2 page music and culture essay proposal due in 10 hours

2.1. Essay  (30% including the proposal)

Evaluation breakdown: 30% of final course mark, of which:

            Proposal; preliminary bibliography (marked separately, earlier due date): 10/30

            Content: 12/20

            Writing style, presentation, organization, references and bibliographical format 4/20

            Final bibliography / reference sources: choice and use: 4/20

Proposal. (10%) Please submit the proposal on time, so adjustments may be made if necessary. The proposal should explain the topic, the main purpose of the paper / project; and the planned methodology.

If you are working with a hypothesis, explain it.

Merely saying “I’ll be writing about Chinese music”, for example, is not a proposal.

It should be one to two full pages, and include a well-thought-out bibliography. The clearer your proposal is, the easier it will be to write the paper itself.

Bibliography: your preliminary bibliography should include a brief (a couple of lines) explanation for each item. It is always a good idea to check relevant entries in Grove and Garland (under “Recommended readings”.)  

Please do not read or cite only one or two pages of a longer work – use your references well.

Essay topics.

Your topic must be related to one or more aspects of world music. It may be a culture, or part of a culture: for example, South Italian wedding songs, or a genre: for example, wedding songs in two Mediterranean cultures. It could be gender-related, examining women’s and/or men’s roles in a specific tradition or in two traditions, comparatively. You might explore the relation of music and work – traditional work such as farming or sewing, or newer work such as music in office work; or politics in a culture or region (music in the “Arab spring”, music in the Occupy movement….), or music and societal structures. Traditional and innovation, sometimes (but not necessarily) related to generation differences,  often form an interesting pair – or you may want to critique the use of such dichotomies and propose another model. The use of old and new instruments, elements of fusion, music in new festivals such as the Kensington Market Solstice Parade…. there are many possibilities.

Please avoid huge topics such as “the music of Africa”, or “women and world music”: make sure that your topic is, on the one hand, focused and specific enough to be handled in a relatively short term paper, but, on the other hand, that there is enough information  available to you on the topic.