Brooklyn College Conservatory of Music

City University of New York

MUSC 3101 – TR11 (1684) 3 crs.
Days/Times: IN PERSON – Tuesdays & Thursdays – 11:00AM – 12:15PM
Room: Whitehead 508

Instructor: Leslie K. Haynes, M.A.T., M.A.

Contact Information: lhaynes@gradcenter.cuny.edu (please allow 48 hours for a response)
Office hours: By appointment, Thursdays: 12:30PM-3:30PM; Fridays: 8:30AM-10:00AM

Course Description:

This course focuses on the transnational origins of American music traditions. 

Music in Global America will draw on the growing body of contemporary ethnomusicology and transnational American literature which seek to view artistic practices and cultural identity through a global lens which focuses on immigration, migration, and contemporary channels of transnational communication.  This global perspective reorients our thinking about the nature of “American” music by focusing on the complex flow of diverse musical practices into and out of the United States.

The diaspora of folk and popular styles from Africa, Europe, Latin America, the Caribbean, and Asia will be traced, historically.  The survival, transformation, and hybridization of these music traditions in diverse U.S. ethnic and cultural communities, as well as the impact they have had on our national popular music landscapes will also be analyzed.  We will consider the relationship of musical practice to the construction of identity among select U.S. ethnic and cultural groups.  Finally, we will explore the spread of American musical practice as it moves across the globe, as driven by mass media and the Internet, coupled with the interaction of those styles with local music cultures around the world.

“Jon Batiste and Stay Human in concert” by digboston is licensed under CC BY 2.0