Department of Music

DEM 5500 Topics in the History & Principles of Democracy
Topic: Sound and Democracy

Nomi Dave & Bonnie Gordon
3.0 credits
T / 2:00-4:30 pm / Bond House 118
Class Number: 21025

How do sound and listening shape democracy? Who listens? Who has a voice? This interdisciplinary seminar will consider the role of vocal and sonic practices, audio technologies, and ways of listening in politics and democratic process. We will address topics such as defamation and free speech, rap lyrics as criminal evidence, audio live streaming of Supreme Court hearings, street protest and noise regulation, and the vocal politics of race and gender. Our discussions will draw from historical and contemporary case-studies, and across socio-legal studies, politics, music and sound studies, anthropology, and philosophy. Students will engage directly with the Sound Justice Lab. No musical experience is necessary.

MUSI 7360 Scoring Human Existence

JoVia Armstrong
3.0 credits 
T / 5:00-7:30 pm / OCH B011
Class Number: 20943

Scoring Human Existence is an ensemble course for composers and improvisers. This course explores the question, "What does it mean to feel music?" Composers and improvisers will create compositions based on various themes and imagery (film, photography, dance, architecture, corporate identity, politics, war, etc.), human emotions, nature, current events, and narratives. Students will create through-composed music as well as improvise live scores to these various mediums which will also be conducted by students. There will be a small concert at the conclusion of the course as well as 360° videos of our favorite musical explorations. All vocalists and instrumentalists (including computer musicians) are welcomed to enroll. Students may submit their works on Bandcamp and YouTube if they choose.

MUSI 7519 The 'Black' Voice

A.D. Carson
3.0 credits 
R / 2:00-4:30 pm / New Cabell 398
Class Number: 19816

This course focuses on critical analyses of and questions concerning “The ‘Black’ Voice” as it pertains to hip-hop culture, particularly rap and related popular musics. Students will read, analyze, discuss a wide range of thinkers to explore many conceptions and definitions of “Blackness” while examining popular artists and the statements they make in [and about] their art. 

Much more than attempting, ourselves, to define or identify what is meant by “The ‘Black’ Voice,” this class will actively participate in creative and intellectual investigations of how many thinkers [artists included] approach and engage the idea/s alluded to by the phrase and its components.

MUSI 7526 Composing Ethnographic Stories

Noel Lobley
3.0 credits
T / 11:00 am - 3:30 pm / Wilson 117
Class Number: 19817

MUSI 7547 Timbre and Composition

Leah Reid
3.0 credits
W / 2:00-4:30 pm / OCH B011
Class Number: 19836