Cities as Cultural Ecosystems: Researching and Understanding Music Sustainability in Urban Settings (original) (raw)
Related papers
2014
Larger than any other creative industry, music is an intangible cultural asset whose sustainability is included in the United Nation's fourth pillar of sustainability. Music contributes to both cultural heritage and also cultural sustainability. Despite this, not enough is known about the characteristics and dynamics of work and career for musicians or the relationships between these activities and cultural life. While there is some recent research describing the use of music for cultural heritage and sustainability in contemporary indigenous contexts, little of this describes the importance of music for culture in urbanized communities. Writing from the perspective of Australia, we contend that the idea of 'creolization'-the development of a new culture from a combination of traditional ones-is a useful concept for broadening understanding of music for cultural heritage and sustainability. More practically, we argue that exploring musical artifacts and performance pract...
The music workforce, cultural heritage and sustainability
Larger than any other creative industry, music is an intangible cultural asset whose sustainability is included in the United Nation’s fourth pillar of sustainability. Music contributes to both cultural heritage and also cultural sustainability. Despite this, not enough is known about the characteristics and dynamics of work and career for musicians or the relationships between these activities and cultural life. While there is some recent research describing the use of music for cultural heritage and sustainability in contemporary Indigenous contexts, little of this describes the importance of music for culture in urbanized communities. Writing from the perspective of Australia, in this paper we contend that the idea of ‘creolization’ – the development of a new culture from a combination of traditional ones – is a useful concept for broadening understanding of music for cultural heritage and sustainability. More practically, we argue that exploring musical artifacts and performance practices from different cultures and times can contribute to our understanding of cultural heritage and highlight cultural sustainability as an essential professional disposition.
Music and Sustainability: An Ecological Viewpoint (2009)
The World of Music, 2009
Attempts to preserve music as cultural heritage put applied ethnomusicologists and public folklorists in a defensive posture of safeguarding property assets. By supporting the conservation of those assets with tourist commerce, heritage management is doomed to the paradox of constructing staged authenticities with music treated as a market commodity. Instead, best practices arise from partnerships among ethnomusicologists, folklorists and music culture insiders (community leaders, scholars, and musicians), with sustainability interventions aimed directly inside music cultures. These efforts should be guided by principles drawn from ecology, not economy; and specifically by four principles from the new conservation ecology-diversity, limits to growth, interconnectedness, and stewardship. First published in The World of Music in 2009, in a special issue on Music and Sustainability, it was reprinted in my book Toward a Sound Ecology: New and Selected Essays (Indiana University Press, 2020).
Sustainable Futures for Music Cultures
Sustainable Futures for Music Cultures, 2016
In Sustainable Futures for Music Cultures, 14 specialists contribute to a tightly woven book illustrating diverse musical practices from around the world using a theoretical framework regarding the preservation of endangered traditions. The volume is the result of a five-year research project (2009-14) in Australia that linked scholars from England, Japan, New Zealand, Sweden and the United States. The concepts and concerns stem from international work beginning in the early twenty-first century as formulated in various UNESCO conventions and initiatives regarding intangible cultural heritage. The project has resulted in other publications and an associated website, which will continue the applied ethnomusicology demonstrated so well in the three theoretical chapters and nine case studies of this book. Other research using the same framework will likely follow, both from these authors and others providing comparable examples.
Oxford Bibliographies Online, 2013
The sustainability of music is an emerging – or rather, re-emerging – theme in ethnomusicological research. Early studies in that discipline centered on documenting musical traditions feared doomed to extinction, an approach scholars now refer to as salvage ethnomusicology. Spurred by UNESCO’s 2003 Convention on the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage and other national and international calls-to-arms, researchers and activists are increasingly re-engaging with the complex challenges of maintaining and revitalizing threatened music genres, particularly those of indigenous and minority peoples. Current approaches are more pragmatic than earlier ones. They typically acknowledge the natural emergence, change and decay of musical traditions as well as the many local and global processes that act upon all music genres, from technological developments and environmental shifts to rural-to-urban migration and economic and political pressures. Defining music sustainability as the ability of a music genre to endure, without implications of either a static tradition or a preservationist bearing, this article maps out a selection of scholarly publications, policy instruments, projects and initiatives, reports and online resources that relate to this topic.
Sustainable futures for music cultures: An ecological perspective
Oxford University Press, 2016
The sustainability of music and other intangible expressions of culture has been high on the agenda of scholars, governments and NGOs in recent years. However, there is a striking lack of systematic research into what exactly affects sustainability across music cultures. By analyzing case studies of nine highly diverse music cultures against a single framework that identifies key factors in music sustainability, the edited volume Sustainable Futures for Music Cultures offers an understanding of both challenges and the dynamics of music sustainability in the contemporary global environment, as well as breathing new life into the realm of comparative musicology, now from an emphatically non-Eurocentric perspective. Situated within the expanding field of applied ethnomusicology, this edited volume confirms some commonly held beliefs, challenges others, and reveals sometimes surprising insights into the dynamics of music cultures by examining, comparing and contrasting highly diverse co...
Music preservation as heritage diplomacy
The preservation of music is a complex concept that has to be approached from two directions. On the one hand, it concerns the sound, whether in its recorded form (sound recordings in different formats) or written form (manuscripts and prints), as well as sound producing objects. On the other hand, it concerns music as a cultural system and tradition. The question is whether focusing exclusively on the sound and neglecting objects tangentially related to music making (architectural works, archaeological sites, monumental sculpture and paintings showing music making) we are losing from the sight some important information. It is easy to forget that musical instruments, which could inform us about their function in ancient thanksgiving offerings or in ritual performance, are buried in archaeological sites. Could we stay indifferent to the deterioration of Venice, and its performance spaces where so many important pieces of Western art music have been created? Should we be concerned how is the destruction of Syria’s mosques, churches, and other shrines affecting loos of information about past music practices and influencing changes of music traditions? Certainly international music societies are not institutions that should be involved as primary initiators of the preservation of such sites, but they should have a broader interest in current needs, initiatives, actions, goals and achievements mediated by the national and international networks involved with the cultural preservation and contribute to them needed music expertise. The societies could delegate the execution of this task to their specific study groups and the joint commissions.
Sustainable Futures for Music Cultures: An Ecological Perspective, 2016
This chapter draws together the key themes, findings, and implications of the volume 'Sustainable Futures for Music Cultures: An Ecological Approach', making cross-connections across the music cultures and across the five key domains of the book. It then reflects on the dynamics of sustainability and the scope for interventions, leading to a framework to approach ecosystems of music. The chapter concludes by giving concrete recommendations for facilitating web-based and hands-on practical and equitable strategies for working with communities to assist them in strengthening the music practices they want to sustain on their own terms
Ethnomusicology Forum, 2022
Both comparative assessment of the concept of intangible cultural heritage (ICH) and developments in musical sustainability, to ensure the viability of grassroots musical practices, have been important concerns among applied ethnomusicologists over the last decade. This paper identifies some of the challenges in the dialogue between these two approaches from an implementation perspective via the case study of the nomination process of the Feast of the Virgin of Candelaria of Puno, Perú to the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. The article analyses the incentives for state officers, music practitioners, and other stakeholders in ICH projects to assess their compatibility with musical sustainability frameworks. I argue that the main challenge in aligning these two approaches resides in the conflicting incentive structures both approaches feature. This paper advances current research on musical sustainability, ICH, and applied ethnomusicology by introducing conceptual developments for the analysis of institutional frameworks, partisan agendas, and decision-making processes.
Introduction (Musical Performance and the Changing City 2013)
When the Wall came down, the size of the city doubled overnight. There was a lot more space, and much of it was unregulated. There was a joy and excitement in the population that energized the music, and the music became so central to Berlin. It coalesced with the advent of an explicitly electronic music, a new music, a new culture of the present and future.