Welcome to ECHO.
In this issue’s lead article,
Robyn Stilwell brings musicology into an
already existing conversation about situation comedies in television,
film, and media studies. Focusing first on I Love Lucy and The
Dick Van Dyke Show, and then expanding to cover a dizzying array
of shows from the 1970s’ The Partridge Family to the more recent
Scrubs, Stilwell focuses on the role of musical numbers in television
sitcoms. Combining her expertise as a musicologist, television historian,
and fan, Stilwell discusses song and dance in detail as they interact
with the generic, comedic, and narrative structures of the sitcom, as
well as sitcoms’ representations of gender, class, and domesticity.
Nasser Al-Taee’s article for this issue delves into the music of Khaled, Rachid Taha, Cheba Fadela, and other artists involved in the popular music genre of Algerian rai. Placing rai at the intersection of Algerian politics, the country’s post-colonial French history, and Middle Eastern folk music, Al-Taee considers the contested representations of gender and sexuality that weave their way through this vibrant musical practice.
We continue to bring you a variety of interviews and roundtable discussions. In this issue, Andrew Berish interviews jazz pianist Aaron Goldberg. Grounded in their shared experiences as teenage musicians playing together in their high school jazz program, Andrew and Aaron’s conversation explores the role of place, pedagogy, musical practices, genre, and the rhetoric of racial politics.
This issue includes a diverse array of reviews covering a wide range of repertoire and media. We include two review essays: Jessica Courtier on The Long Road to Freedom, Harry Belafonte’s monumental collection of African American musical traditions; and Ben Carson on a concert performance of John Adams and Peter Sellars’ epic oratorio El Niño. In our shorter reviews, Russell Grigg and Kerry Murphy combine their knowledge of psychoanalysis and music to evaluate Opera’s Second Death—Slavoj Zizek and Mladen Dolar’s Lacanian critique of Mozart and Wagner operas; Louis Niebur reviews Kay Dickinson’s recent collection of classic essays in film music studies; and Marie Jorritsma brings her perspective as a white South African woman to her discussion of Amandla!, a documentary film about the role music played in the struggles against apartheid. For the first time, we present a conference report: Charles Garrett writes about the events held at the University of Michigan in April 2003 to honor the career of musicologist Richard Crawford.
This issue marks the end of our editorship of ECHO. Being part of its growth since the journal’s inception has been rewarding and exciting beyond anything we could have imagined when it all began. ECHO has indelibly marked and shaped our graduate careers at UCLA, and our final editorial page provides an appropriate place to acknowledge those who have been part of the endeavor. First, we need to thank UCLA’s Department of Musicology. They have fostered an environment that allows a project like ours to thrive, and we are grateful for their continued enthusiasm and support. We also acknowledge the Graduate Student Association for its financial support; Michael Cohen for his willingness to share his technological expertise; and Mary Francis and the University of California Press for their generosity in letting us squat at their display tables at academic conferences. Most importantly, we thank all our friends and colleagues who have shared the work on this journal with us. Their commitment, imagination, and our many late nights spent editing HTML together, created an invaluable professional and personal experience. We turn ECHO over to the capable hands of Olivia Carter Mather and Jonathan Greenberg, and look forward to watching the journal explore new intellectual, artistic, and technological grounds.
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Cecilia Sun
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Maria Cizmic |
