Who We Are
We are a group of musicians and scholars from diverse disciplines, including philosophy, neuroscience, musicology, social science, cultural studies, critical theory, and performance studies. We come together in our mutual contention of the need for new approaches and platforms to understand the importance of music beyond traditional models of Western musicology. We contend that universities are unable to achieve this. We do not conceive music merely as entertainment or cultural commodity, but as an expression of foundational relationships between humans and the worlds in which they find themselves.
I am a performance philosopher, specializing in phenomenology. My current work asks questions of the multiple meanings we resonate when we say the word music. I am studying non-human musics to get a sense of how music comes to us and the effects it has had on the possibility of the development of language, mathematics, and thinking. I ask questions of how music thinks and its intentional structure – how does music give us the world and how do we meet that giving? There are two fundamental questions at the core of this – what might an epistemological structure derived from the intentionality of the sense of listening and an ontology predicated on this sound like?
I am a performance philosopher, specializing in phenomenology. My current work asks questions of the multiple meanings we resonate when we say the word music. I am studying non-human musics to get a sense of how music comes to us and the effects it has had on the possibility of the development of language, mathematics, and thinking. I ask questions of how music thinks and its intentional structure – how does music give us the world and how do we meet that giving? There are two fundamental questions at the core of this – what might an epistemological structure derived from the intentionality of the sense of listening and an ontology predicated on this sound like?
John’s work addresses the various complexities of intercultural music hybridity, especially conjunctions of Thai classical music (dontri Thai) and Western musical forms. This work commenced with attempts to understand and perform Thai music through practice. This led to a recognition of shortcomings in English language representations of Thai music that arose through its enframement in Western/English language terms and conceptual schema developed to explain European originating music. As this work has progressed, it has attempted to delink representations of Thai music from these and frame discussions about it in ways that reflect how it is understood where it is made and heard.
How We Got Here
We are a group of musicians and scholars from diverse disciplines, including philosophy, neuroscience, musicology, social science, cultural studies, critical theory, and performance studies. We come together in our mutual contention of the need for new approaches and platforms to understand the importance of music beyond traditional models of Western musicology. We contend that universities are unable to achieve this. We do not conceive music merely as entertainment or cultural commodity, but as an expression of foundational relationships between humans and the worlds in which they find themselves.
How Are We Doing This
We are a group of musicians and scholars from diverse disciplines, including philosophy, neuroscience, musicology, social science, cultural studies, critical theory, and performance studies. We come together in our mutual contention of the need for new approaches and platforms to understand the importance of music beyond traditional models of Western musicology. We contend that universities are unable to achieve this. We do not conceive music merely as entertainment or cultural commodity, but as an expression of foundational relationships between humans and the worlds in which they find themselves.