Person:

Shelemay, Kay

This essay discusses the study of musical communities, taking as its point of departure the growing avoidance of the term “community” within much of recent musical scholarship. After exploring factors that have been responsible for the move away from community studies, the paper details both the creation of new nomenclature and the discourse surrounding the introduction of these new terms. Based on insights drawn from musical ethnography with recent African immigrants to the United States, the paper goes on to propose a revised framework for approaching “community.” It suggests that attention to processes of descent, dissent, and affinity both elucidates music's generative role in shaping new collectivities and unsettles the notion of music as a static sonic marker of social groupings. The conclusion touches briefly on new research from the sciences that is beginning to shed new light on music's role in generating social outcomes and the potential it holds for future collaboration with music scholars across disciplinary boundaries.

This essay offers a general introduction to the volume's papers, providing the necessary background information about their genesis and relationship to other relevant publications within Ethiopian, African, and diaspora studies. The concept of diaspora and its relevance for the Ethiopian experience is discussed, providing a historical overview of Ethiopian movement abroad, culminating in the mass exodus sparked by the 1974 revolution. The essay explores the topic of cultural creativity in critical perspective, offering definitions of creativity and its relationship to Ethiopian concepts, along with an overview of the essays, a note on technical matters, and acknowledgments.

Urban musical research continues to present theoretical and methodological challenges. This paper suggests a revised approach to the study of the urban diaspora community, mapping ways in which musical processes have been instrumental in shaping the cultural places central to the development of the Ethiopian diaspora community. Following cultural geography’s attention to “place-making” rather than residential proximity as the locus of community formation, the discussion tracks aspects of musical transmission and performance that have helped generate, shape, and sustain new communities among Ethiopians in the diaspora.

This essay, based on ethnographic interviews and observation, discusses the lives and careers of three prominent Ethiopian musicians from sacred, folkloric, and popular musical domains (Moges Seyoum, Tesfaye Lemma, and Mulatu Astatke, respectively) whose individual initiatives have shaped the musical life of the Ethiopian diaspora during its formative years in the United States. These three careers provide an overview of musical activity within the Ethiopian American diaspora community since its inception and shed light on concepts of creativity as conceived both in the Ethiopian homeland and among the immigrant musicians profiled. The conclusion suggests that the ability of each man to negotiate the transition to diaspora life varied according to the musical domain in which he was engaged, his personal background, and the moment and circumstances of his arrival in the United States.

Since the inception of the Ethiopian revolution in the mid-1970's, the forced migration of large numbers of Ethiopians has resulted in the establishment of new permanent communities of Ethiopians in the United States. This paper provides a brief, and necessarily partial, sketch of musical life in the Ethiopian American community, spanning several musical genres touching on a cross-section of Ethiopian American musical activities.

Leonard Bernstein is most often perceived as the quintessential New Yorker—music director of the New York Philharmonic from 1958 to 1969 and composer of Broadway shows that made New York their focus. Yet his grounding in the greater Boston area was powerful. He was born in 1918 in Lawrence, Massachusetts, and raised in various Jewish neighborhoods within Boston. The young Leonard went to Boston Latin, a prestigious public prep school, and graduated from Harvard in 1939. This article explores a team research project, made up of Harvard graduate students and undergraduates, which delved into the urban subcultures and post-immigrant experiences that shaped Bernstein’s youth and early adulthood. It considers the synergy between an individual and a community, and it examines the complexities of blending pedagogy with research, analyzing the multilayered methodologies and theoretical strategies that were employed. Given Bernstein’s iconic status, his life and career illuminate a broad range of questions about the nature of music in American society. Fusing the techniques of ethnographic and archival research, our team probed Bernstein’s formative connections to Jewish traditions through his family synagogue (CongregationMishkan Tefila), the ethnic geography that defined the Boston neighborhoods of his immigrant family, the network of young people involved in Bernstein’s summer theatrical productions in Sharon, Massachusetts, during the 1930s, and the formative role of the city’s musical venues and institutions in shaping Bernstein’s lifelong campaign to collapse traditional distinctions between high and low culture.