Zuzana Jurková (ed.): Pražské hudební světy / Prague Soundscapes ****************************************************************************************** * Anna Libánská ****************************************************************************************** Článek v PDF ke stažení [ URL "LM-813-version1-reviews.pdf"] The book Prague Soundscapes is the successful result of at least two years’ work of a team anthropology seminar students at the Faculty of Humanities of Charles University in Prague leadership of Zuzana Jurková. The title of the publication reveals its authors’ aim to int capital as perceived by ethnomusicological ears. Ethnomusicology (music anthropology) conc complex way: not only as a sound phenomenon, but also as a social one. Music is, first of who play it and those who listen to it – it’s the world around sound, the music world, the 8)! And that was exactly one of the authors’ goals: to introduce ethnomusicology as a disc to understand people through music and music through people (p. 293) – to further link ant theoretical concepts with a particular musical world, or soundcape. The 304 pages of the book contain a symbiotic combination of two genres: impressive “snaps and a theoretical part on the other. A total of twenty-four snapshots – original inside vi events – very well portray the authors’ experience of musical events, including a detailed the music, place, musicians, listeners, and context, and illustrative photos. At the same present information that is potentially relevant to the specific soundscape. All snapshots by Zuzana Jurková through appropriately chosen theoretical concepts professed by ethnomusi anthropologists such as Timothy Rice, Arjun Appadurai, Kay Kaufman Shelemay, Alan Lomax an Individual parts of the book are also distinguished graphically: beige pages indicate the while the snapshots are represented by white pages. In addition, the text is supplemented on the artists or musical genres. This information is also graphically differentiated. The differentiation is explained in the introduction, where the authors instruct “how to read book can be read from different points of view. Those who “do not want to waste time with follow interesting snapshots which show what is happening in Prague or skip arbitrarily to interest them. The book also satisfies even the most demanding reader (“who does not fear does not ask just “how?” but also “why?” in terms of understanding ethnomusicology. “Soundscapes” are an important concept in this publication: a term coined by the American Kay Kaufmann Shelemay (first used by the acousticologist R. Murray Schafer as acoustic cha of a given environment – a sound parallel to “landscape”). Shelemay’s (2001) concept of th theoretical inspiration of socio-cultural anthropologist Arjun Appadurai (1996) and the et Alan P. Merriam (2000). The term soundscape refers to the world of music (-scape is a morp find in the word “landscape,” for instance) in its dynamic variability (characteristic for Being inspired by Appadurai’s theories of global cultural flows (ethnoscapes, technoscapes mediascapes, ideoscapes), she adopts the terms and so do the authors of Prague Soundscapes refer to specific examples of these -scapes. And so, for example the chapter Music and Ide ethnoscapes when talking about migration; technoscapes appear in the chapter Electronic Mu content is inspired by Merriam’s model of exploring music from an anthropological point of music is regarded as a product of human activity (music is the result of human behavior, w human values and ideas [p. 10]). The reviewed book certainly shows Merriam’s model too, fo categorization of soundscapes, in which the values and significance of individual music wo stand out clearly. Prague Soundscapes fall in urban ethnomusicology. In this research disc studies in other world capitals were carried out (the above-mentioned Shelemay 2001 – rese or Philip Bohlman, Sebastian Klotz, Lars?Christian Koch 2007). The book is divided into seven chapters. Except for the initial one, each of the following soundscape. Although it would be possible to find in Prague more soundscapes (soundscapes therapy, music and children, music and politics might come to mind), the publication still wide range of topics: Music and Identity, Music and Social Stratification, Music and Rebel a Commodity, Electronic Dance Music, Music and Spirituality. The authors state that it is possible and certainly not an exhaustive division. They have set these criteria for select (a) the music event had to take place in Prague and (b) musical language and the events ha explained through the values ??of the community in the perspective of anthropology. The au looking for a variety of genres in relation to the multidimensionality of the capital. Each chapter would deserve its own publication, as the majority of the authors spent a lar their studies on their given topics (the themes were pivotal to their bachelor’s, master’s theses) and hence show extensive understanding of their domains. Especially admirable is t Jurková, who led the student team and who managed to skilfully organize all the informatio image. Compactness is also evident in the sequence of the individual themes and sub-sectio theoretical concepts), in which, despite their seeming contradiction (stratification, comm rebellion or electronic music, spirituality), they are connected. For example, the chapter with a snapshot of Tom Stoppard’s performance Rock’n’Roll (a play about, apart from other band The Plastic People of the Universe) at the New Scene of the National Theater (a very and this apt question: “How rebellious is music if It keeps features of a rebellious music fills stadiums with listeners – members of that very system against which the music protes Similarly, the interpretation of Judith Beckett’s unconventional text which deals with the music, emotion and trance and which is placed here within the context of electronic dance precedes the chapter Music and Spirituality. The introductory soundscape explores the relationship of music and identity. It focuses on through the studies of Romani/Gypsy music and music of today’s migrants. The chapter outli “identity” – the question whether music can express who we are. In the next chapter, the authors Zuzana Jurková and Pavla Jónssonová deal with music in re stratification. The authors illustrate stratified music with the example of Dvořák’s Rusal Lomax’s cantometrics and, when analyzing the performance The Makropulos Affair, they look the lens of semiotics. They use Thomas Turino’s adaptation of Charles S. Peirce’s theory i answer the question of how music actually affects people (p. 110). In the 1970s, the British cultural anthropologist Victor Turner comes along with the conce – a mode of social existence complementary to normal stratified society (p. 21). The autho theoretical concept in the chapter Music and Rebellion when they applied it to modern punk Modrá Vopice club and to the original Czech soundscape around the band The Plastic People (Czech underground). The previous two chapters are thematically linked with the soundscape of commodified music the chapter Music as a Commodity. Commodification is a process by which (in this case) mus commodity with the clear intention of making money. How money influences the form of music with the movie Mňaga: Happy End, as well as in the KLF group’s manual “How to Win the Hit Electronic dance music directly refers to one of the mentioned –scapes: technoscapes. The on the relationship between music and technology that changes the very nature of music in analyzing the two forms of electronic dance music, freetekno and psytrance, there appear v completely opposite pole from that in the chapter on commodification; the participants of long to escape from that commercial and anonymous sector into the world created through th symbiosis with technology (p. 34). It is possible to view the relationship between music and spirituality from many angles. T Veronika Seidlová chose to illustrate it in a demonstration of faith in the form of harina procession of Hare Krishna movement members through the city, which catches the eyes and e dwellers. Another example, in fact an opposite one, was the Saint Wenceslas Christian Cele nicely showed the dichotomy between specialization and secularism. The snapshot of the gos shows another dichotomous model which distinguishes between the participants’ level and th level associated with the performance of music (Thomas Turino). The book is definitely an interesting contribution to the field of (dare I say not only Cz anthropology and ethnomusicology. Cultural Prague is viewed here from an entirely new pers from a historical point of view, as it used to be until now, but also from the perspective soundscapes. Although the authors did not want to embark upon a search for a systematic th with which they would analyze the musical worlds of Prague, they managed to find a few bas characterize Prague soundscapes. For urban space, it is the typical ambiguity and overlapp musical genres and musical sound. In all the field studies we clearly see what the authors the introduction, i.e., that music is not just sound itself. In each case, aesthetics and correspond with the musical language. Another feature is the desire to become different fr continually gives rise to constantly new worlds (as we read in the chapters on rebellion, and spirituality). Anna Libánská [ URL "LM-237.html "]