![[PDF]](/pb-assets/Icons/adobe-pdf-icon-1498649896243.png){kind=icon}
Abstract
Musical settings that require consumers to construct their own musical instruments serve as potential sites of reconnection between musicians, the musical instruments they make, the natural resources that comprise those instruments, and the labor required to produce them. When musicians reconnect in these ways, they are able to understand and appreciate their musical instruments in new and meaningful ways. This can allow for heightened efforts in instrument care and maintenance; it can also allow for a greater sensitivity to environmental and ethical issues surrounding musical instruments. Data are drawn from a collegiate-level academic percussion musical setting where the musicians composed for and performed on the instruments they made themselves from mostly recycled materials. Group and individual semi-structured interviews and participant observation conducted over the course of summer and fall 2014 reveal the ways these reconnections are possible. This paper is in response to Matsunobu’s (2013) call to further establish instrument craft as an area within music education curricula.
Keywords Ecomusicology, instrument craft, percussion, reconnection, sustainability
References
Section:
|
Allen, A. (2012). “Fatto di fiemme”: Stradivari’s violins and the musical trees of the Paneveggio. In Auricchio, L., Cook, E., Pacini, G. (Eds.), Invaluable trees: Cultures of nature, 1660–1830 (pp. 301–315). Oxford: Voltaire Foundation. Google Scholar | |
|
Allen, A. (forthcoming). Sounding sustainable; or the challenge of sustainability. In Cooley, L. (Ed.), Cultural sustainabilities: Music, media, language, advocacy. Urbana-Champaign: University of Illinois Press. Google Scholar | |
|
Allen, A., Titon, J. T., Von Glahn, D. (2014). Sustainability and sound: Ecomusicology inside and outside the academy. Music and Politics, 8. Google Scholar | |
|
Bates, E. (2012). The social life of musical instruments. Ethnomusicology, 56, 363–395. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
Carmenates, O. (2009). Honduras rosewood: Its endangerment and subsequent impact on the percussion industry (Doctoral dissertation). Retrieved from Florida State University’s Digital Repository. Google Scholar | |
|
Carson, R., Lear, L., Wilson, E. (1962). Silent spring. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Google Scholar | |
|
Collin, R., Collin, R. (2010). Encyclopedia of sustainability. Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood Press. Google Scholar | |
|
Dawe, K. (2016). Materials matter: Towards a political ecology of musical instrument making. In Allen, A., Dawe, K. (Eds.), Current Directions in Ecomusicology: Music, Culture, Nature (pp. 109–121). New York, NY: Routledge. Google Scholar | |
|
Emerson, R., Fretz, R., Shaw, L. (2011). Writing ethnographic fieldnotes (2nd ed.). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
Friedman, T. (2006). The world is flat: The globalized world in the twenty-first century. London, UK: Penguin Books. Google Scholar | |
|
Hammersley, M., Atkinson, P. (2007). Ethnography: Principles in practice (3rd ed.). New York, NY: Routledge. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
Harvey, D. (2007). A brief history of neoliberalism. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar | |
|
Hildebrandt, C., Zan, B. (2002). Exploring the art and science of musical sounds. In DeVries, R., Edmiaston, R., Hildebrandt, C., Sales, C., Zan, B. (Eds.), Developing constructivist early childhood curriculum: Practical principles and activities (pp. 101–119). New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Google Scholar | |
|
Hopkin, B. (2009). Making musical instruments with kids: 67 easy projects for adults working with children. Tucson, AZ: See Sharp Press. Google Scholar | |
|
Kennedy, M. (2009). Earthsongs: Indigenous ways of teaching and learning. International Journal of Music Education, 27, 169–182. Google Scholar | SAGE Journals | ISI | |
|
Lassiter, L. (2005). The Chicago guide to collaborative ethnography. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
Matsunobu, K. (2013). Instrument-making as music-making: An ethnographic study of shakuhachi students’ learning experiences. International Journal of Music Education, 31, 190–201. Google Scholar | SAGE Journals | ISI | |
|
Miller, D. (1997). Capitalism: An ethnographic approach. Oxford, UK: Berg. Google Scholar | |
|
Miller, D. (2013). Stuff. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Google Scholar | |
|
Moran, E. F. (2006). People and nature: An introduction to human ecological relations. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Google Scholar | |
|
Muir, J. (1911). My first summer in the sierra. New York, NY: Dover Publications. Google Scholar | |
|
Renting, H., Schermer, M. (2012). Building food democracy: Exploring civic food networks and newly emerging forms of food citizenship. International Journal of Sociology of Agriculture and Food, 19, 289–307. Google Scholar | |
|
Robbins, P. (2004). Political ecology: A critical introduction. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Google Scholar | |
|
Ryan, R. (2015). “Didjeri-doos” and “didjeri-don’ts”: Confronting sustainability issues. Journal of Music Research Online, 6. Google Scholar | |
|
Rymer, R. (2004). Saving the music tree. Smithsonian Magazine, 35, 52–63. Google Scholar | |
|
Sage, C. (2011). Environment and food. New York, NY: Routledge. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
Smith, A. (2015). More than a marimba bar. UCLA Echo Blog. Retrieved from http://www.echo.ucla.edu/more-than-a-marimba-bar/. Google Scholar | |
|
Smith, A. (2016a). New musical contexts for more sustainably made marimbas. Percussive Notes Online Research Edition, 1, 32–42. Retrieved from http://www.pas.org/publications/percussive-notes-online-research-edition. Google Scholar | |
|
Smith, A. (2016b). Reconnecting the actors of the music-making experience: Supporting small-scale local craftsmanship in the ademic percussion community. Ecomusicology Review, 4. Retrieved from http://www.ecomusicology.info/reconnecting-the-music-making-experience-supporting-small-scale-local-craftsmanship-in-the-academic-percussion-community/. Google Scholar | |
|
Smith, A. (2017). Crafting new musical possibilities: A new educational area for academic music? Perspectives of New Music, 54, 219–233. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
Soltau, S. (2014). Reclaim and sustain: Homemade instruments in music education. Ecomusicology Newsletter, 1, 1–5. Google Scholar | |
|
Stringer, E. (2013). Action Research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Google Scholar | |
|
Titon, J. T., Cooley, T., Locke, D., McAllester, D., Rasmussen, A. K. (2008). Worlds of music: An introduction to the music of the world’s peoples (5th ed.). Belmont, CA: Cengage Learning. Google Scholar | |
|
Turner, J. (1995). Let’s make music!: An interactive musical trip around the world. Milwaukee, WI: Hal Leonard. Google Scholar | |
|
Upitis, R. (1990). This too is music. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Google Scholar | |
|
Watts, D., Ilbery, B., Maye, D. (2005). Making reconnections in agro-food geography: Alternative systems of food provision. Progress in Human Geography, 29, 22–40. Google Scholar | SAGE Journals | ISI |
