MEDITERRANEAN MUSIC AND CULTURE

Catalog description

Cross-listed ANTH 2309 and MUSC 2309. The aim of this course is to give students an overview of music and culture in the Mediterranean. It will look at the many different types of music found in the Mediterranean (traditional, classical, popular; taken from both oral and literate traditions), and ask whether the music of the Mediterranean could be studied as a series of related - rather than opposing - case studies. The course will ask what role religion has played in the development of different types of music around the Mediterranean, and will examine the role of politics and colonialism in how music was conceptualized, discussed and performed. It will also look at the role of improvised oral poetry in the Mediterranean basin, and discuss the role of women as music-makers, both in the past and now. Together with an overview of a variety of topics, each lecture will also include individual case studies drawn from around the Mediterranean. The course will place particular emphasis on the island of Cyprus, where the connections between culture, history, politics and music can be studied in an interrelated way.