MUS 322-01 - Advanced Studies in Music: Race & Musical Taste

4 credits (Spring)

Taste is a judgment, of what is beautiful, what is ugly, what is disgusting. Expressions of taste can thus be personal, meaningful, and political. Musical taste also reveals how people classify themselves and others. In this class, we ask how the judgments that define musical taste are shaped by ideas of race and the ongoing social construction of race and racism. In turn, we ask how these judgments of taste shape the communities in which they are made. With a foundation in aesthetic philosophy and its critical alternatives, we explore how seemingly benign preferences for certain styles, genres, composers, or performers over others may contribute to processes of social classification and identity construction. Beginning with the antecedents to Rousseau and the Enlightenment, we cover everything from Cavalli and the portrayal of the exotic in Mozart’s operas, to hillbilly music and early blues, Zimbabwean Chimurenga, Beyonce, the Rolling Stones, punk, Györgi Ligeti, and the Aka of Central Africa. Race and musical beauty each meant something quite different before the Enlightenment than they do now. Ensuing centuries defined by colonial expansion, imperialism, and slavery redrew the world’s map, categorized people in unexpected ways, and redefined how identity is understood. Like all aesthetic practices, music participated in these historical processes and was influenced by them. When Europeans confronted the world, how did music’s engagement with the other, with the exotic, and the “Orient” inform people’s attitudes about themselves and others? How has the relationship between race and matters of musical taste shifted in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries? We connect these historical threads to contemporary confrontations during the Civil Rights era, decolonization efforts in Africa and the Caribbean, legacies of cultural appropriation, and address the here and now as multiple movements informed by race (Black Lives Matter, the alt-right) become culturally, musically, and politically resonant. Students will explore the intersections between race and musical taste through classroom discussion, debate, presentations, and research projects.

Prerequisite: MUS 112 and MUS 261 or MUS 262.
Instructor: Perman