I am presenting a paper entitled "A Mere Boy's Play-Thing: Gender, Children, and the Jew's Harp."

Abstract

Due to the range of cultures in which it is found, there is incredible richness and variety in jew’s harp traditions. At the same time, the instrument has not received much scholarly attention and has frequently been referred to as technically or musically deficient. Prior to the twenty-first century, jew’s harps were mass produced at centres in Britain, Ireland, Austria, and Northern Italy and that the numbers were in the millions, a fact that no doubt contributed to the pervasive notion that the jew’s harp was merely a cheap trinket, best suited to children. The connection between the jew’s harp and children, particularly boys, has endured; in Norway and Austria, mass-produced jew’s harps were at the centre of youth-based revivals in the 1950s and 60s. The jew’s harp was chosen as the symbol of the 1952 Boy Scout Jamboree in Austria, symbolizing a return to simplicity in the aftermath of the Second World War. A few years later, Norwegian music shops of the 1960s struggled to keep jew’s harps in stock after an adolescent musician played one on a youth television show. I show how children’s television has been a major conduit for the jew’s harp’s image in popular culture, and how large-scale manufacturers continue to mass produce brightly coloured jew’s harps today, aimed at young people and amateur players. I argue that these associations have contributed to the still widespread belief that it is easy to play, and discuss its ongoing marginalisation within musical discourse.

I am presenting a paper entitled “Archaic Fusion: An Analysis of Norwegian Munnharpe Style and Repertoire.” 

Abstract

Fiddles dominate the world of Norwegian folk music, but the munnharpe (jew’s harp) belongs to a group of instruments that are prized as being uniquely Norwegian. The eldre folkemusikkinstrumente (older folk music instruments) are grounded in the harmonic series and the just scale, and their inability to modulate either excludes them from playing the repertoire of the more popular fiddles and accordions, or requires significant modifications to the tunes. The munnharpe is further marginalized by its biphonic drone and melody texture, and as a result, its players have developed an idiomatic playing technique and repertoire that capitalizes on its idiosyncrasies. In this paper, I show how the munnharpe’s hallmark sound is a trifecta combining the glottal closing technique related to the seljefløyte, the melodic accents and ornamentation patterns related to the hardingfele (Hardanger fiddle), and the foot stomping rhythms related to folk dance choreography (Setesdal gangar). Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, I demonstrate how munnharpe players display their mastery of the tradition by incorporating all three of these elements in performance.

Keywords: Norway, munnharpe, jew’s harp, folk music, playing technique, repertoire, fiddle, willow flute, folk dance

I am presenting a paper entitled "Unworthy Objects: The jew’s harp and discourses of value in European Music." Also presented at the Northwest Chapter Conference of the Society for Ethnomusicology, Bellingham, March 3.

Abstract

The jew’s harp has, at various times, been one of the most popular musical instruments in Europe. First appearing on the continent in the thirteenth century (Kolltveit 2006), it has undergone several centuries of mass production, and is currently experiencing a global revival. At the same time, the instrument has long been seen as an object of little value. In this paper, I use the jew’s harp’s peripheral position to examine issues of labour, leisure, productivity, and waste, and to explore how musical instruments reflect changing tastes, technologies, and social identities. I begin by exploring the pervasive notion that the jew’s harp was merely a cheap trinket, best suited to children. I then examine the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century phenomenon of the jew’s harp “virtuoso” in Europe. Though the instrument’s transgression as a worthy object was brief, I argue that it gets to the heart of enduring prejudices about musical value, virtuosity, and productivity. Moving to contemporary ethnographic contexts, I draw on multi-sited fieldwork in Europe to examine how the isolation of jew’s harp players and makers across the globe has changed radically in the digital age. The marginalisation of the instrument has now given way to inclusive transnational communities, but its longstanding association with unproductive activity remains. It is precisely the jew’s harp’s unworthiness, I conclude, that hides it in plain sight at the very centre of European musical discourse.

I am presenting a paper entitled “Rustic Chivalry: Heroes, outlaws, and the Sicilian marranzano.” , Limerick, July 15. Also presented at the Society for Ethnomusicology, Washington D.C., November 10, 2016.

I have been invited to present an hour-long colloquium talk, entitled "Arcadian Tones: The Austrian Maultrommel from the Pastoral to the Avant-Garde."

I will be presenting a paper entitled "Rustic Chivalry: Heroes, Outlaws, and the Sicilian Marranzano".

Abstract:

Since the early 2000s, the Sicilian marranzano (jew’s harp) has been enjoying a revival. Rising from the ashes of the postwar “cultural grey-out” observed by Alan Lomax, who recorded a Sicilian marranzano song in 1954, the marranzano is being embraced as a symbol of Sicilian identity and cultural renewal. At the same time, the instrument’s resurgence is self-consciously cosmopolitan, and tethered to the transnational jew’s harp movement taking place around the globe. This new image for the marranzano, however, has not entirely superseded the instrument’s enduring mythology: that it was once the instrument of bandits, in particular, the outlaw hero Salvatore Giuliano. Was this association born of fact or fiction? Did Giuliano and his band really use the marranzano? And are such legends compatible with the urbane, activist bent of the present-day revival? Part ethnography and part historical ethnomusicology, this paper delves into the marranzano’s past and present. In the process, it uncovers a long tradition of criminal depictions of marranzano in Italian cinema, which, I argue, is at the heart of the instrument’s lasting legacy in local memory. Drawing on Bithell and Hill’s work on music revivals as activism (2014), I suggest that these popular representations are not wholly at odds with the anti-corruption advocacy of the present marranzano resurgence. Rather, they co-exist along the spectrum of rebellion, self-determination, and pastoral nostalgia that is a defining axis of Sicilian patrimony.

I will be presenting a paper at the AMS Popular Music Study Group session, entitled "The Anatomy of Style: Playing Technique as Musical Artifact".

Abstract:

The jew’s harp has, at various times, been one of the most popular musical instruments in Europe. First appearing on the continent in the 13th century (Kolltveit 2006), the instrument has undergone several cycles of mass production right up to the 21st century, and is currently experiencing a global revival. While it is easy to argue that musical instruments are musical artifacts, what about the techniques that are used to play them? In this paper, I contend that playing technique is an artifact that gets transmitted, historicized, and reproduced in the evolution of popular traditions. Using the ethnographic case study of the Austrian Maultrommel (jew's harp), I analyze the ways in which a music revival writes its own history through the inclusion of certain techniques and the exclusion of others. By examining three centuries of Maultrommel playing techniques through visual artwork, archival recordings, and contemporary performances, I trace the lineage of two different styles of playing: the Wechselpiel style, which became canonized as “traditional” and registered with UNESCO as intangible cultural heritage, and the Alpine style, which is no longer used by present-day musicians. What are the processes that shape some techniques into artifacts and relegate others to obscurity? And what can the survival of certain styles tell us about changing tastes and technologies? Addressing these questions, I suggest methods for interpreting playing techniques, and demonstrate their applicability towards the understanding of popular traditions.

I will be presenting a paper on an ethnomusicology panel on musical instruments.

Paper title: "The imagined community incarnate: Virtual connectedness and co-presence in the international jew’s harp revival." Anthropology in London, University College London, June 15, 2015.

Anthropology on the Move 

Monday 15 June 2015 9.30am-6pm, and evening reception

University College London, Department of Anthropology, 14 Taviton Street & E28 Harrie Massey Lecture Theatre, 25 Gordon Street, London

Questions around migration, mobility, borders, and belonging dominate the contemporary political agenda. In recent decades, anthropological studies of the routes and the roots of people, goods, and ideas have highlighted the interconnectedness between local and global. By doing so, the discipline has successfully challenged static conceptions of what it means to belong. Yet while anthropologists have arguably ‘caught up’ with dynamic and changing social realities, there is an ongoing need to think about how the discipline positions itself to stay at the forefront of social and cultural transformations and processes of deterritorialisation (as well as new territorial creations). How will anthropology keep pace with a hyper-connected world in which our subjects of study are ‘on the move’ in a multitude of ways?

I will be presenting a paper entitled "The Norwegian munnharpe revival: A dialogue between material and intangible culture"

A conference to be held jointly by the Horniman Museum and Gardens and the Royal Anthropological Institute.

An interdisciplinary conference linking organology, the study of musical instruments, with anthropology through the subject of musical instruments as objects of material culture, viewed holistically to consider aspects ranging from their manufacture to the cultural values they embody.  

I will be giving a talk at the upcoming Song Collectors Gathering, where I will be speaking about my experiences collecting jew's harp music around the world, as well as the role of song collecting in the international jew's harp revival. There will be plenty of great music and interesting speakers. A must for anyone interested in traditional music!

Taking place over two days 21st & 22nd March in the beautiful Blackheath Conservatoire and St Mary Old Church for the Sat interviews and conversations, we present a celebration of the art of song collecting, this year under the theme ‘Collecting sounds from cultures internationally’. 

 As in previous years we will have insightful talks on various aspects of song collecting from esteemed invitees such as Shirely Collins MBE, Alistair Anderson and Lucy Duran, Deirdre Morgan as well as a visit from some unique and last of their kind ‘song carriers’ from the Irish and Scots Traveler and Gypsy community. It will be a day of phenomenal stories, experiences, lives and melodies

11.am event starts opening panel

11.20 Lucy Duran – Griot families and transmission of oral culture in Mali

12.20 Alistair Anderson – Passing the tunes on – Roots of Northumbrian culture

1.20pm – lunch

2.20 – SCC films featuring cuts of some of the footage shot on the SCC field trips

2.45pm - Deirdre Morgan – Collecting Jews Harp music in Europe

3.30pm - Shirley Collins MBE – In Conversation with the first lady of folk about her travels with Alan Lomax in the Southern States of the USA

5.30pm end of Gathering

Head over to The Nest Collective’s website to get your tickets:

For Saturday at St Mary Old Church: http://thenestcollective.co.uk/shows/events/21-mar-15-song-collectors-collective-gathering-st-marys/

For Sunday at Blackheath Conservatoire: http://thenestcollective.co.uk/shows/events/22-mar-15-song-collectors-collective-gathering-blackheath-conservatoire/

Santur-Zanburak performance with Peyman Heydarian in celebration of Nowruz (Persian, Kurdish, and Azeri new year).