1st Edition
Shaping Sound and Society The Cultural Study of Musical Instruments
This volume brings together leading voices from the new wave of research on musical instruments to consider how we can connect the material aspects of instruments with their social function, approaches that have been otherwise too frequently separated in musical scholarship.
Shaping Sound and Society: The Cultural Study of Musical Instruments locates the instruments at the centre of cultural interactions. With contributions from ten scholars spanning a variety of methodologies and a wide range of both contemporary and historic music cultures, the volume is divided into three sections. Contributors discuss the relationships between makers, performers, and their local communities; the different meanings that instruments accrue as they travel over time and place; and the manner in which instruments throw new light on historic music cultures. Alongside the scholarly chapters, the volume also includes a selection of shorter interludes based on interviews with makers of comparatively new instruments, offering further insights into the process of musical instrument innovation.
An essential read for students and academics in the fields of music and ethnomusicology, this volume will also interest anyone looking to understand how the cultural interaction of musical instruments is deeply informed and influenced by social, technological, and cultural change.
Introduction: The Cultural Study of Musical Instruments – An Overview
Stephen Cottrell
Instrumental Interlude #1: The Skoog
Ben Schögler and David Skulina
Part I: Ecology, Production, and Communities of Practice
1. The Social Production of a Mallorcan Bagpipe: Collaboration, Technology, Ecology, and Internationalization
Cassandre Balosso-Bardin
2. Feeling Analogue: Using Modular Synthesisers, Designing Synthesis Communities
Eliot Bates
3. Re-inventing the Herati Dutâr: Some Cultural and Social Repercussions
John Baily
4. Musical Instruments as Material Culture: A Case Study of the Cretan Lyra
Kevin Dawe
Instrumental Interlude #2: The Yaybahar
Görkem Şen
Instrumental Interlude #3: Recycled Instruments
Eli Gras
Part II: The Circulation of Instruments
5. Charlie Parker, Massey Hall, and Grafton 10265: Musical Instruments and the Telling of Tales
Stephen Cottrell
6. What’s in a Name?: Carving an Indian Identity into the Slide-Guitar
André J.P. Elias
7. Playing for God: Brass Instruments of the Moravian Brethren in the Atlantic World
Stewart Carter
Instrumental Interlude #4: The Fluid Piano
Geoffrey Smith
Instrumental Interlude #5: The Pikasso Guitar
Linda Manzer
Part III: Reframing History Through Instruments
8. Arcadian Tones: The Rise, Fall, and Rebirth of the Austrian Maultrommel
Deirdre Morgan
9. Musical Instruments as Traded Commodities: The Makers’ Perspective
Jenny Nex
10. Military Musical Instruments and the Culture of Perfection in the Long 19th Century
Trevor Herbert
Biography
Stephen Cottrell is Professor of Music at City, University of London. His previous books include Professional Music-Making in London, The Saxophone, Defining the Discographic Self: Desert Island Discs in Context (co-edited with Julie Brown and Nicholas Cook), and Music, Dance, Anthropology.
