Balkan Music Goes Academic | Oberlin Music Blogs!

I just happened upon a gold mine of information about Balkan Music online in the form of series of blogs required by an Oberlin College music class. The class is being taught by Jennifer Fraser, an Assistant Professor of Ethnomusicology at the Conservatory of Music at Oberlin College. The course covers a broad array of musical styles and regional genres ranging from Turkish Folk to Roma Music to Bulgarian Folk music (among others).

Here is what Jennifer Fraser has to say about the course and its blog initiative in her first blog post:

This site is dedicated to writing about and sharing our experiences interacting with these musics, along with articulating the connections between musical style and socio-cultural meanings; for example, how was music used to express sides during various Balkan wars in the 90s? How can you trace the history of socialism and roads to democratization and economic independence through musical practices in the Balkans? How do the cultural legacies of the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires play out in the musical practices of today?

From my cursory browsing through the subject matter, it looks like a fascinating course that approaches Balkan music the way it should (in my opinion) be approached; through a historical, socio-cultural lens. Apparently, it just isn't me that is fascinated by the symbolic nature of Balkan music and its mixing of cultures. Regardless, I encourage those interested in Balkan music to browse through ETHN 209 and its blog posts. They the blogs are written by university students so the quality ranges between insightful to bland but it continues the conversation. These students study at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music so they are often have a much different approach to music compared to myself because they have a better understanding of the musical structure and also the historical background from other genres and styles. So, without further ado, here is the Ethnomusicology 209 course for Oberlin College:

ETHN 209 | Oberlin College | Professor Jennifer Fraser

While the entries are great, I and many other international readers probably won't want to wade through all of the individual websites to browse the collection of opinions about Balkan Music. To counter that, I have created a Google Reader of the entire class which compiles all the submissions of every student in a central place. It should update automatically whenever a student has a new post. But readers can also click the title of the post to go to the individual blog as well. Here is a public RSS Feed page that you can click to view all of the post in a centralized blog format:

http://tinyurl.com/oberlin-ethn-209

To subscribe to the RSS feed, you can just simply click the link here

Subscribe to Oberlin ETHN 209 RSS Feed (all blogs)