Sociomusicology: February 2014

2/27/14

Music Freedom Day

The international event Music Freedom Day 2014 is nearly here. Music Freedom Day is an opportunity to celebrate and affirm global support for freedom of expression, a fundamental principle of human rights. During Music Freedom Day 2014, I will be at a conference in Sweden where I have been invited to present a speech entitled “Artistic Freedom and Online Learning in an Era of Mass Surveillance.”

Links for Music Freedom Day:

http://musicfreedomday.org/

http://www.freemuse.org

Click HERE for information about the conference in Sweden.

2/13/14

Opera in Bergen

The Golden Cockerel, a spectacular opera by Russian composer Rimsky-Korsakov, will be the next major production of the Bergen National Opera, March 29-April 4, 2014.

I look forward to performing as a Boyar, singing in the chorus of this professional opera in Norway, and over the next several weeks will be memorizing the music, reviewing Russian pronunciation, learning stage movements, and an array of other challenging requirements in preparation for performance.

Click here, and then scroll down for photos from this opera: http://sociomusicology.blogspot.com/2014/04/music-and-globalization_5.html

UPDATE: Click HERE for videos of my more recent singing.

Here are various links for anyone interested in following the production of this opera:

http://eng.bno.no/whats-on/2013-2014/the-golden-cockerel/

https://www.facebook.com/bergennasjonaleopera

http://www.youtube.com/user/BergenNasjonaleOpera/videos

Artistic Freedom and Online Learning

Time magazine is in agreement with many international news publications in suggesting that warrantless mass surveillance was the top news story of 2013, due to what they call "the most important leak of classified intelligence ever."

The editorial boards of both New York Times and The Guardian have called for clemency for the whistleblower that revealed this uniquely valuable information to the citizenry via news media.

Mass surveillance will have enormous and enduring implications for social research, and it naturally changes the way we think about artistic freedom/freedom of expression and the nature of our participation in online environments (including online education). In the field of music, these developments are of great interest to composers and performers engaged in any creative activities that make use of the Internet, or who participate in any international projects, which applies to a large proportion of artists in the present day. For researchers, the privacy of data and our abilities to preserve anonymity in research are naturally topics of concern.

I look forward to giving a keynote speech soon on the topic “Artistic Freedom and Online Learning in an Era of Mass Surveillance” for an interdisciplinary international conference in Sweden, entitled “Cultural Practices, Literacies and Technological Mediations. It will be held at Örebro University, March 3-5 2014. The conference is hosted by three research centers associated with the Swedish Research Council-supported national research school LIMCUL, Literacies, Multilingualism and Cultural Practices in present day society.

My speech will also become an article in a special issue of the scholarly journal Policy Futures in Education.

Link:

http://www.oru.se/Utbildning/Utbildning-pa-forskarniva/Forskarskolor1/Forskarskolor/LIMCUL---Ungas-literacy-flersprakighet-och-kulturella-praktiker-i-dagens-samhalle/Symposium-LIMCUL/

Welcome to Sociomusicology

For over 15 years (since 2007), this website has offered musings on contemporary society and its music by David G. Hebert, PhD. He is a sociomusicologist specializing in global music education who has held academic positions with universities on five continents. Dr. Hebert is now a tenured full Professor with Western Norway University of Applied Sciences, Bergen. There he leads the Grieg Academy Music Education (GAME) research group and manages the multinational government-funded Nordic Network for Music Education, which organizes annual intensive Master courses and exchange of teachers and students across eight countries. He is also an Affiliated Professor with University of the Faroe Islands and an Honorary Professor in China with the Education University of Hong Kong.

Professor Hebert's research applies an international-comparative perspective to issues of pluralism, identity, and cultural relevance in music education, as well as processes by which new music traditions emerge and change - both sonically and socially - as they are adopted into institutions. Born in the 1970s, he is among the most widely-published and globally-active music scholars of his generation (h-index:20; i10-index:30), with professional activities in an average of 8 countries per year across the past decade (2008-2020).