A Quarter-Million Visitors

It has now been over 13 years since I started posting various activities and announcements on this website, which across time has turned into a kind of digital portfolio. It is hard to believe, but according to statistics from the host Blogger, by mid-Autumn I am projected to have had a total of over 250,000 visitors to Sociomusicology. Those numbers are much larger than I would have ever expected, but some of the traffic might be "bots" rather than real live humans.

The very first post on Sociomusicology was about visiting Kyoto, Japan, in 2007 to complete research for my first book, while working as a young Assistant Professor at Boston University. As I would later write, just a few months afterward, it was a pleasure to have such activities as playing trumpet in Boston for Honkfest with Charlie Keil and Reebee Garofalo, and with bluesman Lou Pride in Victor Coelho’s great band. I was also excited about the work of my doctoral students, as well as the landmark Tanglewood-II symposium, but by the end of the year I left for a new job as a full professor in Finland, and eventually ended up in Norway.

Since 2007, there have been so many developments and activities that I could never have imagined. Those who have done any online writing in a blog, or related medium, will know that it can be difficult to decide what to write (and what to leave out), and inevitably issues arise across years in one’s older posts, such as broken links, formatting changes, and images that are no longer online. Meanwhile, the technology keeps evolving, especially across more than a decade. With time, I have gradually started to include more videos and photos, but never felt the need to have much interactivity built into the site. I figured that if people were curious about something they read, they could always just send me an email, and indeed, there have been many messages from strangers. I regret that sometimes I have been so busy that it has taken a while to reply.

Today most online activity is centered on proprietary social media that emphasize instant interaction and enable “big data” analytics for targeted advertising and surveillance: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, etc. Nevertheless, I think it still remains useful to maintain a site with one’s own content, something to link to with relative autonomy, so Sociomusicology will probably keep going for a while longer.

Displayed above are various systems that humans use to represent numbers, as well as a bit of time-lapse photography taken a few days ago from beside my home as mist was drifting across the lake.

Music, Law, and Society

It was a great pleasure this week to give an invited lecture entitled “Language and Cultural Policy: Rethinking Music’s Significance,” for the International Law Summit in Bergen on The Language and Law. The law professors there, many of whom were from China, showed great interest in the topic and had excellent suggestions.

Law has been of increasing interest to me across recent years, and during the past few summers I have taught Cultural Policy courses for international PhD students at Bergen Summer Research School as well as law students at the China University of Political Science and Law, Beijing.

I am now developing a book with contributors from several countries that addresses how government policies can effectively support the sustainability of music traditions through various public institutions. This will most likely become part of the Deep Soundings book series with Rowman & Littlefield (Lexington), but I also mentioned it in my discussion with Routledge editors who had arranged a recent meeting with me in Bergen. Although the book is still under development, we have likely contributions from China, Vietnam, Sweden, Poland, Guyana, Nigeria, South Africa, Ethiopia, and other countries.

Public institutions, such as schools, universities, concert halls, museums, and galleries - as well as memorials and protected heritage sites - play an important role in ensuring that the arts and cultural heritage can remain viable for future generations. This is not only a local or national concern, but a global one, as recognized by UNESCO and other organizations. However, some kinds of laws and programs certainly function better than others, and there is a need for more robust, critical and comparative studies in this field.   

Below is a photo from my speech at the International Law Summit: 

Click HERE for a law-related article that I developed with Finnish scholar Marja Heimonen in an earlier phase of my career, and HERE for a later article we developed.

Some of the earliest laws in Northern Europe were written in runes on stone surfaces such as this one, which I photographed last week as part of some research on Viking Age and early Medieval times: 

Scholarly Milestones

This is by no means important news for most people, but every once in a while some personal milestones are reached in the life of a scholar that may be worth a bit of private celebration. In the past two days, I suddenly reached five significant numbers as a researcher, 10 years after completion of the PhD: Today I learned that a paper co-authored with Kristoffer Jensen has been accepted for publication, which means that I will now have articles in 30 different professional journals (with more under review). Also, in Google Scholar, two days ago my citation count reached 250, with an h-index of 10 (meaning that at least 10 of my publications are cited in a minimum of 10 other publications). Also, book number 5 (as author or editor) has been approved by the managing editors of a major academic press, and a contract will most likely be offered in the next few weeks as their financial department makes its calculations. Finally, a current doctoral student is now scheduling her final hearings and examinations for the Autumn, and it appears I will soon be appointed to my 15th doctoral committee. Compared to researchers in many science fields - or those with additional decades of experience - these numbers may not be very large, but for an arts scholar born in the 1970s it convincingly indicates my research is having a confirmable impact.

Of course, writings can be endless, and like many in academia I seem to be in a permanent state of facing both impossible writing deadlines and rejected grant applications, while frequently reminding myself there is much more to life than writing. The point here is not to complain, for it is a very interesting life, with good fortune to have such opportunities, but also a call for deeper reflection. I recall that a while back I was waiting in an airport security line and noticing that the procedures are increasingly complicated and more intrusive every year. In addition to the array of physical tests and scans, I had to answer about 50 personal questions in order to be allowed to board an airplane. After inquiring for many details about my work on music research related projects in various countries, the guard asked “how does that make a difference for anyone?”. I had to admit the relevance is less obvious than medical research to minimize disease, applied science research to improve technologies, or economic research to maximize profits. Nevertheless, new knowledge of global artistic and cultural practices in its own way helps us to better understand what it is to be human, which is something we still seem to need much more of in this complex world.

Research advances knowledge and helps to make us better teachers at all levels of education. Here are some links, for anyone curious to know more about my scholarship in such fields as music education, ethnomusicology, comparative education, arts policy, and East Asian studies:

https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=gASNnFkAAAAJ&hl=en

http://sociomusicology-icom.blogspot.com/

https://hib.academia.edu/DavidHebert

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_G._Hebert

What is Sociomusicology?

The interpretation of words is inevitably subjective, for meanings are constantly evolving, negotiated through discourse across each sector of society. Still, it has now been over six years since I decided to start this blog called SOCIOMUSICOLOGY, which at this point has over 72,000 page views, so it now seems a good idea to explain my understanding of what this word can mean.

Sociomusicology has been discussed in various ways by music scholars. Some view sociomusicology as a specialized subfield of sociology - essentially the “sociology of music” - while others view it as a particular form of ethnomusicology. Comparing the sociology of music with ethnomusicology, Keller observed a “difference in expertise and competence between the two disciplines” that “derives from their different historical roots” (Keller, 1986, p.179). Personally, I am equally happy with both understandings of this term, which is why I use sociomusicology here, but I also include a subtitle “musical arts – education – social sciences” on this website to suggest some more specific interests. My main fields of academic study are music teacher education and ethnomusicology, so I examine music teaching and learning (and the institutionalization of music) from a global perspective, and I am also very interested in developing new approaches to research that are informed by recent developments in philosophy and new technologies.

In my view, sociomusicology can generally be seen as a form of musicology that proceeds with the intention of producing outcomes that have a social impact, or findings of relevance to practitioners, such as musicians and music teachers (from studies of music ensembles, music learning strategies, and performance techniques, for example). Sociomusicology can also be understood as a specific form of applied ethnomusicology, marked by an openness to research methodologies that may sometimes be distinct from ethnographic fieldwork, such as historiography, computational analysis, practice-based research, and arts policy studies.  

I agree with Norman Stanfield that it is a bit regrettable ethnomusicology was not called “sociomusicology” all along, for ethnicity is merely one dimension of the array of social themes commonly explored in the field usually called “ethnomusicology”. Interestingly, it is really “musicology” - with its traditional focus on composers of “common practice” European art music - that tends to be a specific kind of ethnic-musicology, while “ethnomusicology” tends to be the more holistic field, embracing all kinds of music everywhere in the world. When viewed from the perspective of other fields – such as linguistics or drama – this situation in the academic disciplines of music surely must seem counterintuitive. Still, this is all changing nowadays, as the division between musicology and ethnomusicology now seems to be diminishing.

Here are some examples of how scholars in the past have discussed sociomusicology:

According to Barbara Lundquist (1982), “Sociomusicology focuses on the study of music in its social context. Therefore sociomusicology is closely related to ethnomusicology as well as psychomusicology and historical musicology. Its perspective affects aesthetics and criticism. It deals with concerns that often overlap one or another of these areas of study.”

Lundquist also writes the following:

“In general terms the bibliographical research revealed that since the early 1900s there has been a marked increase in sociomusicological research all over the world. The variety is quite overwhelming, the focus broad. Procedures range from descriptive, ethnographic studies to empirical ones; from the application of mathematical techniques to entirely speculative language. Everything from the role of song texts or particular genres in revolutions to economic manipulation in the music industry is examined. Studies analyze the social interaction between conductors and musicians in orchestras, at times using such studies to stand for similar status-bound, product-oriented relationships in society. They examine the social interaction in recording studios which affects music as business, as well as the role of music in changing the social behavior of children and adults. The use of music to control attention during television programs is studied, as is the use of music alone or with drugs in cross-cultural comparisons of ritual. The socialization of musicians has been analyzed along with elements in the acculturation and enculturation in music of groups of all sizes, from all over the world. Some studies examine aspects of music which appear to assist in creating and preserving social orders, and inspect the extent to which music is made to play a manipulative role in society.”

Regarding the term “sociomusicology”, Charles Keil (1996) writes that it is “Not ‘ethnomusicology’ because the ‘ethno-’ means ‘other’ in the minds of most people and also fosters the misconception of a style or styles tied to one culture at a time, an equation no longer true if it ever was. ‘Sociomusicology’ because musicking only has definable feelings and meanings in social contexts.” Keil notes in one of his other publications that “The most basic sociomusicological idea is that interacting sounds constitute the abstraction ‘music’ in the same way that interacting people constitute the abstraction ‘society’” (Keil, 1998).

Kizinska’s discussion of sociomusicology emphasizes the role of capitalism and the “transformation of social practices into objects of economic exchange” (Kizinzka, n.d.).

Related Articles:

Steven Feld, “Symposium on Comparative Sociomusicology: Sound Structure as Social Structure” Ethnomusicology, 28/3 (1984). Retrieved from: http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/851232?uid=2129&uid=2&uid=70&uid=4&sid=21103165991331

Charles Keil, “MUSE Incorporating and Applied Sociomusicology,” MUSE (1996). Retrieved from: http://www.musekids.org/berlin.html

Charles Keil, “Ethnomusicology in Education-Skills for Children’s Liberation: An Applied Sociomusicology for Echologists,” Folklore Forum, 34: 17-27. Retrieved from: https://scholarworks.iu.edu/dspace/bitstream/handle/2022/2352/34%281-2%29%2017-27.pdf?sequence=1

Charles Keil, “Applied Sociomusicology and Performance Studies,” Ethnomusicology, 42/2 (1998). Retrieved from: http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/3113893?uid=2&uid=4&sid=21103165991331

Marcello Sorce Keller, “Sociology of Music and Ethnomusicology: Two Disciplines in Competition,” Journal of General Education, 38/3 (1986): 167-181.  

Karolina Kizinska, “Elements of Sociology of Music in Today’s Historical Musicology and Music Analysis,” Ad Alta: Journal of Interdisciplinary Research

(pp.63-65). Retrieved from: http://www.magnanimitas.cz/ADALTA/0301/papers/A_kizinska.pdf

Barbara R. Lundquist, “Sociomusicology: A Status Report,” College Music Symposium, 22 (1982). Retrieved from: http://symposium.music.org/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=1932:sociomusicology-a-status-report

Barbara R. Lundquist, “A Sociomusical Research Agenda for Music in Higher Education,” Bulletin of the Council for Research in Music Education, 86 (1986): 53-70. Retrieved from: http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/40317968?uid=2129&uid=2&uid=70&uid=4&sid=21103165991331

John Shepherd, “A theoretical model for sociomusicological analysis of popular music,” Popular Music, 2 (1982), pp. 145-77.

Material from a recent Wikipedia entry on the topic:

Among the most notable of earlier sociologists to examine social aspects of music were Georg Simmel (1858-1918), Alfred Schutz (1899-1959), Max Weber (1864-1920) and Theodor Adorno (1903-1969). Others have included Alphons Silbermann, Ivo Supicic, Max Kaplan, K. Peter Etzkorn, Charles Seeger (1886-1979), Howard Saul Becker, Eli Siegmeister, Jacques Attali, John Mueller (1895-1965), Kurt Blaukopf and Charles Keil.

More recently, notable sociomusicologists have included

§  Peter J. Martin

§  Tia DeNora

§  John Shepherd

§  Hildegard Froehlich

§  Christopher Small

§  Steven Brown

§  Timothy Dowd

§  Andy Bennett

§  Steve Waksman, and

§  Robert Faulkner.

Younger scholars whose work contributes to the field of sociomusicology include:

§  Shyon Baumann

§  David Hebert

§  David Grazian

§  Eric Hung, and

§  Joseph Schloss.

Music in Southern Mississippi

Back to the USA . . . I have been offered a new position in the United States as Associate Professor with the School of Music, University of Southern Mississippi. My job will be leading the school’s PhD program and teaching graduate research methods seminars and other courses. USM is a state funded institution located about 80 minutes north of New Orleans that has a strong history for music programs (including winds, jazz, and music industry studies), is nationally designated as a research-extensive university, and has a tenure (permanent employment) system. The School of Music at University of Southern Mississippi is the only doctoral-degree granting music school in the state, and the university is considered a leading research institution of the Gulf South region. In this position I will also plan development of a unique research center to support the music education PhD program, focused on the theme of originality in music, including globally-significant genres that first originated in the southern Mississippi region, such as blues, jazz, and rock and roll.

MISSISSIPPI is actually a very important place for music, as the source of innovative performers that have forged new styles and made a substantial impact on music in much of the world. Musicians from Mississippi include leading blues performers Muddy Waters, Robert Johnson, Bo Diddley, W. C. Handy, Howling Wolf, John Lee Hooker and B.B. King, pioneers of rock and roll Jerry Lee Lewis and Elvis Presley, jazz legends Lester Young, Hank Jones, and Gerald Wilson, contemporary jazz masters Tom Malone, Mulgrew Miller, Mose Allison, and Cassandra Wilson, pioneers of country music Jimmie Rodgers and Charley Pride, renowned songwriters like Jimmy Buffett, and even revered art music composers such as William Grant Still and Milton Babbitt.

University of Southern Mississippi is ideally situated - in the original heartland of American musical innovation - for studies of American music traditions that will be of interest to musicians and educators in other parts of the USA and the rest of the world. For anyone interested in the roots of blues, jazz, or rock, this is a perfect setting for research.

Recently, Mississippi also seems ripe for new initiatives in the areas of educational and cultural policy that could be supported by music education research. For decades, the state has experienced economic and educational challenges, with the highest percentage of people living below the poverty line in the USA and low ratings for basic educational achievement. Music education research studies may help to turn this situation around by developing more effective ways of capitalizing on the rich and unique cultural heritage of this area, which has impacted much of the world through music. Research in music education may also inform the development of innovative, culturally relevant forms of education that motivate students for higher levels of academic achievement.

Hopefully the experiences of developing intercultural music programs in Europe, indigenous/minority music education in New Zealand, community music in Japan, and online doctoral education in Boston may aid as I work with others to envision some new possibilities for music education in Mississippi, as well as opportunities for effectively sharing the important musical achievements from Mississippi with the rest of the world. USM has outstanding facilities, and will be an excellent place to host conferences and symposia on such topics as music education, sociology of music, popular music pedagogy, American music studies and ethnomusicology.

This is an exciting new opportunity and I am eager to work with the students and world-class music faculty at University of Southern Mississippi.

Projects in Early 2009

In addition to mentoring doctoral students (who I hope to see finish their degrees soon), I will be working on several music projects in early 2009: Books, grant applications, lectures, recording sessions, program development, and research editing.

Books

I am currently writing a chapter entitled “Ethnicity and Music Education: Sociological Dimensions” for the book Sociology and Music Education (Ed., Ruth Wright) that will be published on Ashgate Press. In recent months I have completed chapters for the books De-Canonizing Music History (Cambridge Scholars Press), Music Education for Changing Times: Guiding Visions for Practice (Springer), and Multicultural Perspectives in Music Education (Rowman-Littlefield), as well as for my own book Wind Bands and Cultural Identity in Japanese Schools (Springer), all of which will be published in 2009.

Grants

In 2009 I will be applying for funding to support some Nordic research associated with the global Sustainable Futures in Music project of Huib Schippers. I am also currently designing a proposal for a multi-national research project on the use of new music technologies in targeted urban centers of Europe, Asia, and North America.

Lectures

I will be giving lectures on music-related topics in ten countries in 2009. The first of these is a keynote lecture on “How Music Education Research Approaches Music” in Orebro, Sweden for the Nordic Network of Research in Music Education. The topics of other presentations include “Virtuality and Music Education in Online Environments,” “On Maori music,” and “Institutionalizing Popular Music Pedagogy: Lessons from Jazz Education.” I am also currently planning a conference presentation in collaboration with Marja Heimonen.

Recordings

I will finally be spending some time in the recording studio in early 2009 to record several new original songs I wrote over the past few years. I am also producing some original music for New Zealand playwright Susan Battye's Telling Tales book series and singing with Kampin Laulu in a recording session for their CD on Alba Records.

Program Development

Lauri Vakeva and I have recently developed a proposal for a Master of Music degree with emphasis in popular music pedagogy, for which we will be seeking partnerships and external funding from music industry and various foundations. As a member of the GLOMUS network of Nordic higher education music academies, I am also contributing to development of a new inter-institutional Nordic Master of World Music degree.

Editing

Soon the editorial board will release a "Call for Papers" for a special issue of the Finnish Journal of Music Education on multicultural music education, for which I am serving as Guest Editor in mid-2009. I am also continuing on the Editorial Board of Research and Issues in Music Education and as Associate Editor of International Journal of Education and the Arts for at least a few more months. Alexandra Kertz-Welzel and I will also move forward with resubmitting our proposal for a co-edited book to academic publishers.

International Lectures

In 2009, I will be giving lectures and workshops on music at universities and conservatories in 10 nations. These will be for music institutions in Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Great Britain, Northern Ireland, the United States, Japan, Mexico, and France.

Click HERE for a tentative schedule.

Click HERE to view my current homepage at Sibelius Academy.

Two New Projects

Two new music projects are online now:

The Boston Hybrid Musics website displays findings from a graduate seminar research project in 2008. A few more media files still need to be added, but the main content is all currently available.

Also, I have been developing the new website for the International Society for Philosophy of Music Education (ISPME), which will have its next symposium at the Sibelius Academy in 2010.

Enjoy!

Books Galore

Pictured here is a photograph I took recently of one section of the Sibelius Monument, about a 10-minute walk from my new apartment in Helsinki. In between writing and making music at home, I have been taking many long walks around the Helsinki area. It is important to make a point of getting out, because suddenly I find I am writing for lots of books, which requires sitting for long periods of time. Most of my colleagues are also busy doing the same nowadays.

I would like to take a break to record a new album of original songs soon, so hopefully I can get caught up on all the writing within about a month. Probably I will not be posting any new material on this site for a while because I need to focus on finishing various book projects:

• My book Wind Bands and Cultural Identity in Japanese Schools will - hopefully - go to print by the end of the year (forthcoming, Springer press).

• I am currently co-authoring a book chapter with Patricia Shehan Campbell entitled “World Beat” for Volume III of Multicultural Perspectives in Music Education (third edition), which will be published after the new Volumes I and II are released.

• I am also currently writing a chapter with the working title “Musicianship, Musical Identity and Meaning as Embodied Practice” for a very interesting book entitled Music Education for Changing Times: Guiding Visions for Practice (forthcoming, Springer Press). The contributing editors of this book are J. Terry Gates and Tom Regelski, and the other chapter authors are Wayne Bowman, Roger Johnson, Marie McCarthy, Elizabeth Gould, Scott Goble, Julia Koza, Daniel Cavicchi, John Shepherd, Anthony Palmer, Richard Colwell, Graham Welch, David Elliott, and Sandra Stauffer.

• I continue to work on two music book proposals that have strong interest from publishers but have not yet managed to see contracts: one co-edited with Alexandra Kertz-Welzel (Germany), and the other with Susan Battye (New Zealand).

• A few weeks ago I submitted my chapter entitled “Rethinking the Historiography of Hybrid Genres in Music Education” to Lauri Vakeva and Vesa Kurkela for their book De-Canonizing Music History (which is going to Cambridge Scholars Publishing). My chapter discusses the neglect of hybrid music genres within book-length national histories of music education in Japan, the United States, and New Zealand.

• About a month ago I submitted my chapter on “Jazz and Rock Music” for Volume II of William Anderson and Patricia Shehan Campbell’s book Multicultural Perspectives in Music Education (third edition), which will be published soon on Rowman-Littlefield Publishers.

• Earlier this year I also published chapters on Maori brass bands in Alta Musica and on Japanese bands in Music of Japan Today.

• I am also beginning to write a novel on the theme of corruption in higher education, which is loosely based on personal experience. [Update: Having just read the tragic and allegedly nonfictional Post Millenium Writings of Henry Kingsbury online, I feel the need to mention that my own work in this area takes an entirely different approach and is intended to be consumed as authentic literary fiction: Challenging yet humorous and hopeful in tone, my stories emphasize creative solutions and survival within complex settings.]

• It has been quite a busy time, but certainly interesting and probably worth the effort. To obtain the complete bibliographic details for any of these publications, please visit the following website with a link to publications and a CV:
  

http://hib.academia.edu/DavidHebert

From Boston to Helsinki

I am excited to have accepted a new job as Professor of Music at the Sibelius Academy in Finland. The new post begins in August of 2008, so I will be teaching for one more semester at Boston University and then moving to Europe. I will continue to supervise some doctoral dissertations for Boston University as an online Master Lecturer. The new job at Sibelius Academy will emphasize research and thesis supervision, and has come about partly as a result of restructuring within the institution to bring the music education, jazz studies, folk music (ethnomusicology), and arts management/music technology programs into closer collaboration within a single faculty unit. I am eager to work with the faculty in jazz studies, music technology, and ethnomusicology as well as music education, and see enormous potential for many interesting new projects within this unique and forward-thinking institution.

“The internationally renowned Sibelius Academy, located in Finland’s capital city Helsinki, was founded in 1882 and bears the distinguished name of the great Finnish master composer Jean Sibelius. The Sibelius Academy ranks today as one of the largest and most prestigious music universities in Europe. In addition to providing the highest education in the field of music, the Academy engages prominently in performance and in creative artistic activity and research” (from: http://fsa.siba.fi/en/sibelius_academy/).

Here are links to some open-access online articles that discuss music education in Finland:

http://act.maydaygroup.org/articles/Bladh_Heimonen6_1.pdf

http://act.maydaygroup.org/articles/Vakeva_Westerlund6_4.pdf

http://www.leeds.ac.uk/educol/documents/00001696.htm

http://www.uta.fi/FAST/FIN/EDU/sh-early.html

For those interested in music in higher education and folk music in Finland, Juniper Hill's recent dissertation provides some useful insights: http://juniperlynnhill.net/

The Folk Music Department of Sibelius Academy recently won a major award:
http://www.womex.com/realwomex/award_pr.html

For those interested in Finnish bands, I recommend examining publications by Kari Laitinen available online through WASBE (linked under National Wind Band History / Finland) and the Finnish Music Information Centre (linked under Contemporary Music / Publications / Other publications in English), and certainly the work of Paul Niemisto at St. Olaf's College.

Links for Japanese:
http://www.finstitute.gr.jp/
http://www.sib-jp.org/

Bands Around the World

Relevance of Wind Bands

Schools throughout much of the world offer music instruction, and wind bands have tended to be among the most popular instrumental ensembles in educational settings. Wind bands have also long played an important role in military, governmental, industrial, and religious institutions. Nevertheless, the relevance of wind bands in the contemporary world is an important question that seems inadequately explored.

Wind bands have certain educational advantages, yet probably cannot alone suffice as a comprehensive form of music education. Still, wind bands (broadly defined) may have greater relevance than most would realize, since the global phenomenon of wind band fusions has received inadequate scholarly attention and many schools tend to subscribe to a very narrow definition of the genre.

Research on bands in various cultures also provides important insights into the processes of hybridity and transculturation in music. It seems possible that as much can be learned about a culture from the way it modifies and adapts to newly introduced styles as from studies of its own long-standing traditions. Certainly the role of competition in Japanese bands, and the role of religion in Maori and Tongan bands, are demonstrative of fundamental values within these cultures, as is the role of rhythm, dance and improvisation in the other ensembles shown further below.

My research in this area contributes to the growing body of scholarship that seeks to attain a more comprehensive global understanding of wind bands. Other scholars addressing related topics include Trevor Herbert, Rob Boonzajer Flaes, Kate Brucher, Suzel Reily, Shuhei Hosokawa, Kanichi Abe, Bernhard Habla, and Richard Scott Cohen.

Japanese Wind Bands

What is important about Japanese wind bands?:

(1) The All-Japan Band Association national competition is the largest music contest of any kind in the world, with nearly 500,000 contestants.

(2) The world's leading professional civilian wind ensembles are based in Japan, most notably the Tokyo Kosei Wind Orchestra and the Osaka Municipal Symphonic Band. These ensembles have ticket sales and recording outputs that resemble major symphony orchestras.

(3) In just a few years, young Japanese band students learn to perform at virtually a professional level. This is remarkable considering the relatively short history of bands in Japan.

(4) Japanese composers have produced a unique body of original band works that fuse Japanese and European influences. Many of these works are of an outstanding quality and have received little attention outside Japan.

(5) Bands are the oldest form of western instrumental music ensemble in Japan.

I first began researching Japanese wind bands about ten years ago and my book will finally be published in the coming year.

Here is a video clip of a Singaporean band performing an original piece by Japanese composer Bin Kaneda. Kaneda was a close friend of Hiroshi Hoshina and a teacher of Toshio Mashima, both of whom are also regarded as important Japanese wind band composers:

Here is a video clip of some interesting images of Africa accompanied by the Tokyo Kosei Wind Orchestra’s performance of Van McCoy's "African Symphony." The Tokyo Kosei Wind Orchestra is considered an important professional model for wind bands throughout Japan, and is very highly regarded internationally as well:

Here is another clip of the Tokyo Kosei Wind Orchestra performing in a nationally televised awards event:

Most Japanese wind bands play thorough-composed music under the guidance of a conductor, but here is a video clip of an especially interesting professional band called Tokyo Brass Style (which has developed from embellishing the Japanese school band tradition in fusion with global popular music styles, such as salsa). They are playing a song that was recently popularized in the Dragon Ball anime series, Maka Fushigi Adventure:

Here is a video of the Do-Re-Mi Nursery School Marching Band:

Here are more links to amazing videos of Japanese youth bands:

• Japanese middle school band (12&13-year olds), 2011 contest: start at 4:00

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAB-imDWTx0&feature=related

• Japanese high school band playing piece by Toshio Mashima: start from 5:10
  

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoX_vmMzwBs&feature=related

• Japanese middle school band on Japanese band piece:

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9eqPCgS5bU&feature=related

• Japanese news story on school band contests:

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lGwSEs7OJM&feature=related

Here is a video of another intriguing (but less musically compelling) wind band and Japanese culture fusion that occured outside Japan: It is a live performance of the recent pop hit “Hollaback Girl”, which combines hip-hop with a marching band (playing on Yamaha gear), accompanied by Tokyo’s Harajuku Girls, all led by American pop icon Gwen Stefani. Stefani's recent hit album includes many surprising references to Tokyo youth culture and Harajuku style:

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Maori Ratana Bands

New Zealand's Maori Ratana bands are a unique tradition that developed within the largest political and religious movement among Maori. Using an ethnographic approach, I studied the social history of these bands during 2006. The research took me to the religion's headquarters and even to Japan, where an important meeting had occurred between Japanese and Maori Ratana musicians in 1924.

Here are video clips of some Maori Ratana bands:

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Tongan Brass Bands

Tongan brass bands are another unique tradition that fuses European and Polynesian influences. I studied a Tongan band in Auckland, New Zealand to see how this tradition was adapted into the migrant urban context.

Here is a video clip of the Royal Hifofuoa Tongan Brass Band:

Here is a video clip of the Tongan Police Brass Band:

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As sociomusicologist Charles Keil has demonstrated, bands that are organized on democratic principles, that emphasize rhythmic "groove", and provide opportunities for improvisation, composition, and arranging offer great potential for creative and meaningful lifelong participation in music. Brass bands have also played an important role in the development of many popular music styles (reggae, ska, jazz, salsa), and brass samples are even used in hip hop.

The following video clips of a New Orleans Mardi Gras band followed by Balkan, Romani, Pakistani, Thai and West African bands illustrate this point:


Mardi Gras Street Band (USA):


Balkan Brass Band:


Romani Brass Band:




Gengbe' Brass Band of Benin:

Seun Kuti & Egypt 80 brass section (Nigeria)

Bjork: Overture from "Dancer in the Dark":