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Course Syllabus

MUSC 4405 World Music Studies

  • Division: Fine Arts, Comm, and New Media
  • Department: Music
  • Credit/Time Requirement: Credit: 3; Lecture: 3; Lab: 0
  • Prerequisites: Successful complete of lower division
  • Semesters Offered: Spring
  • Semester Approved: Fall 2024
  • Five-Year Review Semester: Summer 2029
  • End Semester: Summer 2030
  • Optimum Class Size: 35
  • Maximum Class Size: 35

Course Description

This course provides students with a rigorous introduction to selected musical traditions from various parts of the globe. Through the use of a comparative analytical framework, which includes perspectives from ethnomusicology, the cognitive sciences, and psychoacoustics, students will learn to critically analyze and appreciate the selected musical traditions. These traditions will be approached from within their own cultural contexts and viewed as a social process. Students will develop an understanding of what music is, what it means to its practitioners and audiences, and the means by which musical meaning is transmitted. Emphasis is placed on recognition and analysis of the salient musical characteristics of each tradition, the artists who made major contributions to those traditions, and the particular musical instruments that are iconic to each.

Justification

Courses like this are part of the curriculums baccalaureate music degrees across the country. The National Association of Schools of Music requires college music programs to demonstrate how the outcomes addressed in this course are achieved.

Student Learning Outcomes

  1. Students will demonstrate an ability to research various world music cultures online.
  2. Students will be able to aurally identify and analyze music samples from various world music cultures.
  3. Students will be able to categorize musical examples from various world cultures in terms of the ways in which those examples demonstrate human behavior leading to evolutionary success.
  4. Students will be able to articulate the ways in which musical practices from different world cultures relate to music in the western tradition--both how they differ and how they are the same.

Course Content

Students will examine non-Western musical cultures through the lens of the role music has played in evolutionary biology. Various musical cultures will be selected from Asia, Oceana, Africa, South America and the Caribbean, Europe, and the Middle East. The breadth of possible materials and approaches will allow instructors to curate curriculum from a wide variety of perspectives. Students will examine both commonalities and differences between non-Western musical cultures are the Western tradition. This course offers great possibilities for incorporating student perspectives from various backgrounds who may have experiential knowledge of the styles being examined.