Overview

Playing It Dangerously questions what happens when feelings attached to popular music conflict with expressions of the dominant socio-cultural order, and how this tension enters into the politics of popular culture at various levels of human interaction. Tambura is a genre-crossing performance practice centered on an eponymous stringed instrument, part of the mandolin family, that Roma, Croats, and Serbs adopted from Ottoman forces. The acclamation that one is a “dangerous player” connotes exceptional virtuosic improvisation and rapid finger technique and, as the highest praise that a musician can receive from his peers. Tambura has served as a site of both contestation and reconciliation since its propagation as Croatia’s national instrument during the 1990s Yugoslav wars. This study combines ethnographic fieldwork with archival research and music analysis to expound affective block: a theory of the dialectical dynamics between affective and discursive responses to differences in playing styles.

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9780819579027

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Reviews

Playing It Dangerously represents important contribution to the discipline of ethnomusicology, and is especially convincing as regards the growing field of studies in music and affect. --Naila Ceribasic, scholarly advisor, Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Research in Zagreb The tambura bands that play dangerously across the pages of Ian MacMillen's compelling book rechart the discursive landscapes of race and nationalism today, opening spaces for witnessing music's intimate affect in critical new ways. --Philip V. Bohlman, author of Music, Nationalism, and the Making of the New Europe MacMillen's timely work offers a new understanding of how affect 'blocks' musicians'strategies of signification. This detailed ethnography amplifies the rich multilocality of intimacies expressed and delineated in tambura performance. --Denise Gill, author of Melancholic Modalities: Affect, Islam, and Turkish Classical Musicians

Playing It Dangerously represents important contribution to the discipline of ethnomusicology, and is especially convincing as regards the growing field of studies in music and affect. --Naila Ceribasic, scholarly advisor, Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Research in Zagreb The tambura bands that play dangerously across the pages of Ian MacMillen's compelling book rechart the discursive landscapes of race and nationalism today, opening spaces for witnessing music's intimate affect in critical new ways. --Philip V. Bohlman, author of Music, Nationalism, and the Making of the New Europe MacMillen's timely work offers a new understanding of how affect 'blocks' musicians'strategies of signification. This detailed ethnography amplifies the rich multilocality of intimacies expressed and delineated in tambura performance. --Denise Gill, author of Melancholic Modalities: Affect, Islam, and Turkish Classical Musicians

Author Information

Ian Macmillen holds a PhD in the anthropology of music from the University of Pennsylvania and has taught widely in ethnomusicology and slavic studies programs. He currently directs the Center for Russian, East European & Central Asian Studies at Oberlin College & Conservatory.

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