Conference Agenda

Early television animation - particularly that from before Hanna-Barbera's rise with Huckleberry Hound and Yogi Bear - is not particularly well known by the general public or regularly discussed in academic circles. Consider, for example, the animated serial Crusader Rabbit, produced by Jay Ward. While generally considered to be better than most of the television-specific cartoons of its day, the show is rarely discussed in animation history books; when it's mentioned at all, it's often (as Jason Mittel notes) as an example of basic limited animation, or (as Giannalberto Bendazzi and Maureen Furniss state) as the first well-known made-for-TV animation. The music in particular is ignored or dismissed as unimportant or irrelevant. Upon closer examination, however, the music plays an important role, helping to draw the audience in and keep them there, similar not only to radio shows (hence Chuck Jones' comment calling these "illustrated radio"), but also theatrical action serials and theatrical cartoons - especially those of the early sound era. Drawing upon the work of Daniel Goldmark, Lisa Scoggin, and Grace Edgar, this paper will act as a case study for this transitional period, considering the precise ways in which these genres inform the music and structure of Crusader Rabbit, thereby continuing those traditions while presaging the approach shown in Hanna-Barbera and other television animation. In doing so, this research will not only help to fill in the gap surrounding early television animation music, but also shed light on the connective musical tissue between these different media.

Graphic elements of the poster will include: pictures of Crusader Rabbit, Radar Men from the Moon (theatrical serial), a Warner Bros. Cartoon with a Carl Stalling score, people performing a radio show, and Huckleberry Hound; a timeline of when these media were being performed as part of their first run; a Venn diagram of the predecessors' sound elements and Crusader Rabbit's sound elements; a comparison of Crusader Rabbit's sound elements and Huckleberry Hound's sound elements; and QR codes with links to related video examples.

On their 2015 album The Phosphorescent Blues, the progressive bluegrass band Punch Brothers open with “Familiarity,” a ten-minute epic musing on the difficulties of making authentic connections through smartphones and social media. While the band features a traditional bluegrass string band instrumentation, and while the players themselves have deep roots in American old-time music, “Familiarity” notably features the band playing musical gestures associated with varied styles of electronic dance music (EDM).

Aided by extreme close miking, violin and bass play slowly evolving tones to evoke the warble of analog synthesizers, followed by rapid crescendos that evoke reversed samples. Plucked instruments arpeggiate chords in a mechanical way, mimicking the automatic up-and-down arpeggiator present in synthesizers and sequencers. The song’s second section is built on a repeating riff evoking a delay effect, complete with logarithmic volume decay and the 4:3 polyrhythm popularized in dub reggae tape delays. The methodical buildup of interlocking parts in this section is itself a major EDM trope, including in live looping situations.

What’s curious about these EDM gestures is that in their usual form, they are gestures that divorce sound from the physical action that created them. By mimicking these gestures with traditional folk instruments, Punch Brothers are reconnecting these common acousmatic phenomena to discrete physical actions, a feat of John Henry-like virtuosity.

Taken with the song’s lyrics, this re-embodiment of electronic music tropes reflects an anxiety that technology is an enemy of authenticity, both musical and social. In that way, Punch Brothers appear to subscribe to a Lomaxian view of American folk authenticity, where technology is a corrupting force. However, while “Familiarity” challenges some acousmatic illusions of contemporary music technologies, it fully embraces others. In the song’s second half, the opening verse gets recast as a lilting traditional ballad, with the lyric’s speaker reaching for true intimacy. To achieve a sonic intimacy, all instruments are miked extremely closely and processed with heavy compression, creating the illusion that the listener is uncannily close to the instrument. The song’s complex relationship to technology is grounded in frontman Chris Thile’s own musings on social media.

Much is known of the Italian operas of the eighteenth century which saw at the time a tremendous diffusion among many Western European nations; what is often forgotten—or ignored—in textbooks, however, is the state of such opera in the colonies of these nations, even amidst an era of great European imperial zeal which only broadened in the subsequent century. In attempt to Westernize the New World with European aesthetics and lofty cultural values, Portuguese elite employed Italian opera in colonial Brazil, which not only reverberated the politics and instabilities of the monarchy but ultimately incited the earliest precepts of authenticity and nationalism within Brazilian operatic tradition.

In this poster, I present a detailed overview and analysis of opera in colonial Brazil. I begin with an observation of imported tangible and intangible European musical aesthetics, primarily by analyzing Rogério Budasz’s 2006 publication, “Opera and Musical Theater in Eighteenth-Century Brazil: A Survey of Early Studies and New Sources.” Subsequently, I analyze literature on the earliest counts of Brazilian music-politics. I then highlight the disparities that often existed between Brazilian and Italian opera productions, which included differences in race and ethnicity, language, resources, and audience reception, among others. The second half of this research involves a personal analysis of what is widely regarded as Brazil’s “first opera,” Il Guarany by Antônio Carlos Gomes. I do this through a review of literature as well as musical analyses on various parts of the score.

Broadly, I argue that Italian opera was a medium that Portuguese elite utilized to Europeanize Brazil. More specifically, I find that fervent political undertones, Portuguese-Brazilian cravings for European cultural capital, and the eventual realization of national identity are the foundations that characterize the birth of opera in Brazil. From there, I prompt conversation and questions on "Brazilian opera" as an independent and modern genre.

This poster will manifest a sort of “flow chart” in which various cultural and political aspects of Portuguese colonialism can be paralleled directly to the musical phenomena of the time. Viewers will be able to firmly grasp the concept of colonialism-turned-nationalism in the case of Brazilian opera.

Success or quality of a popular music track, album or an artist can be expressed in a variety of ways. Some of the most systematic paradigms of measurement are musical contests. However, the important question that has to be discussed in the context of musical contests is “what is being assessed during those competitions”.

One of the biggest pop music competitions in the world is Eurovision Song Contest (a songwriting contest held annually primarily among European countries). There are two significant aspects of this contest: first, portion of the result is determined by the number of votes from regular people (TV audience); and second, the contest has a strong nationalistic logic – like the Olympics for pop music. Given these two aspects, and particularly the second one, it can be argued that the music and the artistry by themselves are the primary categories of the assessment. The most recent and perhaps the most controversial example of this is Eurovision 2022 (10-14 May), where the artists representing Ukraine were named the winners of the contest and had scored the history-high number of votes from the general audience. In the light of the ongoing Russian-Ukrainian conflict, a simple question can be asked – was this victory because the art was “good” or are there other reasons which have nothing to do with the quality of art per se.

This poster will present statistical analysis of the results of the Eurovision Song Contest along with an analysis of sociocultural and political events in Europe in recent years. Observed correlations and conclusions derived from the analyses support the following hypothesis: results of Eurovision 2022 were deeply influenced by the current political situation in Europe and have the most direct connection to the Russian-Ukrainian conflict while the artistic dimension was in the background.

The goal of the graphic presentation is to utilize visualization of statistical analysis in order to efficiently present the supportive evidence. Moreover, the graphic presentation allows to show chronology and connections between various facts in a straightforward fashion, where overall picture is clearly observable, while the necessary details are not omitted.