Venue: University of Edinburgh
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Event Date: 04/09/2018 17:00 - 18:30
“Music is a universal language”. Do you agree, or disagree? This talk questions much of the “conventional knowledge” about music making, by examining three different musical examples from around the world.
Following the lecture, the workshop is about mukkuri, a bamboo Jew’s harp used by the Ainu, an indigenous minority people of northern Japan. Try playing the instrument to please your ears, as the Ainu people do. They are much more timbre-oriented than we are!
Speaker’s bio:
Akiko TAKAMATSU studied ethnomusicology at Ochanomizu University, where she received an MA, in Liberal Arts and Humanities in 1988. During her doctoral research, she undertook fieldwork with Scottish Travellers in Northeast Scotland. In 1996 she received a Ph.D. in Liberal Arts and Humanities from Ochanomizu University.
She has been teaching ethnomusicology and other musicological subjects. Her research focuses on Scottish music, with a particular emphasis on the social context of Scottish Travellers’ singing. In her recent paper, “The local, the global and identity” (2016, in Japanese), she describes how Scottish music and dance have survived in the global context. Her other works are Scotland: Travelling people, travelling music (2000, in Japanese); “Exporting Ireland to the world: an analysis of cross-border transmission of a “folk” dance in some Riverdance performances” (2007, Japanese); “Transmission and Creation of ‘Scotch Tunes’ in James Oswald’s A Curious Collection of Scots Tunes (1740)” (2017), etc. She also has an interest in English music of the 16th-17th centuries.
(This event is supported by Japan Foundation, Sakura Network Grant)
Visit the website to register for this free event.