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William T. Faber

Lecturer

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Bio

Will Faber is an ethnomusicologist and musician, whose teaching includes courses focused on jazz and blues, the musics of the Caribbean, and the musics of Asia, as well as interdisciplinary courses focused on topics such as rhythm and the voice. A Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Music at the University of Chicago, he has presented his scholarly research at meetings of the International Council For Traditional Music and the Society for Ethnomusicology.

Working with guitar, banjo, ngoni, laptop, and flute, he performs with Ben LaMar Gay's Tones for Tongues Quartet and Ernest Dawkins' Boglifier and Nabaggala Ensembles, and is a founding member of El is a Sound of Joy, a collective of artists, instrument builders, recording engineers, and fieldworkers. He is also actively involved with Live the Spirit Residency, a nonprofit organization which produces the annual Englewood Jazz Festival and provides a free after-school jazz education program.

Personal Statement

Will Faber is a Ph.D. Candidate at the University of Chicago, completing a dissertation in the Department of Music titled "Improvised Belongings: Music, Race, and Post-Imperial London." His ethnographic research addresses the affordances of performance, collaboration, and dissonance in the contexts of jazz, electronic dance music, and reggae. Working alongside musicians, dancers, and listeners in clubs, studios, and rehearsal rooms, his work engages the diverse ways they produce and transform categories of race, nation, and musical style. In addition to his work in London, he has conducted extensive research on the musical cultures of Chicago and Jamaica. He has presented his scholarly work at meetings of the International Council For Traditional Music and the Society for Ethnomusicology.

As a guitarist and electronic musician, he performs with Ben LaMar Gay's Tones for Tongues Quartet and Ernest Dawkins' Boglifier Ensemble, and is a founding member of El is a Sound of Joy, a collective of artists, instrument builders, recording engineers, and fieldworkers. He is also actively involved with Live the Spirit Residency, a nonprofit organization which produces the annual Englewood Jazz Festival and provides a free after-school jazz education program.

Courses

Title Department Catalog Term

Description

In this course we will work to develop our capacities as critical writers and readers by engaging the question: ¿what is a voice?¿ To do this, we will move across the domains of politics (¿voice of the people¿), linguistics (¿spoken voice¿), psychology (¿individual voice¿), creativity (¿find your voice¿), sound (¿tone of voice¿), the body (¿vocal chords and voice box¿), technology (¿the recorded voice¿), and the sacred (¿voice of God¿). Ultimately, we will cultivate through writing and discussion a semester- long call and response via the diverse meanings and identities attributed to the voice across a range of cultural and historical locations. How do these diverse formulations resonate and speak with one another, and what might their connections reveal about how we understand ourselves and our world? Our course materials will include works by linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, composer Pauline Oliveros, the poet Ovid, sociologist W.E.B Du Bois, novelist Tommy Orange, philosopher Maladan Dolar, folk tales collected by the Brothers Grim, the spiritual texts of Hazrat Inayat Kahn, the blues music of Ma Rainey, among many others. Thematically, we will frequently consider the ways that the voice transgress the borders of metaphor and material fact, shaping our sense of both the individual and the collective. Throughout this course students will develop techniques for critical reading, writing, and listening, as we discuss materials which present and theorize the identity and meaning of the voice, including examples from music, religious studies, poetry, and philosophy. Students will analyze, synthesize, and compare these multiple perspectives in weekly writing assignments and class discussions and develop strategies for mobilizing diverse forms of evidence in support of their original arguments.

Class Number

1319

Credits

3

Description

Experimentalism Unbound: Hearing the Noises beyond Sun Ra and John Cage

Following the recent centennial celebrations of Sun Ra and John Cage, this course takes up the music and thought of both figures as pathways to three interlocking issues central to contemporary musical practice: the roles of improvisation and performance; the affordances of technology and circuits of mediation; and the articulation of musical meaning with matters of race and gender. Moving across the borders of discipline and genre, course materials will serve to anchor and amplify our inquiry, being drawn from the fields of musicology, philosophy, film studies, and social history, among others, as well as the practices of jazz, experimental music, electronic dance music, and Jamaican popular musics. Our weekly lectures, readings, listening exercises, and writing assignments will ultimately equip students to undertake final research projects which critically extend and apply the questions and themes raised in the course.

Class Number

1491

Credits

3

Description

This course engages jazz and blues traditions on three interrelated fronts: as a set of historically situated practices emergent within the context of the African diaspora; as critical strategies of resistance, collectivity, and self definition; and as dynamic systems of sonic signification, meaning, and value. Lectures, readings, discussion, and critical listening will introduce students to the historical contexts, soundscapes, and discourses of jazz and blues, as well as the musical and social structures at work in their creation and reception.

Throughout the semester we will critically consider the writings of musicians, historians, ethnomusicologists, and critics, as well as musical recordings, filmed performances, and documentary films. Through this students will synthesize foundational theories and concepts relating to the study of music, race, gender, and diaspora; cultivate their skills as critical listeners and musical analysts; and will integrate these capacities within a final project due at the end of the semester.

Class Number

1651

Credits

3