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Jon Silpayamanant (โจนาทาน ศิลปยามานันท์) Profile picture
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8 Nov, 8 tweets, 3 min read
This thread outlines many of the reasons I see WPM (Western Pop Music) as the other side of the coin to WAM colonialism/white supremacism & why DEI initiatives that uncritically include WPM in the curricula are just reinforcing the same systemic structures we have in WAM studies.
Figure from Matthew Salganik and Duncan Watts' paper, “Leading the Herd Astray: An Experimental Study of Self-fulfilling Prophecies in an Artificial Cultural Market,” ( princeton.edu/~mjs3/salganik… ) Image
Re: the figure above:

"Now let’s see what happened when the download counts were flipped, so that the new participants thought the least popular song was actually the most popular."

1/3
"As you can see, the download count for the least popular song grew much more quickly when it was artificially placed at the top of the list. And the download count for the most popular song grew much more slowly when it was artificially placed at the bottom of the list."

2/3
"In the alternative world that began with the true rankings reversed, the least popular song did surprisingly well, and, in fact, held onto its artificially bestowed top ranking."

3/3
Quotes are from a Krueger piece, "Rock and Roll, Economics, and Rebuilding the Middle Class"

obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/blog/2013/06/1…
My blog five years ago discussing the Krueger piece, Salganik and Watts study, and the *Mere Exposure Effect* and how it relates to canon formation in WAM and WPM.

silpayamanant.wordpress.com/2015/01/03/on-…
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More from @Silpayamanant

Jon Silpayamanant (โจนาทาน ศิลปยามานันท์) Profile picture
9 Nov
I am so excited to see "The Wonderful Kingdom of Papa Alaev" as part of the National Library of Israel Film Festival in November! I've spent the past 11 years exploring and performing music of the Bukharan Jews, this is just really exciting!

docutext.nli.org.il/movies/hmmlkh-… Image
I've spent the past 11 years learning the about the repertoire of that region of the world and the pst 3 years have been arranging music for @EnsembleSulh to perform in collaboration with the Crescent Moon Dance Company--a project we call "Raqs Maqom."

It's been one of the most rewarding musical experiences of my life--and in some cases some of the msot difficult music I've ever had to perform. For example, this image is from a performance of "Doira Dars," a 5 minute tune I spent 6 weeks practicing every day to learn (by ear). Image
Read 14 tweets
Jon Silpayamanant (โจนาทาน ศิลปยามานันท์) Profile picture
8 Nov
When I read about Slave Orchestras I have that scene in "A Beautiful Mind" where Nash/Crowe, during his insight moment about Governing Dynamics, says to Hansen/Lucas "Incomplete. Incomplete."

If we can't own the FULL history of #ClassicalMusic, then it's systemically incomplete. Image
That <<logic of exclusion of colored bodies>> comes to play when thinking about the evolution #ClassicalMusic in these formerly colonized countries and how the composers, repertoire, & ensembles that emerged in them are distinctly absent from our whitewashed histories ...
... and how the contribution of scholarship from formerly colonized countries is also absent—the very scholarship that acknowledges the colonial histories and #ClassicalMusic’s Slave Orchestras/Choirs/Bands and hybridized performance practices.
Read 7 tweets
Jon Silpayamanant (โจนาทาน ศิลปยามานันท์) Profile picture
31 Oct
This paragraph in Dr. DjeDje's interview says so much, and am really looking forward to her book African American fiddling! The three or four paragraphs after this one (about half way through the interview) are dense with rich implications for the history of Black musicking! 1/ Image
"The result is that when blacks did not hear themselves playing the fiddle in the media, many turned to other instruments (i.e., guitar) & musical genres (blues & jazz instead of old time & country)."

Curious how she frames that in relation to Blues & the violin-amping issue! 2/
Of course that connection to history of string playing and rise of Islam in Western Africa and the connection of those two things and the Blues with our growing understanding that it's now estimated that up to a third of African slaves were Muslim. 3/

Read 6 tweets
Jon Silpayamanant (โจนาทาน ศิลปยามานันท์) Profile picture
16 Oct
THREAD: #OperaDiversity

Taking @GarrettMcQueen's comments (Quote Tweeted below) as a point of departure.

I may add to this from time to time, so this is going to be an open-ended thread. But first a few caveats.

1.0/ THREAD: #OperaDiversity

#Opera #ClassicalMusic #WAM
When I say "Opera Diversity" I'm talking about <<Diversity OF Opera>> not <<Diversity IN Opera>>. These are two very different ideas and I articulate that a bit in this piece:

silpayamanant.wordpress.com/2018/07/18/div…

2.0/ THREAD: #OperaDiversity Caveats

#Opera #ClassicalMusic #WAM
One of my other research projects is compiling a list of First Language Operas: a catalogue of the first time languages are used in the libretti of Operas historically. Many examples here will pull from that list.

2.1/ THREAD: #OperaDiversity Caveats

#Opera #ClassicalMusic #WAM
Read 13 tweets
Jon Silpayamanant (โจนาทาน ศิลปยามานันท์) Profile picture
14 Oct
An 1870 photo of the Slave Band of Antônio Luís de Almeida.

Figure 10, pg. 66 in Luiz Cleber Moreira Freire's 2007 dissertation, "NEM TANTO AO MAR NEM TANTO À TERRA:
Agropecuária, escravidão e riqueza em
Feira de Santana - 1850-1888"

repositorio.ufba.br/ri/handle/ri/1…

1/
Antônio Luís de Almeida was a Brazilian Coffee Baron in Bananal, São Paulo. The white guy at the top-center of the photo is German conductor, Wiltem Sholtz. Most slave orchestras and ensembles were directed by European conductors.

2/
In Brazil, slavery didn't end till 1888, so finding actual photographs of slave ensembles in existence shouldn't be surprising.

This group was often called "Banda do Tio Antoniquinho" and as many slave ensembles, would have to perform diverse functions.

3/
Read 15 tweets
Jon Silpayamanant (โจนาทาน ศิลปยามานันท์) Profile picture
13 Oct
Adventures in compiling bibliographies: Arabic #MusicTheory edition. PART III: Graeco-Arabic Translation Movement.

One of the pleasures of working on this bib is coming across other folks' work. For example, the Digital Corpus for Graeco-Arbic Studies!
graeco-arabic-studies.org
Western Music Theorists/Historians don't generally have a healthy understanding of the Islamic Golden Age and the translation movement that likely helped preserve a fair number of ancient Greek Music treatises which might not have otherwise survived.

historyofinformation.com/detail.php?ent…
The Greek works, obviously, haven't been the only ones preserved, translated, and commented on in Baghdad and Cordoba. My 1st two threads talked about the Syriac and Hebrew/Judaic overlap. Some translators were ethnically Persian so there's also overlap with Pahlavi works.
Read 10 tweets

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