Music

This seminar explores Turkish/Ottoman classical music, Anatolian folk music, Arabesk, Anatolian pop/rock, Turkish pop, jazz, and Sufi (Mevlevi) music, Kurdish music, Alevi music, Armenian music, and Western classical music from Turkey. The course focuses on ethnic identities and class hierarchies reflected in these genres, the issues of orientalism and occidentalism, and the influence of globalization on the music of Turkey while expanding our knowledge of the repertoire.

Lectures in this course survey and discuss important performing artists, composers along with significant readings and recordings. Weekly topics include regional overviews addressing geographic, cultural, religious, and linguistic issues, alongside a broad general historical and political exploration.

This course examines Black (Afro-diasporic) music and its impact on society in America and Europe. It reveals how Black Music functions as a form of cultural politics, a philosophy, and a way of building identity and community. It shows how Afro-diasporic musical production has been a central force in political movements and social transformations from interwar anti-colonial activism to Civil Rights campaigns, which has continued in the recent #BlackLivesMatter movement. This course engages with genres of music such as blues and spirituals, jazz, gospel, afro-futurist pop, and hip-hop. This course situates these genres in their historical context, listens to and performs them, and shows how the music – both individual pieces and whole genres - makes political and philosophical claims. This treatment of music serves as a form of critical thinking and engagement with scholarly traditions that give primacy to textual work. The course combines readings, historical case studies and biography, and music listening and making. It therefore enacts and models radically interdisciplinary approaches that connect text-based and embodied learning.

During this course, students take a critical look at the music industry - particularly those companies that are based in London, such as Sony, Universal, and Kobalt - and explore the impact new technologies have had on the way music is produced and consumed. Central to this exploration is the question of how music is valued in the 21st century. Students survey two classic conceptions of value: the value of commodities by Marx (and later Marxians), and ideas about gift and gift exchange established by Marcel Mauss.