Audible Traces

Book excerpt: "In recent years, new fields of inquiry in music have blossomed, some more controversial and inflammatory than others, some overtly veering from the traditional affairs of the Academy. Among the variety of questions raised are those that explore the differences between "who we are," "what we do," and "how/what we experience." Such inquiry reflects our desire to discover the ways in which we identify with our music and the ways in which the music we make, listen to, and talk about identifies us. Going beyond singular investigations of history, theory, gender, race, or culture, the contributors to Audible Traces complicate matters. They examine the ways that our supposed self-identity? gender, race, sexuality, sexual orientation, and ethnicity? intersects with our activities and our experiences. Their concerns also include dance, technology, societal forces, cognitive studies, poetry, fashion, sensory inputs, and politics. In a mosaic of approaches and viewpoints composers, musicologists, performers, ethnomusicologists, theorists of music and of literature, suggest and reveal traces of the ways that these complex matrices of identity affect us during the compositional, listening, or performing experience."--Publisher's website.