Talks by Nathan K Reeves
Music, Place, and Identity in Italian Urban Soundscapes, c. 1550-1860, 2023
Throughout the early modern period, Spanish overseers of the city of Naples maintained a fleet of... more Throughout the early modern period, Spanish overseers of the city of Naples maintained a fleet of galley ships that provided military protection to its busy harbor and patrolled the coasts of the wider kingdom. As was typical throughout the Mediterranean, these ships relied on labor from slaves (mostly North African and Turkish) and local convicts, identified collectively by contemporaries as galeotti. During the months the galleys were in harbor, many galeotti were expected to earn their daily bread through a trade, craft, or a skill like music. Significantly, galeotti who were musicians, or sonatori, supplied a form of specialized labor that was valuable both on and off the galleys. Thus, galeotti musicians were uniquely positioned to traverse social boundaries while remaining chained within the political confines of their state servitude.
This paper argues that records of music-making among galeotti from the middle to late sixteenth century provide an archive that elucidates their movements within different types of public space as well as their shifting discursive and legal positions in Neapolitan society. Specifically, evidence from contemporary nautical manuals, civic chronicles, travel accounts, and the financial records of the galley fleet reveal the presence of musicians onboard the Neapolitan galleys and a culture of music that led many galeotti to be enlisted in musical forms of labor on the galleys and within the city itself. While musicologists have paid little attention to such ephemeral sounds, these records have much to tell scholars about the relationships between music, criminality, and the development of urban space in early modern Naples. This study pays close attention to the permeable position of galeotti musicians in Naples, contributing to a growing literature that emphasizes the diverse and complex nature of urban soundscapes in early modern Italy.
Sixteenth Century Society Conference, 2018
In the mid-sixteenth century, a body of popular song depicting scenes of street life in Naples be... more In the mid-sixteenth century, a body of popular song depicting scenes of street life in Naples began to circulate in print music collections throughout Europe. By the 1560s, these collections had assumed a semi-standard format comprised of two main genres: the canzone villanesca alla napolitana and the moresca. Though both featured ribald carnivalesque themes that parodied the promiscuity and violence of the Neapolitan lower classes (plebe), the moresca was distinct in its representation of a population of African slaves that became substantial in sixteenth-century Naples, known as gente nigra. While music scholars have acknowledged the racially charged content of moresche, little attention has been paid to the material contexts in which they appear, concomitant with villanesche in music publications designated as “Neapolitan.”
This paper presents a critical interpretation of these collections that considers how they negotiate an intertextual economy of racialized sound that parallels the social realities of slavery in Naples. I examine the discursive and musical techniques through which composers of these songs differentiated slaves from other members of the Neapolitan plebe appearing in villanesche. I argue that this economy reserved the most distinctive markers of sonic difference for gente nigra, portraying a musical “blackness” that resonated with the physical and socio-political differences through which slaves were identified. Thus, close attention to these collections can tell scholars a great deal about tactics of marginalization present in forms of European popular culture that proved influential to the development of conceptions of race in early modernity.
In early modern Naples, competing socio-political factions sought to convey their authority with... more In early modern Naples, competing socio-political factions sought to convey their authority within the civic and religious festivals that permeated everyday life. Of these, the Spassi di Posillipo was known as notoriously striking. Occurring in July and August, during the Spassi the local nobility processed in elaborately decorated boats to the beachhead northwest of Naples. By the late sixteenth century, the ruling viceroy had joined the procession with his own fleet of ships, seeking to assert Spanish dominance over the nobility. En route to Posillipo, musicians onboard these ships engaged in competitive displays of sonic power, heard from the shore as “sweet singing of Sirens.”
This project examines the sonic discourses that transformed the marine paradise of Posillipo into a contested site for the negotiation of Neapolitan civic identity. Published written accounts and collections of songs provide evidence that Spassi musical materials circulated and promoted a “marine pastoral” genre within Naples that provided an imagined space of protest. I argue that the sounds of the Spassi operated within a cultural framework centered on the city’s mythic founder, the siren Partenope. In turn, the Spassi became conditionally linked to an extensive body of Neapolitan public ritual dependent upon this sonic metaphor.
Indigenous peoples from throughout North America actively participated in the Chicago World’s Fai... more Indigenous peoples from throughout North America actively participated in the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893. Among these, the Kwakwaka’wakw of British Columbia acquired a reputation for dramatizations of ritual violence and cannibalism, performances that had been suppressed by the Canadian 1884 Indian Advancement Act. The music of these events attracted the attention of prominent anthropologist Franz Boas and musicologist John Comfort Fillmore, who collaborated together on a series of Edison cylinder recordings and transcriptions of Kwakwaka’wakw music with the assistance of Boas’s native consultant George Hunt. Though such early ethnomusicological work has often been regarded as culturally reductive, scholars have neglected to consider its productive capacity to create new conditions of possibility for indigenous peoples living in settler colonial states at the end of the nineteenth century.
This paper argues that the collaboration of Boas, Fillmore, and Hunt produced Kwakwaka’wakw musical texts subversive to settler colonial law. I show that these texts preserve records of rituals made illegal by Canadian authorities and testify to how the Kwakwaka’wakw gained political mobility through the manipulation of Indianist exoticism. I understand Kwakwaka’wakw participation in this musical project through their contemporaneous disputes with Canadian authorities over sovereignty, for which the Chicago World’s Fair provided an international stage.
Taking into account the asymmetrical power relations between participants, I explore the transcription of Native American song as a dialogue in which both recorders and singers sought to assert claims to authority. Despite attempts by Boas and Fillmore to erase indigenous labor from this project, these texts contain residues of this labor that trouble late nineteenth-century notions of indigenous cultural practice. I argue that a confluence between the preservationist, textualizing practices of anthropology and the rhetorical strategies of Kwakwaka’wakw performance constituted a form of alliance that implicated both parties, producing musical texts that met anthropological needs as well as the needs of emergent modern indigeneity. Thus, this paper answers Olivia Bloechl and Melanie Lowe’s recent call for a redressing of recognition-based critiques of musical difference, advocating for a relational approach to early ethnomusicological documents that rethinks Native American agency and provides new paths to resistance.
Conference Presentations by Nathan K Reeves
Dinko Fabris (Università della Basilicata), Chair
Elizabeth Elmi (Iowa State University), "Pasto... more Dinko Fabris (Università della Basilicata), Chair
Elizabeth Elmi (Iowa State University), "Pastoral Politics in the Lyric Song of Late-Fifteenth-Century Southern Italy"
Nathan Reeves (Northwestern University), "Locating Plebe Communities in Sixteenth Century Neapolitan Song"
Zoey Cochran (McGill University), "Scarlatti's Call to 'Arms': Resisting Spanish Rule in the Neapolitan Production of Comodo Antonino (1696)"
Publications by Nathan K Reeves
La Capraia – Year 2. Research Reports from the Center for the Art and Architectural History of Po... more La Capraia – Year 2. Research Reports from the Center for the Art and Architectural History of Port Cities - 2019-20. Edited by Sarah K. Kozlowski, editorial coordination by Francesca Santamaria, Napoli, 2020.
Research Reports from Predoctoral Research Residents Claire Jensen, Lisa Malberg, Diana Mellon, Nathan Reeves, and programs reports.
Papers by Nathan K Reeves
All rights reserved. iii DEDICATION To Zak The fool who taught me to live in mezzo iv ACKNOWLEDGE... more All rights reserved. iii DEDICATION To Zak The fool who taught me to live in mezzo iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This project results from a long-term fascination with the diverse peoples of early modern Italy that has benefitted from a personal synthesis of performance, research, and lived experience. In the past two years, this work has profoundly affected my development as a researcher and performer of music and culture. This being said, none of it would have been possible without the guidance and resources of multiple individuals and institutions. I would first like to thank my advisor Dr. Rachel Golden, whose endless supply of patience and encouragement never ceases to amaze. She has consistently inspired me to engage musicological questions with creative zeal and innovative approaches. To Drs. Leslie Gay and Dorothy Habel, I give additional thanks-Dr. Gay's advice on ethnomusicological questions and Dr. Habel's unmatched expertise of all things early modern Italian have both bee...
This thesis examines musico-dramatic activities centered at the Spanish viceregal court of Naples... more This thesis examines musico-dramatic activities centered at the Spanish viceregal court of Naples during the years 1608-1630 and positions them as reflective of shifting socio-political practices occurring in the cultural milieu of the city in the seventeenth century. I argue that three spectacles written by the writer and courtier Giambattista Basile expose emergent Neapolitan identities within the colonial society of Spanish-occupied Naples. Utilizing Mary Louise Pratt’s (1991) concept of the contact zone, I read these works as instances of autoethnography, a medium involving a conscious blending of forms and idioms, necessitating both negotiation and collaboration between cultures of the occupant and occupied. Within the contact zone of Naples, mythology, history, and lived experience coalesced into a shared phenomenology of the city, creating an integrative soundscape where Neapolitans of multiple social spheres interacted through spectacle. In his writings, Basile sought to ext...
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Talks by Nathan K Reeves
This paper argues that records of music-making among galeotti from the middle to late sixteenth century provide an archive that elucidates their movements within different types of public space as well as their shifting discursive and legal positions in Neapolitan society. Specifically, evidence from contemporary nautical manuals, civic chronicles, travel accounts, and the financial records of the galley fleet reveal the presence of musicians onboard the Neapolitan galleys and a culture of music that led many galeotti to be enlisted in musical forms of labor on the galleys and within the city itself. While musicologists have paid little attention to such ephemeral sounds, these records have much to tell scholars about the relationships between music, criminality, and the development of urban space in early modern Naples. This study pays close attention to the permeable position of galeotti musicians in Naples, contributing to a growing literature that emphasizes the diverse and complex nature of urban soundscapes in early modern Italy.
This paper presents a critical interpretation of these collections that considers how they negotiate an intertextual economy of racialized sound that parallels the social realities of slavery in Naples. I examine the discursive and musical techniques through which composers of these songs differentiated slaves from other members of the Neapolitan plebe appearing in villanesche. I argue that this economy reserved the most distinctive markers of sonic difference for gente nigra, portraying a musical “blackness” that resonated with the physical and socio-political differences through which slaves were identified. Thus, close attention to these collections can tell scholars a great deal about tactics of marginalization present in forms of European popular culture that proved influential to the development of conceptions of race in early modernity.
This project examines the sonic discourses that transformed the marine paradise of Posillipo into a contested site for the negotiation of Neapolitan civic identity. Published written accounts and collections of songs provide evidence that Spassi musical materials circulated and promoted a “marine pastoral” genre within Naples that provided an imagined space of protest. I argue that the sounds of the Spassi operated within a cultural framework centered on the city’s mythic founder, the siren Partenope. In turn, the Spassi became conditionally linked to an extensive body of Neapolitan public ritual dependent upon this sonic metaphor.
This paper argues that the collaboration of Boas, Fillmore, and Hunt produced Kwakwaka’wakw musical texts subversive to settler colonial law. I show that these texts preserve records of rituals made illegal by Canadian authorities and testify to how the Kwakwaka’wakw gained political mobility through the manipulation of Indianist exoticism. I understand Kwakwaka’wakw participation in this musical project through their contemporaneous disputes with Canadian authorities over sovereignty, for which the Chicago World’s Fair provided an international stage.
Taking into account the asymmetrical power relations between participants, I explore the transcription of Native American song as a dialogue in which both recorders and singers sought to assert claims to authority. Despite attempts by Boas and Fillmore to erase indigenous labor from this project, these texts contain residues of this labor that trouble late nineteenth-century notions of indigenous cultural practice. I argue that a confluence between the preservationist, textualizing practices of anthropology and the rhetorical strategies of Kwakwaka’wakw performance constituted a form of alliance that implicated both parties, producing musical texts that met anthropological needs as well as the needs of emergent modern indigeneity. Thus, this paper answers Olivia Bloechl and Melanie Lowe’s recent call for a redressing of recognition-based critiques of musical difference, advocating for a relational approach to early ethnomusicological documents that rethinks Native American agency and provides new paths to resistance.
Conference Presentations by Nathan K Reeves
Elizabeth Elmi (Iowa State University), "Pastoral Politics in the Lyric Song of Late-Fifteenth-Century Southern Italy"
Nathan Reeves (Northwestern University), "Locating Plebe Communities in Sixteenth Century Neapolitan Song"
Zoey Cochran (McGill University), "Scarlatti's Call to 'Arms': Resisting Spanish Rule in the Neapolitan Production of Comodo Antonino (1696)"
Publications by Nathan K Reeves
Research Reports from Predoctoral Research Residents Claire Jensen, Lisa Malberg, Diana Mellon, Nathan Reeves, and programs reports.
Papers by Nathan K Reeves
This paper argues that records of music-making among galeotti from the middle to late sixteenth century provide an archive that elucidates their movements within different types of public space as well as their shifting discursive and legal positions in Neapolitan society. Specifically, evidence from contemporary nautical manuals, civic chronicles, travel accounts, and the financial records of the galley fleet reveal the presence of musicians onboard the Neapolitan galleys and a culture of music that led many galeotti to be enlisted in musical forms of labor on the galleys and within the city itself. While musicologists have paid little attention to such ephemeral sounds, these records have much to tell scholars about the relationships between music, criminality, and the development of urban space in early modern Naples. This study pays close attention to the permeable position of galeotti musicians in Naples, contributing to a growing literature that emphasizes the diverse and complex nature of urban soundscapes in early modern Italy.
This paper presents a critical interpretation of these collections that considers how they negotiate an intertextual economy of racialized sound that parallels the social realities of slavery in Naples. I examine the discursive and musical techniques through which composers of these songs differentiated slaves from other members of the Neapolitan plebe appearing in villanesche. I argue that this economy reserved the most distinctive markers of sonic difference for gente nigra, portraying a musical “blackness” that resonated with the physical and socio-political differences through which slaves were identified. Thus, close attention to these collections can tell scholars a great deal about tactics of marginalization present in forms of European popular culture that proved influential to the development of conceptions of race in early modernity.
This project examines the sonic discourses that transformed the marine paradise of Posillipo into a contested site for the negotiation of Neapolitan civic identity. Published written accounts and collections of songs provide evidence that Spassi musical materials circulated and promoted a “marine pastoral” genre within Naples that provided an imagined space of protest. I argue that the sounds of the Spassi operated within a cultural framework centered on the city’s mythic founder, the siren Partenope. In turn, the Spassi became conditionally linked to an extensive body of Neapolitan public ritual dependent upon this sonic metaphor.
This paper argues that the collaboration of Boas, Fillmore, and Hunt produced Kwakwaka’wakw musical texts subversive to settler colonial law. I show that these texts preserve records of rituals made illegal by Canadian authorities and testify to how the Kwakwaka’wakw gained political mobility through the manipulation of Indianist exoticism. I understand Kwakwaka’wakw participation in this musical project through their contemporaneous disputes with Canadian authorities over sovereignty, for which the Chicago World’s Fair provided an international stage.
Taking into account the asymmetrical power relations between participants, I explore the transcription of Native American song as a dialogue in which both recorders and singers sought to assert claims to authority. Despite attempts by Boas and Fillmore to erase indigenous labor from this project, these texts contain residues of this labor that trouble late nineteenth-century notions of indigenous cultural practice. I argue that a confluence between the preservationist, textualizing practices of anthropology and the rhetorical strategies of Kwakwaka’wakw performance constituted a form of alliance that implicated both parties, producing musical texts that met anthropological needs as well as the needs of emergent modern indigeneity. Thus, this paper answers Olivia Bloechl and Melanie Lowe’s recent call for a redressing of recognition-based critiques of musical difference, advocating for a relational approach to early ethnomusicological documents that rethinks Native American agency and provides new paths to resistance.
Elizabeth Elmi (Iowa State University), "Pastoral Politics in the Lyric Song of Late-Fifteenth-Century Southern Italy"
Nathan Reeves (Northwestern University), "Locating Plebe Communities in Sixteenth Century Neapolitan Song"
Zoey Cochran (McGill University), "Scarlatti's Call to 'Arms': Resisting Spanish Rule in the Neapolitan Production of Comodo Antonino (1696)"
Research Reports from Predoctoral Research Residents Claire Jensen, Lisa Malberg, Diana Mellon, Nathan Reeves, and programs reports.