

Feld, Steven. (2012). Jazz Cosmopolitanism in Accra: Five Musical Years in Ghana. Durham: Duke University Press. Selections.

Fernandes, Sujatha. (2003). “Fear of a Black Nation: Local Rappers, Transnational Crossings, and State Power in Contemporary Cuba.” Anthropological Quarterly 76(4):575-608.

Hall, Stuart. (1990/2021) “Cultural Identity and Diaspora.” In Selected Writings on Race and Difference. Paul Gilroy and Ruth Wilson, eds. Durham: Duke University Press.

Henriques, Julian. (2011). Sonic Bodies: Reggae Sound Systems, Performance Techniques, and Ways of Knowing. London and New York: Continuum. Selections

Putnam, Lara. (2013). “The Weekly Regge: Cosmopolitan Music and Race-Conscious Moves in a “World a Jazz”.” In Radical Moves: Caribbean Migrants and the Politics of Race in the Jazz Age. University of North Carolina Press. Pp. 152-195

Moore, Robin. (2002). “Salsa and Socialism: Dance Music in Cuba, 1959-99.” In Situating Salsa: Global Markets and Local Meanings in Latin American Popular Music. Lise Waxer, ed. NY and London: Routledge. Chapter 3: Pp. 51-74

Weston, Andy. (2010). African Rhythms: The Autobiography of Randy Weston. Composed by Randy Weston, Arranged by Willard Jenkins. Durham: Duke University Press. Selections

Niaah, Sonjah Stanley. (2010). Dancehall: From Slave Ship to Ghetto. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press. Selections

Hall, Stuart. (2015). “Creolité and the Process of Creolization.” In Creolizing Europe: Legacies and Transformations. Encarnacion Gutiérrez Rodríguez & Shirley Anne Tate, eds. Pp. 12-25.

Jaji, Tsitsi. (2014). Africa in Stereo: Modernism, Music, and Pan-African Solidarity. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Selections.

John Storm Roberts. 1998. Black Music of Two Worlds: African, Caribbean, Latin and African-American Traditions. Schirmer 2nd edition.

Reebee Garofalo. 2002. Crossing Over – From Black Rhythm and Blues to White Rock ‘n’ Roll The Political Economy of Black Music. NY: Akashit Books

Ballantine Christopher. 2012. Marabi Nights: Jazz, ‘Race’ and Society in Early Apartheid South Africa. University of KwaZulu Natal Press.

Klein, Debra. 2007. Yoruba Bata Goes Global: Artists, Culture Brokers, and Fans. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Olatunji, B. 2005. The Beat of My Drum: an Autobiography. Philadelphia: Temple UP.

Nutall, Sarah. (2007.) Beautiful/Ugly: African and Diaspora Aesthetics. Durham: Duke UP.

Sublette, Ned. (2004). Cuba and its Music, From the first Drums to the Mambo. Chicago: Chicago Review Press.

Robert Moore & Walter Aaron Clark. (2012.) Musics of Latin America. Norton and Co.

Deborah Pacini Hernandez. (2010). Oye Como Va! Hybridity and Identity in Latino Popular Music. Philadephia, PN: Temple University Press.

Perna, Vincenzo. (2005). Timba: The Sound of the Cuban Crisis. London and New York: Routledge.

Glasser, Ruth. (1997). My Music is My Flag: Puerto Rican Musicians and Their New York Communities, 1917-1940. University of California Press.

Flores, Juan. (2000). From Bomba to Hip Hop: Puerto Rican Culture and Latino Identity. NY: Columbia University Press.

Washburne, Christopher (2008). Sounding Salsa: Performing Latin Music in New York. Philadephia: Temple University Press.

Guilbault, Jocelyne. (1993). Zouk: World Music in the West Indies. University of Chicago Press.

Lipsitz, George. (1994). Dangerous Crossroads: Popular Music, Postmodernism, and the Poetics of Place. London and New York: Verso.

Averill, Gage. (1997). A Day for the Hunter, A Day for the Prey: Popular Music and Power in Haiti. Chicago: Chicago University Press.

Largey, Michael. Vodou Nation: Haitian Art Music and Cultural Nationalism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

On Pan-Africanism:
https://www.studysmarter.co.uk/explanations/politics/political-ideology/pan-africanism/

Grading Scheme :
Essay / Project / Final Assignment / Referat 50 %
Presentation / Poster Presentation / Lecture/ Seminar / Pro-seminar / Research proposal 25 %
Attendance / Participation in Field Excursion 25 %

Additional information:
Attendance includes preparing homework and writings short responses to it on a weekly basis; presenting a topic and leading discussion during one class of the semester, and active participation.