Once and for all...

After extensive research, I have determined unequivocally that the clapping in "Sometimes" is on the offbeat!

I've now watched every video of Bessie Jones on YouTube, and there is ALWAYS clapping, ALWAYS on the offbeat. "Sometimes" just doesn't have the foot-stomping to tell us where the 1 and 3 are. We have to internalize it. Check out the videos:

But here's the meat:

Historically, music from the African-American tradition (spirituals, gospel, blues) and its descendants (rock and roll, hip hop) accent the offbeat. It might be harder to make distinctions between "black music" and "white music" today, but in Bessie Jones's time, this would not be the case. Simply, those with experiential basis in the African-American tradition would feel the offbeat, and those with experiential basis in the Euro-American tradition would feel the opposite. Today, nearly all music is syncretic. Maybe I feel "Sometimes" the way I do because I listened to nothing but ska and reggae from fourth to tenth grade (very strong accent on the offbeat), and maybe Dr. Amico listened to a lot of Russian opera. Who knows. But anyway, watch the following video clip. Look at the way the children clap. The white children immediately start clapping on the beat, and the African-American girl claps on the offbeat. Eventually, Bessie starts clapping on the offbeat, and all the children correct themselves (to the best of their abilities). This is not a racist observation. In those highly segregated times, less cultural syncretism would lead to differences in the races' treatment of music. In the most politically correct terms I can think of, Dr. Amico and Moby are just too white to hear the clapping on the offbeat!

I hope I've made my point without being too offensive or confrontational. It's all in the spirit of debate!

Berio - Sinfonia

This is the piece I mentioned in class as a prime example of temporal/rhythmic dissonance. There is harmonic dissonance also, to be sure, but I think the real key to this piece is the fact that each of the individual excerpts is played with the same tempo and style as one would hear in a performance of just that piece. An example of 20th Century musical "scrapbooking," if you will.

When I listen to this piece, it reminds me of a "time travel" effect seen in movies, where excerpts of memories float by the main character. Perhaps this is the effect that Berio was going for; after all, the quotations span from a Bach chorale to graffiti on Parisian walls with everything from Wozzeck to James Joyce in between. The YouTube clip attached seems to be trying to do just that... so, apologies for the 80s-tastic "cinematography."

This is the third movement, "In ruhig fliessender bewegung" from Sinfonia (1968). This title comes from Mahler's Resurrection Symphony -- the only quotation that spans the entire movement. The instrumental quotations Berio uses are listed below (thank you, Wikipedia):

• Schoenberg's Five Pieces for Orchestra, fourth movement (violent opening scale played by the brass)
• A brief quotation of Mahler's Symphony No. 4 (Mahler) just before.....
• Mahler's Resurrection Symphony, third movement (the only quotation that is ongoing)
• Ravel's Daphnis et Chloé, flute solo from the Pantomime
• Berlioz's idée fixe from the Symphonie Fantastique (played by the clarinets)
• Ravel's La Valse (orchestra plays octave motif with piccolo playing a chromatic scale)
• Stravinsky's Le Sacre du Printemps (the "Dance of the Earth" sequence at the end of the first tableux)
• Stravinsky's Agon (upper oboe part from the "Double pas de quatre")
• Richard Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier (one of the waltzes composed for the opera)
• a chorale by Johann Sebastian Bach
• Alban Berg's Wozzeck (the drowning scene late in the third act)
• Beethoven's Pastorale Symphony, second movement (melody stated with the clarinets)
• (Schoenberg segment quoted again)
• Debussy's La Mer, second movement "Jeux de vagues"
• Boulez's Pli Selon Pli, very first chord of the entire piece from the first movement ("Don")
• Karlheinz Stockhausen's Gruppen for three orchestras (during the introductions of the vocalists near the end)

Enjoy!

Functionalism and the Body

This site gives a good overview ofthe way the body is invoked in cultural theory - specifically, functionalism (which Stockmann uses as one of her bases for the discussion of music and work):

http://www.as.ua.edu/ant/Faculty/murphy/function.htm

Messy bodies, indeed

I came across this post, Bewitching "Sexual Color" Photography, from Twitter.  (It includes a bunch of large images, so click to the article to see them.)  I couldn't help thinking of the "Corporeographies" article we read when I saw these images.  It seems that the aim of the photography series is to intentionally emphasize a connection between sexuality and, well, messy fluids.  Most of them look like paints in the images shown, though, so there's an artificial element here - whereas it seemed more like Longhurst was referring to fluids naturally produced by the body.

I also noted that most (all?) of the subjects are females, and this plays directly into Longhurst's point about the associative imagery of females as the soft, fluid, not-rigid, (etc.) bodies.  In contrast, though, I don't think this photography is depicting such characterization as a negative one.  Instead the association is supposed to enhance the sexuality, or more specifically the sexual attractiveness, of the subjects.

Ride - Samuel R. Hazo

With all the examples of interesting rhythms that we discussed and to which we listened in class today, I could not help but think of this symphonic band composition which I played in high school.  Honestly I am so captivated by listening to the song that I have trouble putting my head into analytical mode to try to determine the meter; the best I can remember from high school is that I think it's 7/8 sometimes but interspersed with measures or sections in other meters.  (I struggled to find any kind of image of just a single page of the score or one instrument's part to this song, but I neither had a scanned page on my computer nor could find anything online.)  To me it all fits together seamlessly, though, and I think therein the piece accomplishes the ultimate goal.  Even if, as a listener, you don't always know how to count along with what you're hearing, the beats and ebb and flow are powerful enough that you can move to it rather easily and intrinsically.  To wax poetic for a second: you just have to remove your mind from the pathway and let the music go straight to your body.  (In other words, don't think.)

For background on the inspiration behind this song, see Sam Hazo's story about it.  I love that it has both a totally physical experience as well as an overarching symbolic meaning attached to it.

Vitruvian Woman

One part of Longhurst's 'Corporeographies' that really struck a chord with me was the discussion of "genderizing" the rational as masculine and the "Other" as feminine. That is, the idea that contained, orderly and complete form is masculine, whereas femininity connotes messiness, passion and incompleteness.

I thought immediately of da Vinci's Vitruvian man and the structure of the anatomy and containment of the body within the boundaries drawn. In art, men of most desired form are almost always depicted in an almost rigid way -- chiseled features, deliberate stance -- while women have always been presented with more organic forms and undefined boundaries.

Positive and negative connotations aside, this difference in male and female physique can be seen in many forms of dance. Men tend to rely more on the rhythm, power and straight lines while women draw on fluidity and curvature with moves that don't necessarily illustrate the beat of the song.

Rhythm

If anyone has any observations regarding any of the listening assignments, please feel free to add them as "comments" to this post.