Full Description
This volume brings together leading voices from the new wave of research on musical instruments to consider how we can connect the material aspects of instruments with their social function, approaches that have been otherwise too frequently separated in musical scholarship.
Shaping Sound and Society: The Cultural Study of Musical Instruments locates the instruments at the centre of cultural interactions. With contributions from ten scholars spanning a variety of methodologies and a wide range of both contemporary and historic music cultures, the volume is divided into three sections. Contributors discuss the relationships between makers, performers, and their local communities; the different meanings that instruments accrue as they travel over time and place; and the manner in which instruments throw new light on historic music cultures. Alongside the scholarly chapters, the volume also includes a selection of shorter interludes based on interviews with makers of comparatively new instruments, offering further insights into the process of musical instrument innovation.
An essential read for students and academics in the fields of music and ethnomusicology, this volume will also interest anyone looking to understand how the cultural interaction of musical instruments is deeply informed and influenced by social, technological, and cultural change.
Contents
Introduction: The Cultural Study of Musical Instruments - An Overview
Stephen Cottrell
Instrumental Interlude #1: The Skoog-Ben Schögler and David Skulina
Part I: Ecology, Production and Communities of Practice
1. The Social Production of a Mallorcan Bagpipe: Collaboration, Technology, Ecology and Internationalisation
Cassandre Balosso-Bardin
2. Feeling Analogue: Using Modular Synthesisers, Designing Synthesis Communities
Eliot Bates
3. Re-inventing the Herati Dutâr: Some Cultural and Social Repercussions
John Baily
4. Musical Instruments as Material Culture: A Case Study of the Cretan Lyra
Kevin Dawe
Instrumental Interlude #2: The Yaybahar-Görkem Şen
Instrumental Interlude #3: Eli Gras
Part II: The Circulation of Instruments
5. Charlie Parker, Massey Hall and Grafton 10265: Musical Instruments and the Telling of Tales
Stephen Cottrell
6. What's in a Name?: Carving an Indian Identity into the Slide-Guitar
André J.P. Elias
7. Playing for God: Brass Instruments of the Moravian Brethren in the Atlantic World
Stewart Carter
Instrumental Interlude #4: The Fluid Piano-Geoffrey Smith
Instrumental Interlude #5: The Pikasso Guitar-Linda Manzer
Part III: Reframing History Through Instruments
8. Arcadian Tones: The Rise, Fall, and Rebirth of the Austrian Maultrommel
Deirdre Morgan
9. Musical Instruments as Traded Commodities: The Makers' Perspective
Jenny Nex
10. Military Musical Instruments and the Culture of Perfection in the Long Nineteenth Century
Trevor Herbert
