Institute for Studies In American Music
Conservatory of Music, Brooklyn College of the City University of New York
NEWSLETTER


Volume XXXIII

 


No. 2      Spring 2004

Inside This Issue:

Documenting Calypso by Stephen Stuemple

Brooklyn’s Jazz Renaissance by Robin D.G. Kelley

Bolly’hood Re-mix by Kevin Miller

Johanna Beyer by Melissa J. de Graaf

Exploring Roots Music: Review by Charles K. Wolfe

Cage and Carter DVDs: Review by Anton Vishio

ISAM Matters

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ISAM Matters
By Ellie M. Hisama

We are grateful to the many people who responded to our recent appeal for donations. If you would like to make a contribution to support the Institute for Studies in American Music, we can still use your help. Since 1993, New York state appropriations for higher education have declined by 5%, adjusted for inflation.  Your support will make it possible to continue publishing this Newsletter, to organize conferences, and to bring guest speakers and performers to campus.  Thank you for your generosity!

 

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Stephen Stuempfle’s lead article focuses on the migration of Trinidadian calypso to New  York and eventually around the globe. This theme will be thoroughly explored in our upcoming conference, Calypso in New York and the Atlantic World, to be held on 30 October 2004 at Brooklyn College. The conference will feature leading Caribbean scholars including Gordon Rohlehr, Keith Warner, and Jocelyne Guilbault, as well as an evening concert with Trinidadian historian and 2004 Calypso Monarch Hollis “ChalkdustLiverpool.  See the preliminary schedule on p. 13.          

ISAM’s colloquium series, Music in Polycultural America, continued this spring with a talk by Henry Frank on the secularization of Haitian Vodou ritual, a performance by the Ibo Dancers of Haiti, and a performance by pianist/singer/songwriter Magdalen Hsu-Li.  We also hosted Mark Katz, who delivered a paper on Paul Lansky, Fatboy Slim, and Public Enemy; Martha Mockus, who shared her research on bassist/singer/songwriter MeShell Ndegéocello; and Carl Stone, who talked about his work in sampling and computer music.

This year the Ph.D./D.M.A. Program in Music at the CUNY
Graduate Center
received a remarkably high number of applications from students interested in American music topics, particularly in twentieth-century composers, jazz, and popular music.  We are delighted to welcome an exciting new crop of students to our doctoral programs in musicology, ethnomusicology, music theory, composition, and performance.  

Congratulations to Adrienne Fried Block, who received the Society for American Music’s 2004 Lifetime Achievement Award at its meeting last March in Cleveland, and to John Graziano, who received SAM’s 2004 Distinguished Service Award. We look forward to their upcoming conference, A Century of Composing in America: 1820-1920, to be held on 17-19 November 2004 at the CUNY Graduate Center.  Please see the announcement on p. 12.

On 7-9 October 2004, the American Music Research Center at the University of Colorado will host the symposium Nadia Boulanger and American Music. For more information, please visit <www-libraries.colorado.edu/amrc/conferences.htm>.

Lastly, our thanks to Ben Bierman for his outstanding work as managing editor of the Newsletter. We welcome Carl Clements, a Ph.D. student in ethnomusicology at the CUNY Graduate Center, as our new managing editor starting in Fall 2004.