Selected Areas for Special Study I: Music and Social Justice: The Aesthetics of Activism

In his Republic, Plato wrote that "the modes of music are never disturbed without unsettling of the most fundamental political and social conventions." Chinese neo-Confucian scholar Li Guangdi believed similarly that "for moving the moral climate and changing customs there is nothing better than music." More recently, poet and president of Senegal Léopold Sédar Senghor argued that "Black music is not a purely aesthetic manifestation, but brings its faithful into communion, more intimately, to the rhythm of the community which dances, of the World which dances." Today, many scholars posit a relationship between the sound, syntax, and style of music and social practices and structures. Contemporary critics might describe the collective improvisation of jazz as a sonic embodiment of US democracy or the intricately layered samples of hip-hop as the soundtrack of postindustrial urban experience. Yet there is little consensus about how music reflects and/or produces social life. Does musical change follow social and political change or is it the other way around? Can we separate "the music itself" from its social context, or are music and society so intimately connected that we cannot regard music as an autonomous art form? This seminar will address these and other questions through close reading of classic works and new research in ethno/musicology, cultural studies, and philosophy, and will culminate with research papers that allow participants to explore issues relevant to their own topics of interest.
Course Attributes: AS HUM; EN H

Selected Areas for Special Study I: Music and Social Justice: The Aesthetics of Activism

MUSIC 519

Section 01