Module description
This module examines selected musical cultures of a particular world region, guided by the following queries: What role might musical practices have in consolidating, maintaining, revising, or questioning regional identifications? How can in-depth study of particular music cultures lead us to a greater appreciation of the diversity found within broader areas? How is music embedded in and intertwined with the complex sociocultural practices, norms, and histories that we tend to associate with specific world regions, such as those pertaining to religious institutions and practices, economic development, national sentiment, racial mixture, or gender roles, for example? What instruments and stylistic characteristics have come to be identified with the region's music? Finally, are there any developments challenge the notion of a stable cultural-geographic region as a framework for understanding musical practices?
Assessment details
4000 word essay (100%)
Educational aims & objectives
This module allows for changing emphasis from year to year within the general framework of world culture regions. It takes advantage of the diverse research interests of our existing academic staff, who have contrasting yet complementary specializations. Students will gain in-depth knowledge about selected music cultures associated with a given region (e.g., the Middle East, South Asia, Latin America) through reading, listening, and critical discussion in seminars. Students will learn about the various histories, traditions, and practices that help define a given region, while connecting these to musical practice. Given the framework, there is a comparative dimension to the module. However, students will develop focused research projects that may or may not be explicitly comparative. Thus, another educational aim is to gain an appreciation of the diversity that can flourish within broad regional political and cultural geographies. General educational aims include improving critical reading, writing, and debating, as well as honing research skills.
Learning outcomes
By the end of the module students will have developed intellectual and practical skills appropriate to a level 7 module and in particular will have gained:
- an understanding of the historical, institutional, cultural, and social forces that have shaped the particular world region under consideration
- an ability to relate musical practices to the above, and to compare different practices within the region
- an ability to consider differing perspectives on what constitutes the region, and to articulate critiques of those perspectives
- an ability to understand 'region' as a flexible concept that may not necessarily be permanently tied to a specific geography (e.g., how transnational emigre communities relate to regional identities)
- an ability to design and undertake independent resarch into a particular musical context or phenomenon pertaining to the regional focus
- a capacity to recognise and describe to others what characterizes the major genres of music covered in the module
- a capacity to formulate original questions about specific music cultures.
- increased ability to determine relevant primary and secondary sources, and to digest and summarize the latter
- greater facility with presenting research findings in public (in this case to classroom peers)
- increased ability to compare the music cultures and theoretical issues studied in the module with ones learned about in other modules, or from personal experience