FOLK 259 401 Caribbean Music & Diaspora

T. Rommen
Lecture: Tuesday, Thursday 1:30-3:00
Contact: trommen@sas.upenn.edu

Cross-listed with LTAM258, MUSC258

This survey course considers Caribbean music’s within a broad and historical framework. Caribbean musical practices are explored by illustrating the many ways that aesthetics, ritual, communication, religion, and social structure are embodied in and contested through performance. These initial inquiries open onto an investigation of a range of theoretical concepts that become particularly pertinent in Caribbean contexts --concepts such as post-colonialism, migration, ethnicity, hybridity, syncretism, and globalization. Each of these concepts, moreover, will be explored with a view toward understanding its connections to the central analytical paradigm of the course -- diaspora. Throughout the course, we will listen to many different styles and repertories of music, ranging from calypso to junkanoo, from rumba to merengue, and from dancehall to zouk. We will then work to understand them not only in relation to the readings that frame our discussions but also in relations to our own North-American contexts of music consumption and production.

 
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