A blank canvas: The impacts of our music preferences on our reactions to sounds and improvisational expressions
(last edited: 2023)
author(s): Merve Abdurrahmani
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
Just as birds carry their sounds everywhere they go to be recognizable by the other animals, music is a tool for us to define ourselves and our culture, and it allows us to express ourselves through performances and even just through listening. A key factor in the growth of community music has been the acknowledgment that everyone has a social and biological guarantee of musicianship and evidence that anyone, regardless of social status, education, mental health, or medical issues, can communicate through music. (Elliott, 2004; Miell, MacDonald & Hargreaves, 2005; Pavlicevic & Ansdell, 2004)
This thesis explores the relationship between the established individual differences and environmental factors when it comes to forming our musical preferences. In my experience, no matter where we come from, we all appreciate the beauty of sound and the depth of music in uniquely different ways. To be able to receive new ways of experiencing music, we have to understand that we all come from different backgrounds, and we all walked through different paths in our unique lives.
Global Music: Recasting and Rethinking the Popular as Global
(last edited: 2023)
author(s): Carlos Roos
connected to: Academy of Creative and Performing Arts
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
The present dissertation revolves around popular music as a global phenomenon. The research focuses on the form and meaning of its musical structures and their rapport with everyday experience1 at the dawn of the 21st century. In what follows, I argue that the ontological key to popular music lies in the dialectic between formal attributes and societal dynamics, between musical text and cultural context. To that end, this inquiry unfolds at the intersection of cultural musicology and media studies.
Research by Carlos Roos
Music Ecology, Music Sociology, Music Locality - the case of Epirus
(last edited: 2023)
author(s): Mpiliax Mpiliens - Vasileios Katopodis
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
This master’s thesis investigates and interprets locally produced music and particular music traditions of the world that have strong aesthetics and characteristic sounds.
Through the concepts of music ecology, music sociology, and music locality, it identifies the link of the music with its place of origin, in an attempt to find the tools to understand how the world works when it comes down to the tiny but hugely important matter of music traditions. Through music examples from different countries, and with a special focus on the music of Epirus, Greece, music ecology, sociology, and locality become the lenses through which answers are sought to crucial questions, such as:
How natural and built environments affect, almost dictate locally produced music; what kinds of tools do music traditions become in the hands of communities;
and how can communities express, come together, and function through music traditions?
Additionally, this thesis explores the effects on music traditions when they are relocated from one environment to another.
Finally, this thesis investigates how immersion into any music tradition can affect ones’ personal musical identity, and how this enhances the development of an individual’s personal style, always taking into consideration the aspects of music ecology, sociology, and locality.
In the Case of Epirus, Greece I attempt to answer these questions by visiting the birthplace of the music during my field work, which allows me to immerse myself in the environment as well as the music, communicate with the carriers of the tradition, and learn the music directly from them.
Findings emerge in terms of a deep connection between music traditions and the triptych of music ecology, sociology and locality, in the example of the music of Epirus but also in general. These triptych influences, shapes and guides locally produced music, to the extent that one, when researching, should acknowledge its connection to local music to deepen the understanding of why things happen as they happen within a music tradition. Awareness of this connection would also be a powerful tool of an individual’s immersion process into new music traditions, empowering them to come to a deeper understanding of it.
Discovering a Personal Sonic Identity through Collaborative Intercultural Music Making
(last edited: 2020)
author(s): Chrysoula Panagiotopoulou
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
This exposition is an attempt to gain deeper understanding of the factors contributing to the formation of an artistic identity by unfolding the process of music making with a transcultural band. The focus of the study is the identification of the elements that form a musical identity, the development of a language and the cultivation of the artistic expression by embedding elements from other cultures.The cases used for this exposition are fragments of the work done within the framework of the author's bachelor concert for the Global Music Programme of the Sibelius Academy. The process of working on the material, with all four members of the band, lasted about nine months and the concert took place in Helsinki in May 2019