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Blurred lines, forensic musicology, and music

[updated 3/17/15] Musicologists, and more specifically forensic musicology, are receiving some attention in the mainstream press lately over the lawsuit regarding whether Robin Thicke and Pharell Williams violated copyright law by essentially creating music substantially similar to Marvin Gaye’s music without permission or providing royalties to Gaye’s estate. (To make a long story short, jurors found Thicke and Williams guilty.) You might be interested in musicologist Joe Bennett’s analysis and commentary on the issue. I’m more interested here in the… Read More »Blurred lines, forensic musicology, and music

Hybridity and Convergence: Popular and “Classical” music and musicianship can live together

I often write and speak about music education curriculum and teaching/learning contexts in terms of hybridity and convergence. I differentiate these paradigms of curriculum to those that are more compartmentalized or specific to particular ways of knowing or doing music such as “strands” and classes that focus on a form of musicianship or type of music (particularly in relation to secondary K-12 music education). John Covach’s recent piece, Rock Me, Maestro, in the Chronicle of Higher Education is a great… Read More »Hybridity and Convergence: Popular and “Classical” music and musicianship can live together

Solo, multitrack, mute? Producing and performing (gender) in a popular music classroom

Tobias, E. S. (2014). Solo, multitrack, mute? Producing and performing (gender) in a popular music classroom. Visions of Research in Music Education, 25, 1-29. My article Solo, multitrack, mute? Producing and performing (gender) in a popular music classroom is now published in Visions of Research in Music Education (VRME). For those unfamiliar with VRME, it is an open-access journal, which means that all articles are available for free on the journal’s website. An earlier version of this article was presented… Read More »Solo, multitrack, mute? Producing and performing (gender) in a popular music classroom

Dead Prez & Jean-Pierre Rampal – A serendipitous sample discovery

While listening to the following recording this morning I immediately thought to myself “I know that melody” . . . Jean-Pierre Rampal & Lily Laskine performing Kojo no Tsuki Now check out Dead Prez performing Behind Enemy Lines I looked at the liner notes of Dead Prez’s album let’s get free and couldn’t find any mention of the sample or its source. So, I am not sure of the actual sample source or whether it was manipulated during production, but… Read More »Dead Prez & Jean-Pierre Rampal – A serendipitous sample discovery

Flipping the misogynist script: Gender, agency, Hip Hop, and music education

Tobias, E. S. (2014). Flipping the misogynist script: Gender, agency, Hip Hop, and music education. Action, Criticism and Theory for Music Education, 13(2), 49-84. In my article Flipping the misogynist script: Gender, agency, Hip Hop, and music education I make a case for including Hip Hop in music programs through a critical media literacy framework and providing students diverse opportunities to address socio-cultural and musical issues through related musical engagement. In particular I address issues of gender and agency as… Read More »Flipping the misogynist script: Gender, agency, Hip Hop, and music education