Journal Article

Listening to Discourses of Ethics and Aesthetics

Witulski, Christopher

2012

Overview

Music, as sound, physically and figuratively transcends previously erected or conceptualized boundaries. Artists and listeners each have the ability to aurally extend their values into new spaces, where others hear them. Passions and ideas gain traction through a constant aural negotiation that exists within the music that individuals use to soundtrack their public and private lives. As argued by the contributors to this roundtable, music both resides within the larger societal and cultural constellations that surround it and helps to shape those dynamics in active ways. Music, as a loosely defined social practice, plays an important role in self-identification. Musical aesthetics provide an avenue through which listeners and performers place themselves within specific social groups. Al-āla and Andalusian genres typically associated with North African elite classes constitute one prominent example that is threaded throughout this roundtable. These social groups are rarely exclusive, however, and musical aesthetics provide a significant set of data through which scholars might read (or, perhaps better put, listen to) the dynamic nature of social institutions and the cultural formations that mold them.

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Subject: Aesthetics / Africa / Artists / Borders / Boundaries / Cultural values / Discourses / Elites / Ethics / Listeners / Listening / Mahmood, Saba / Middle East / Music / Music practice / Musical aesthetics / Musical performance / Musical rhythm / Negotiation / Religious practices / Religious rituals / Ritual music / Roundtable / Social Dynamics / Social Groups / Social identity / Social Institutions / Social Systems / Studying the Music of North Africa / Values