Roundtable discussions
Music Cultures and Corporate Cultures. Changes in Music Broadcasting in Finland, 1963–2005
Roundtable 1a
Vesa Kurkela (Chair), University of Tampere, Sibelius Academy
Pentti Kemppainen, Sibelius Academy
Kaarina Kilpiö, University of Helsinki
Timo Syrjälä, Arts Council of Finland
Heikki Uimonen, University of Tampere
The radio broadcasting in Finland has undergone a radical change in the past twenty years. Until 1985, radio broadcasting was the monopoly of YLE, the Finnish Broadcasting Company. Today there are nearly one hundred radio stations. The reason for this change was the deregulation of broadcasting, which represented a major shift in the state communications policy. Little by little music has become the dominant form of radio programming in Finland: the average Finn spends more than two hours daily listening to the music on the radio.
The aim of the panel is to discuss changes in radio music in relation to two major cultural trends: the commoditisation of music and the growth of the electronic media. Since the 1960s, the popular music in Finland has increasingly been dominated by rock music, which has its roots in American popular music. However, the older forms of European popular music or the “schlager” still survive here in the form of “iskelmä”, Finnish popular music. The theoretical orientation of the panel is the ethnomusicology of industrial societies.
Finnish and English language books concerning the subject will be published in the panel. However, the presentations and the discussion will focus not only on the themes such as past music policies in Finnish radios and music selection intertwined with corporate cultures but also to future policymaking. The panel seeks to raise discussion on the following questions: How will music radio face the new challenges of music dissemination? Will the transformed media environment change the commercial radio license policies as well?
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Change and Stability. Music Culture in Southern Ostrobothnia
Roundtable 1b
David Hebert (Chair), Sibelius Academy
Piia Kleemola-Välimäki, Sibelius Academy
Saijaleena Rantanen, Sibelius Academy
Tuuli Talvitie-Kella, University of Tampere
The main purpose of the panel is to discuss about the music culture in Southern Ostrobothnia from three different perspectives and three different time periods.
In 1809 Samuel Rinta-Nickola from Ilmajoki collected a music sheet book, which is considered as one of the most important music collections in Finland. The tunes of the book vary from archaic polskas to the music of the gentry. The roots of the tunes go to back to the 17th century. In the panel Piia Kleemola-Välimäki demonstrates how the polskas from that time adjust and change in the hands of the musician in our age.
Organization culture had a big influence on music and music practice in Southern Ostrobothnia in the years 1882–1905. The purpose of Saijaleena Rantanen’s presentation is to evaluate the role of music in the communal life and movements of the 19th century in the area of Southern Ostrobothnia. Central elements in the musical culture of the period are brass bands and choirs, a large number of which were founded in Finnish cities and countryside from the late 19th century (1870–1880). In her presentation Rantanen will focus especially on years 1870–1888 when the first brass bands and choirs started their action. She will choose few examples of these music groups and clarify how they were built and how their action affected on themselves and their societies.
Tuuli Talvitie-Kella’s presentation deals with the change and stability of the dance music culture in Southern Ostrobothnia in the beginning of 20th century. ‘Hääpelimanni’ was the most respected name a musician could have in the 19th century, but in the 20th century they had to give space to the dance music bands. What where the elements of the change? How did the elements of the stability appear? The data of Talvitie-Kella’s research consists of the life stories and music gathered from musicians born in years 1880–1930. The research methods have varied from biographical method to bimusical action research. In this presentation she describes the concrete elements (dance music bands, radios, 5-row accordions, glissandos) that built up the change in the regional culture and music.
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How Cultural Studies Help in Designing New Kind of Music Experiences
Roundtable 2a
Heikki Uimonen (Chair), University of Tampere
Lassi Liikkanen, Helsinki Institute for Information Technology
Vilma Lehtinen, Helsinki Institute for Information Technology
Suvi Silfverberg, Helsinki Institute for Information Technology
Pirkka Åman, Helsinki Institute for Information Technology
The past ten years have brought terror and turmoil to music industry. The rapid dissemination of broadband Internet access and new forms of social networking, peer-2-peer applications in particular, have compromised the proprietary business models that characterized the 20th century recording industry. At the same time, the digital technology for music production has matured and currently music enthusiasts have the technical capacities for producing independent, professional-quality recordings and distributing them world wide. This gives them possibility to act simultaneously as users and producers.
In just few years, we have seen an uprising of numerous legitimate Internet services providing consumers access to massive music libraries for a nominal fee. Presently, we are facing a situation in which most technical limits restricting a revolution in music production and distribution have been banished. What is preventing further advances in bringing better music experiences through technology is just developers’ imagination. For instance, the accessibility of digital music, discovery of new music, and completely new approaches to music consumption are missing out.
In the proposed symposium, we present a forum for presenting views on how cultural studies may help in the construction of new musical experiences. We are looking for new kinds of studies in empirical musicology, ethnography and anthropology for insights on what implicit needs people seem to have, which music-related practices are poorly supported by present technology and what are the evident issues in current technology. The goal of the symposium is to collect multiple perspectives into how cultural studies could inform and provide implications for design – be it the design of new means for musical expression, interfaces for consuming music or creating music through virtual performances.
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The Folk Doctors at the Sibelius Academy - Artistic Research as a Process Towards Innovation and New Territories in Contemporary Finnish Folk Music
Roundtable 3a
Hannu Saha (Chair), Sibelius Academy
Kristiina Ilmonen, Sibelius Academy
Anna-Kaisa Liedes, Sibelius Academy
Timo Väänänen, Sibelius Academy
At the Sibelius Academy Folk Music Department, doctoral studies have been practised since 1990s, and the first Doctor of Music from the Art Study Programme graduated in 2000. Since then, there have been several graduates and the programme is becoming increasingly popular. The concept of artistic research at the Department allows room for different approaches and is seeking new practises, to bring out the best from the artistic research process of the doctoral students.
For the Department and for Finnish folk music in general, the development of a doctoral programme that enables the artists themselves to be the researchers has been a success story in many ways. The professional contemporary folk music of Finland has gained international acknowledgement and a Master´s degree for folk music performance has been available at the Sibelius Academy since 1983. The concept of a creative musician-researcher has been central to the Department´s philosophy from the start, and hence it has now been possible to further develop a meaningful, structural process for even more elaborate and intensive practise-based research.
The artistic process of each student is individual and the musician-researchers are encouraged to find their own voice. The Department has emphasized the importance of the process itself - you should not be all too sure where you will arrive, when starting out your journey. The results of these processes would not have been possible to achieve through conventional, scientific research of the arts. Doing the art rather than observing it enables a different kind of viewpoint, and besides offering new information, artistic research creates new experiences - sound, movement, emotion, intimacy. It has also produced results such as musical instruments, educational material and visual art.
This panel will present the approach to arts research at the Folk Music Department and demonstrate actual case studies. M.Mus, multi-instrumentalist Kristiina Ilmonen will present her doctoral work in progress, “The Sound of the Shepherd - Music from Old and New Pastures” focusing on folk flutes, performance and improvisation as well as merging tradition with contemporary expression, ancient with avant garde.
D.Mus, kantele artist Timo Väänänen will present his work “Image Making in Väinämöinen and Kantele in Finnish Culture”, including a new concept for the written work of an Artistic Doctoral Degree. He composed and performed the music of his concerts using the modern electrical kantele, and through the whole cross-disciplinary process including dance, theatre and visual arts he studied and revealed the symbolism and the hidden myths of the Finnish national instrument.
D.Mus Anna-Kaisa Liedes will present her work “Journeys into the World of Voice”. As a singer and musician, she has experimented with various forms of expression in music making. “I have shouted, cried, hollered, puffed, sighed, panted, laughed, burped and sung. I have tried to find a musical expression of grief, passion, happiness, lightness, sentimentality, peace, amusement, beauty, melody, archaic words and theatrics. The result has been the creation of various sound compositions and improvisations, based on poems and melodies, the investigation of overtones, tone colour and resonance, as well as the manifestation of various emotional states.”
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Individual abstracts
Lari Aaltonen
University of Tampere
Mediating Music Interculturally Through (Controversial) Humour. Uncle Paintbrush and the Geese of Nile
Session 1b
In my presentation I will analyse the reception of the 2009 YouTube hit “Uncle Paintbrush” in Finland. As my primary source material I will use YouTube videos and their comments, other Internet discussion and newspaper articles.
Uncle Paintbrush (Pensseli-setä) and the song ”Geese of Nile” (Niilin hanhet) became the YouTube hit of the year 2009 in Finland. In the video, Syrian musician Mihemmed sings a Syrian popular song, but the video has subtitles in Finnish. Using some kind of phonetic transliteration, the singer seems to be singing absurdities in Finnish. The video ”Geese of Nile” had over 1,7 million views at YouTube at the end of November 2009.
In the public discussion, themes of racism, cultural tolerance and attitudes towards ”world” music and orientalism were immediately raised. What can this popular Internet meme tell about the sense of humour of the Finns and our perception of music and lyrics of the ”other”? Is the video racist and claim increases to our negative prejudices, or does it help us to understand the ”other” and teach us to listen various music styles?
By analyzing this Internet phenomenon, my presentation will take us deep into our attitudes towards the “other” and tell something about Finland and the Finns in our time.
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Stephen Amico
University of Pennsylvania, USA
A “Queer” Silence: Ethnomusicology, Masculinity, and Homophobia
Session 3a
From the discipline’s inception, ethnomusicologists have made notable strides not only in broadening the conceptual apparatuses used in the study of music, but also in redressing the silencing of a significant amount of the world’s musics by Western scholarship, throughout a large portion of the twentieth century. Such strides notwithstanding, however, the field continues to be marked by an almost inexplicable yet deafening silence of its own, a palpable absence existing in an inverse proportion to a presence (marked by rich array of critical engagements) in other humanities and social science disciplines, including Musicology. In short, the subject of homosexuality – linked to, though distinct from “gender” – has failed to be engaged as a legitimate area of inquiry within the field. In this paper I offer some hypotheses to explain the various dynamics (social, structural, logistical, disciplinary) which have contributed to the continued discounting of homosexuality (and the concomitant de facto assumption of a universal heterosexuality) within Ethnomusicology, focusing in part on constructions of masculinity in relationship to fieldwork. I will also examine how the elision of the variable of non-heterosexual identity has implications for the scholarly literature, the classroom and, by extension, the activities and foci of young ethnomusicologists, and the future of the discipline. Finally, I will discuss the ways in which the ethnomusicological engagement of homosexuality may serve as a fruitful inroad to investigating both the products and processes of expressive culture in a world no longer necessarily divided or defined by geography or socio-political affiliation.
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Johannes Brusila
Åbo Akademi University, The Society of Swedish Literature in Finland
Finland-Swedish Rap as Mediation of Minority Marginalities
Session 3a
There are about 300,000 Swedish-speaking Finns (less than 6 % of the population) and, although Finland formally is bilingual, the Swedish-speaking population is usually conceptualized as a minority. The self-identification of this “Finland-Swedish minority” is usually constructed through a positioning of the self in relation to three major others, that is: Finnish, Swedish (from the country of Sweden) and international culture (in popular music often concretized in English lyrics). However, an individual musician’s self can be positioned in many different ways. Thus, for example musicians active within different fields can view questions of self and other, or mainstream and marginality, differently.
In my paper I shall focus on a marginal musical genre of a small minority, namely rap produced by Swedish-speaking Finns. By doing this I wish to discuss the risks of approaching identity as a singular fixed position, constructed in relation to a separate other. I argue that we need to liberate ourselves from many of the preconceived ideas of minority identity in order not to reconstruct the identity construction that we intended to deconstruct. While mainly existing outside commercial mainstream markets, Finland-Swedish rap is created using small-scale “post-fordist” production systems and the possibilities offered by new technology. Thus, it is an example of how marginal musical and ethnic identities can be negotiated and musical meanings mediated in a way that questions many of the stereotypical assumptions that form a basis for the general construction of “Finland-Swedishness”.
The paper originates in a larger project called “Finland-Swedishness constructed through music”, which is funded by The Society of Swedish Literature in Finland.
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Jennifer Daniel
University of Leeds, Opera North, UK
Mediating Family Opera: Swanhunter, (The Kalevala), Audience and Expectation.
Session 1a
In its recent commissioning of Jonathan Dove’s Swanhunter under the title of ‘family opera’, Leeds based company Opera North has set out what Jeffrey Kallberg terms a ‘contract of generic expectation’. Opera North has labelled this product with clear reference to its intended audience, and with this label is carried the association of how the work might be perceived by all audience members. Based on the Finnish folk tale, the Kalevala, the story of a mother singing her son back to life is self-referential (and thus potentially self-promoting) in operatic terms. Swanhunter is advertised as ‘an in ideal introduction to opera’, with a quote from the composer ‘What could be better than a story celebrating the magical and healing power of human song?’
This paper refers to methodological approaches to the study of the birth of this work, including ethnographical studies of composer, librettist, performers and young audience members as well as literary, musicological and performance analysis. My aim is to elucidate the processes of Opera North in the of matching intention (through commissioning and creation) via production, educational work and other communication between company and audience, to outcome, in terms of audience experience, reception and feedback.
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Pekka Gronow
University of Helsinki
Music Without Musicians. Rudolf Arnheim and Radio Music in the 1930s
Session 3b
Radio broadcasting started in Europe in 1922 with the founding of the BBC. By the end of the 1920s, all European countries had their broadcasting companies, and a large part of the population had become regular listeners.
Initially, all broadcasts were live. Tape did not yet exist and gramophone records were seldom used. All big broadcasters had regular studio orchestras and invited other performers to their studios. They also transmitted music from public concerts. In the 1930s, the proportion of music and speech in most countries was about 50 – 50, and radio quickly become an important source of music for many people. The regular use of gramophone records in broadcasting began in the mid-1930s, but in most countries, live music remained an important part of programming until the advent of television.
There have been few studies on the history of radio music, and today researchers seem to assume that it has always consisted of records. Rudolf Arnheim was one of the first theoreticians to consider the nature of radio music. Arnheim had been a psychologist and theatre critic in Berlin. In 1932 he published a pioneering study on the art of film. After he was forced to leave the country in 1933, his book “Rundfunk als Hörkunst” (“Radio”) was first published in England in1936, and the original German text appeared in print much later.
The focus of the book is on radio drama, but Arnheim also discusses the nature of radio music. Radio is based on the art of hearing, the visual components of drama and music are absent, but radio listeners apparently had no difficulty in accepting the idea of “music without musicians” streaming out of their loudspeakers. Instead, even monophonic broadcasts could transmit the experience of space and depth. The technology of broadcasting also had an influence on the experience of music, and the microphones of the 1930s were not well adapted to the transmission of trained soprano voices.
Arnheim notes how radio in the 1930s was moving from the role of a “transmitter of music” to a “producer of music”. Studio orchestras and special arrangements were preferred to transmissions of public concerts. Based on his experience in film editing, he also discusses the possibility of tape editing, which only became a reality much later.
In the field of popular music, radio has since the 1960s largely been overshadowed by the recording industry, and has merely become a passive transmitter of music produced by others. But in many other fields of music, radio is still important. Exact figures are not available, but even today, European radio stations probably produce more classical music, jazz and folk recordings that all record companies. We clearly need more research on the history of radio music.
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David Hebert
Sibelius Academy
Whither Hypermusicology? Ethical and Epistemological Issues in Historical Ethnomusicology
Session 2a
Whether broadcast from the Voyager satellite at the farthest distance ever reached from planet earth, or blared as a form of torture within the infamous Abu Ghraib prison, music today is intimately intertwined with both the most admirable and most regrettable of human pursuits. But so is academia, and like musicians, academics wielding new music technologies often find themselves unwittingly entangled in a precarious dance between the competing interests of industry, professional peers, and the general public. Interdisciplinarity, like musical fusion, entails an academic space in which traditions may be shed and creative new approaches forged, yet also like the former it is often misunderstood and feared by those in positions of authority, sometimes for good reason. Historical ethnomusicology, an interdisciplinary subfield that recently emerged within the broader sphere of musicology, therefore seems to call for careful deliberation. An examination of the discourse regarding this subfield reveals diverse perspectives. While Kay Shelemay has suggested that “ethnomusicologists can contribute more to the understanding of history” (Shelemay, 1980, p.234), Bruno Nettl cautioned that “historical studies, to qualify as proper ethnomusicology, should relate somehow to the central tenets of ethnomusicological definition – relationship to other cultural domains and a view of music as a world of musics” (Nettl, 2005, p.273), and Jonathan Stock has even advanced the position that “it may be unhelpful to sustain a named subdiscipline called historical ethnomusicology” (Stock, 2008, p.198). To what extent might such subfields ultimately serve to strengthen musicology, or conversely, lead to divisive or distracting outcomes? Using examples from the author’s fieldwork on musical practices in four continents, this presentation will address ethical and epistemological issues in the subfield of historical ethnomusicology, with the intent of illustrating some possible themes and new directions for a philosophically grounded, technologically empowered, and unprecedentedly relevant musicology in the third millennium.
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Olli Heikkinen
University of Tampere
The Preception of Sibelius’s Kullervo. The Social Construction of ”Finnish Musical Language”
Session 1a
Sibelius’s Kullervo was premièred on 28th April 1892. The reception was enthusiastic. Sibelius was cheered after every movement of this five-movement work. Oskar Merikanto, music critic of the newspaper Päivälehti, summarized the national reception by writing that “we recognize these [tones] as ours, even if we have never heard them before.” But how could the audience recognize those tones as Finnish already after hearing just the first movement, which with its strong Brucknerian influences seems to have no allusions to Finnish folk music and mythology?
In my paper I shall argue, that, contrary to the opinions of many researchers (a.o. A.O. Väisänen, Matti Huttunen, Glenda Dawn Goss), Merikanto’s statement was not a summary of national reception, but an important part of social construction of Sibelius as a national composer. Merikanto’s article was published on the same day as the première took place and it was the last in the long line of articles, which described to the audience the content and national meaning of Sibelius’s new work. The audience could recognize those tones as their own, because they were told to do so.
I will use the term “preception” to describe this kind of writing, because it was written before the publication and performance of the work and its main purpose was to act as a precept to the reception. Intellectual currents behind the preception are being studied, the most important being the Herderian and Hegelian nationalism, collective genius vs. individual genius, high-brow vs. low-brow and the aesthetics of autonomous art.
In the end of my paper I will make a brief comparison with the nationalist preception and reception (mainly by A.B. Marx) of the famous revival of J.S. Bach’s St. Matthew Passion in Berlin in 1829.
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Yrjö Heinonen
University of Turku
The Many Lives of ‘Scarborough Fair’
Session 4a
My aim is to explore the mediation of folk music through a case study of the well-known Anglo-American ballad ‘Scarborough Fair’. Theoretically, my exploration is based on (a revised version of) Lauri Honko’s folklore process model, on Vilmos Voigt’s distinction between folklorism and folklorization, and on Walter Ong’s notions of “primary orality”, literacy and “secondary orality”. I will analyze how primary orality, literacy and secondary orality, as well as folklorism and folklorization, have been interacting with one another during the “third life” (i.e., the culture-political and commercial use) of ‘Scarborough Fair’.
In fact, the “third life” of ‘Scarborough Fair’ appears to consist of several semi-independent lives. One is the one found in Francis J. Child’s collection of ballads, which includes 12 versions of ‘The Elfin Knight’ (of which #2G, ‘The Cambrick Shirt’, is the “prototype” for the lyrics of ‘Scarborough Fair’). Another is represented in various songbooks printed during the late 19th and early 20th century. A third life manifests itself in the recordings made during the second English folk song revival during the 1950s and early 1960s. It is only during this “life” when the presently best-known tune emerges and becomes fixed with the lyrics. A fourth live begins with Simon & Garfunkel’s commercial record (1966) and continues in other commercial versions released during the rest of the 1960s. Still another life is represented in many present-day popular and neo-folk cover versions of the song.
On a more general level, the life span of ‘Scarborough Fair’ appears to have proceeded from the “first life” (living tradition, primary orality) through the “second life” (folklore studies, literacy) to the “third life” (culture-political and commercial use; literacy and secondary orality). However, these “lives” have not only overlapped but also folklorization of the printed versions of the song has taken place.
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Sara Jansson
University of Gothenburg, Sweden
Radio, High Fidelity, MP3: Sound Reproduction Technologies and Gender in Swedish Magazines
Session 5a
The purpose of this paper is to analyse discourses surrounding technologies for sound reproduction in Swedish magazines from a gender perspective. Since the paper has its focus on the reception of rather than the production of music, magazines that deal with music technologies used for listening in the home have been chosen. Magazines from three time periods will be analysed: 1925-35, a time when both radio and the gramophone were being introduced to a vast range of listeners; 1950-65, with the introduction and establishment of the concept ‘high fidelity’; and 1985-present, with the advent of digital sound reproduction technologies.
Important questions concern how technologies used for sound reproduction are described and represented in the magazines, and also in what way(s) and to what extent these technologies are being gendered as male and aimed towards a male target audience, as well as the possible implications this might have on women’s access to the technologies in question. Furthermore, Kenney (1999) points out the important role of women as consumers of both records and phonographs in the early years of the phonograph, and of particular interest here is to explore whether the gender coding of the sound reproduction technologies in my material changes over time, as well as how this is expressed in the magazines.
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Joonas Keskinen
University of Tampere
Riki Sorsa – The Harbinger of Digital Revolution in Finland
Session 1b
The digital revolution in consumer audio electronics started really in 1980’s with the introduction of Compact Disc, commonly known as CD. It became commercially available in Finland in 1983.
In this presentation I’ll focus on the story behind the first Finnish CD, Riki Sorsa’s Kellot ja peilit (‘Clocks and mirrors’). It was originally released in 1984 in LP and music cassette formats and later in 1985 as CD. At that time CD players were owned by only a small number of people, mainly audio and hi-fi professionals or hardcore hobbyists. It took over 10 years before CD became the dominant format in Finland in mid 1990’s, a lot later than in other Nordic countries.
Riki Sorsa’s music at the time of Kellot ja peilit’s release could be described as mainstream popular music, somewhere between Finnish ‘iskelmä’ and new wave poprock of the 1980’s. Sorsa was popular not only in Finland, but enjoyed some success abroad as well. In Finland he is known for his songs sung in Finnish, yet he recorded a number of albums in English.
In my presentation I will bring forth the corporate policies and artist’s views of why Kellot ja peilit became the first Finnish CD. I’ll also take a look into the media coverage that Compact Disc, especially Kellot ja peilit, got when entering the Finnish market in mid 1980’s. In broader terms, my goal is to find out how a new audio technology was introduced to the Finnish consumer markets. In addition I hope to discuss the question why Finland was so much slower in embracing CD than other Nordic countries.
This presentation is part of my ongoing research for my master’s thesis on the early history of CD in Finland.
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Meri Kytö
University of Eastern Finland
Mediated Football Atmospheres of Çarşı Supporter Group
Session 4b
On weekends when passing by the Besiktaş square in Istanbul one can hardly avoid the sonic presence of Çarşı, the supporter group of Besiktaş football team. Istanbul is the home of Çarşı (spelled with an anarchist "a" letter) known for its 132 dB chanting record and placards with up-to-date political slogans.
This paper deals with sonic meanings of Çarşı. It can be argued that this supporter group functions as an acoustic community. The marches, chants and sonic rituals draw the supporters together constructing a sense of a shared space in which there are communally used and interpreted sounds. It seems that this acoustic community is also supported by an electro-acoustic community. There are multiple ways in which the fans not being able to attend to the matches or pre-match gatherings in situ can share and learn about the acoustic atmosphere. One medium is of course broadcasts on television and radio, but just as important are the supporter sites and video sharing portals in the Internet.
Following the idea of acoustemology of anthropologist Steven Feld, sound as a way of knowing the world (i.e. acoustic epistemology) this paper seeks answers to the following questions: What can we know about the group by listening to it in different places and (virtual) spaces? What does chanting and sounding contribute to the group and what does the ways it manifests sonically tell about the community?
The questions will be answered mainly by field observations and diaries, recordings and interviews made at the Besiktaş Çarşı square, the Inönü stadium and the supporters’ Kazan bar in March 2009. The study will be supported by a television documentary "Asi ruh" made about the fan group, virtual fan sites on the Internet containing recordings, videos and conversations of the fans.
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Timo Leisiö
University of Tampere
A Quest for Neural-Based Analysis of Melody. Changes in Paradigm?
Session 2a
In the 18th century Jean-Philippe Rameau established scientific solutions to many problems in tonal theory. In the next century Hermann von Helmholtz explained how the cochlea of the inner ear processes sound energy according to Fourier analysis, hereby enabling the auditory system to define the timbre and the pitch. He also explained the acoustic basis of consonance and dissonance: the sensation depends on harmonics that either do or do not coincide. Carl Stumpf tried to give psychologically motivated definition of consonance and assumed that consonant intervals cohere into a single sound sensation (tonal fusion). Martin Ebeling recently published a highly mathematical study on the perception of consonance. He still gave the harmonics the same central role as did researchers since Rameau but he also took account of what had been found in several neurological studies. All this looks profoundly scientific and mathematically precise.
Thus, two details are clear. First, the explanation of consonance and dissonance remains an open issue. Second, in spite of complicated calculations and theory formation, many ethnomusicologists remain dissatisfied with the paradigm on which the theory for modal analysis of melody is based, that is, the tonal approach. This was recently articulated by Michael Tenzer: “--- for saying that the existing paradigm is anachronistic is not at all the same as saying that a proper substitute is at hand.”
The present author has laboured for years on a theory entitled Seeker Tone Theory. It is based on Gerald Langner’s long-term research on the function of the mammalian auditory centre. Some of his conclusions are: 1) Sensation of a pitch is a result of periodicity analysis of the midbrain. 2) The harmonics play no role in the definition of pitch. 3) The representation of a harmonic tone is not only one activated neuron in the Colliculus inferior but at least 6 neurons that are organized like a minor triad. 4) The unresolved question of consonance can be resolved with the horizontal aspect of harmony, that is, with the help of subharmonic responses of midbrain neurons.
The new musicological method is based on these neurological findings. The Seeker tone corresponds to the dominant tone of a mode and detects any changes in the logic within the melody formation like radar in the physical world. For neural reasons, it is possible to analyse any melody of any culture using only 6 modes that are defined in relation to the dominant, not the tonic. An analysis leads to a train of defined modes and this train is called syntax. The aim of the method is a universal comparison of local syntaxes leading to typological musicology, that is, the global comparison of human music (for the present with special reference to song).
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Ilppo Lukkarinen
University of Jyväskylä, Finnish Jazz & Pop Archive
Finnish Heavy Metal Music in Media
Session 4a
Heavy metal has been mainstream popular music in Finland in the 3rd millennium. One of the reasons for its popularity is that in newspapers and weblogs it has been connected with nationality. There is a modern myth of good bands coming from the northern countries, where cold weather, poor conditions and historical facts (usually starting from World War Two) have made people strong but modest. The supposed originality in dark music and the international success of bands like HIM, Nightwish and Apocalyptica have been something that the press has wanted to see as part of the (post)modern Finnish culture.
Considering the history of heavy metal, it is interesting that it is so widely accepted nowadays. During the 1970’s and 1980’s it was something to disapprove in newspapers and to be put in its own category in rock press. In Finland it is even more interesting that the society – politics, press, even church – has got a grip of heavy metal and are about to create something conventional of it. Not all the musicians and rock journalists are so happy about this – where is the spirit of rebellion, once so clear in the music?!
I’m working on my doctoral thesis about the connecting of heavy metal music and Finland in media texts. Combining works of Norman Fairclough (1995), Pierre Bourdieu (1994) and Michel Foucault (1969), I analyze texts from the mainstream media and the power structures behind them.
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Markus Mantere
Sibelius Academy, University of Tampere
The North in Music. Issues of Geography, Aesthetics, and Ideology
Session 5b
The "North" and "South" in the history of music aesthetics have been discursive -- that is, social and historical -- stereotypes through which it has been possible to map out whole nations musically. Eduard Hanslick, for instance, wrote of the Italians as "musical tosspots" who are able to "consume such quantities of music" that makes "the northern soul shudder". The pianist Glenn Gould, in the 20th century, saw the "North" as an ethical and aesthetic category, the opposite to the adrenalin-filled musical atmosphere of the Mediterranean countries, Italian opera in particular.
This presentation addresses this broad theme generally, taking the question of music's
ability to signify "latitude" through its very ontology. While the focus of discussion will be personalized through a discussion of a handful of important figures from the history of music (Gould, Hanslick, Adorno, Schenker), the main motivation behind the presentation is one big question: how, and through which of its elements, is music able to signify the North"?
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Janne Mäkelä & Jaakko Suominen
Finnish Jazz & Pop Archive, University of Turku
In Search of the Lost Web. (A Media Archaeology of) Early Finnish Music Net and Its Disappearance
Session 5a
The Finnish Jazz and Pop Archive JAPA organized a competition “Early Music Net” in 2009. The idea of the contest was to collect early web pages (before year 1997) related to Finnish music and to award the earliest web page as well as give recognition to a person or an institution who did a grand pioneering work within the area. As it appeared, the task was difficult. Most of the earliest pages had been disappeared or no longer were available. The contest resulted in the competing arguments about the "preserved first-ever ones": the first ones stored in the Internet Archive (HYPERLINK "http://www.archive.org/"http://www.archive.org/), a single posting left in a rock band’s web discussion forum which was later rebuilt, earlier page which was a part of larger band portal, past page which was not survived but introduced as a screen capture in a music magazine in 1995 etc. The JAPA also received more or less coherent reminiscence and oral histories about "pages there once were".
We argue that the case of the early Finnish music web is very characteristic in new media historiography and it reveals that new media is not usually recognized as important and worth of preserving before it is too late. On the other hand the case shows how complicated (and perhaps impossible, if we think for example Foucault's studies on archaeology of knowledge) it is to define which was the foremost. The article analyses the case of Finnish Early Music Net and reflects questions of Internet sources and historical research to studies of “has-been new media” such as cinema, radio and television.
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Jarkko Niemi
Academy of Finland
NEZD – Impressions of a Russian Project for a Digital Archive of Traditional Music
Session 5b
NEZD (National Electronic Auditory Depository) was designed as a large-scale joint project for creating a depository of traditional music in Russia. The specific aim of the project was to build a modern, Internet-based archive especially for the historical audio materials from the indigenous (non-Russian) peoples of the Russian North.
In my paper I should like to give a concise description of the project, present my own impressions of the project from the standpoint of a peripheral observer and discuss the implications and impact momentum of the project.
Concise description of the history of the project NEZD
The project was initiated in 2006 by the research collegium of the most important phonogram archive in Russia, the ”Pushkin House” phonogram archive of the Institute of Russian Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The other partner was the administration of Yamal Nenets autonomous region, a northern administrative unit in Russian Siberia, famous for its active and visible indigenous ethnic minority, the Nenets, but on the other hand, for the region’s oil and gas industry. The aim of the project was to create a national centre and depository for digitised materials, freely accessible for the listener.
Outsider’s impressions of the project
My personal interest for this project was aroused by my own long-time research interests associated with the study of the musical cultures of the Uralic indigenous peoples of Russian western Siberia. On the other hand, I am quite well acquainted with the most of the archived collections of audio materials concerning the northern indigenous peoples of Russia and this made me even more eager to see, what was going on with the project.
Implications and impact momentum of the project
From the client’s viewpoint, these kinds of projects represent a modern, ubiquitous reality of access to documentation of ethnic materials of the past. However, the whole project was planned primarily as an effort of Russian professional partners. I was interested to find out more about the indigenous thoughts concerning this kind of project. Furthermore, what actual materials were included in the collection and what kind of planning and selection work was made to target the informational value of the audio items specifically for the people of the Yamal Nenets region?
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Gabriel Pareyón
University of Helsinki
Traditional Patterns and Textures as Values for Meaningful Automatization in Music
Session 5a
This participation points out the ethical and aesthetic implications of the musical use of sound patterns in automated composition and sound design.
Without entering the assertion that sound patterns extracted from scientific context equals to colonialism or cultural imposition, this paper is rather focused on the accelerated loss of traditional sound patterning in musics, parallel to the exponential loss of linguistic and cultural variety in a world increasingly globalized by aggressive market policies and economic liberalization, in which scientific justification plays a crucial role.
As a contribution to an alternative trend, musicians, composers, and music theorists are invited to explore the world of design and patterning by grammar rules from non-dominant cultures, and to make an effort to understand their use in context, in order to better appreciate their symbolism and aesthetic depth. To do so, some practical examples are provided.
A first approach to the issue comes from a realistic case: in the last 25 years, to produce music, more and more composers are involved with the use of fractal geometry and L-systems manipulation, profiting from scientific achievements sponsored by prosperous societies and governments. Nevertheless, most of this use can also be associated to traditional objects and patterns from non-dominant cultures, equally producing awesome musical results, with a potential ethical involvement within their cultural sources (e.g. promotion of ecological and cultural values associated to local grammars and symbols).
In other words, why should it be more interesting making music from an L-system than from an Indonesian batik, provided that both systems show a similar deep kind of spatial structuration, and both can be intersemiotically translated by the same sort of process? In order to avoid a simplistic interpretation of this issue, and noticing that recycling materials can turn into another way of colonialism, this view is extended to a wider complexity of linguistics and poetics.
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Risto Pekka Pennanen
University of Helsinki
Praising the Emperor and King: The role of music in Habsburg colonial rule in Bosnia-Herzegovina, 1878-1918
Session 4b
During the Habsburg rule (1878-1918) of the former Ottoman provinces Bosnia-Herzegovina, colonial authorities exploited a repertoire of Central European music as symbols of the Austro-Hungarian colonial power. Such music was combined with ceremonies, forming a complex of auditory and visual symbols which by and large consisted of sets of invented traditions. Thus, schools taught local children to sing the imperial hymn Kaiserlied and the children were required to perform it in state and religious festivities. Military bands, which played a marked military, cultural and symbolic role in the colonisation of Bosnia, performed the hymn repeatedly in various contexts. In addition, the band of the Sarajevo garrison regularly marched through the town during its tattoo, performing one piece in front of the Provincial Government Palace and three in front of the palace of the military governor, thus symbolically marking the centres of power and their hierarchy. For royal visits, Emperor’s and Empress’ birthdays, and the anniversary of the Emperor’s ascension to the throne, the authorities organised cannonades, rifle salutes, military and torchlight parades with brass music, and homages with choral serenades (Ger. Huldigungen).
Another official function the colonising authorities gave to music was enlightening: The authorities saw promenade concerts as a form of music education and a means of spreading Western music among the native population. That sort of music was very different from the symbol of Bosnian traditional culture, i.e., epic singer accompanying himself on the gusla bowed lute.
In conclusion, some of the music performed in Habsburg Bosnia-Herzegovina mingled with propaganda and indoctrination which aimed at persuading the colonised to accept the occupation and the subsequent annexation, and Central European (music) culture.
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Mark J. Percival
Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh, UK
Music Radio and the Record Industry: Songs, Sounds and Power
Session 1b
The nature of the economic, social and cultural relations between the radio industry and the record industry is characterised by both academics and practitioners as symbiotic, that is, both parties benefit from the interaction. Music radio needs records to fill airtime and to draw audiences - the record industry needs the kind of pervasive exposure that airplay still provides to sell product and to build artist profiles. The rewards, it has been suggested for decades, are mutual and equivalent.
This paper argues that there has been an historic over-simplification of a complex set of relationships in which the balance of power between radio and the record industry has shifted over time in both directions. Drawing on interviews with record industry pluggers and music radio programmers, I suggest that not only is radio currently in a dominant position, but also that this has had important consequences in terms of record industry A&R practices (signing policy and release schedules) and the production of popular music recordings (the actual sounds on the records). The significance of those consequences is mediated by pluggers and programmers and their interpretation of contested, socially constructed notions of 'good music', 'good radio records', and 'public service broadcasting'. The power of music radio extends far beyond simple promotion of records and artists - it has a profound influence on the sound of popular music and the shape of popular music culture.
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Ari Poutiainen
Composer, Violinist & Researcher (DMus)
Jazz Pop Hit in Pieces: A Definition of the Finnish Jazz Pop Hit Songs as a Dimension
Session 4a
In the second half of the 1950s a particular popular music song type frequently identified as a jazz pop hit song (in Finnish jazziskelmä) appeared in Finland. Within this song type elements of modern jazz expression were creatively employed in popular music performances. Although this song type is well recognized and the related term widely utilized in literature, there appears to be no established definition of the song type. In my presentation I show how this song type can be successfully defined as a dimension of characteristics and musical elements.
Singer Brita Koivunen´s jazz pop hit recording, Suklaasydän, from 1956 launched an influential period in Finnish popular music. Within this period several new, typically female artists established their careers in the fast developing pop industry. Consequently, this particular period is often referred to as jazz pop hit song era. It however appears that relatively few recordings of that period include any of the key characteristics and elements of modern jazz expression but reflect the dance music characteristics of the day instead. Surprisingly, it also seems that popular music literature often fails to distinguish jazz pop hit songs from then popular tangos and waltzes, for example.
In my definition, I embrace practices that contemporary jazz research employs when defining jazz. Instead formulizing a strict definition, which this particular song type would naturally resist, I introduce a selection of characteristics and elements associated to jazz pop hit song. This approach acknowledges, for example, that a characteristic or element can be stressed (if necessary) when identifying potential jazz pop hit songs from stylistically diverse performances.
My presentation reflects the trends of contemporary musicology: The definition emphasizes recordings a source that signifies the period to a present-day consumer. In addition, I creatively apply an approach from one research field (jazz) to another.
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Nick Prior
University of Edinburgh, UK
Snap, Crackle and Pop: Re-writing Popular Music Studies Through Contingency
Session 3b
What happens when we start to write from music’s ignoble events? This paper explores the relatively unexplored territories of contingency, accident and error in musical practices. It suggests that everyday processes of “musicking” are inherently contingent and dependent on fragile encounters between mediating bodies, technologies and practices. The paper will offer a typology of accidental phenomena – from slips of the hand and misprinted record sleeves to hard-drive crashes and exploding guitar amps - and argue that they are fundamentally constitutive of popular music’s myths, forms and practices. Empirical material showing the messiness of production amongst digital musicians will be broadened into a more theoretical engagement with recent debates around the possibility of a new approach to popular music that favours the ordinary role of open-ended, contingent and indeterminate practices. Re-instigating the body of the mistake is not necessarily to fetishize or celebrate it, but to show how the unplanned, micrological stuff of music cultures lubricates grand history. Accidents and errors, in short, hold things together, and should not be treated as anomalous, infrequent or trivial. If a third millennium musicology makes room for an epistemology of the mistake, then ideas of musical agency, action and practice have to be fundamentally revised. Such a move also points analysis beyond the always problematic frame of postmodernism, towards something akin to "complexity" and "emergence".
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Elina Seye
University of Tampere
The (Ethno) Musicologist as a Mediator of Musical Meanings
Session 2b
In my presentation I would like to start a discussion about the role of the musicologist as a mediator of meanings, especially when considering non-Westerns musics.
At a time when almost any kind of music from almost anywhere in the world is easily available online (e.g. on YouTube) and many kinds of transnational flows have brought people from different cultures also into personal contact with foreign musics, the role of (ethno)musicologist as mediators of foreign musics may seem to become irrelevant. But are the meanings of foreign musics as readily available to listeners as the musics themselves? Most researchers would probably say that they are not, but then again, do the “original” meanings even matter when each listener will in any case attach his/her own meanings to each piece of music?
My question is thus: are cultural meanings of music still relevant in the postmodern world and what is the position of an (ethno)musicologist as one of the mediators of these meanings.
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Anne Sivuoja-Gunaratnam
Sibelius Academy
Opera Diva as Media Celebrity: Aïno Ackté’s Salome Performances in London (1910, 1913)
Session 1a
Aïno Ackté (1878–1944), the Finnish opera diva, was among the early Salome performers who also did the Dance of Sevel Veils herself. After her first Salome performances (Leipzig and Dresden 1907) she continued to fascinate audiences in Germany (Cologne, Berlin, Frankfurt, Munich etc.) and elsewhere. Some of the performances were conducted by Richard Strauss himself with whom Ackté had studied the role in 1906.
The pinnacle of Ackté’s career were the two runs of Salome performances at Covent Garden with Thomas Beecham in 1910 and 1913, recounted in her autobiography Taiteeni taipaleelta (1935). The London performances were exceptionally challenging for her because she needed to sustain the role for several nights. Also the prestige of the Covent Garden and the British censorship with interventions by the Lord Chamberlain’s Orffice added extra pressure as well as the unfailing interest from the British press. Besides texts, the press reception included also graphic material, drawings and photographs.
This paper studies the press reception of the Salome performances paying particular attention to how Ackté’s diva position emerged in the reviews. Furthermore, from Ackté’s several letters addressed to her then husband Heikki Renvall (1872–1955), her mother Emmy Achté (1850–1924) and her sister Irma Tervani (1887–1936) – both of them professional opera singers – we can learn Ackté’s thoughts about the media circus. The third issue in this paper concentrates on how press reception may be used as a source for gaining information about historical performances. The issue binding all these three aspects is the voice: how diva’s voice was narrated in the press and how Ackté reflected this in her correspondence.
This paper is one of the results of the research project ‘The Cantatrices Achté,’ in collaboration with Ulla-Britta Broman-Kananen.
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Pekka Suutari
University of Eastern Finland
Reviewing Russian Karelia: Is Folk Music a Kiss of Death?
Session 4b
Karelian tradition as all the cultures of the small peoples in Soviet Union was carefully patronised by the Soviet system. Professional quality of music was raised with education of folk musicians, and arranged, trained and choreographed performances were put in the national scenery of the music theatre. In every level from peasants to the finest concert halls music was made with enthusiasm. This fulfilled the function of the so-called Leninist national policy. It meant that although the ultimate aim of communism was to erase national differences, in the meanwhile all the nations and ethnic groups should be represented side by side. On the other words, the musical aims were national, not ethnic on the local level.
Karelia is special in the sense that Finnish language - and in many respects Finnish culture - was set to represent the whole Karelian speaking people. Speaking Karelian was at the same time ashamed and cleansed from public use. Karelian music within the national system became boring part of official rituals and uniform concerts, and it did not always raise the ethnic scenery in which local music would have been made by Karelian musicians for the minority audience. Instead musicians like Santtu Karhu had to search for the producers (and listeners) of their music in Finland. Only recently youth activists have started to organise music events (ethno-disco) to which they call young in the Karelian associations. Language is Russian but wish to become visible member of the minority exist.
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Juha Torvinen
University of Helsinki
The Experience of the North and the Experience of Music. Some Philosophical Remarks on Resemblances
Session 5b
Like Peter Davidson has pointed out, through the history of Western philosophy and fiction, the North has been usually considered as either a place of extreme evil, death and darkness, or a place of extreme happiness, goodness and virtue - rarely anything between. According to cultural geographers Frank Möller and Sami Pehkonen this oxymoronic nature of the North manifests itself even today, for example, in the contrast between the romantic and mystifying language of the travel industry and the vast socio-economic and problems in the North.
In a sense, music seems to resemble the characteristics of the North in this oxymoronic sense. The potential dangerousness of music for an individual or a society has been a subject of many writers and philosophers from Plato to musico-political theories of the 20th century. On the other hand, the theory of the harmony of the spheres saw music as a unique model of the universe, romantic writers (e.g. Tieck, Wackenroder, Schopenhauer) considered music as capable of reaching perfect and more genuine worlds, and Glenn Gould considered North a source for an aesthetic and philosophical ideal.
In my paper I will ponder, whether the similarity between music and the North (in aforementioned sense) is fundamentally a question of experience. I will also ask, what kind of implications such experiental connection would have for musicology - especially for the study of North-related music and for our understanding of musical experience in general. Philosophically I draw, for example, from post-phenomenology and its emphasis on the locality of experience.
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Martha Tupinambá de Ulhôa
Instituto Villa Lobos – Universidade Federal do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Redefining Musicology in the Technical Mediation Era
Session 2b
Musicology has always in search for listening to sonorities. When musicology began as an area of systematic knowledge in the nineteenth century, and began to study its own Austro-German musical tradition, people were able to “listen to” a score. Today, in the twenty-first century, after more than 100 years of “aural” enculturation, and with all the impact caused by technology on musical composition itself, this is no longer possible. Today listening is ever more materialized in sonority. And in a multiplicity of musics, which makes the field of study rather complex. In any instance the musicologist begins from sound, a sonority which is always mediated whether by a score, a text, a performance, a record. Intellectual technologies to which we can today add information technology as well. However, as the Tunisian philosopher Pierre Lévy observes, even if “some social times and peculiar ways of knowing are linked to computers [real time], printing, writing and the mnemotechnical methods of oral societies have not been put aside. All these “antiquated” technologies had, and still have, a fundamental role in the establishment of intellectual and spatio-temporal referents for human societies.” (Lévy 1993, p. 75. Brazilian translation of Les technologies de l'intelligence, La Découverte, Paris, 1990). The presentation discusses the implications of these different intelligence technologies for the musicologists working methods in the 3rd Millennium.
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Tanja Uimonen
University of Helsinki
Bürgerian Interpretation of the Institutionalization of Musical Avant-Garde
Session 3b
In my presentation I will discuss the definition of musical avant-garde in the context of the 20th century Western art music according to Peter Bürger’s Theory of the avant-garde (1984). I will base my discussion on the idea of institutionalization of musical avant-garde presented by Georgina Born in her study Rationalizing culture. IRCAM, Boulez, and the Institutionalization of the Musical Avant-Garde (1995). Born suggests that the musical avant-garde has basically two poles: European modernism (serialism) and American postmodernism (experimentalism).
I will focus on the idea of experimentalism and it’s relation to musical modernism by exploring the difference between these two poles using Bürger’s idea of the relationship of the avant-garde and aesthetism. First I will impose that modernism and experimentalism are not antagonistic but parallel movements. Second I am going to discuss the whole idea of musical avant-garde: what is and what is not musical avant-garde from the viewpoint of these institutions and Bürger’s theory.
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Lauri Väkevä
Sibelius Academy
Musical Mediation in Digital Soundscape: What Should a Music Educator Know About Remixing?
Session 2b
Digital music culture with its freewheeling practices of producing, disseminating, and enjoying music presents a challenge for music educators worldwide. One theoretical aspect of this challenge is mediation, previously judged to be secondary issue in educating towards musical artistry. It can been argued that mediation in digital realm not only influences the way we communicate in music, but also changes our aesthetic approaches towards it. Popular music pedagogy is one realm where the implications of this change became apparent. I will discuss remixing as a case that not only contests the work-centered aesthetics behind traditional music teaching, but also the production aesthetics suggested by some popular music scholars. The case of remixing can be also used to expand the current band-oriented popular music practices based on informal learning.
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Susanna Välimäki
University of Helsinki
Music and Transgender
Session 3a
During the 2000s, transgender studies, emerging from the tradition of feminist studies, poststructural gender theorizations and queer studies, has established itself as its own area of scholarly inquiry. Transgender studies is an interdisciplinary field of study that examines identities, bodies and behaviors – signification processes and cultural practicies – associated with transsexuality, transgenderism, intersexuality, cross-dressing and other expressions of gender non-conformity and phenomena of gender diversity contesting the (hetero)normative conception of two-gender system and the notion of gender in general.
In my paper, I will focus on the transgender studies in the discipline of music research. More specifically, I aim to provide a historical overview of the emergence of transgender studies in music research and outline the current research trends and directions. Moreover, I will try to discuss the significance of music research to transgender studies and the significance of transgender studies to music research.
As a concrete example of transgender studies of music, I will discuss Italian opera singer Cecilia Bartoli’s recent album Sacrificium (2009) from a transgendered point of view.
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Posters
Digital Recordings in Learning Folk Music
Anneli Kont-Rahtola, Sibelius Academy & University of Tartu, Estonia
Modern way of learning music, traditional music included, is mostly nowadays computer based or using other kind of digital equipments. The basic position is develop a long way from the traditional situation, where the music was learned by listening older players and when the skills were good enough, it was possible to join to the group. By this listen-and-learn-method it was later possible to earn a status of an independent and skilled folk musician. Afterwards in Estonia, while the traditional players were almost disappeared, young players learned the music from printed notes. This situation occurred mostly between the years 1940-90.
Now we can organise the methods of learning traditional music in three different categories:
- learning by imitating living players (folk musician, teacher, co-musician)
- learning from literature: notes, notebooks, etc.
- learning by listening traditional recordings from CD-s and other digital methods.
It can be summarized, that digital music has increased different ways of learning also traditional music. Almost everyone can have a recorder and by cheap digital storage equipments it is possible to record thousands of music pieces easily. Recording machines are also very small and easy to transport to different places. Also the re-processing of the music has come easier. Here we can mention methods like changing the sound quality, slow it down or fast it up, transposing, repeating chosen sections, clearing the material from unneeded noise etc. All these are much easier to do with digital material and modern programs.
The most common ways of using digital music among students are recording (dictaphone, CD-player, Minidisc, Ipod, ZOOM H-4, ZOOM H-2, also mobile phones can be used). The used music could be for example from archive material, new performances or from educational performances. Recorded music is usually moved to lap-top computer, where it could be listened as it is, or after opening it with special music programs (Adobe Audition, Transcribe, Audacity, Quickplayer), where earlier mentioned processing could be done. Quite common is also to choose only some smaller samples from the recordings to demonstrate some special properties from the music. Also visual analysing programs can be used to compare different pieces and players and understand better the structure of the music.
Practising of the music is possible from recordings step by step listening and playing or by playing together with the recorded material. Digital metronome can be valuable in this phase. Students can also record their own playings (Garageband) and listen and compare them afterwards. By playing and recording it is also possible to get exact note material by special programs like Sibelius, Finale etc.
Based to my experience as a teacher, students have answered that they learn about 50-85 % of the whole repertoire by following the last method that is listening different recordings. The advantages of this kind of learning are: learning is possible to do at what ever time and as long as needed, it is easy to choose the desired key and tempo, you can play solo or with accompaniment, good versions can be recorded for the future and the exact note can be achieved. Negative properties, compared to learning from living players are maybe lack of the joy and enthusiasm when playing and more poor direct interactions between teaching and learning musicians.
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Roundtable discussions
Music Cultures and Corporate Cultures. Changes in Music Broadcasting in Finland, 1963–2005
Roundtable 1a
Change and Stability. Music Culture in Southern Ostrobothnia
Roundtable 1b
How Cultural Studies Help in Designing New Kind of Music Experiences
Roundtable 2a
The Folk Doctors at the Sibelius Academy - Artistic Research as a Process Towards Innovation and New Territories in Contemporary Finnish Folk Music
Roundtable 3a
Individual abstracts
Mediating Music Interculturally Through (Controversial) Humour. Uncle Paintbrush and the Geese of Nile
Lari Aaltonen, University of Tampere
A “Queer” Silence: Ethnomusicology, Masculinity, and Homophobia
Stephen Amico, University of Pennsylvania, USA
Finland-Swedish Rap as Mediation of Minority Marginalities
Johannes Brusila, Åbo Akademi University, The Society of Swedish Literature in Finland
Mediating Family Opera: Swanhunter, (The Kalevala), Audience and Expectation.
Jennifer Daniel, University of Leeds, Opera North, UK
Music Without Musicians. Rudolf Arnheim and Radio Music in the 1930s
Pekka Gronow, University of Helsinki
Whither Hypermusicology? Ethical and Epistemological Issues in Historical Ethnomusicology
David Hebert, Sibelius Academy
The Preception of Sibelius’s Kullervo. The Social Construction of ”Finnish Musical Language”
Olli Heikkinen, University of Tampere
The Many Lives of ‘Scarborough Fair’
Yrjö Heinonen, University of Turku
Radio, High Fidelity, MP3: Sound Reproduction Technologies and Gender in Swedish Magazines
Sara Jansson, University of Gothenburg, Sweden
Riki Sorsa – The Harbinger of Digital Revolution in Finland
Joonas Keskinen, University of Tampere
Mediated Football Atmospheres of Çarşı Supporter Group
Meri Kytö, University of Eastern Finland
A Quest for Neural-Based Analysis of Melody. Changes in Paradigm?
Timo Leisiö, University of Tampere
Finnish Heavy Metal Music in Media
Ilppo Lukkarinen, University of Jyväskylä, Finnish Jazz & Pop Archive
The North in Music. Issues of Geography, Aesthetics, and Ideology
Markus Mantere, Sibelius Academy, University of Tampere
In Search of the Lost Web. (A Media Archaeology of) Early Finnish Music Net and Its Disappearance
Janne Mäkelä & Jaakko Suominen, Finnish Jazz & Pop Archive, University of Turku
NEZD – Impressions of a Russian Project for a Digital Archive of Traditional Music
Jarkko Niemi, Academy of Finland
Traditional Patterns and Textures as Values for Meaningful Automatization in Music
Gabriel Pareyón, University of Helsinki
Praising the Emperor and King: The role of music in Habsburg colonial rule in Bosnia-Herzegovina, 1878-1918
Risto Pekka Pennanen, University of Helsinki
Music Radio and the Record Industry: Songs, Sounds and Power
Mark J. Percival, Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh, UK
Jazz Pop Hit in Pieces: A Definition of the Finnish Jazz Pop Hit Songs as a Dimension
Ari Poutiainen, Composer, Violinist & Researcher (DMus)
Snap, Crackle and Pop: Re-writing Popular Music Studies Through Contingency
Nick Prior, University of Edinburgh, UK
The (Ethno) Musicologist as a Mediator of Musical Meanings
Elina Seye, University of Tampere
Opera Diva as Media Celebrity: Aïno Ackté’s Salome Performances in London (1910, 1913)
Anne Sivuoja-Gunaratnam, Sibelius Academy
Reviewing Russian Karelia: Is Folk Music a Kiss of Death?
Pekka Suutari, University of Eastern Finland
The Experience of the North and the Experience of Music. Some Philosophical Remarks on Resemblances
Juha Torvinen, University of Helsinki
Redefining Musicology in the Technical Mediation Era
Martha Tupinambá de Ulhôa, Instituto Villa Lobos – Universidade Federal do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Bürgerian Interpretation of the Institutionalization of Musical Avant-Garde
Tanja Uimonen, University of Helsinki
Musical Mediation in Digital Soundscape: What Should a Music Educator Know About Remixing?
Lauri Väkevä, Sibelius Academy
Music and Transgender
Susanna Välimäki, University of Helsinki
Posters
Digital Recordings in Learning Folk Music
Anneli Kont-Rahtola, Sibelius Academy & University of Tartu, Estonia