Dear All,

Next week we have two different, exciting events. The first one is our next
official Colloquium speaker, CHLOË ALAGHBAND-ZADEH, who is a temporary
lecturer in the Faculty of Music here in Cambridge, and who researches
North Indian Classical Music through a combination of ethnography and music
analysis. She received her Ph.D. from SOAS, University of London (2013),
for a dissertation on the semi-classical genre ṭhumrī.

The lecture will be next Wednesday (October 21), at the usual time of 5PM in
the Recital Room.

Abstract: "With this talk, I interrogate listeners’ experiences of North
Indian classical music. At a typical North Indian classical concert,
audience members can be remarkably active and noisy; music connoisseurs, or
“rasikas”, are especially conspicuous, commenting out loud or gesturing
whenever they hear something they like. Based on ethnography and interviews
with musicians and music-lovers in Delhi, Mumbai and Pune, I explore what
it means to listen in this context. I show how embodied listening practices
are shaped by interrelated discourses about music, music history and about
what it means to be a good listener; but I also show how they entail
particular ways of experiencing musical sound, such that listeners orient
themselves to certain features of the performance over others. Contributing
an ethnographic study of North India to the diverse body of theoretical
literature that has recently emerged on listening, my aim is to highlight
the sociality of how people listen to music. I argue that ways of listening
are weighted with meaning, value and ideology; that they are tied to issues
of prestige, status and social class; and that they are a means through
which individuals perform social identities".

-

The following day, OCTOBER 22 (5PM, Recital Room), we will have a SPECIAL
TALK on his new book from PROF. KIRIL TOMOFF, professor of history at the
University of California, Riverside, that has been organized by Prof.
Marina Frolova-Walker.

Professor Tomoff is the author of "Virtuosi Abroad: Soviet Music and
Imperial Competition during the Early Cold War, 1945 - 1958" (Cornell,
2015); "Creative Union: The Professional Organization of Soviet Composers,
1939 - 1953" (Cornell, 2006) and coeditor, with Golfo Alexopoulos and Julie
Hessler, of "Writing the Stalin Era: Sheila Fitzpatrick and Soviet
Historiography" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011).

Abstract: "In the 1940s and 1950s, Soviet musicians and ensembles were
acclaimed across the globe. They toured the world, wowing critics and
audiences, projecting an image of the USSR as a sophisticated promoter of
cultural and artistic excellence. In _Virtuosi Abroad:  Soviet Music and
Imperial Competition during the Early Cold War, 1945-1958_(Cornell UP,
2015), Tomoff focuses on music and the activities of the Soviet Union's
star musicians to explore the dynamics of the cultural Cold War. He views
the competition in the cultural sphere as part of the ongoing U.S. and
Soviet efforts to integrate the rest of the world into their respective
imperial projects.  In this talk based on the book, Tomoff argues that the
spectacular Soviet successes in the system of international music
competitions, taken together with the rapturous receptions accorded touring
musicians, helped to persuade the Soviet leadership of the superiority of
their system. This, combined with the historical triumphalism central to
the Marxist-Leninist worldview, led to confidence that the USSR would be
the inevitable winner in the global competition with the United States.
Successes masked the fact that the very conditions that made them possible
depended on a quiet process by which the USSR began to participate in an
international legal and economic system dominated by the United States.
Once the Soviet leadership transposed its talk of system superiority to the
economic sphere, focusing in particular on consumer goods and popular
culture, it had entered a competition that it could not win."

Hope to see you all there,

All best,

The Colloquium Committee