Jim Sykes
I'm currently an Associate Professor of Music at the University of Pennsylvania. To date, my research has explored music and sound in the eastern Indian Ocean Region (with a focus on Sri Lanka) in conjunction with issues like religion, migration, violence, capitalism, and development. My book, The Musical Gift: Sonic Generosity in Post-War Sri Lanka (OUP, 2018), received the Bruno Nettl Prize from the Society for Ethnomusicology. With Gavin Steingo, I co-edited Remapping Sound Studies (Duke, 2019) and I’m currently co-editing a book (w/Julia Byl) on musical histories and migrations across the Indian Ocean region. I researched Tamil Hindu drumming in Singapore in conjunction with my postdoctoral fellowship at King’s College London (2011-2013).
As a drummer, I’ve recorded and toured widely with experimental, improv, noise, and indie rock groups, including Mark Shippy (U.S. Maple) in our band Invisible Things (https://invisiblethings.bandcamp.com/), Martin Bisi (Sonic Youth, John Zorn), Marnie Stern, Grooms (of the Death by Audio collective in Brooklyn), Boredoms’ 77 Boadrum, Parts and Labor, Mike Watt, Norman Westburg (Swans), and many other bands who also rehearsed a ton and played dimly lit venues.
Supervisors: Dr. Philip V. Bohlman
As a drummer, I’ve recorded and toured widely with experimental, improv, noise, and indie rock groups, including Mark Shippy (U.S. Maple) in our band Invisible Things (https://invisiblethings.bandcamp.com/), Martin Bisi (Sonic Youth, John Zorn), Marnie Stern, Grooms (of the Death by Audio collective in Brooklyn), Boredoms’ 77 Boadrum, Parts and Labor, Mike Watt, Norman Westburg (Swans), and many other bands who also rehearsed a ton and played dimly lit venues.
Supervisors: Dr. Philip V. Bohlman
less
InterestsView All (50)
Uploads
Books by Jim Sykes
The introduction to the book is posted under "papers".
Papers by Jim Sykes
"Researchers using scientific methods and approaches to advance our understanding of music and musicality have not yet grappled with some of the perils that humanistic fields concentrating on music have long articulated. In this edited volume, established and emerging researchers—neuroscientists and cognitive scientists, musicians, historical musicologists, and ethnomusicologists—build bridges between humanistic and scientific approaches to music studies, particularly music psychology. Deftly edited by Elizabeth H. Margulis, Psyche Loui, and Deirdre Loughridge, The Science-Music Borderlands embodies how sustained interaction among disciplines can lead to a richer understanding of musical life."
"The essays in this volume provide the scientific study of music with its first major reckoning, exploring the intellectual history of the field and its central debates, while charting a path forward."
"The Science-Music Borderlands is essential reading for music scholars from any disciplinary background. It will also interest those working at the intersection of music and science, such as music teachers, performers, composers, and music therapists."
Abstract:
Why does power need glory? If it is essentially force and capacity for action and government, why does it assume the rigid, cumbersome, and 'glorious' form of ceremonies, acclamations, and protocols? What is the relation between economy and Glory?"-Giorgio Agamben 1 Political Theology and Formations of Music History In his 2011 book The Kingdom and the Glory, Giorgio Agamben reconsiders Carl Schmitt's (1922) famous thesis that "All significant concepts of the modern theory of the state are secularized theological concepts." 2 Schmitt, a committed Nazi, sought (as Carl Raschke puts it) "to revalidate somehow the pre-modern assumption that political absolutism had its own kind of legitimacy, if it had the warrant of religious transcendence." 3 Agamben argues there is a second paradigm of sovereignty also operative in early Christian political theology, the "divine economy" or oikonomia ("an immanent ordering-domestic and not political in a strict sense-of both divine and human life"). 4 To stick with Raschke's summary of Agamben a bit longer, he suggests the origins of the second paradigm lie "in Jesus' proclamation of the 'kingdom of God'": On the one hand, "kingdom" (basileia) signifies unconditioned divine sovereignty, but as the Great Commandment implies, and Jesus' own radically relational interpretation of what it means to be a participant in the "kingdom," it also connotes limitless mutual obligations that we have to each other, a form of a familialism reaching infinitely beyond the limits of blood, kinship, and any particular, concrete "household." It was under the influence of Christianity and the writings of Saint Paul that the classical notion of dike morphed into the broader, "cosmopolitan" ideal of what nowadays we term social justice. 5
have conditioned the musical traditions of ports and islands, and we put ethnomusicological writings on places like Zanzibar and Oman into dialogue with those from Mauritius and Singapore. We address how ethnomusicology’s area studies paradigm has inhibited musical studies of the Indian Ocean Region (IOR); the specter of comparative musicology; and the perils of modern Indian Ocean populations in light of postcolonial ethnonationalisms.
In two conjoined articles, I argue that Sri Lanka—long passed over in ethnomusicology classes as one proceeds from India to Indonesia or vice-versa—is worthy of gaining a strong foothold in our field. This is due in part to the unique approach to rhythm and meter found in the rituals of a caste called the Beravā, members of the island’s Sinhala Buddhist ethnic majority. The genre’s rhythms are generated by drum syllables (aksaras) of long and short duration (guru and laghu) set in lines of drum poetry (padas). Sometimes the drumming resembles unmetered speech; other times, a pulse or beat cycle sounds present. However, there is no word for “meter” or “beat cycle” in the tradition (the pan-South Asian term tala is not used). In any given padaya (the singular), several aksaras will not match up with a beat, its seeming subdivisions, or the pulse. Even when a seemingly straightforward beat cycle is performed, it may be stretched to match the duration of the drum word. All this gives Sinhala drumming a unique feel: to outsiders, many rhythms appear uncountable. Sri Lankan musicologists have long been aware of the genre’s metric ambiguity, but they are not in agreement on how to understand it.
In the first of my two articles, I consider the “problem” of Sinhala meter set in an introduction to Sinhala Buddhist ritual, a discussion of the relationship between music and Theravada Buddhism, and a history of Sinhala drumming—a long prologue that is warranted, I suggest, because of the lack of studies of Sri Lanka in ethnomusicology and the prevalence of misunderstandings in the literature on the role of music in Theravada Buddhism.
The second article provides an analysis of drumming in three low-country (southern coastal) Sinhala Buddhist rituals. I argue that because of Buddhism’s Seventh Precept—which prohibits reveling sensuously in music and dance—Sinhala drumming was constructed as speech rather than music so that it would be acceptable as an offering to the Buddha and deities. Drum offerings for the Buddha and deities more closely approximate unmetered speech than drum offerings for demons (yakku). I also contend that modern Indian and Western notions of meter are nowadays often mapped onto Sinhala drumming by non-Beravā, the result being that a tradition of sacred speech is slowly being transformed into music—thus threatening the acceptability of drum offerings in the ritual context.
Video examples can be found here: http://aawmjournal.com/articles/2018a/Sykes_Captions_AAWM_Vol_6_2.html
In two conjoined articles, I argue that Sri Lanka—long passed over in ethnomusicology classes as one proceeds from India to Indonesia or vice-versa—is worthy of gaining a strong foothold in our field. This is due in part to the unique approach to rhythm and meter found in the rituals of a caste called the Beravā, members of the island’s Sinhala Buddhist ethnic majority. The genre’s rhythms are generated by drum syllables (aksaras) of long and short duration (guru and laghu) set in lines of drum poetry (padas). Sometimes the drumming resembles unmetered speech; other times, a pulse or beat cycle sounds present. However, there is no word for “meter” or “beat cycle” in the tradition (the pan-South Asian term tala is not used). In any given padaya (the singular), several aksaras will not match up with a beat, its seeming subdivisions, or the pulse. Even when a seemingly straightforward beat cycle is performed, it may be stretched to match the duration of the drum word. All this gives Sinhala drumming a unique feel: to outsiders, many rhythms appear uncountable. Sri Lankan musicologists have long been aware of the genre’s metric ambiguity, but they are not in agreement on how to understand it.
In the first of my two articles, I consider the “problem” of Sinhala meter set in an introduction to Sinhala Buddhist ritual, a discussion of the relationship between music and Theravada Buddhism, and a history of Sinhala drumming—a long prologue that is warranted, I suggest, because of the lack of studies of Sri Lanka in ethnomusicology and the prevalence of misunderstandings in the literature on the role of music in Theravada Buddhism.
The second article provides an analysis of drumming in three low-country (southern coastal) Sinhala Buddhist rituals. I argue that because of Buddhism’s Seventh Precept—which prohibits reveling sensuously in music and dance—Sinhala drumming was constructed as speech rather than music so that it would be acceptable as an offering to the Buddha and deities. Drum offerings for the Buddha and deities more closely approximate unmetered speech than drum offerings for demons (yakku). I also contend that modern Indian and Western notions of meter are nowadays often mapped onto Sinhala drumming by non-Beravā, the result being that a tradition of sacred speech is slowly being transformed into music—thus threatening the acceptability of drum offerings in the ritual context.
The introduction to the book is posted under "papers".
"Researchers using scientific methods and approaches to advance our understanding of music and musicality have not yet grappled with some of the perils that humanistic fields concentrating on music have long articulated. In this edited volume, established and emerging researchers—neuroscientists and cognitive scientists, musicians, historical musicologists, and ethnomusicologists—build bridges between humanistic and scientific approaches to music studies, particularly music psychology. Deftly edited by Elizabeth H. Margulis, Psyche Loui, and Deirdre Loughridge, The Science-Music Borderlands embodies how sustained interaction among disciplines can lead to a richer understanding of musical life."
"The essays in this volume provide the scientific study of music with its first major reckoning, exploring the intellectual history of the field and its central debates, while charting a path forward."
"The Science-Music Borderlands is essential reading for music scholars from any disciplinary background. It will also interest those working at the intersection of music and science, such as music teachers, performers, composers, and music therapists."
Abstract:
Why does power need glory? If it is essentially force and capacity for action and government, why does it assume the rigid, cumbersome, and 'glorious' form of ceremonies, acclamations, and protocols? What is the relation between economy and Glory?"-Giorgio Agamben 1 Political Theology and Formations of Music History In his 2011 book The Kingdom and the Glory, Giorgio Agamben reconsiders Carl Schmitt's (1922) famous thesis that "All significant concepts of the modern theory of the state are secularized theological concepts." 2 Schmitt, a committed Nazi, sought (as Carl Raschke puts it) "to revalidate somehow the pre-modern assumption that political absolutism had its own kind of legitimacy, if it had the warrant of religious transcendence." 3 Agamben argues there is a second paradigm of sovereignty also operative in early Christian political theology, the "divine economy" or oikonomia ("an immanent ordering-domestic and not political in a strict sense-of both divine and human life"). 4 To stick with Raschke's summary of Agamben a bit longer, he suggests the origins of the second paradigm lie "in Jesus' proclamation of the 'kingdom of God'": On the one hand, "kingdom" (basileia) signifies unconditioned divine sovereignty, but as the Great Commandment implies, and Jesus' own radically relational interpretation of what it means to be a participant in the "kingdom," it also connotes limitless mutual obligations that we have to each other, a form of a familialism reaching infinitely beyond the limits of blood, kinship, and any particular, concrete "household." It was under the influence of Christianity and the writings of Saint Paul that the classical notion of dike morphed into the broader, "cosmopolitan" ideal of what nowadays we term social justice. 5
have conditioned the musical traditions of ports and islands, and we put ethnomusicological writings on places like Zanzibar and Oman into dialogue with those from Mauritius and Singapore. We address how ethnomusicology’s area studies paradigm has inhibited musical studies of the Indian Ocean Region (IOR); the specter of comparative musicology; and the perils of modern Indian Ocean populations in light of postcolonial ethnonationalisms.
In two conjoined articles, I argue that Sri Lanka—long passed over in ethnomusicology classes as one proceeds from India to Indonesia or vice-versa—is worthy of gaining a strong foothold in our field. This is due in part to the unique approach to rhythm and meter found in the rituals of a caste called the Beravā, members of the island’s Sinhala Buddhist ethnic majority. The genre’s rhythms are generated by drum syllables (aksaras) of long and short duration (guru and laghu) set in lines of drum poetry (padas). Sometimes the drumming resembles unmetered speech; other times, a pulse or beat cycle sounds present. However, there is no word for “meter” or “beat cycle” in the tradition (the pan-South Asian term tala is not used). In any given padaya (the singular), several aksaras will not match up with a beat, its seeming subdivisions, or the pulse. Even when a seemingly straightforward beat cycle is performed, it may be stretched to match the duration of the drum word. All this gives Sinhala drumming a unique feel: to outsiders, many rhythms appear uncountable. Sri Lankan musicologists have long been aware of the genre’s metric ambiguity, but they are not in agreement on how to understand it.
In the first of my two articles, I consider the “problem” of Sinhala meter set in an introduction to Sinhala Buddhist ritual, a discussion of the relationship between music and Theravada Buddhism, and a history of Sinhala drumming—a long prologue that is warranted, I suggest, because of the lack of studies of Sri Lanka in ethnomusicology and the prevalence of misunderstandings in the literature on the role of music in Theravada Buddhism.
The second article provides an analysis of drumming in three low-country (southern coastal) Sinhala Buddhist rituals. I argue that because of Buddhism’s Seventh Precept—which prohibits reveling sensuously in music and dance—Sinhala drumming was constructed as speech rather than music so that it would be acceptable as an offering to the Buddha and deities. Drum offerings for the Buddha and deities more closely approximate unmetered speech than drum offerings for demons (yakku). I also contend that modern Indian and Western notions of meter are nowadays often mapped onto Sinhala drumming by non-Beravā, the result being that a tradition of sacred speech is slowly being transformed into music—thus threatening the acceptability of drum offerings in the ritual context.
Video examples can be found here: http://aawmjournal.com/articles/2018a/Sykes_Captions_AAWM_Vol_6_2.html
In two conjoined articles, I argue that Sri Lanka—long passed over in ethnomusicology classes as one proceeds from India to Indonesia or vice-versa—is worthy of gaining a strong foothold in our field. This is due in part to the unique approach to rhythm and meter found in the rituals of a caste called the Beravā, members of the island’s Sinhala Buddhist ethnic majority. The genre’s rhythms are generated by drum syllables (aksaras) of long and short duration (guru and laghu) set in lines of drum poetry (padas). Sometimes the drumming resembles unmetered speech; other times, a pulse or beat cycle sounds present. However, there is no word for “meter” or “beat cycle” in the tradition (the pan-South Asian term tala is not used). In any given padaya (the singular), several aksaras will not match up with a beat, its seeming subdivisions, or the pulse. Even when a seemingly straightforward beat cycle is performed, it may be stretched to match the duration of the drum word. All this gives Sinhala drumming a unique feel: to outsiders, many rhythms appear uncountable. Sri Lankan musicologists have long been aware of the genre’s metric ambiguity, but they are not in agreement on how to understand it.
In the first of my two articles, I consider the “problem” of Sinhala meter set in an introduction to Sinhala Buddhist ritual, a discussion of the relationship between music and Theravada Buddhism, and a history of Sinhala drumming—a long prologue that is warranted, I suggest, because of the lack of studies of Sri Lanka in ethnomusicology and the prevalence of misunderstandings in the literature on the role of music in Theravada Buddhism.
The second article provides an analysis of drumming in three low-country (southern coastal) Sinhala Buddhist rituals. I argue that because of Buddhism’s Seventh Precept—which prohibits reveling sensuously in music and dance—Sinhala drumming was constructed as speech rather than music so that it would be acceptable as an offering to the Buddha and deities. Drum offerings for the Buddha and deities more closely approximate unmetered speech than drum offerings for demons (yakku). I also contend that modern Indian and Western notions of meter are nowadays often mapped onto Sinhala drumming by non-Beravā, the result being that a tradition of sacred speech is slowly being transformed into music—thus threatening the acceptability of drum offerings in the ritual context.