Anthropology of Music Lecture Series 2019

Acoustemology

Prof. Steven Feld, University of New Mexico

Lecture 2 discussed the “alternate” or “bush” modernity of remote villagers in Bosavi today, people whose knowledge of the world and global capitalism is vastly out of alignment with their actual way of life in a 5 mile radius of their location of birth. It presented the world of Bosavi’s younger generations, people with cellphones but no toilets, bank accounts but no money, and questioned the use of a new technologies by young people – guitars, ukuleles – to reinvent nostalgic music based on the poetic inheritance received from their parents and grandparents. “Acoustemological” approaches to music, sound and technology are here brought together with the local dynamics of globalization and neoliberal capitalism in rather remote places.  The starting point of the lecture was a criss-cross moment when a Bosavi guitar band CD was confused by the media with post-9/11 Americana country music nostalgia.