AFRC 253 - Music and Performance of Africa

Institution:

University of Pennsylvania

Subject:

Description:

Muller. This class provides an overview of the most popular music styles and discussion of the cultural and political contexts in which they emerged in contemporary Africa. Learning to perform a limited range of African music/dance will be a part of this course. No prior performance experience required, though completion of Music 50 is recommended. (AFST257, PSCI210) Contemporary African Politics. (C) Callaghy, Markovits. The course will consist of an analytic survey of contemporary politics in the states of sub-Saharan Africa. It will focus on the complex relationships between state, society, economy, and external groups in Africa and will offer a conceptual framework which takes into account an African politics that is highly fluid and personalized and frequently very authoritarian in character. The course will endeavor to provide a synthesis of political, social, and economic analyses, which relate the prevailing tendency toward authoritarianism to the fragmented and rooted yet changing characteristics of African society and economy and to high levels of economic and political dependence on external actors. Particular attention will be paid to Africa's interrelated debt, economic, and development crises. (ANTH227, FOLK259, LALS258, MUSC258) Caribbean Music and Diaspora. (M) Rommen. This survey course considers Caribbean musics within a broad historical framework. Caribbean musical pracices are explored by illustrating the many ways that aesthetics, ritual, communication, religion, and social structure are embodied in and contested through performance. These initial inquiries open onto an investigation of a range of theoretical concepts that become particularly pertinent in Caribbean contexts--concepts such as post-colonialism, migrations, ethnicity, hybridity, sycretism, and gloalization. Each of these concepts, moreover, will be explored with a view toward understanding its connections to the central analytical paradigm of the course--diaspora. Throughout the course, we will listen to many different styles and repertories of music, ranging from calypso to junkanoo, from rumba to merengue, and from dancehall to zouk. We will then work to understand them not only in relation to the readings that frame our discussions, but also in relation to our own North-American contexts of music consumptions and production.

Credits:

3.00

Credit Hours:

Prerequisites:

Corequisites:

Exclusions:

Level:

Instructional Type:

Lecture

Notes:

Additional Information:

Historical Version(s):

Institution Website:

www.upenn.edu

Phone Number:

(215) 898-5000

Regional Accreditation:

Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools

Calendar System:

Semester

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