music

By Sala Levin ’10 

Feb 15, 2023

Which version was better: the original “Nothing Compares 2 U” by Prince, or the cover by Sinéad O’Connor, who turned his funky number into a haunting breakup lament? How about “I Will Always Love You”? Was it more successful as Dolly Parton’s plaintive tune or as Whitney Houston’s power ballad?

For pop music diehards, bickering over the merits of cover songs and their original versions is as much fun as debating whether the art on the “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” album is meant to tell listeners that Paul is dead. Stephanie Shonekan, an ethnomusicologist and new dean of the College of Arts and Humanities, has turned these amiable arguments into fodder for her podcast, “Cover Story.”

Shonekan’s podcasting career began in 2015, when she was chair of Black studies at the University of Missouri-Columbia. It was a tense time on campus, as students protested racism at the university, ultimately leading to the resignations of the chancellor and the system president. She decided to launch a show called “#Black,” where members of the campus community could come together weekly to talk about the struggles Black people faced at the university and around the country.

In 2020, Shonekan returned to Mizzou after a few years at the University of Massachusetts. KBIA, the local NPR affiliate that had produced “#Black,” asked her to come back. “I definitely wanted to continue podcasting, but I wanted something a little more joyful, a little bit more uplifting, a little bit more reflective of all the ways Black people live, not just at the brunt of white supremacy,” she said.

So she turned to her work in ethnomusicology. The daughter of a Trinidadian mother and a Nigerian father, Shonekan had grown up with the sounds of calypso music and West African highlife, full of jazzy horns and guitar plucking. She learned that she could tell “who people are by the music that they create, the music that they disseminate, the music that they consume, the stories that are told in that music,” she said.

In each episode, Shonekan and a guest—music fans from different walks of life—discuss two versions of a song, analyzing their differences and merits. In all cases, either the song’s initial artist or the cover artist (or both) are people of color.

In the show’s first season, which debuted last spring, Shonekan and her guests mulled over “Yesterday,” “Piece of My Heart” and “Before I Let Go.” They take up songs like “Respect” and “Ghost of Tom Joad” in the second season that began in October.

Some “Cover Story” episodes delve into the personal memories associated with specific songs. In season two, Shonekan invited her husband as a guest to talk about “their” song, “I Believe in You and Me,” originally recorded by the Four Tops and covered by Whitney Houston. “It was great to have a conversation around love and life and how it started and how it’s going, and how that song remains true to our relationship.”

But some marital disputes can’t be fixed with a song. Shonekan insists that the Houston version is better, but her husband remains solidly Team Four Tops.

By: Ashawnta Jackson

In a recently released interactive project—the Timeline of African American Music—Carnegie Hall, in collaboration with ethnomusicologist Portia K. Maultsby, has charted the histories, traditions, sounds, and communities that have made Black music such a vital part of American culture. Charting movements from Afrofuturism to ragtime, funk to work songs, the project doesn’t just represent the history of the music, it also represents a coming together of some of nearly thirty notable scholars in music and cultural studies.

The timeline, according to the project’s website, “​​reveals the unique characteristics of each genre and style, while also offering in-depth studies of pioneering musicians who created some of America’s most timeless artistic expressions.” Those unique characteristics can be as familiar as the sounds of rock or blues or come from genres that reveal Black artists thriving and creating in spaces that, as musicologist Tammy Kernodle writes, “expand the palette for what has come to define sonic Blackness.”

In this series, we explore the work of some of the scholars involved in the project, highlighting their scholarship that can be found in the JSTOR archives.

Tammy Kernodle is a music professor at Miami University in Ohio, where she primarily focuses on African American music, American music, and gender studies. In an essay she contributed to the Timeline, Kernodle explores a genre of music that is often excluded from discussions of Black music—concert or classical music. Though the names of Black classical composers are not always part of the conversation, Kernodle argues that not only should they be, but that Black concert or Afro-classical music has a long tradition spanning from the Colonial Era (1619–1775) to the present day. Composers such as the formerly enslaved Newport Gardner or singer Matilda Sissieretta Jones weren’t just part of the genre; their work was an essential “form of resistance culture to notions of racial inferiority, and the marginalization of Black America,” Kernodle explains.

Continuing the theme of music as resistance is Stephanie Shonekan in an essay that charts the sounds of protest. An ethnomusicologist and Dean of the College of Arts and Humanities at the University of Maryland, Shonekan explores the intersections of music, culture, and identity. Music has shaped Black life from slavery to the Civil Rights movements of the 1960s, Shonekan writes, and “has served as the inspirational soundtrack of these movements, evolving from one era to another, and reflecting their revolutionary response to each new challenge for justice, progress, and equality.” Music, she argues, is a vital part of protest and “it is only when the world truly listens, commits to the work of change, that sustainable resolution is possible.”

Explore the work of both Tammy Kernodle and Stephanie Shonekan:

Tammy Kernodle

• Arias, Communists, and Conspiracies: The History of Still’s “Troubled Island”
• This Is My Story, This Is My Song: The Historiography of Vatican II, Black Catholic Identity, Jazz, and the Religious Compositions of Mary Lou Williams
• Diggin’ You Like Those Ol’ Soul Records: Meshell Ndegeocello and the Expanding Definition of Funk in Postsoul America
• Black Women Working Together: Jazz, Gender, and the Politics of Validation

Stephanie Shonekan

• Fela’s Foundation: Examining the Revolutionary Songs of Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti and the Abeokuta Market Women’s Movement in 1940s Western Nigeria
• Epilogue: “We People Who Are Darker than Blue”: Black Studies and the Mizzou Movement

Resources

JSTOR is a digital library for scholars, researchers, and students. JSTOR Daily readers can access the original research behind our articles for free on JSTOR.

Arias, Communists, and Conspiracies: The History of Still’s “Troubled Island”By: Tammy L. KernodleThe Musical Quarterly, Vol. 83, No. 4 (Winter 1999), pp. 487–508Oxford University Press

 This Is My Story, This Is My Song: The Historiography of Vatican II, Black Catholic Identity, Jazz, and the Religious Compositions of Mary Lou WilliamsBy: Tammy Lynn KernodleU.S. Catholic Historian, Vol. 19, No. 2, African American Spirituality and Liturgical Renewal (Spring 2001), pp. 83–94Catholic University of America Press

 Diggin’ You Like Those Ol’ Soul Records: Meshell Ndegeocello and the Expanding Definition of Funk in Postsoul AmericaBy: Tammy L. KernodleAmerican Studies, Vol. 52, No. 4, THE FUNK ISSUE (2013), pp. 181–204Mid-America American Studies Association

 Black Women Working Together: Jazz, Gender, and the Politics of ValidationBy: Tammy L. KernodleBlack Music Research Journal, Vol. 34, No. 1 (Spring), pp. 27–55Center for Black Music Research - Columbia College Chicago and University of Illinois Press

 Fela’s Foundation: Examining the Revolutionary Songs of Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti and the Abeokuta Market Women’s Movement in 1940s Western NigeriaBy: Stephanie ShonekanBlack Music Research Journal, Vol. 29, No. 1 (Spring 2009), pp. 127–144Center for Black Music Research - Columbia College Chicago and University of Illinois Press

 Epilogue: “We People Who Are Darker than Blue”: Black Studies and the Mizzou MovementBy: Stephanie ShonekanThe Journal of Negro Education, Vol. 86, No. 3, Special Issue—When Voices Rise: Race, Resistance, and Campus Uprisings in the Information Age (Summer 2017), pp. 399–404Journal of Negro Education

UMD Libraries is pleased to announce the recipients of the inaugural TOME@UMD grants:

• Siv B. Lie, Ph.D., of the School of Music and her work, Django Generations: Hearing Ethnorace, Citizenship, and Jazz Manouche in France;  
• Mauro Resmini, Ph.D., of the School of Languages, Literatures and Cultures and his work, Italian Political Cinema; 
• Thurka Sangaramoorthy, Ph.D., of the Department of Anthropology and her work, Immigration and the Landscape of Care in Rural America;  
• Thomas Zeller, Ph.D., from the Department of History and his work, Consuming Landscapes: What We See When We Drive and Why It Matters.

The TOME@UMD (Toward an Open Monograph Ecosystem) grant program sponsors the publication of open access, digital monographs of UMD faculty members.

Scholarly monographs are detailed written accounts of research in specialized subjects, and are especially critical in the dissemination of knowledge in the arts, humanities, and social sciences disciplines.Publishing open access monographs removes access barriers and allows for research to be used freely by anyone.

All UMD faculty members were invited to apply and submissions were evaluated on the potential impact of their work both in their field and beyond academia; the benefits of the open access distribution for their work; and the potential to enhance equity, diversity and inclusion in the production and dissemination of knowledge.

TOME is a national initiative to advance open-access (OA) publishing of monographs in the humanities and social sciences. TOME’s goal is to make this important scholarship available to readers across the globe, without cost and access barriers. 

TOME@UMD is led by the University Libraries in partnership with the Office of the Senior Vice President and Provost, and the College of Arts and Humanities.

By Jessica Weiss ’05

Students learning classical violin usually have to wait until a session with a music teacher to get personalized feedback on their playing. Soon they may have a new tool to use between lessons: an app that can observe them play and guide them toward better posture and form—key elements both for sounding their best and avoiding overuse injuries.

Two University of Maryland researchers are drawing on very different academic backgrounds—one in classical violin and music education, the other in robotics and computer science—to develop this virtual “teacher’s aide” system powered by artificial intelligence (AI) technology. In addition to expanding the market for violin instruction, it will allow students who may not have access to private lessons to receive feedback on their playing.

Associate Professor of Violin in the School of Music Irina Muresanu, who is collaborating with Cornelia Fermüller, associate research scientist in UMD’s Institute for Advanced Computer Studies, said the technology will be revolutionary for a field rooted in tradition.

“While I believe that traditional methods are still the best way to pass on to our students the legacy and heritage of the classical music world, I am excited to explore ways in which artificial intelligence can be integrated as a feedback mechanism into daily practice—the central experience of any musician’s life,” she said.

The project is part of Arts for All, a new initiative to expand arts programming across campus and bolster interdisciplinary offerings through a fusion of the arts, technology and social justice.

Muresanu and Fermüller were recently awarded a $115,000 Phase I Maryland Innovation Initiative award by the Maryland Technology Development Corporation to support the project. The award, a partnership between the state of Maryland and five of its public universities, is designed to help propel research ideas from the lab to the commercial market.

An internationally renowned Romanian violinist, Muresanu has spent the last decade working at the intersection of music and technology. She previously collaborated with Amitabh Varshney, dean of the College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences, on “Four Strings Around the Virtual World,” which embedded Muresanu’s solo violin project in famous global locales including concert halls, cathedrals and outdoor spaces.

When the COVID-19 pandemic made in-person teaching impossible, Muresanu began seeking new ways to allow violin students to continue learning remotely. Last year, she partnered with UM Ventures, a joint technology commercialization initiative of the University of Maryland, Baltimore and University of Maryland, College Park, to explore high-tech approaches for enhancing remote lessons.

Fermüller was a natural fit for the project. A researcher of computer vision and robotics, she works to enable computers to understand and enhance what people are doing in their daily activities.

In the Autonomy Robotics Cognition Lab, Muresanu and Fermüller, along with computer science Ph.D. student Snehesh Shrestha, are studying human-robot interaction in the context of playing the violin and how to integrate AI into the learning process. The technology they are producing—which will enable computers and phones to derive information from digital video—will let music teachers customize the type and amount of feedback students receive and survey the results.

Fermüller said the technology will be a major step forward in using AI for music education, and could potentially be applied to other instruments.

“The platform we are currently working on provides feedback to students based on their specific needs, and this is very novel,” she said. “I believe this is the future of AI-supported education.”