• Inactive for Year: 2024/25

• Module Leader(s): Professor Nanette De Jong

• Owning School: Arts & Cultures
• Teaching Location: Newcastle City Campus

Semesters

Your programme is made up of credits, the total differs on programme to programme.

Aims

•       To build on existing practical experience of world music
•       To provide a non-pressurised context for learning (i.e. not staking everything on a final performance)

•       To provide complimentary skills and knowledge valuable to students in their future professional careers, e.g. as creative practitioners, or teachers

•       To encourage cultural understanding though practical encounter, and thus …

•       To provide a practical compliment to the academic study of ethnomusicology and world music

•       To enable familiarisation with the specific characteristics of a selection of musical styles and systems across the Caribbean
•       To acquire knowledge and appreciation of the diverse forms of musical expressions found in varied parts of the Caribbean
•       To acquire a further understanding of the importance and relevance of considering music and music-making in relation to their cultural and social contexts
•       To provoke thought and understanding of Caribbean music traditions, including their differences and similarities as well as how (and why) they arise and develop
•       To instil appreciation regarding the ways music and musical participation provide mediums into understanding world cultures in genera
•       To explore the link between music and identity in reference to the Caribbean
•       To explore how colonial politics impact the early developments of cultures and musical societies in the Caribbean
•       To provide a basic understanding of how music can be used as a tool for re-piecing lost or forgotten histories

Outline Of Syllabus

In the Caribbean, a land distinguished by migration and displacement, the concept of nation and identity assumes tremendous importance. Music and Identity in the Caribbean will examine invented and reinvented identities and traditions as celebrated in the music of the Caribbean people, uncovering a Caribbean ethos based on the generation of new myths and revisions of old, with music revealed as primary indicator for both. The general purpose of this course is to introduce students to the scholarly study of traditional, popular, and classical musics from around the Caribbean through in-depth reading, close listening to assigned sound recordings, available online, and performance. The first half of the module is based around lectures and seminars, where students will be introduced to a range of scholarly approaches to the Caribbean, grounded in a number of specific case studies. The second half of the module is based around learning about Caribbean music by ‘doing it.’ Apart from providing a practical introduction to Caribbean music, this second half will also help students develop a range of general musical skills valuable to their existing musical practice(s) – e.g. improved listening, rhythmic and ensemble sense, intonation, ability to improvise. No prior experience of playing in world music ensembles is necessary.

Tuition will take place weekly, and will be supplemented with small sectionals.

Teaching Methods

Teaching Activities

Teaching Rationale And Relationship

Ensemble and sectional teaching provides the core of students’ practical learning. Seminars provide fora in which students learn performance, transcription, arranging and composition skills and exchange ideas on wider issues of interpretation and performance practice.

Lectures provide a forum for discussing critical concepts regarding Caribbean music. Lectures will focus on relevant analytical skills, and demand independent learning that includes listening, reading and reflecting on key sources and texts, which helps to develop and enrich knowledge of global popular music repertory and scholarly perspectives on the role of Caribbean music across a variety of island societies.

Assessment Methods

The format of resits will be determined by the Board of Examiners

Exams

Other Assessment

Assessment Rationale And Relationship

•       The combination of essays, exam, and collaborative project will provide opportunities to apply critical and analytical strategies within different contexts
•       The literature review encourages students to engage in primary materials from womanist perspectives, rarely afforded in standard Caribbean readings
•       The collaborative performance project enables students to engage in materials as part of group, culminating in an informal end-of-term showing of material
•       The final essay enables students to apply concepts examined in the course to an original research topic, reflecting, on a grand scale, their understanding of those concepts.

Reading Lists

• MUS3038's Reading List

Timetable

• Timetable Website: www.ncl.ac.uk/timetable/
• MUS3038's Timetable