Sociomusicology: Activism through Music

6/16/21

Activism through Music

The first monograph of our book series will be published in the next few weeks.

We are happy to announce Ambigay Yudkoff’s book Activism through Music During the Apartheid Era and Beyond: When Voices Meet, which is volume 1 of Deep Soundings: The Lexington Series in Historical Ethnomusicology. Other volumes are coming soon.

Professor Carol Ann Muller (University of Pennsylvania) writes the following about this unique book:

Ambigay Yudkoff has written a beautiful account of the musical activism of South African born music therapist and multilingual singer Sharon Katz. In the wake of the release of political prisoner Nelson Mandela and others in 1990, Katz created a "Peace Train," a large South African interracial youth choir for purposes of racial and cultural reconciliation, collaboration between strangers, who literally traveled South Africa and the United States in a train. This is not a conventional story about music and politics but far more about the need for social and emotional healing through singing together in the post-apartheid era. It is one of a few books on musical activism as a mode of social reparation and intercultural understanding that has value well beyond 1990s South Africa.

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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).