Identity artifacts and cultural crumbs: an analysis of the art music of John Dangerfield Cooper

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Date

2019-12-09

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Indiana University

Abstract

This dissertation provides a biography for Dr. John Dangerfield Cooper, a culturally informed lens to examine and understand his works, and a paradigm for approaching African American art music. It has been said by many that “African Americans have not made a substantive contribution to the field of art music, hence their exclusion from the canonical anthologies and analytical texts of the genre.” Research showed that African American composers who had indeed made significant contributions to the genre and many had already been biographized and their music published. My research also revealed that much of the work focusing on this music lacked cultural some awareness with analyses lacking depth and breadth to fully capture the musical messages in the manuscripts. Even further research revealed that there was not biographical information for composer John Cooper and that there was differing opinions about his oeuvre. I found this intriguing and completed the rese arch that led to this full study on Cooper, his works, and African American paradigmatic analysis. To provide a biography for Dr. Cooper and enhance the analytical tools for African American art music, I began with an examination of Dr. Cooper’s life and works. Collecting Cooper’s works, interviewing friends, family, and former students, and reading the writings of Cooper’s contemporaries, I gained context for his music, experiences, and perspective on those who lived before and during the same time period. Incorporating analytical works about African American cultural communication, identity construction, and musical heritage written by ethnomusicologists, music theorists, anthropologists, philosophers, educators, historians, sociologists, and psychologists resulted in the creation of a biography for Dr. Cooper and a paradigm to approach his and other African American’s art music. After assimilating these various sources, it seemed that specific and essential elemen ts related to the personal and cultural identity of the composer were illuminated. I best described these elements as cultural crumbs and identity artifacts. These elements, taken together with consideration of Jennifer Post’s life spheres and an expansion of Horace Maxile’s semiotic framework, produced the lenses necessary to view Dr. Cooper’s work contextually for academically and culturally competent interpretation and understanding.

Description

Thesis (DM) – Indiana University, Music, 2019

Keywords

Dr. John Dangerfield Cooper, blackness, art music, art song, masculinity, musicology, ethnomusicology, black history, black music, African American, signifying, double consciousness, DuBois, Fanon, Woodson, New Negro, Alain Locke, Harlem Renaissance, Maxile, Analyzing black music, humanistic analysis, Philadelphia music

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Thesis