Abstract In this article, I explore reforestation as a form of ethnomusicological “practice research.” I build on fieldwork with community reforesting groups in southern Mexico City for whom reforesting provokes participants to develop new kinds of musicking and auditory engagement. The article proposes the term “auralities of restoration” to describe the fluid, exploratory, adaptive ways that those seeking to restore natural environments appropriate and rework the musical and aural cultures around them. It advocates listening to, with, and through such restorative work as a way to articulate the study of music and sound cultures to a context of environmental crisis.

Abstract Gentrification transforms neighborhoods and erodes intimacies, creating spaces of displacement and exclusivity. Where, then, is justice in a gentrifying city? In this article, I argue that sound offers an opening into a fleeting—“ephethereal”—justice; that is, a portmanteau of ephemeral and ethereal. This is a justice that is short lived and ephemeral, and yet offers an impression of something not of this world, something ethereal. Drawing on my work on listening to gentrification in Washington, DC, I consider how sound invokes this ephethereal justice and offers us the tools to explore the temporal and spatial contours of liberation.

Abstract This article examines the sonic forms of protest that spread throughout Brazil beginning in March 2020 in response to then President Bolsonaro's mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic. I take the panelaços as a site from which to probe the efficacy of sound in sedimenting and congealing incipient political and social subjectivities, especially in contexts of anonymity, isolation, and social distance. Drawing from ethnographic work among panelaço participants, I suggest that these events be understood as the sonic formation of an emergent political public that also intervenes in debates concerning intimacy, stranger-sociality, and the formation of publics more broadly.

Abstract In this article, I analyze the whys of ethnomusicological translation before arguing for a reframing of translation as both polyvocal and polydiscursive. To do this, I analyze aspects of A. J. Ellis's translation of Hermann von Helmholtz's Die Lehre von den Tonempfindungen als physiologische Grundlage für die Theorie der Musik as well as the early twentieth-century oeuvre of famed Brazilian writer and musicologist Mário de Andrade. I conclude by discussing briefly how these different issues and considerations can allow us to rethink translation as a decolonial praxis and a decolonial otherwise that may help us challenge some of the perennial Western logical structures that continue to plague ethnomusicology and the academy more generally.

Abstract Inspired by Philip Ewell's call to rethink musical analysis in US academia and recent critiques of the concept of ethnotheory (Agawu 2017; Hood and Hutchinson 2020), this article reflects on the paradoxical position of culture-specific musical theories that circulate in ethnomusicological literature as tools to decolonize music studies. Using clave theory as a case study, I interrogate the power dynamics in theoretical formulations, the role of dance, and the ways in which theories impact communities of musicians and dancers. I propose an approach to theorizing that is reflexive, embodied, attentive to contexts, holistic, open ended, and collaborative.

A new series edited by dAniel Fischlin Books in this new series advocate musical improvisation as a crucial model for political, cultural, and ethical dialogue and action-for imagining and creating alternative ways of knowing and being in the world. The books are collaborations among performers, scholars, and activists from a wide range of disciplines. They study the creative risk-taking imbued with the sense of movement and momentum that makes improvisation an exciting, unpredictable, ubiquitous, and necessary endeavor. IMPROV ISATION AND SOCIAL AESTHET ICS GeorGinA born, eric lewis, And will strAw, eds.

Abstract This article examines a corpus of Burmese-language anti-Muslim hate songs archived on YouTube. Burma/Myanmar is the site of recent genocidal violence perpetrated against Muslims, and these songs are part of the hate speech campaign that undergirds this violence. Using the definition of incitement articulated by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, the article shows that the lyrics of these songs constitute incitement to violence. Further, the comments written by YouTube listeners provide evidence that the songs provoke additional dehumanizing speech. The songs and their creators are therefore complicit in the recent violent persecution of Muslims in Myanmar.

In 1997 the third and final edition of the late Eileen Southern's monumental Music of Black Americans: A History was published, begging the question of who would craft comprehensive histories of Black American music going forward. Portia K. Maultsby and Mellonee V. Burnim answered that question with their own monumental African American Music: An Introduction (2006, second edition 2015, henceforth AAM), a seven-hundred-page edited volume that continued Southern's historical documentary approach but departed from a through-narrative in favor of chapters organized largely by genre. Maultsby and Burnim's Issues in African American Music complements AAM but also stands on its own: with twenty-one chapters by preeminent and emerging ethnomusicologists, musicologists, music journalists, and performers, it is both shorter and more wide-ranging. The “issues” include historiography, agency, power dynamics, commodification, and gender and for the most part privilege Black voices (only six of the twenty contributors are not African American). Other than Olly Wilson's “Negotiating Blackness in Western Art Music,” the essays center on popular music with a mix of historical, theoretical, and ethnographic approaches.The chapters are grouped into four parts: “Interpreting Music,” “Mass Mediation,” “Gender,” and “Musical Agency—African American Music as Resistance.” Six new chapters were written specifically for this volume, and the remaining are reprinted from AAM with new titles and minor updating. Although each section boasts strong chapters, the middle two are the most cohesive. The seven case studies in these sections articulate with other chapters throughout the volume, making them especially useful for teaching.Reebee Garofalo's excellent “Industrializing African American Popular Music” scaffolds the case studies in part 2 with a concise overview of racism in the music business (record labels, radio, TV, and streaming) through 2015. Aside from Burnim's classic case study “Crossing Musical Borders,” which compares the crossover success of the Edwin Hawkins Singers (“Oh Happy Day”) and Kirk Franklin (“Why We Sing”), each of the remaining chapters is devoted to a single Black-owned label. Although the stories of Motown (by Charles E. Sykes), Stax (Rob Bowman), and their rivalry are well known (which in no way diminishes these contributions), less so are those of Philadelphia International Records (John A. Jackson), SOLAR (Sound of Los Angeles Records, Scot Brown), and Tyscot Records (Tyron Cooper). These five portraits reveal interesting patterns and divergences. For example, each label evolved in stages characterized by early years of efflorescence followed by later stages of financial difficulties that in most cases led to its dissolution. An important distinguishing feature, as Scot Brown writes of SOLAR, is that many “Black-owned record labels . . . not only identified African American talent but tended to stay with and develop artists in ways that would defy the patience of major companies” (177–78).The business model of Tyscot Records is especially interesting for defying this common narrative of growth and demise. Founded in 1976 by Leonard Scott and Craig Tyson and located in Indianapolis, it is “the oldest Black-owned and operated gospel music label in the United States” (180). Cofounder Scott has been able to keep the company afloat through income from his dental practice, helping it weather financial vicissitudes. Another central factor in the company's longevity is the determination to function as a ministry within the marketplace, as does GospoCentric Records, profiled by Burnim. (In fact, a then-unknown Kirk Franklin recorded for Tyscot before his career took off with GospoCentric.)Part 3, on gender, includes standout essays by Daphne Duval Harrison, whose “Women in Blues: Transgressing Boundaries” can be paired productively with Garofalo's overview of record labels. Sherrie Tucker's “Jazz History Remix: Black Women from ‘Enter’ to ‘Center’” works to “visibilize” (as she puts it) women jazz musicians, demonstrating without question that any jazz history omitting women is incomplete (257). Her article pairs well with Travis Jackson's astute historiography of jazz from the 1990s to the present, “New Bottle, Old Wine: Whither Jazz Studies?,” a welcome new addition to the collection. Maureen Mahon's chapter on African American women in rock ’n’ roll argues, as Tucker does for jazz, that Black women were not exceptions but were foundational to—and inextricable from—the genre's development. Covering solo performers, backup singers, the political economy of records, white covers, and girl groups, her article intersects with Maultsby's outstanding essay, “The Politics of Race Erasure,” among others in part 2. Cheryl L. Keyes's “Ain't Nuthin’ but a She Thang: Women in Hip Hop” is essential not only for its coverage of artists at the mic but also for addressing women in the boardroom and behind the camera. Her chapter, which nicely pairs with Mark Anthony Neal's closing chapter on the politics of musical creativity, extends only to 2010, leaving the reader yearning for her assessment of Nicki Minaj and more recent female artists.Although the editors claim in their preface that chapters have been updated, many remain noticeably out of date. For example, Etta James and Koko Taylor passed away in 2012 and 2009, respectively, yet Harrison presents them as contemporary blueswomen, noting that “as of this writing, James has a new release” (250). There are many more such instances. One chapter that would have greatly benefited from updating is Susan Oehler Herrick's “Performing Blues and Navigating Race in Transcultural Contexts,” reprinted from the 2006 edition without substantial revision. In this chapter Oehler gives an admirable overview of modern blues scenes, focusing on social conventions, cultural values, and economic practices. She opens with an anecdote of “royalty” visiting the Clinton White House in 1999, when B. B. King and other blues artists gave a concert that was memorialized on public television. But missing from this account is King's return visit in 2012 to the Obama White House. Historicizing these two visits as bookends within a framework that analyzes the interaction of Black and white blues scenes is a sorely missed opportunity (as is mention of Michelle Obama's blues workshop for students that same year). It is impossible for any publication on popular music to stay current. But these two examples are representative of numerous instances where minor revisions would have balanced out the chapters so that teachers could have confidence that material was accurate at least through the time of publication.Those who are familiar with AAM will find Issues to be a valuable enhancement for courses, whether in music (at undergraduate and graduate levels, including general education), African American studies, history, or cultural studies. I have been using selected chapters of Issues since its publication; the business students in my course on Black American music have reacted with enthusiasm to the topics and the writing styles. The focus on issues provides readers with models for approaching any kind of Black American music and should ensure that the book has a long and relevant life. It is appropriate for Maultsby to offer the closing words of this review, for they encapsulate the vigor of the work she and Burnim have envisioned, written, compiled, and edited: “In this collection, African American voices matter, not because they reflect a singular point of view, but because they affirm the existence of conscious musical agency” (xi). “Rather than simply repeating the master narrative of the past,” Maultsby and Burnim have given us multiple synchronous narratives depicting the innovations of Black Americans who “shape the presentation and representation of African American popular music” (61). We owe them a debt of gratitude.