Some notes from today's seminar.

My memory seems a bit fuzzy at the moment, so hopefully I'll be able to add to this later.

Some books I mentioned today:

Carlson, Marvin A. 2004. Performance: A Critical Introduction. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge.

This book provides an overview of the contemporary concept of performance and its development in various related fields; including the development of performance art since the 1960s, the relationship between performance, postmodernism, the politics of identity and current cultural studies, and the recent theoretical developments in the study of performance in the fields of anthropology, psychoanalysis, linguistics and technology.

Cresswell, Tim. 2004. Place: A Short Introduction. Short Introductions to Geography. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.

This book provides an overview of the contemporary concept of place and its development in Geography and other fields. As a significant and very interesting example of recent work on place, it includes most of Doreen Massey's article A Global Sense of Place.

Seeger, Anthony. 2004. Why Suyá Sing: A Musical Anthropology of an Amazonian People. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

A very interesting, readable and not too long book—at its end it tells the story of Tony's not entirely voluntary foray into "applied ethnomusicology".

Bourdieu, Pierre. 1990. The Logic of Practice. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press. p68.

This is at least one place where Bourdieu indicts participant observation: 

"One cannot really live the belief associated with profoundly different conditions of existence, that is, with other games and other stakes, still less give others the means of reliving it by the sheer power of discourse." (he goes on at some length)

Frith, Simon. 1996. Performing Rites: On the Value of Popular Music. Cambridge, MA: Harvard.

Can't remember why I mentioned Frith at the moment, but we'll be reading him later in the course (see the bibliography)

And some of the music and vid:

Snow Ball the dancing cockatoo (there is lots more of him):

Tuvan Throat Singing:
This bloke explains a bit about it (2.15 is when he starts singing and talking about it):

Huun Huur Tu (higher, whistle style):

An Edison wax cylinder and machine (he didn't think it would be used for music, but important speeches and such):

Wax Cylinder Recording Demo (keep watching, they show you more of how it works):

Matt Molloy and Donal Lunny (bouzouki) with James Galway watching:

Here's me mate John Joe on the bodhrán (the old winnowing tray) with Flook (solo around 2.15):