ENG315: Writing About Music
Week One
R 8.19: Introduction
Week Two: WRITING
T 8.24: Writing About Music (U of Calgary Site)
“Writing About Music" Jonathan Bellman
"What To Listen for in Music" Aaron Copland
R 8.26: "Testing.... Testing" Greg Milner
“Coming to Terms with Writing About Music” (Dusted Magazine)
Dartmouth’s Guide to Music Writing
Secondary Materials: Music and Politics Journal
Wikipedia Entry on "Music and Politics"
Response 1: Browse the Music and Politics site and describe the some of the essay topics that interested you and why. Be specific and cite where necessary. How do they write about musical texts? Do they use a particular vocabulary? What about the Wikipedia entry?
Week Three: MUSIC
T 8.31: "Origins and Collective Functions" and "The Significance of Music" Anthony Storr
"What is Music?: From Pitch to Timbre" Daniel Levitin
R 9.2: "Message Understood: Musical Texts" Roy Shuker
Secondary Materials: "Towards an Aesthetic of Popular Music" Simon Frith
Introductory Music Theory Lessons
Songs:
Response 2: Pick a popular song more than 50 years old and, after researching the composer, performer, producer, and label, spend some time describing its instrumentation, tone, lyrics, and genre. Has the song changed with time (has it been covered)? Does its original context survive in the song, if not the culture itself? Be specific and don't just quote Wikipedia.
Week Four: POLITICS
T 9.7: "Ideology" and "Politics" from Key Terms in Popular Music and Culture
R 9.9: "Politics" from Popular Music in Theory
"Gender" from Key Terms in Popular Music and Culture
Secondary Materials: "Revolution: Social Change, Conscience Rock and Identities" Roy Shuker
Wikipedia Entry on "Protest Song"
F: First Essay Du
Week Five: BLUES
T 9.14: "What is Blues?" Elijah Wald
"Popular Culture as Folk Culture" John Storey
R 9.16: "Nobody's Dirty Business: Folk, Blues, and the Segregation of Southern Music" David Barker
"Race" from Key Terms
Secondary Materials: "All That is Native and Fine: American Folk Song and Its Collectors" Richard Crawford
Southernmusic.net History
Songs: Carter Family, Bill Monroe, Lead Belly, Skip James, Robert Johnson, Jimmie Rodgers, Hank Williams
Response 3: Research one particularly interesting contextual element of early 2oth century American music in the south (for example, the phenomenon of race records).
Week Six: COUNTRY
T 9.21: "Take Me Back to the Sweet Sunny South" Bill Malone
R 9.23: "Blue Shadows on the Trail: Space and Place in the Imagined West" Peter Doyle
Secondary Materials: Roughstock History of Country Music Site
Songs: Les Wilson, Sons of the Pioneers
Response 4: Summarize Doyle's argument and cite two occasions where you feel it is made most clear--remeber to use actual and complete quotes from the essay. NB: Since this is a summary, you will want to avoid your own commentary.
Week Seven
T 9.28: Peer Review
R 9.30: In-Class Writing Assignment
F 10.1: Second Essay Due
Week Eight
T 10.5: No class
R 10.7: "Death Fugue: Music in Hitler's Germany" Alex Ross
Secondary Materials: Music from the Third Reich
"Stravinsky's Music in Hitler's Germany" Joan Evans
Week Nine: JAZZ
T 10. 12: "A Tamed Richness: Jazz as Myth" Peter Townsend
R 10.14: "The Significance of the Jazz Controversy in Twenties America" and "Prudes and Primitives: White Americans Debate Jazz" Kathy J. Ogren
Secondary Materials: Jazzstandards.net: Introduction, Early Period, Jazz in the 20s
Response 5: Put together a bibliography featuring 6 critical texts about jazz and 6 "important" albums--no need to fully annotate, but keep notes for each entry.
Week Ten: ROCK
T 10.19: "Ancestors" Greil Marcus
"Amateurs and Executants" Elijah Wald
R 10.21: "Great Balls of Fire: Rock n' Roll and Sexuality" Glenn Altschuler
"Pushin' too Hard: Moral Panics" Roy Shuker
Secondary Materials: "Progressive Rock and Psychedelic Coding in the Work of Jimi Hendrix" Sheila Whiteley
"Tear down the walls: Jefferson Airplane, race, and revolutionary rhetoric in 1960s Rock" Patrick Burke
Response 6 : genre response, subgenre research
Week Eleven: ROCK II
T 10.26: "Apocalypse USA" and "Green Day's American Idiot" David Janssen
R 10.28: Peer Editing-Draft Due
F: Argument Essay Due
Secondary Materials:
"Out of Control: Music of Liberation and the Liberation of Music" Mat Callahan
"The Function of Subculture" Dick Hebdige
Week Twelve: POPULAR MUSIC
T 11.2: Strange Fruit: The Biography of a Song David Margolick
"Strange Fruit" Ken Burns' Jazz (TealVision Link)
"Strange Fruit" Billie Holiday Performance
"Lady of the Day" Farah Jasmine Griffin
R 11.4: "Afro-American Music, without Apology": The Motown Sound and the Politics of Black Culture" Suzanne E. Smith
Secondary Materials:
"The (re)marketing of disability in pop: Ian Curtis and Joy Division" Mitzi Waltz and Martin James
Songs: Billie Holiday, Motown
Response 7:
Week Thirteen: HIP HOP
T 11.9: "Contextualizing Rap" Gail Hilson Woldu
"Hip Hop's Mama" Imani Perry
R 11.11: "Fear of a Muslim Planet: Hip Hop's Hidden History" Naeem Mohaier
Secondary Materials: Wikipedia Entry on "Hip Hop"
"Hip Hop and Politics" Tanji Gilliam
Songs:
Week Fourteen: DANCE MUSIC
T 11.17: "Love to Love You Baby: Disco and the Mechanization of Music" Barker
R 11.18: "Turbulence" from Love Saves the Day Tim Lawrence
"Techno" from Last Night a DJ Saved My Life Brewster and Broughton
Secondary Materials: "Music, Meaning, and Pleasure: from Plato to Disco" Jeremy Gilbert
Songs: Giorgio Moroder, Kraftwerk, Detroit Techno, Dub,
Response 8: Final Essay Thesis and Bibliography
Week Fifteen
T 11.23: Research Essay Peer Editing
R 11.25: No Class, Thanksgiving
Week Sixteen
T: Last Class