Undergraduate Program
Selected Course Offerings:
Ethnomusicology
A number of electives in Ethnomusicology are offered on a regular basis. They include:
Music 266: Funk: The Re-Africanization of American Popular Song.
Professor Michael Veal
A survey of African American dance music of the late 1960s through the early 1980s, typified by artists such as James Brown, Earth, Wind & Fire, Parliament-Funkadelic, and Sly & the Family Stone. Examination of the music in the context of the period of African American cultural history during which it emerged.
Music 306: World Music Theories: Practice and Aesthetics.
Professor Sarah Weiss
Survey of the musical processes of various mode-based musical systems, selected from the Indian raga, Arabic maqam, Irish tune-family, Javanese pathet, Persian dastgah, and Vietnamese Dieu. Survey of the musical cultures; notation and analysis of the music; related aesthetics systems.
Music 346: Javanese Gamelan: Analysis and Performance.
Professor Sarah Weiss.
Javanese musical genres and performance styles from the eighteenth century to the twenty-first. Performance on multiple instruments; study of theoretical, aesthetic, and analytical discourses about gamelan and other Indonesian performance genres. Students in this class form the nucleus of the Yale Javanese Gamelan Ensemble.
Music 353: Topics in World Music.
Professor Michael Veal and Professor Sarah Weiss.
A critical introduction to selected cultures of world music. Specific cultures vary from year to year but generally include those of Native America, South Asia, Southeast Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, and the Caribbean.
Music 420: Gendering Musical Performance.
Professor Sarah Weiss.
A critical examination of the discourse on gender, sexuality and music. Grounded in the cross-cultural detail of specific musical genres and performers, we will examine the ways in which issues of race, class, ethnicity, spirituality, and embodiment intersect with gender in the shaping of musical cultures and aesthetics.
Music 487: Traditional and Contemporary Music of Sub-Saharan Africa.
Professor Michael Veal.
Advanced study of the traditional and contemporary music of sub-Saharan Africa. Focus on selected musics and music cultures of Guinea, Mali, the Gambia, Senegal, Ghana, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, and South Africa.
