Notes from the Field

Over the week since Nov 24, 2022 when 10 people locked in an apartment building died in Urumqi, Xinjiang, thousands of protesters took to the streets in multiple cities to protest the zero-COVID policy that was still in place then, with no exit strategy.

When UCLA announced on March 13 that we would transition to remote instruction for the entirety of spring quarter, I had to quickly reconceptualize my graduate seminar. Like so many other instructors at my institution and elsewhere, I needed a crash course in the mechanics of online teaching.

One of the rewarding aspects of exploring Indonesian jazz communities is my relationship with members of Warta Jazz, an Indonesian jazz news source and website.

Christophe Apprill and Sara Le Menestrel

How can we approach the sensory dimensions of musical and dance experience as cultural anthropologists? What methodological tools can we use in our empirical research? What does happen when teachers experiment with these tools within the classroom, turning it into a field? (1)

Many Americans have potent memories of their early years in music classrooms, squeaking out the melodies to patriotic tunes or outdated popular music hits on a plastic recorder. Even as a musician who studies music education as the subject of my Ph.D., most of the particulars of elementary school general music class have faded from my memory.

Does Non-Western music sound more familiar under the label of “psychedelic”? Does the label become less efficient once applied outside of the original realm of the 60's California counterculture? While widely used by music critics, it isn’t risky to say that “psychedelic” has become an equivocal term. But equivocal doesn’t mean ineffectual.

This edition of “Notes from the Field” showcases the incredible number of eclectic musical activities that occurred during the Big Ears Festival in Knoxvill

“Detroit techno” is a musical category and a paradigm my research deals with. As a matter of fact, I was acquainted with Detroit techno mostly while living in Paris (France), where I study. Fans of this electronic music genre, clubbers and partygoers, may mention their taste through this common category called techno music. At the same time, they mention city names like Berlin or Detroit.