Selected Abstracts of Juniper Hill's Work |
Articles: |
"Rebellious Pedagogy, Ideological Transformation, and Creative Freedom in Finnish Contemporary Folk Music ." Forthcoming in Ethnomusicology. Creativity and artistic freedom in music are encouraged or inhibited by pedagogy, ideology, and socio-musical conventions. Finnish folk music pedagogues became dissatisfied with the lack of creative opportunities in Western art music, popular music, the music education system, and nationalistic folkloric music. Inspired by historical Finnish folk music, Albert Lord's theory of oral composition, and avant-garde free improvisation, they developed radical teaching methods that give students the tools and permission to be creative within traditional idioms, and to challenge and defy conventional aesthetics and boundaries. Disseminated from the Sibelius Academy, this pedagogy is impacting ideology and creative processes across Finland. |
"'Global Folk Music' Fusions: The Reification of Transnational Relationships and the Ethics of Cross-Cultural Appropriations in Finnish Contemporary Folk Music." Yearbook for Traditional Music Vol. 39, 2007. (In Press.) Contemporary folk music in Finland is characterized by several different types of transnational musical activities, which assert new transnational identities by reifying multiple idealized relationships with different ethnolinguistic, cultural, geopolitical, and affinity groups. Six types of transnational musical activities that assert different types of relationships, each with specific status and power dynamics, are discussed: 1) Long-term collaborations are used to forge contemporary alliances and egalitarian affiliations amongst Nordic musicians; 2) Historical archival and field research is used as source material to define shared roots and heritage amongst Finno-Ugric cultures (and often connotes modern versus “primitive” status differentials); 3) Exclusions and unacknowledgment of influences serve to disassociate and distance musicians from cultures or groups that are disliked or perceived to be threatening (such as Russians and minorities); 4) Incorporations of “exotic” disembodied “world music” sounds (such as djembes, kotos, and didjeridus) serve to mark cosmopolitanness, contemporaneity, and participation in a global scene; 5) Discourse about “global folk music” communities and short-term collaborative projects assert subcultural affinities with distant groups based on shared values; and 6) Extensive study and practice in another tradition express deep personal connections borne of individual experiences. These world music fusions are reactionary against, yet indebted to, folk music's nationalist legacy. The nationalist-propagated belief that folk music is the heritage of a given nation/ethnicity/culture led to the conventional assumptions that authority and ownership over musical traditions should align with a musician’s nationality/ethnicity/ cultural membership. Changing the boundaries of group membership from national to transnational cultural, ethnolinguistic, geopolitical, and affinity groups results in changing notions of which music “belongs” to whom and who has the right to perform and alter a musical tradition. In performing musical elements that “belong” to others, Finnish musicians have come under critique for possibly exoticizing and disrespecting the traditions of other cultures. The final section of the article examines and challenges notions of communal ownership the ethics of cross-cultural appropriations. |
"From Oppression to Opportunity to Expression: Intercultural Relations in the Indigenous Musics from an Ecuadorian Highland Community. Pacific Review of Ethnomusicology Vol. 12, Fall 2006. Full text. For the indigenous inhabitants of the community of Peguche in the Ecuadorian Highlands, daily life is permeated by interactions with mestizos, indigenous people from other regions, and foreigners from Europe and North America. These intercultural relationships are deeply intertwined with the community's musicmaking, in traditional music, commercial music, and personal music. Traditional music performed at festivals in the community reflects a long history of Incan-Spanish interaction. Today it plays a role in contemporary indigenous-mestizo identity politics and indígenas' struggle to overcome their stigmatized social status. Commercial music performed for and sold to foreigners in Europe and North America provides an opportunity for indígenas to circumvent the socioeconomic oppression within Ecuador. Traveling musicians returning home to the Andes with newly acquired wealth, worldly experiences, and heightened social consciousness impact local politics, racial hierarchies, and indigenous identities. Personal creative music performed in the private sphere allows indígenas' to express and cope with their cosmopolitan intercultural lifestyles. |
"Musical Ironies in the Andes: Borrowing from the Other to Define the Self." Manifold Identities: Studies on Music and Minorities, edited by Ursula Hemetek, Gerda Lechleitner, Inna Naroditskaya and Anna Czekanowska. London: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2004, pp. 220-230. In the Andean highlands of Ecuador, the relations between the indígenas and the mestizos (modern-day descendents of the Incas and Spanish colonialists, respectively) have been plagued with social, economic, and racial hierarchies and oppression. Indígenas and mestizos can no longer be distinguished by phenotype; instead, music and other cultural markers are used to construct, maintain, and manipulate the ethnic boundaries and social relationships between indígenas and mestizos. Ironically, the very cultural tools that are used to distinguish ethnic identities, themselves reveal Incan-Spanish and indigenous-mestizo syncretisms, which chronicle ongoing processes of intercultural appropriations and acculturations. Four different musical styles are highlighted: 1) traditional indigenous festival music; 2) mestizo urban socialist music (Nueva Canción); 3) transnational commercialized Andean music performed by indígenas; and 4) Western classical music performed on Andean instruments by mestizos. |
Dissertation: |
"From Ancient to Avant-Garde to Global: Creative Processes and Institutionalization in Finnish Contemporary Folk Music." Dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles, 2005. Full text. This dissertation is an ethnography of the ideology, teaching methods, development, performance practices, and creative processes of Finnish contemporary folk music, focusing on the Sibelius Academy Folk Music Department in Helsinki. The following issues are discussed: 1) the institutionalization of musicians’ training in traditional musics; 2) the construction of legitimacy, authenticity, and historical continuity in revived and recontextualized musics; 3) the ideology, pedagogy, and methods for teaching creativity and improvisation; 4) how the authority for musical creativity and artistic freedom is created and allocated; and 5) the expression and reification of transnational relationships through cross-cultural musical fusions and appropriations. |
Selected conference papers: |
"'Rescuing Creativity' by Recapturing the Creative Processes of Past: Reactionary Pedagogy in Institutionalized Finnish Folk Music Education." International Council for Traditional Music World Congress, July 2007, Vienna, Austria. Creativity and artistic freedom have become two of the most valued defining hallmarks of the contemporary folk music scene that has been generated at the Folk Music Department of the Sibelius Academy in Finland. The ideology driving the department's teaching methods has been partly motivated in reaction against both Western art music education and the amateur folklore that grew out of the romantic nationalist and public enlightenment movements. Contemporary folk music pedagogues perceive the processes of music learning and music creation in both the art music education system and in nationalist folkloric music to be stifling to creativity. Leading pedagogue Heikki Laitinen has polemically argued that "art music is based on the eradication of creativity," because the teaching methods of the music education system are "founded on repetition, obedience, subjugation and conformity." They deem the nationalist folkloric music scene to be uncreative, as well as inauthentic, due to the common practice of learning and performing folk music from written notation exactly as transcribed from archive recordings. Department leaders believe that the new folk music pedagogy could "become the salvation of musical creativity." The teaching methods of this reactionary pedagogy are based on attempts to recapture the creative processes believed to be inherent in oral cultures, or more specifically in "aural-memory-storage-based" cultures. Modern written and recording based cultures, in which music students learn fixed versions of tunes and store exact replicas in notation or recordings, lead to the uncreative replication of authoritative versions. In contrast, oral cultures – in which musicians learn multiple variants orally, store music in their memories according to cognitive "chunking" or pattern- and formula-based processes, and perform music by re-creating it in their own way in the moment of performance – are believed to actively foster creativity, musical freedom, and individuality. Teaching methods intended to simulate oral culture and recapture the creative processes of the past have been developed and institutionalized in the Sibelius Academy Folk Music Department. The ideology and techniques disseminated by this prestigious and powerful institution have changed the creative processes of both professional and amateur folk musicians across Finland. |
"Non-Normative Genders and Renegotiated Performance Processes: Challenging Norms of Gender and Sexuality On and Off the Stage." Panel chaired and organized by Juniper Hill, Society for Ethnomusicology Annual Meeting, November, 2006, Honolulu, Hawaii. Panel abstract: How can resistance to gender norms be embodied in the physical and psychological processes of learning, rehearsing, preparing, and performing? When performers' physical bodies do not conform to conventions and expectations, how are music-learning, performance styles and techniques, and repertoire renegotiated to create new, counterhegemonic performance practices? Previous ethnomusicological research, such as work by Jane Sugarman, has demonstrated that physical performance practices and styles can engender, enforce, and perpetuate conventional gender norms. In this panel, we demonstrate how nonnormative performing bodies deconstruct and denaturalize expected gender behaviors. The first panelist investigates girls learning traditional male roles in Balinese children's gamelans; the second panelist analyzes transgendered women singing typical male voice parts in American choruses; and the third panelist examines men performing idealized women in Taiwanese cross-dressing troupes. In each case study, the physical bodies of the performers contradict gender expectations and present alternative gender constructions to their public audiences. Transgendered performers in the US and Taiwan – whether performing their "true gender identities" or maintaining distinct presentations of gender and sexuality in their public and private lives – further challenge strictly binary gender roles. These nonnormative genders require the renegotiation of technique, style, and repertoire during offstage learning and rehearsing processes, resulting in, for example, new transgender vocal techniques, new female gamelan styles, and newly commissioned pieces. Based on ethnographic data contrasting perspectives of individual performers, performance collectives, public institutions, media, and audiences, all three panelists analyze the embodiment, (de)construction, and denaturalization of gender in the processes of learning, rehearsing, and performing. |
"The Transformative Experience of Transgressing Comfort Zones: Pedagogical Techniques from Outward Bound and Finnish Folk Music Education." Society for Ethnomusicology Annual Meeting, November, 2006, Honolulu, Hawaii. The transformative experience of transgressing “comfort zones” is a pedagogical tool used by Finnish folk musicians to foster courage for self-expression and musical freedom. This teaching method is nearly identical to the philosophy behind Outward Bound wilderness education: both are designed to provide transformative experiences to individuals who overcome their preconceived self-limitations by succeeding at physical tasks that made them uncomfortable. Drawing on eighteen months of field research in Finland, and several years of experience as a wilderness instructor, I compare outdoors education to Finnish folk music teaching methods that push students beyond their comfort zones in physical performance. The innovative curriculum at Finland's Sibelius Academy Folk Music Department requires students to study voice and movement, and undergo an intensive seminar-retreat in which students experiment with unconventional, sometimes unnerving, performance techniques. While first-year students may be shaken, seasoned students and alumni describe these experiences as the single most important elements in their development as artists – and have gone on to create an extraordinarily innovative contemporary folk music scene. Folk music educators developed this pedagogy in part as a reaction to Western music education in Finland, which they perceived as inculcating passive music-learning and obedience in performance that stifles creativity. Their teaching methods were designed to garner self-confidence and inspire students to push boundaries and challenge the norms, judgment criteria, and values acquired from Western culture. Building on Patricia Shehan Campbell's and Peter Webster's scholarship, I present fresh perspectives on music-learning and creativity drawn from wilderness education and the Sibelius Academy. |
"'The Ancient Is Avant-garde:' Inspirations from an Imagined Past in Contemporary Finnish Folk Music." International Council for Traditional Music World Congress, August 2005, Sheffield, UK. The contemporary folk music scene in Helsinki, Finland, is experimental, avant-garde, professionalized, urban, and elite. Much of the music sounds more like avant-garde art music, free jazz, or world beat, than conventional folk music. Yet contemporary folk musicians constantly draw inspiration and musical elements from traditional music for use in their contemporary creations. In contrast to Finland's previous folk music revival in the 1960s and '70s, which focused on eighteenth and nineteenth-century dance tunes (pelimanni music), the current generation of folk musicians seeks to go further back in time and bring ancient Finnish music into the present. They study Kalevala-style epic sung poetry, laments, jouhikko (bowed lute), kantele (zither), shepherd flutes, single reed woodwinds, simple wooden trumpets and horns, shamanic drums, and even the use of rocks and sticks as percussion instruments -- traditions which are believed to have been practiced several hundreds of years ago. By the late 20th century, many of these traditions had completely died out. Despite field recordings and transcriptions by early folk scholars, there is much that is not known about the performance practices and repertoire of these older traditions. Instead of limiting contemporary musicians, the lack of knowledge has given them greater freedom in their re-creations. For example, the descriptions of a musician sitting in the corner of a room expressing himself on his kantele for hours has inspired contemporary musicians to embrace self-expressive free improvisation. Archive recordings and transcriptions have inspired the melodic contours, modal structures, and ornamentation that some musicians use in their new compositions. Old instruments tucked away in museum storage rooms have inspired the building, development, and performance of new models of traditional instruments. By embracing the creative processes of imagined historical performance practices, contemporary folk musicians can create new, highly artistic folk music, and be historically authentic at the same time. The ancient allows them to be avant-garde, and the ancient is avant-garde. |
"Institutionalization and Improvisation: Impacts of Ideology on Folk Music-Art Music Boundaries in Finland." Society for Ethnomusicology, November 2004, Tucson, Arizona. Contemporary folk music in Finland has been institutionalized in an elite, prestigious music conservatory. The teachers, students, and alumni of the Sibelius Academy Folk Music Department, who are the leaders in the new Finnish folk music scene, have reshaped the boundaries and definitions of folk music, transforming it into a professionalized high art form. Their definition of folk music is based on the processes of musical creation, execution, and transmission, rather than the actual sound or style(s) of the resulting music. Some of their primary goals are to elevate folk music to an art form with the same status and artistic license as classical music and jazz, and for folk musicians to have the freedom as individual artists to express themselves personally and develop creatively. Improvisation acts as a bridge between traditional and contemporary folk music; it serves as a tool for contemporary artistic goals (used for personal expression, arranging and composing, collaborating with artists from other fields, and individual artistic freedom), and as an argument for continuity with traditional/historical folk music (used to legitimize and authenticate contemporary folk music practices). I will elucidate how this Institution's ideology and pedagogy have shaped the multiple structures, levels, and characteristics of improvisation in folk music. I will also discuss how and why free improvisation in the contemporary folk music scene has developed a specific style and sound (more reminiscent of free jazz than folk music), despite the musicians' aspirations for individual, personal musical expression. |
"Folk Music's Changing Relationships with Folk Dance and Modern Dance in Finland." Moving Boundaries: The Symbiotic Relationship between Music and Dance, Society for Ethnomusicology Pre-Conference Symposium, November 2004, Tucson, Arizona. Radical changes in contemporary folk music in Helsinki, Finland, have changed Finnish folk music's relationship with dance. For centuries, Finnish folk musicians have accompanied folk dancers, performing folk music genres that fit folk dances in structure and form. Over the course of the last two decades, Finnish folk music has been institutionalized and transformed into a high art form. Contemporary folk musicians value and strive for individual artistic development, creativity, and personal expression, and their music is often characterized by extensive free improvisation, virtuosity, and the breaking of boundaries (including the structures and forms of traditional folk music genres). While these changes in folk music have led to similar developments in the small arena of professional staged folk dancing, much contemporary folk music is now unsuited for the more widely practiced traditional social folk dances. However, contemporary folk music's flexible structures and abundant free improvisation make it ideal accompaniment for modern dance performances. Folk music's position in Finland's top music academy further facilitates frequent collaborative projects between students, teachers, and alumni from the Folk Music Department of the Sibelius Academy and the Theater and Dance Academy. In this paper, I will illustrate how developments in the structures and performance practices of folk music have impacted its relationships with amateur folk dance, professional folk dance and modern dance. |
"Finnish Attitudes Towards New Folk Music: Multiculturalism, Nationalism, and Individualism." Society for Ethnomusicology Southern California Chapter, February 2003, Los Angeles, CA. In the small, remote country of Finland, contemporary folk music departs
from conventional notions of how and what folk music should be. Professionalized,
institutionalized, and mediated, new Finnish folk music is characterized
by fusions of traditional and ancient local folk music with Scandinavian
and Eastern European musics, with "exotic" World Beat styles,
with electronic dance music, with jazz harmonies, with avant-garde experimentations,
and with personal improvisation and composition. It is simultaneously
an expression of individual creativity, a symbol of national identity
and cultural continuity, an assertion of regional ethnic and cultural
identities, and a reflection of current transnational political events.
Unique ideologies surrounding artistic freedom and authenticity, combined
with complex, multitiered notions of Finnish identity, provide an environment
in which folk musicians can depart drastically from tradition while retaining
legitimacy, authenticity, and cultural significance. For example, folk
music is deemed authentic when it is the sincere creative expression of
the individual musician, instead of through accurate historical preservation.
Influential folk musicians and scholars have argued that folk music should
have the same artistic freedom as classical and jazz musicians have to
develop their music. Shifting attitudes of Finnish cultural and ethnic
identities (i.e. Finno-Ugric ethnicity with roots preserved in Russia
and the Baltics, a Nordic country culturally affiliated with Scandinavia,
a modern Western nation, and a participant on the contemporary global
scene) are asserted in new folk music, which has retained its power as
a symbol of Finnish-ness. I will be sharing findings from my recent six-month
stay in Finland and shorter trips to neighboring countries on the Baltic
Sea. I will also propose theoretical issues, which I plan to explore further
in my next trip to the field, in hope of gaining feedback. |
"Global Travel and the Return Home: Money, Creative Exploration, and Protecting the Indigenous Other in Andean Music." International Council of Traditional Music, July 2001, Rio De Janeiro, Brazil. In recent years, we have witnessed an explosion of Andean musicians performing music in subways, plazas, and festivals across Europe and in North America. These indigenous musicians have discovered that by selling their music at the international level, they have greater economic opportunities and can break free from some of the poverty and oppression they face in their home countries. While abroad, they are also free from the scrutiny of their communities which obligate them to perform traditional music. Thus, they have the opportunity for creative exploration and musical experimentation. These musicians regularly return home to indigenous communities which use the expression of tradition to actively fight for the preservation of their cultural identity in the face of frequent exposure and pressure from outside cultures. While conducting fieldwork in northern Ecuador, I observed the negotiations between monetary gain, artistic freedom, and the protection of indigenous identity through preservation of tradition. Young indigenous men seeking material gain picked up instruments without bothering to learn their community's repertoire or performance techniques. When they traveled abroad, they were distanced not only from their communities but also from other musicians from their region due to the difficulty in obtaining visas for groups. Thus, individual musicians formed pickup bands abroad with indigenous musicians from other countries and created a new style of commercial music characterized by generic Pan-Andean repertoire, diatonic instruments, and non-traditional electronic instruments. Meanwhile, talented, knowledgeable musicians discovered that in addition to making money abroad, they had the freedom to express themselves and engage in musical experimentation not allowed at home. These musicians recorded CDs of fusions between their local styles and new age, rock, Afro-Ecuadorian music, and other world music styles. Many of these world traveling musicians return every three to six months of each year to their indigenous communities in the Andes. Back home, indigenous cultures are threatened by foreign influences from globalization, tourism, and the aftermath of colonialism. Traditional music performed at festivals and rituals is guarded as an important expression of the indigenous communities' unique cultural identity. Many of the musicians who perform this traditional music are the same musicians who travel back and forth between the Andes and international performance venues. In this paper I discuss how these musicians are viewed by their communities back home and how they negotiate the different musical worlds in which they live. |
"Choques (Culture Clashes): The Effects of Music Commercialization and World Travel on Local Indigenous Communities in the Northern Andes." Society for Ethnomusicology, October 2000, Toronto, Canada. Young Quichua-speaking indigenous musicians from the Northern Andes of
Ecuador have discovered that there are many more opportunities abroad
than in their own country. These musicians perform and sell their goods
at festivals, plazas and subways in Europe and the U.S. for three to six
months each year and then return home bringing worldly experiences and
a great deal of money to their indigenous communities which still lack
basic services such as running water and sewage systems, communities which
still struggle to maintain their cultural identity in a country which
treats them as second-class citizens. |
"Voices on the Internet: Sexuality, Gender and Politics in Listeners' Interpretations of Popular Music." Thinking Gender Conference, February 2000, Los Angeles, CA. Most studies on gender, sexuality and popular music, such as the articles
edited by Sheila Whiteley in Sexing the Groove, are based on
the scholar's interpretation of music, lyrics or image. My paper demonstrates
not only how listeners identified with and found meaning in music, but
also how that music influenced their lives. In this study, I used Internet
message boards and email listserves to study fans of Dar Williams, Ani
Difranco and the Indigo Girls. I chose these three contemporary female
singer-songwriters from the U.S. because they each express strong social
commentaries and political opinions that are often avoided in mainstream
popular culture. |