{"id":268,"date":"2011-05-09T10:05:31","date_gmt":"2011-05-09T17:05:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/normanstanfield\/"},"modified":"2014-07-11T14:38:07","modified_gmt":"2014-07-11T21:38:07","slug":"welcome-3","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/normanstanfield\/welcome-3\/","title":{"rendered":"WELCOME"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I am a prairie boy, born and raised in Calgary. Even to this day, the memory of those\u00a0vast,\u00a0flat\u00a0landscapes with\u00a0the Rocky Mountains on the skyline, is irresistible. But I also recall the impact of the\u00a0Silent Generation\u00a0<\/span><\/a><\/span>who lived through the war and\u00a0made Calgary, aka The Radiant City<\/span><\/a><\/span>,\u00a0a particularly comfortable place for the style of materialism and consumerism common to 50s North America, and still prevalent today.<\/p>\n

I began my musical life as a flutist and was doing quite well until I heard the plangent sounds of the Japanese flute called the shakuhachi<\/em><\/span>.<\/a>\u00a0 If you’ve seen the movie Baraka<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0and recall the haunting flute music\u00a0during\u00a0the opening credits,\u00a0you’ll know exactly what I mean.\u00a0 What followed was a journey to the\u00a0heart of music\u00a0down the path (\u9053\u00a0d\u014d) of “buddhology”, my minor\u00a0as a graduate student pursuing a\u00a0Master of Music in Ethnomusicology. The research trip to Japan clinched the deal. I also discovered that I would never see and hear\u00a0Western music again without the eyes and ears of a buddhologist and\u00a0ethnomusicologist.<\/p>\n

Side trips to the music and dance of the Kwakwaka-wakw<\/span><\/a>\u00a0<\/span> (Kwakiutl) kept my hand in the field of ethno as I made a living in the world of Early Music and the recording studio as a session musician. The highlight? Playing the shakuhachi<\/em> and yokobue<\/em> for the soundtrack of Platoon<\/span>. Or maybe it was portraying a Komuso at Expo 86.<\/p>\n

An entirely new and unexpected turn of events led me to morris dance, the folk dance of England that is a curious mix of square-dance and rugby. The world of morris dance<\/span><\/a><\/span> and its sister folk art, mumming<\/span><\/a><\/span>, is so rich and complex that it begs for\u00a0deeper study. Hence my enrolment in a Ph.D. program of study and my dissertation topic: Rough Music, Rough Dance, Rough Play: Misrule and Morris Dance. The seminars and readings\u00a0on postmodernism, cultural studies, critical theory, and ethnography added yet more\u00a0fuel to the bonfire\u00a0that is my\u00a0curiosity about the musical condition of humanity.<\/p>\n

After\u00a0moving far and wide through\u00a0the academic and\u00a0lived experiences of various musics around the world, I became curious about the\u00a0music of my\u00a0“home”, variously defined as Canada, the West, British Columbia\u00a0or Vancouver, depending on my focus at the time. My frequent travels across Canada as a woodwind, brass and percussion examiner for the Royal Conservatory of Music<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0heightened those feelings.\u00a0Such an about-face is typical in ethnomusicology, where\u00a0some ethnos bring their skills and insights to the music\u00a0of their back yards. And what is the\u00a0most prominent\u00a0and most persuasive musical sound here at home? Popular Music – the soundtrack of our lives.\u00a0My curiosity also extends to the music of our Canadian First and Second Nations.<\/p>\n

These days I am in search of the musical identity of Canada. No mean feat, given that Canada is a complex melange of cultures where no one group of people and their music\u00a0is more privileged\u00a0than another, no matter when they arrived in the history of Canada. The topic is vast and unwieldy, as it is urgent and timely. My years in the Canadian Society for Traditional Music taught me that contradiction.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, I kept my musical sensibilities in order by playing a cornet in a local British Brass Band<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0to 2013, then the fiddle\u00a0up to\u00a0the present time.<\/p>\n

Sessional Instructor<\/span><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Curriculum Vitae<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  I am a prairie boy, born and raised in Calgary. Even to this day, the memory of those\u00a0vast,\u00a0flat\u00a0landscapes with\u00a0the Rocky Mountains on the skyline, is irresistible. But I also recall the impact of the\u00a0Silent Generation\u00a0who lived through the war and\u00a0made Calgary, aka The Radiant City,\u00a0a particularly comfortable place for the style of materialism and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6987,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":1,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-268","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/normanstanfield\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/268","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/normanstanfield\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/normanstanfield\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/normanstanfield\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6987"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/normanstanfield\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=268"}],"version-history":[{"count":44,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/normanstanfield\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/268\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1508,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/normanstanfield\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/268\/revisions\/1508"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/normanstanfield\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}