Washington gives $250,000 to American musicology
mainThe American Musicological Society today received a $251,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to support its Music of the United States of America series.
The project is based at University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre & Dance with matching funds from the U-M School of Music, Theatre & Dance through donations to its American Music Institute / UM Gershwin Initiative and by the Society for American Music.
Forty volumes of American music are planned. The repertoire is extremely varied. Interesting materials. See:
https://sites.google.com/a/umich.edu/musa/publications
I’m not knocking this but they would not have gotten the grant if they were working on anything but American music
It’ll be interesting who wide they define “American” music, it already includes Mexican and Cuban influences, it necessarily includes European influences, will it include Asian influences (to reflect the faculty at U-M)…
At some point, the Trump administration in charge of the National Endowment of the Humanities will have something to say about what is “American”, just as the Trump administration has already redefined what is “climate change” under the Environmental Protection Agency…
Forget the uniformed and racist members of the present administration for a minute: what makes you think that they call the shots at the NEA?
Well, it was the National Endowment of the Humanities but I believe there’s a lot of self censorship. The Trump administration already submitted a budget which eliminates the Endowment entirely. The sensible thing to do would be to find projects that Trump and his fellow travelers would not find so objectionable. That’s why I said that they would not have received the money if the project was not about American music
On the other hand, if American Musicologists don’t devote money and energy to study their own musical heritage, who will?
Good point.
How about more information on the content of this project?