Event Start:
Wednesday, February 22, 2017 - 7:01pm - 9:01pm
Location:
Book Culture 536 W 112th St New York, NY 10025
Please join us Wednesday, February 22nd at 7pm for a discussion
of the Punk Ethnography, edited
by Michael Veal and E. Tammy Kim. This
talk is co-sponsored by The Center for Ethnomusicology at
Columbia University and Book Culture. It is moderated by Alessandra Ciucci from the Department of Music at Columbia University.Panelists include: Michael Veal, E. Tammy Kim, Will Glasspiegel, Rachel Lears,
and Stanley Scott. .
A critical companion to the radical DIY record
label that challenges the conventions of ethnography, representation, and the
category of “world music.”
This ground-breaking case
study examines record production as ethnographic work. Since its founding in
2003, Seattle-based record label Sublime Frequencies has produced world music
recordings that have been received as radical, sometimes problematic critiques
of the practices of sound ethnography. Founded by punk rocker brothers Alan and
Richard Bishop, along with filmmaker Hisham Mayet, the label's releases
encompass collagist sound travelogues; individual artist compilations;
national, regional and genre surveys; and DVDs all designed in a distinctive
graphic style recalling the DIY aesthetic of punk and indie rock. Sublime
Frequencies producers position themselves as heirs to canonical ethnographic
labels such as Folkways, Nonesuch, and Musique du Monde, but their aesthetic
and philosophical roots in punk, indie rock, and experimental music effectively
distinguish their work from more conventional ethnographic norms. Situated at
the intersection of ethnomusicology, sound studies, cultural anthropology, and
popular music studies, the essays in this volume explore the issues surrounding
the label including appropriation and intellectual property while providing
critical commentary and charting the impact of the label through listener
interviews.
Alessandra
Ciucci is Assistant
Professor of Music (Ethnomusicology) at Columbia University. Her research
interests include the music of North Africa, particular Morocco, music and
gender, sung poetry, and music and migration. She is currently working on a
monograph on music and the Moroccan migration to Italy.
Michael E. Veal is a musician and professor of ethnomusicology at Yale University. He is the author of several books,
including Fela: The Life and Times of an African Musical
Icon and Dub: Soundscapes and Shattered
Songs in Jamaican Reggae.
E. Tammy Kim is a writer and member of The New Yorker's editorial staff. She previously worked
as a staff writer at Al Jazeera America and
as a social justice lawyer.
Wills Glasspiegel is
a multimedia journalist and artist with a background in music management. His
work has appeared on NPR, Fader, Vice, Dis Magazine and Afropop
Worldwide, As a manager, Glasspiegel facilitated the introduction of two
niche electronic music genres: Shangaan electro from South
Africa and bubu from Sierra Leone. He is currently a Ph.D
candidate at Yale in African-American Studies/American Studies where his work
is focused around footwork, a music and dance style from Chicago, Glasspiegel's
hometown.
Rachel Lears is
a filmmaker, writer, and musician based in Brooklyn, New York. Her first
documentary Birds of Passage (2010) explored the everyday
struggles of two Uruguayan songwriters. Her most recent documentary
project The Hand That Feeds follows an historic labor campaign
led by undocumented immigrant workers in New York City, and is supported by the
Sundance Documentary Program. She holds a Ph.D in Cultural Anthropology from
New York University, and her doctoral research on media and cultural policy in
Uruguay was supported by grants from Fulbright-Hays and the American Council of
Learned Societies/Mellon Foundation. Her ongoing video art collaborations with
artist Saya Woolfolk have screened in numerous galleries and museums worldwide.
Stanley Scott
teaches Indian music at Yale and Wesleyan Universities and directs the Rangila
School of Music, serving Connecticut's South Asian community. He received the
2011 Mumbai Music Award for "contribution to the cause of Indian music by
an overseas-resident personality," and the 2001 lifetime achievement award
from New York's Cultural Association of Bengal. His recordings
include The Weaver's Song: Bhajans of North India and a major
role in Anthony Braxton's opera Trillium E. He has performed as a featured
artist at Kolkatta's Rabindra Sadhan, Mumbai's NCPA and Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan,
Delhi University, and New York's Chhandayan Institute.
The Columbia Ethnomusicology community is delighted to congratulate Columbia Ethnomusicology PhD alumna 
Ethnomusicology PhD candidate Emily Clark has been awarded two fellowships, including a Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Fellowship(DDRF) and a GSAS Mellon Humanities International Travel Fellowship from the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Columbia. Her recently-defended dissertation proposal is entitled “Iron Gongs and Singing Birds: Paths of Migration and Acoustic Assemblages of Alterity in the Former Dutch Colonial Empire.” The fellowships will fund 14 months of field and archival research in Suriname and the Netherlands, focusing on the music- and self-making practices of ethnically Javanese diasporic populations defended dissertation proposal is entitled “Iron Gongs and Singing Birds: Paths of Migration and Acoustic Assemblages of Alterity in the Former Dutch Colonial Empire.”
