Music and Liberation I: Music and Narratives

Session Submission Type: Panel

Affiliate Organization: Russian, Eastern European, and Eurasian Music Study Group

Brief Description

This panel presents different approaches to investigating the theme of liberation in music and narratives. The papers cover works from the 19th to 21st century. Ani Abrahamyan will discuss Vsevolod Krestovskii’s novel Peterburgskie trushchoby (Petersburg slums, 1864-66) and focus on diegetic music within the work and its overall urban soundscape. Elizabeth Abosch will present a paper on Soviet proletarian song culture in the 1920s and 1930s, pay particular attention to the narratives of the transformation and liberation of the self. Polina Dimova will discuss two novels – Vladimir Sharov’s Before and During (1993) and Georgi Gospodinov’s Time Shelter (2020) – and address how they grapple with the past and manipulate time to interrogate the very possibility of liberation in post-socialist Bulgaria and post-Soviet Russia.

Sub Unit

• Arts II: Music, Theater, Performance Studies

Chair

• Tony H Lin, Boston College

Papers

• The Song of the Slums: Music in Vsevolod Krestovskii’s Peterburgskie trushchoby - Ani Abrahamyan, Hamilton College

• 'Proletarian Music? But That Is for Free People': Narratives of Liberation and Transformation in the Development of Early Soviet Proletarian Song Culture - Elizabeth Abosch

• Apocalyptic Liberation: Music, Memory, and the Senses in Georgi Gospodinov’s 'Time Shelter' and Vladimir Sharov’s 'Before and During' - Polina Dimcheva Dimova, U of Denver

Discussant

• Karen Joan Evans-Romaine, U of Wisconsin-Madison