In January 2019, Warner Music Group signed a twenty-album contract with the artist Endel. And then in May 2023, Endel came to an agreement with Universal Music Group to collaborate with the label’s artists. These major record label deals would be impressive under any circumstances, but what’s… Read More
Consider five variations on music’s ineffability: Disjunction. Music can be magnetic—attracting very specific meanings and affects in one moment in ways that seem so right on—and in another moment, seem to be quite indifferent to those meanings and affects. In a scene from Cameron Crowe’s Almost Famous (1999), a… Read More
In this conversation, Allison Jerzak spoke with cultural anthropologist Nick Seaver, who studies the intersection of people, technology, and culture. His 2022 book, Computing Taste: Algorithms and the Makers of Music Recommendation, draws on several years of ethnographic fieldwork at music recommendation companies in the United States. A … Read More
In this conversation, the first of a multi-part interview series with performers, scholars, and pedagogues of early music, historically informed performance, and related topics, David Miller spoke with conductor, instrumentalist, and musicologist Joshua Rifkin. A transcript is provided for increased accessibility. As a conductor and performer on various keyboard… Read More
Ed. note: This essay is an offshoot from a lecture originally presented as the AMS Committee on Women and Gender Annual Endowed Lecture. Fred Maus and Tes Slominski read responses to that spoken delivery. These are also available to read (Maus; Slominski). I am grateful for the opportunity… Read More
What of music in the time of war? It is not a new question, but a question whose answers unfold along complex and specific paths. In the eighteen days since the Russian government’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24, music and musicians have been part of many of this… Read More
A note about Pandemic Piece (2020): Ethnography is a research method that involves deep human contact—studied, immersed involvement with communities over months, years, or even decades. Relationships with real people always involve give-and-take, so ethnographic research as a rule cannot be mapped in advance. Ethnographers know that they will experience… Read More
This recorded conversation is an audio contribution to Musicology Now’s Sounds of Social Justice Roundtable. Neil Verma speaks with Yvette Janine Jackson about her recent piece, The Coding (2021), and how it engages with problems of language, race, colonial thinking, and two phenomena that have a strange overlap… Read More
A note from Executive Editor, Andrea F. Bohlman This is the new Musicology Now. Relaunched and reimagined, this Musicology Now is a product of teamwork over the course of the past two years. It emerges from a reflection upon the various roles this online publication has… Read More