Abstract
In this auto-ethnographic lyric essay, Rishma Dunlop considers the emotional resonance of music education beyond traditional conceptions of acoustical space. She explores what she calls “acute listening” as an embodiment of hearing music across cultural, environmental, and geographical spaces. Dunlop, a poet and a professor of Creative Writing and pedagogy, was a keynote speaker at the Narrative Inquiry in Music Education Conference at Arizona State University in 2008. Her essay explores the significance of the music we listen to and the potential impact of music education on teaching students and provoking ontological concerns about poetics, social practices, knowledge, and concepts of beauty and justice. Human music is explored as it merges in a synaesthesia that is attached to hearing, smell, taste, touch, sight, and memory. “Music Lessons and Other Stories” is an inventory of an epistemology of listening.
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1.Rishma Dunlop, “Stop-time,” in White Album (Toronto: Inanna Publications, 2008), 72.
2.Janet Cardiff, http://www.cardiffmiller.com/artworks/inst/motet.html
3.Simone Weil, The Notebooks of Simone Weil (New York: Routledge, 2004).
4.R. Murray Schafer, Patria: The Complete Cycle (Toronto: Coach House Books, 2002), 83.
5.Theodor Adorno, Aesthetic Theory, trans R. Hullot-Kentno (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), 350–1355.
6.Edward Said, Musical Elaborations (New York: University of Columbia Press, 1991).
7.Adam Zagajewski, “Another Beauty,” in Another Beauty, epigraph trans. Clare Cavanagh (New York: Farrar, Strauss, Giroux, 1998). Originally published in Tremor, Farrar, Strauss, Giroux, 1985.
8.Kurt Cobain, “Heart-shaped Box,” single from Nirvana’s In Utero, DGC Records, 1993.
9.Nicholas Bourriaud, Altermodern (London: Tate Publishing, 2009).
10.Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace (London: Routledge 1952), 28.
11.Rishma Dunlop, “Soundtracks,” in White Album (Toronto: Inanna, 2008), 31.
12.Rishma Dunlop, “Libretto,” in White Album (Toronto: Inanna, 2008), 35. The poem refers to the Ku Klux Klan bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, September 15, 1963. Four young girls were killed: Denise McNair, age 11; Cynthia Wesley, age 14; Carole Robertson, age 14, and Addie Mae Collins, age 14. Lyrics from “Darkness, Darkness.” Jesse Colin Young and the Youngbloods. Elephant Mountain, RCA Records, 1969. During the Vietnam War the song was considered an “anthem” by American soldiers for it described what they felt during combat in the jungles. Lyrics to “Won’t Get Fooled Again,” by Pete Townshend. Performed by The Who on the album Who’s Next, Polydor Records (UK) MCA Records (USA). First released as a single, 7” 45 rpm format, 1971.
13.Rishma Dunlop, “August Wedding: Anand Karaj,” White Album, 2008, 42.
14.Rishma Dunlop, “Metropolis,” in Metropolis (Mansfield Press: Toronto, 2005), 52.
15.Rishma Dunlop, “Augustine Said,” White Album, 2008, 57.
16.George Oppen, “The Mind’s Own Place” (1963), Selected Poems of George Oppen, ed. Robert Creeley (New York: New Directions, 2003), 173–182.
17.Roland Barthes, “From Work to Text,” Modern Literary Theory, ed. Philip Rice and Patricia Waugh (New York: Arnold, 1996).
18.Dénomme-Welch, Spy and Catherine McGowan. “Giiwedin.” Opera, 2009.
19.Dénomme-Welch, “Over My Dead Body” (PhD dissertation proposal, York University, 2009).
20.Rishma Dunlop, “Agnus Dei,” in Metropolis (Toronto: Mansfield Press, 2008), 26.
21.Rishma Dunlop, “Canto,” The Body of My Garden (Toronto: Mansfield Press, 2002), 108.
22.Edward Said, Music at the Limits (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), 3–10.
23.Rishma Dunlop, “Notes from a Journal,” in Reading Like a Girl (Windsor: Black Moss Press, 2004), 25.
24.Rishma Dunlop, “New Year’s Eve,” in White Album (Toronto: Inanna, 2008), 67.
25.Rishma Dunlop, “Driving Home With Chet,” in White Album (Toronto: Inanna, 2008), 4.
26.Rishma Dunlop, “Soja,” in Reading Like a Girl (Windsor: Black Moss Press, 2004), 43–45
27.Rishma Dunlop, “Elegy,” in White Album (Toronto: Inanna, 2008), 63. Lyrics from “Mon Pays Bleu” by Roger Whittaker, EMI records, 1979. Lyrics by Harry Belafonte from “Jamaica Farewell.” Calypso, RCA Records, original release 1955.
28.Rishma Dunlop, “Stop-time,” in White Album (Toronto: Inanna, 2008), 72.
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Dunlop, R. (2012). Music Lessons and Other Stories: Partial Inventory. In: Barrett, M., Stauffer, S. (eds) Narrative Soundings: An Anthology of Narrative Inquiry in Music Education. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-0699-6_8
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