Letter from the Editors
Allan Zheng, Hannah Snavely, and Garrett Groesbeck
Letter from the Guest Editor
Allan Zheng
PhD Candidate, University of California, Riverside It is my pleasure to introduce our readership to the latest issue of Rising Voices in Ethnomusicology. As outgoing copy editor and associate editor, I have truly enjoyed working with the editing team over the past few years. I joined Rising Voices in Ethnomusicology in 2022, back when we were called SEM Student News, and watched it transform into the wonderful publication space that it is today. I hope that Rising Voices in Ethnomusicology’s platform inspires scholars for generations to come and continues to push the boundaries of what scholarship can be, moving beyond the standard academic essay to imaginative writing, poetry, media, art, and hopefully more emergent forms. I am happy to have been on this adventure with such wonderful colleagues.
To our collective surprise, Rising Voices in Ethnomusicology has not produced an issue overtly related to the theme “Music, Gender, and Sexuality.” There is no better moment to discuss gender and sexuality: US-based scholars are watching in real-time the suspension and dissolution of hard-fought legal protections for women, queer, and trans folks, compounded by ongoing colonial and racial violence. Without a doubt, the current geopolitical situation will have consequences for decades to come. We as scholars must be vigilant regardless of our individual research agendas, address continuing injustices and violence, and intervene in academia and beyond.
In this issue, I am inspired by the critical work of our contributors, particularly their critiques of the heteropatriarchy and close readings of vocal expressivity. Johnson Oluwajuwon Adenuga examines how wáka musicians navigate and challenge gendered expectations of Yorùbá womanhood. Through their lyrical interventions, women wáka musicians leverage Yorùbá spirituality to redefine womanhood. Rubens De La Corte reveals how women and non-binary luthiers in Brazil and Argentina disrupt the male-dominated industry through defying the commodity fetish of exchange through collaboration and community. Misaki Kishi investigates how women dalang in Java emphasize vocal projection techniques when performing male and demon characters in wayang kulit. Instead of imitating stereotypically masculine voices, they shift gendered associations of what constitutes powerful voices and highlight their potential for a greater range of vocal expression. Continuing discussions of the voice through the posthuman, April Wei-West discusses how transgender producers use vocaloid technologies to ultimately reimagine the human by affirming and producing gender subjectivity. Xuan He analyzes Tan Dun’s multimedia symphonic work Nu Shu (2013) and his portrayal of nüshu, an exclusively female written and expressive practice. She highlights how Tan Dun’s work draws attention to the complexities of cultural translation and representational visibility through vocal and visual representations of nüshu practitioners.
As the genocide of Palestinians continues, Felícia Campos discusses how DAM’s (Da Arabian MCs) critique of marriage as a tradition draws attention to the entanglement of capital, sexism, and colonialism as it impacts the lives of Palestinian youth while gesturing towards a liberated future. Through the lens of sonic orientalism, Amy Maatouk critiques the extrapolation of sounds from across Southwest Asia and North Africa (SWANA) in Zimmer’s scores for Dune (2021) and Dune: Part 2 (2024). Maatouk argues that ongoing sonic orientalism in mainstream media continues to dehumanize Arabs, Muslims, and people in SWANA.
This issue also features a special column titled “What’s Queer about Ethnomusicology Now?” with five short essays with brief responses by Emily Kaniuka, Jordan Brown, Garrett Groesbeck, Anton Blackburn, and myself. All the authors provide a critical perspective to the relationship of music and queer studies that highlight the missing racial, embodied, and methodological dimensions within queer music studies and challenge existing disciplinary divides. I am excited about the continued dialogue about music, gender, sexuality, queerness, and transness that has emerged from this piece.
“What is academia?” Dear SEM contributor Tes Slominski asks us to consider. Taking up the expansiveness of “queerness” as both a theoretical concept and a representation of lived experience, they argue that scholarly work must expand and acknowledge the importance of community, especially as academic institutions remain complacent or contribute to mass violence. Slominski wants us to remember that all our scholarship is deeply indebted to our interlocutors and communities. Our communities are what sustains us; they are the people who give our work meaning and significance.
I want to extend my deepest gratitude to the efforts of the contributors and editing team for making this issue possible. I also want to give an additional thanks to the next copy editor Katie Minyoung Cooke for stepping up and helping review and edit the special column. Thank you to the contributors of this issue’s special column for your responsiveness and willingness to work with such tight deadlines. I hope this community and our collective efforts will inspire future music scholars, especially in these turbulent times.
With warmth and appreciation,
Allan Zheng
Letter from the Outgoing Editor
Hannah Snavely
I write this letter at the end of yet another difficult academic year for many. Dissertation research fellowships have been eliminated, leaving colleagues without funding to complete their field work. Teams of graduate students and professors scramble to finish government-funded grants that have suddenly come to a halt. International students return home for the summer, sinisterly joking about their hopes of successfully re-entering the U.S. in the fall. And, most bone-chilling, countless colleagues finish their degrees jobless and uncertain what their future holds in a political and economic climate that continuously devalues diverse music cultures.
I also write this letter during my final weeks of the school year, eager to weed the stressful hamster wheel of graduate education out of my mind and out of my body. As scholars, we ride a delicate balance between sustaining our day-to-day work (grading papers, reading for classes, writing up field notes yet again), supporting our communities, generating new knowledge and projects, and caring for ourselves. In the last push of school, I did not care for myself well; I feel the imprints of dissertation writing deep in my shoulders and hips. I want to sing and dance and do all the embodied activities we write about, but never actually have time to practice. I crave rest. I know I need it if I am going to continue supporting rising ethnomusicologists with the many challenges we are currently facing.
I don’t have many words right now (I think they all went into the dissertation). Instead, I feel gratitude. I am grateful that, through my work at Rising Voices, I have been able to help edify the up-and-coming generation of interdisciplinary music scholars through expanding opportunities for publication. Throughout my five years working for the publication, I have been nourished by my colleagues and mentors. Together, we have learned that collaborative and generous approaches to scholarship turn words on a page into friendship. I am grateful for the support we have received from SEM staff, the SEM Board, and student and faculty authors alike. I am particularly thankful for my Co-Editor, Garrett Groesbeck. I am also pleased to welcome Mark Hsiang-Yu Feng as incoming Co-Editor, and I look forward to the ways that Rising Voices will continue to morph under their leadership.
I am thrilled that Rising Voices has become a resource for students to be able to publish in a system where waiting for peer review can take years. I hope that the publication continues to open up paths and be a site of community for rising scholars.
Hugs,
Hannah Snavely
P.S. from the Continuing Editor
Garrett Groesbeck
We would like to express our deepest gratitude to our outgoing senior editor Hannah Snavely, who oversaw our transition from SEM Student News to Rising Voices. Hannah has a deep concern for the needs of students in our field, and under her guidance we have made a renewed commitment to supporting our fellow student scholars, particularly those whose voices have been marginalized in anglophone scholarship. Current and past editors, authors, and collaborators have all expressed their gratitude for Hannah’s dedicated work and send their well-wishes for the next stage of her journey.