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Browsing Music by Author "Bowman, Robert M. J."
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Item Open Access Ensemble Stuff: The Grateful Dead's Development of Rock-based Improvisational Practice and its Religious Implications(2014-07-09) Kaler, Michael John; Bowman, Robert M. J.This dissertation examines the Grateful Dead’s creation of a distinctively rock-oriented approach to open improvisation in the mid to late 1960s. In the first section of the dissertation, I draw on live recordings, presented diachronically, to examine how the band developed this approach to improvisation. In the second section, I address the issue of why they developed this approach; in so doing, I move from strictly musical to religious concerns in order to demonstrate the fundamentally spiritual impetus that drove the band to devise and devotedly practice such a radical approach to rock playing, in the process linking their religious motivations with similarly transcendence-focused aspirations of other radical improvisers of the 1960s.Item Open Access Jackie Mittoo At Home and Abroad: The Cultural and Musical Negotiations of a Jamaican Canadian(2015-12-16) Cyrus, Karen Anita Eloise; Bowman, Robert M. J.Donat Roy ‘Jackie’ Mittoo (1948-1990) made significant contributions to the genres of rock steady and reggae as a musician, producer and musical director of Studio One in Jamaica. He is renowned for the number of recordings that he arranged at Studio One, as well as his own instrumental recordings that featured the organ. He was also among a number of Jamaican musicians who migrated to Canada at the end of the 1960s and was active on the music scene in Toronto, as well as in the UK and the USA. Although Mittoo’s significance to the emergence and dissemination of Jamaican popular music (JPM) is acknowledged by music industry personnel, most studies focus on the big names of reggae and the theme of social protest in their music. Little attention is given to the role of session musicians such as Mittoo and the instrumental recordings that they created. This study attempts to redress this oversight; it will offer the first in-depth account of the career and instrumental recordings of Jackie Mittoo. This dissertation is in two parts. The first section presents a career biography which situates Mittoo’s role within the collective experience of Jamaican session musicians at home in Jamaica, and abroad in the centers of JPM production in Canada, the UK, and the USA. In part two of this dissertation, I examine four strategies that he used in his instrumental arrangements—straight covers, covers with multiple sources, paraphrases, and remixes— and discuss the complexities associated with his body of work.Item Open Access "Knowing is Seeing:" The Digital Audio Workstation and the Visualization of Sound(2018-05-28) Macchiusi, Ian Andrew; Bowman, Robert M. J.The computers visual representation of sound has revolutionized the creation of music through the interface of the Digital Audio Workstation software (DAW). With the rise of DAW-based composition in popular music styles, many artists sole experience of musical creation is through the computer screen. I assert that the particular sonic visualizations of the DAW propagate certain assumptions about music, influencing aesthetics and adding new visually-based parameters to the creative process. I believe many of these new parameters are greatly indebted to the visual structures, interactional dictates and standardizations (such as the office metaphor depicted by operating systems such as Apples OS and Microsofts Windows) of the Graphical User Interface (GUI). Whether manipulating text, video or audio, a users interaction with the GUI is usually structured in the same mannerclicking on windows, icons and menus with a mouse-driven cursor. Focussing on the dialogs from the Reddit communities of Making hip-hop and EDM production, DAW user manuals, as well as interface design guidebooks, this dissertation will address the ways these visualizations and methods of working affect the workflow, composition style and musical conceptions of DAW-based producers.Item Open Access Locating Lucille Bogan: Black Music, The Arts and Socio-Political Opposition in Early 1900s America(2018-05-28) Moroziuk, Linda M.; Bowman, Robert M. J.This study identifies the previously overlooked catalogue of music by Lucille Bogan as part of the landscape navigated by black entertainers in post slavery America. The classic blues artists, like playwrights and musicians in the theatre industry, used their respective platforms to disseminate socio-political narratives opposing gender and racial bias to audiences both black and white. Methods used to unearth these narratives include lyric analyses of Bogan and her contemporaries, Gertrude Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith. Subject matter of theatrical plays and the music used therein is also examined, revealing content that subverts white efforts to silence black protest in post-Emancipation America. Turn-of-the-century public protest was an occurrence not tolerated in society. Activists learned that speaking out could subject them to punishment and result in terrifying repercussions (Cherry 1998, 225). In the songs of Bogan and the classic blues women and on the stages in urban theatres, however, black artists found the freedom to articulate socio-economic realities, gender and racial injustices and everyday struggles of life faced by their community.Item Open Access Reflections and Compositions Inspired by Three Pioneering Guitar Women(2015-04) Foley, Susan Ellen; Bowman, Robert M. J.In the male dominated world of guitar, there have been many, largely unknown, female guitarists who were innovative players and were musical and social pioneers.This thesis brings to light and celebrates the musical achievements of three such women guitarists—Maybelle Carter, Lydia Mendoza and Memphis Minnie—through biographical essays, musical analyses and compositions based around their individual biographies, aesthetics, unique playing styles and techniques. The accompanying compositions are not only influenced by the lives and stories of each artist, but by their varied cultures—Caucasian, Mexican-American and African-American. Besides being an examination of three accomplished women guitarists, this is also a study of the roots and history of American popular music, with an underlying theme of triumph and accomplishment over oppression, transcendence over gender bias and exemplary artistry that has withstood the test of time.Item Open Access Thematic Interconnectivity as an Innate Musical Quality: An Investigation of Jandek's "European Jewel" Guitar Riffs(2015-01-26) Marchesseau, Nicole Aimee; Bowman, Robert M. J.This dissertation is divided into two main areas. The first of these explores Jandek-related discourse and contextualizes the project. Also discussed is the interconnectivity that runs through the project through the self-citation of various lyrical, visual, and musical themes. The second main component of this dissertation explores one of these musical themes in detail: the guitar riffs heard in the “European Jewel” song-set and the transmigration/migration of the riff material used in the song to other non-“European Jewel” tracks. Jandek is often described in related discourse as an “outsider musician.” A significant point of discussion in the first area of this dissertation is the outsider music genre as it relates to Jandek. In part, this dissertation responds to an article by Martin James and Mitzi Waltz which was printed in the periodical Popular Music where it was suggested that the marketing of a musician as an outsider risks diminishing the “innate qualities” of the so-called outsider musicians’ works. While the outsider label is in itself problematic—this is discussed at length in Chapter Two—the analysis which comprises the second half of this dissertation delves into self-citation and thematic interconnection as innate qualities within the project. Explored at length in this dissertation are the guitar riffs of the Jandek song “European Jewel,” the closing track appearing on the artist’s debut album, Ready for the House (1978). The riffs are heard 37 times over the course of five different versions of the song. Elements of the riffs also appear in tracks that are not labeled as “European Jewel” variants. A larger structural form in which the song-set is situated has been observed. When heard outside of the “European Jewel” song-set the riffs appear in fragmented form. Continued use of the “European Jewel” riff material lasts until the album One Foot in the North (1991). Much attention has been given to the interconnection between certain visual and lyrical ideas present in the project by Jandek fans; however, Jandek has not been investigated at any great length in music scholarship, popular or otherwise. In part, this investigation contributes to the breadth of popular music scholarship by exploring this underrepresented act. It also delves into the sonic qualities which are intrinsic to Jandek. This type of sonic analysis is performed in order to separate Jandek’s sonic qualities from non-sonic discussions of the project. Finally, this dissertation poses the question of whether or not these qualities are of value to fans and scholars.