Probably the single reason I've never felt any more comfortable playing in/with bands than in classical. It's all just "CosPlaying" the dominant culture(s) for me.

digitalcommons.pace.edu/honorscollege_…
It's the Perpetual Foreigner trope at play in music--going back to George Lewis and his "afrological/eurological" analysis--these are the two primary categories that defines "USianological" (American) music. Thus palcing everything else as other and as Perpetually Foreign Musics.
Not even worthy of inclusion in the old canon, much less in the DEI initiatives for revising the canon even if these forms of musicking have been in the US for centuries. This reinforces the White Canon/White Supremacy/Western Colonialism as determinants of what's "American."
7 Years ago I had similar thoughts about the American Voices" festival at the Kennedy Center--reframing it now in Lewis' analysis--leaving out all the genres of pop music not originating from the "Eurological/Afrological" = "American" Equation.

silpayamanant.wordpress.com/2013/12/13/ame…
And discussed the long history of Anglicizing names of non-White and non-Black artists as part of the whole process of erasure of color in popular music.

silpayamanant.wordpress.com/2013/12/18/ame…
Which can also mask the nuances and intersections with other axes (e.g. religion) such as the possible connections with a Islamological mode of musicking that may have influenced Black music given an estimated up to 30% of slaves were African Muslims.

Which is just another symptom of the Perpetual Foreigner trope along the axis of religion/religious practice and also demonstrates the colonial logic of what religions, outside Christianity, get general acceptance--usually by widespread appropriation by whites.
This also plays out in language--there are still, and have always been, many places in the US where English isn't spoken as a primary language and in some cases at all by any appreciable proportion of the population.
Which makes it difficult for us to comprehend the growing understanding of Arabic writings by African Slaves as part of US literary history since the Arabic Language and Islam are part of that *Perpetually Foreign* trope in white, Christian America.

niu.edu/arabic-slave-w… Image
So I think it's so fantastic that Rhiannon Giddens and Michael Abels have written the opera, Omar, based on Omar Ibn Said's Autobiography written while he was a slave in the US.

We can only hope the musics outside the "Afrological/Eurological" divide can get some time in the curricula, funding in performance, recognition as a part of American[USian] music scene. To that end, here are some books that might be useful that I've read over the past few years.
Nancy Rao's "Chinatown Opera Theater in North America" charting the 170 year history of Chinese Opera in the US and Canada. I've mentioned elsewhere, Chinese Traditional Orchestras are the most ubiquitous large ensembles outside of Eurological groups.

press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/…
Richard March's "The Tamburitza Tradition: From the Balkans to the American Midwest" which discusses Croatian American's plectrum orchestras/soloists that are uniquely tied to an intracongregational network worldwide that have evolved since the mid 1800s.

uwpress.wisc.edu/books/5043.htm
Evan Rapport's "Greeted with Smiles: Bukharian Jewish Music and Musicians in New York." In the past ten years, I've played in Klezmer & Sephardic music groups, but I've also learned/performed this rep by Mizrahi Jews. An entirely different musical world.

global.oup.com/academic/produ…
Not a book, but a series of articles about Arab American ensembles and orchestras by Sami Asmar. The pieces in the series aren't linked in this article but a search for "America's Other Orchestras" will bring up all 14 pieces.

arabamerica.com/americas-orche…
I haven't read all these yet, but the Refiguring American Music series has a number of books featuring some aspect of BIPOC American's musical cultures.

dukeupress.edu/books/browse/b…
So essentially, what I was saying ab classical music's exclusion logic in this thread about the Perpetual Foreigner Trope and Colonialism is replicated at the microlevel when DEI initiatives define American Popular Music(s) from an exclusionary viewpoint.

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More from @Silpayamanant

Jan 13, 2023
Apparently there were organs on planes.

"An organ was installed on a Northwest Stratocruiser in the 1950s through an arrangement with local musician Swanee Swanson. The organists received free flights to New York and other East Coast destinations."

content.govdelivery.com/accounts/MNORG…
Image
Page 43 of "Northwest Airlines: The First Eighty Years"

arcadiapublishing.com/Products/97807…
Image
"Anne Kerr (center) explained the location of the organ installed on one of the Stratocruisers to Dave and Wendy McCarthy."

Page 5 of "REFLECTIONS: The Newsletter of the NWA History Centre"
northwestairlineshistory.org/wp-content/upl…
Image
Read 32 tweets
Aug 5, 2022
Welsh Harp tablature from the *Robert ap Huw manuscript* (1613). The manuscript is the oldest extant source of primarily Late Medieval eisteddfod repertory that dates to 1340-1500 and was compiled by Robert ap Huw (c.1580-1665).

pbm.com/~lindahl/ap_hu…
Short segment on the *Robert ap Huw manuscript* in Rhodri McDonagh's wonderful "Welsh Trad Music | A Beginner's Guide" video (cued up to that segment below). The whole vid is worth a watch and is only 24 minutes.

Bangor University's "Music of the Robert ap Huw Manuscript" page with other resources for Cerdd Dant and other British Isles harp traditions.

bangor.ac.uk/music-and-medi…
Read 4 tweets
Aug 3, 2022
One of the things I love about Georgian Harmony is that it's based on what's essentially close to a functionally 7TET/EDO collection of pitches. Many global harmonic systems are built on different tuning systems than those in what's typically referred to as Western harmony.
The above image from Malkhaz Erkvanidze's "On Georgian Scale System" pg. 181

citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/downlo…
See also:
"Tonal Organization of the Erkomaishvili Dataset: Pitches, Scales, Melodies and Harmonies"

publishup.uni-potsdam.de/frontdoor/inde…
Read 7 tweets
Aug 3, 2022
Just looking the bi/polymusical course offerings at Thai Universities (sample below) in a Dissertation from 1998.

"Undergraduate Piano Pedagogy Course Offerings in Thai Universities" Chindarat Charoenwongse. University of Oklahoma.
shareok.org/handle/11244/5… Image
Bi/polymusical education ecosystems are far more common outside of Europe and North America.

H/T to @FergusonGuitar for this.

"Bi-musicality in modern Japanese culture"
Alison Tokita
doi.org/10.1177%2F1367…
Read 10 tweets
Aug 2, 2022
Latest update to the <Solo Keyboard Repertoire - Southeast Asian Composers> resource. Added about another 50 or so pieces by (primarily) Vietnamese/Vietnamese diasporan composers.

I'm barely scratching the surface of solo keyboard rep here, folks.
doi.org/10.6084/m9.fig…
I think it's easy to underestimate the size and diversity of SE Asia (hence why I added a new second paragraph to the doc). For example, Indonesia alone has a population of nearly 275 million: the 4th most populous country in the World. About 231 million Indonesians are Muslim. Image
And just hearing all those different composers that've created wonderfully expressive uses of the piano for native tunes, or how they've incorporated that into their compositional style or, in some cases, incorporated the piano into SEA folk and art musics, is just so refreshing!
Read 4 tweets
May 12, 2022
Finally getting a chance to read this and the intro piece "American Music and Racial Fantasy, Past and Present" is so excellent & lays out the backdrop for what I call the <Perpetually Foreign Music> idea & how Raceface Minstrelsy shapes current Anglo/American popular musics.
This, especially: "Dismantling the Black-white binary requires us to locate our discussion of music and race in the period prior to 1900" (pg. 573) though I'd argue we should extend this into discussion of race/music today & how the Black-white binaries create other...
...exclusions. Especially as this carries over into music education & how this "In every part of the globe that was touched by minstrelsy, fantasies served to advance white male status" plays into ehtno-nationalist views of what counts as "American Music."
Read 12 tweets

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