Dale A. Olsen

A portion of this book is a narrative about the World Music Ensemble Program at the Florida State University from 1973 to 2008, the time period of my employment at FSU. While admittedly this narrative history is somewhat of a memoir, my major goal with this book is to provide philosophical bases and even practical instructional strategies for creating world music ensembles in public places where such participatory musical groups can be educational and constructive vehicles for creating cross-cultural communication, good will, understanding, community well-being, healing, and, perhaps, world peace. Not limited to institutions of higher learning, the instructional strategies presented in this book can apply to other public places, such as public and private primary and secondary schools, after-school programs, churches, community or junior colleges, community recreation and learning centers, autism and mental health centers, detention centers, public libraries, retirement homes and rehabilitation facilities, and other organizations interested in learning about diversity through musical participation in world music ensembles. Why are world music ensembles important? What are their roles in education and elsewhere? Who teaches them? Who funds them? Who performs in them? How can they be developed, supported, and assured of success? This book, From the Sound Up: Building World Music Ensembles in Public Places, seeks to answer these and other questions. What I call the "world music ensemble concept" is built on the premise that we all have the capability to play musics from cultures other than that (or those) we have been born into. To seriously learn to play musics from different cultures by participating in world music ensembles, regardless of how accomplished one becomes as a performer, will help to create cross-cultural understanding. At every moment of the day, as our world becomes more and more complex, cross-cultural understanding becomes more vital to our very existence. The world's survival, in fact, depends on such cross-cultural awareness, sensitivity, and acceptance.

In many places around the world, flutes and the sounds of flutes are powerful magical forces for seduction and love, protection, vegetal and human fertility, birth and death, and other aspects of human and nonhuman behavior. This book explores the cultural significance of flutes, flute playing, and flute players from around the world as interpreted from folktales, myths, and other stories--in a word, ""flutelore."" A scholarly yet readable study, World Flutelore: Folktales, Myths, and Other Stories of Magical Flute Power draws upon a range of sources in folklore, anthropology, ethnomusicology, and literary analysis. Describing and interpreting many examples of flutes as they are found in mythology, poetry, lyrics, and other narrative and literary sources from around the world, veteran ethnomusicologist Dale Olsen seeks to determine what is singularly distinct or unique about flutes, flute playing, and flute players in a global context. He shows how and why flutes are important for personal, communal, religious, spiritual, and secular expression and even, perhaps, existence. This is a book for students, scholars, and any reader interested in the cultural power of flutes.

In many places around the world, flutes and the sounds of flutes are powerful magical forces for seduction and love, protection, vegetal and human fertility, birth and death, and other aspects of human and nonhuman behavior. This book explores the cultural significance of flutes, flute playing, and flute players from around the world as interpreted from folktales, myths, and other stories--in a word, ""flutelore."" A scholarly yet readable study, World Flutelore: Folktales, Myths, and Other Stories of Magical Flute Power draws upon a range of sources in folklore, anthropology, ethnomusicology, and literary analysis. Describing and interpreting many examples of flutes as they are found in mythology, poetry, lyrics, and other narrative and literary sources from around the world, veteran ethnomusicologist Dale Olsen seeks to determine what is singularly distinct or unique about flutes, flute playing, and flute players in a global context. He shows how and why flutes are important for personal, communal, religious, spiritual, and secular expression and even, perhaps, existence. This is a book for students, scholars, and any reader interested in the cultural power of flutes.

Based on the author’s research in Ho Chi Minh City, Hanoi, and other urban areas in Vietnam, this study of contemporary Vietnamese popular music explores the ways globalization and free market economics have influenced the music and subcultures of Vietnamese youth, focusing on the conflict between the politics of remembering, nurtured by the Vietnamese Communist government, and the politics of forgetting driven by the capitalist interests of the music industry.Vietnamese youth at the end of the second and beginning of the third millennium are influenced by the challenges generated by a number of seemingly opposite ideologies and realities, such as "the past" versus "the present," socialism versus capitalism, and cultural traditionalism versus globalization. Vietnam has undergone a radical demographic shift with a very pronounced youth movement, and consequently, Vietnamese popular culture has been radically reshaped by a young population coming of age in the twenty-first century. As Olsen reveals, the way Vietnamese young people cope with these opposing and contrasting forces is often expressed in their active and passive music making.

Based on the author’s research in Ho Chi Minh City, Hanoi, and other urban areas in Vietnam, this study of contemporary Vietnamese popular music explores the ways globalization and free market economics have influenced the music and subcultures of Vietnamese youth, focusing on the conflict between the politics of remembering, nurtured by the Vietnamese Communist government, and the politics of forgetting driven by the capitalist interests of the music industry.Vietnamese youth at the end of the second and beginning of the third millennium are influenced by the challenges generated by a number of seemingly opposite ideologies and realities, such as "the past" versus "the present," socialism versus capitalism, and cultural traditionalism versus globalization. Vietnam has undergone a radical demographic shift with a very pronounced youth movement, and consequently, Vietnamese popular culture has been radically reshaped by a young population coming of age in the twenty-first century. As Olsen reveals, the way Vietnamese young people cope with these opposing and contrasting forces is often expressed in their active and passive music making.

In the first comprehensive synthesis of Andean musical instruments, Dale Olsen breathes life and humanity into the music making of pre-Hispanic cultures in the northern and central Andes. He assesses three decades' worth of anthropological findings from diverse collections, museums, tombs, and temples. Although the instruments, ranging from the ceramic flutes of the Sinu and Tairona and the panpipes of the Paracas and Nasca to the Moche's rattles, drums, and conch shell trumpets, are analyzed in great detail, Olsen's is original among studies of pre-Columbian music in that it takes an interpretive rather than a purely descriptive approach. What did music mean in the lives of these pre-Columbians? Part musical quest, part adventure of the mind, he considers not only why and when the instruments were played, but exactly how. Enhancing the text are fascinating illustrations of more than 80 archaeological musical instruments and ancient artifacts, many never before reproduced in books available in the United States.

This work examines the music of the Warao, which is a central aspect of their life. Their musical genres are divided into three categories - music for pleasure, utility and theurgy. Musical and textual transcriptions of the songs are provided, and included on the accompanying compact disk.