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Title:
Whose music is it, anyway?
Black vocal ensemble traditions
and the Feminist choral movement:
Performance
practice as politics
Pub
No: 9989946
Author:
Boerger, Kristina Gisele
Degree: AMusD
School: University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign
Date: 2000
Pages: 504
Adviser: Turino, Thomas
ISBN: 0-599-97382-X
Source: DAI-A 61/10, p. 3818, Apr 2001
Subject: Music (0413); Women's Studies
(0453); Sociology, Ethnic and Racial Studies (0631)
Abstract:
The Feminist choral
movement is a virtually White, and amateur, phenomenon. Its
ensembles perform Black styles more regularly than most
virtually White ensembles of the choral mainstream. This study
explores this practice and its attendant history of angry
charges of cultural appropriation.
Participant observation and ethnography reveal the convergences
of racial and gendered identities, politics, and music in the lives of women
in four Feminist choirs and also in three professional, Black
women's ensembles whose song teaching, performance, and
recording have heavily influenced choral Feminism. Historical
and theoretical groundwork covers: identity as strategic
construct; the centrality of aesthetic style in identity
construction, performance, and policing; a twentieth-century,
U.S. history of progressive political uses of "ethnic"
or "folk" -- especially African-American -- music; Black music as metaphor for
Black identity; Womyn's music festivals as crucibles of cultural
Feminism and Feminist identity; and the convergence in the '70s of cultural Feminism and Black Liberationist
cultural expression. Members of Urban Bush Women, Linda Tillery
and the Cultural Heritage Choir, Sweet Honey In The Rock,
Sistrum, Anna Crusis, and AMASONG (the author's choir) discuss
their ensembles as "homes" for their
identities as women, African Americans, Lesbians, Feminists. All
ensembles regard their performances as activism. The Black women
claim traditional Black songs as material resources with
manifold powers and uses; feelings of ownership and
protectiveness vie with a sense of obligation to share this
music with White people. White women's optimism that to sing
Black song is to perform Feminist anti-racism is contradicted by
reports from their ensembles' token Black members about how it
feels to be Black within their choirs. Racial and musical
essentialism are theoretically rejected, though the continuing,
material need under racism for positive constructions of
Blackness is affirmed. A definition of cultural appropriation is
offered that opens the way to White performance of Black music
while recommending practices that will enhance its chances of a
positive reception, musically and politically. A case study of
Cincinnati's MUSE -- founded and directed by choral
Feminism's pioneer Catherine Roma -- explores how this
chorus alone in the movement began as a White organization but
became truly racially integrated.
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