中国传统“中庸”思想在音乐发展中的作用

中国传统的"中庸"思想在当代音乐发展的走向中仍具有很好的启示作用。西方文化中的单极思维造成的对"音乐资源"的无限"开采",有可能给音乐的未来发展带来不良后果,使音乐的和声与曲式构架遭到彻底的破坏。中国传统文化中提倡"不偏不倚"的"中庸"思想能避免这两种极端,对音乐的未来发展或许有一些益处。     

Strawberry feel forever: understanding metaphor as sensorimotor dynamics

ABSTRACT

Metaphor is a useful way of explaining how to do things. The literature on metaphor in the learning of physical skill has generally explicated its efficacy by examining its actionable directives for motor enactment. And yet from the perspectives of phenomenological philosophy, ecological psychology, and enactivism, action is immanently intertwined with perception, so that models of metaphor-based learning should foreground the role of sensory activity modulating motor behavior. As such, metaphor is retheorized as a sensorial constraint one imaginarily projects into one’s action–perception phenomenological landscape. I present two metaphors from an instructional video on cello technique. Whereas these metaphors are couched in action language (what one should do), their potential impact, I argue, lies in emergent goal sensations (what one should feel). These explorative sensorimotor accommodations may, in turn, bring forth yet new scopes of latent sensations coupled to unanticipated performance possibilities, which suggest further modifying and calibrating enactment in the target domain. Attending to, achieving, and maintaining emergent intermediary goal sensations regulates instrumented action by forging new affordances that bring forth new motor coordination. As teacher and student co-imagine images for action, they should attend to sensory perceptions. And the same goes for scholars of metaphor.     

当代通俗音乐的社会文化内涵解读

当前的通俗音乐是新时期流行文化中最活跃的一种,是以高科技的大众传媒为依托,以人才、智力和创造力为主要特征,以都市大众为消费对象,按照市场规则批量生产,集中满足人们感性娱乐的文化形态,其文化内涵也大多是非主流的,造成了新的文化矛盾和冲突.在市场规则和经济效益占据主导地位的今天,如何历史地看待审美标准,平衡地对待通俗音乐带来的精神与物质导致新的人性冲突和裂变,却是值得我们思考的.     

Putting Her on the Shelf

This article analyzes discourse around pop stars Katy Perry and Nicki Minaj as fragrance spokeswomen. It mobilizes the term “post-feminist entrepreneurialism” to describe business strategies for female recording artists representing themselves as workers and capitalist subjects through the endorsement of mass-produced, hegemonically feminine consumer products that exploit individual brands to engender feelings of proximity and empowerment in consumers. Because such entrepreneurial efforts extend female pop stars' industrial viability, post-feminist entrepreneurialism is defined through a critical reclamation of “shelf life,” or the timespan that a commodity can be stored before it spoils. This concept is meaningful for female celebrities who embody the passage of time in complex ways and defend themselves against industrial and cultural perceptions of their own disposability. Post-feminist entrepreneurialism describes the contradiction between empowerment and the erasure of agency for such media professionals. Thus “shelf life” metaphorizes the affective registers embedded within the consumption of endorsed products and the demands placed on female pop stars to sell normatively feminine ancillary properties.     

A Social and Historical Perspective of the San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus

ABSTRACT

This study sought to understand the various roles music played for gay men who were members of the San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus, the world's first gay men's chorus. Specifically, it answers the following questions: What is the demographic profile of the chorus members? How has the chorus shaped or reflected social issues; how has the chorus shaped or reflected political issues; how has the music evolved over time?; How was the chorus impacted by the HIV/AIDS epidemic? Historical information for this study was gathered through eight interviews of original and long-time choral members as well as the current artistic director. Interviews were conducted in San Francisco at the San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus office, and additional data were derived from programs of previous choral concerts, two questionnaires (Internalized Homophobia Scale and Gay Chorus Questionnaire), and observations of choral rehearsals and concerts. As a follow-up to a previous study documenting the formation of the chorus in 1978–1982, this study historically documents the chorus's evolution from 1983 through 2003, emphasizing the chorus's impact on social and political issues, the musicality of the chorus, and the impact of HIV/AIDS on the chorus.     

Tales of transition: self-narrative and direct scribing in exploring care-leaving

Direct scribing is a technique that transforms oral discourse into written text, basically by typing oral material verbatim . It was developed in practice with youth in child welfare care and adapted for research data collection. The technique flattens the power imbalance in the interview situation and between oral speech and written text, supports self-reflection, democratizes the ownership of written material, is potentially empowering, and is an efficient means to produce high-quality text. The origins in practice are reviewed and a research application is discussed in detail. Thirty youths aged 18/19 from child welfare constructed self-narratives about how they conceptualized and managed the adolescent transition, and collaborated with the researcher in analysing the narrative as a story. Each interview was direct scribed and printed copy given to the participant. Participants were introduced to direct scribing by completing a questionnaire presented on a note-book computer, and some took part in a gender-specific group discussion as a final data-collection event, which was audio-taped and transcribed. The value of direct scribing and self-narrative in this research project and possibilities for other applications are discussed.     

Assembling the dance: reggae sound system practices in the United Kingdom and France

Reggae sound systems are assemblages of speakers, record decks, and amplifiers that permit sound to be reproduced at very powerful levels. Sound systems crews, alongside an extended affinity group, build their own systems and organize and engineer the space of the dance. Interviews with crews from the United Kingdom and France reveal differences in how they each draw from the history of Jamaican musical experimentation when making spaces to collectively immerse the crew and crowd in sound. Yet in both cases, their approach to sound design communicates a commitment to inclusivity, maintaining an emphasis on the “vibe,” which progressively alters participants’ somatic experience and perceptions. In contrast to “dancehall” in Jamaica, such sound systems disrupt understandings of a “standard” setup that reinforces hierarchical relationships between performers and audience. Crews also downplay the visual aspects of the “dance” and dancing and are consciously non-consumerist. Thus, different crews’ histories and associations alter how they enact, feel, and understand similar conventions.     

高职高专院校音乐教育探讨

阐述了高职高专院校加强音乐教育的紧迫性和必要性,探讨了高职高专音乐教育的内容、音乐教育存在的问题及音乐教育实践的途径和措施。     

The politics of the Digital Single Market: culture vs. competition vs. copyright

This paper examines the implications for European music culture of the European Union’s (EU) Digital Single Market strategy. It focuses on the regulatory framework being created for the management of copyright policy, and in particular the role played by collective management organisations (CMOs or collecting societies). One of the many new opportunities created by digitalisation has been the music streaming services. These depend on consumers being able to access music wherever they are, but such a system runs counter to the management of rights on a national basis and through collecting organisations which act as monopolies within their own territories. The result has been ‘geo-blocking’. The EU has attempted to resolve this problem in a variety of ways, most recently in a Directive designed to reform the CMOs. In this paper, we document these various efforts, showing them to be motivated by a deep-seated and persisting belief in the capacity of ‘competition’ to resolve problems that, we argue, actually lie elsewhere – in copyright policy itself. The result is that the EU’s intervention fails to address its core concern and threatens the diversity of European music culture by rewarding those who are already commercially successful.     

Bargaining for Success: Examining the Relationship Between Teacher Unions and Student Achievement

While many previous studies have identified a positive relationship between teachers unions and student achievement on standardized tests, little research to date has explored the channels through which unions might actually affect achievement. Utilizing multilevel random intercept models, we examine the effects of two categories of items commonly negotiated in teacher contracts—“industrial union” items and “professional union” items—on individual student math scores. Further, we assess the ability of these two clusters of variables to explain the positive union effect found in previous research. The results confirm that teachers unions are positively associated with student achievement and suggest that the industrial model explains moderately more of the union effect than the professional model; however, only the combination of both models is capable of reducing the union effect to nonsignificance. These findings are also confirmed in a supplemental analysis utilizing instrumental variables to account for the possibility of endogeneity. Finally, a decomposition of the union effect suggests that teachers unions are most beneficial to middle‐ and high‐achieving students. We conclude that through industrial and professional bargaining, teachers are able to secure higher salaries, credentialing, and greater autonomy which lead to improved student achievement.