{"id":7440,"date":"2018-04-09T10:36:38","date_gmt":"2018-04-09T14:36:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/academics\/music-and-dance\/?p=7440"},"modified":"2024-04-22T14:37:10","modified_gmt":"2024-04-22T18:37:10","slug":"representing-radiohead-at-ethnomusicology-conference","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/academics\/music-and-dance\/2018\/04\/09\/representing-radiohead-at-ethnomusicology-conference\/","title":{"rendered":"Representing Radiohead at Ethnomusicology Conference"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Saturday, March 24, Swarthmore Professor of Music Lei Ouyang Bryant and recent alumnus Tommy Neale \u201917 presented selections of their respective scholarship at the Mid-Atlantic Chapter of the Society for Ethnomusicology\u2019s annual conference in College Park, Maryland. Neale\u2019s conference presentation consisted of a condensed version of the senior comprehensive paper that he presented to the music faculty for evaluation last semester. The topic of his paper is a music theoretical, historical, and cultural analysis of \u201cParanoid Android,\u201d the lead single from Radiohead\u2019s third studio album,\u00a0OK Computer<\/em>.<\/p>\n

After reading his paper and listening to his presentation, Professor Bryant realized that Tommy\u2019s research would be a good candidate for a conference presentation. She said, \u201cI was really impressed with his multi-faceted examination of Radiohead. In his paper, he rigorously investigates the band, their music, and the particular historical and cultural moment of the album. Tommy has a wonderfully analytical mind and is really engaging in both writing and public speaking.\u201d But the process of preparing his comprehensive for a conference presentation has not been without its challenges. Neale was tasked with condensing his 36-page thesis into a 10-page document and 20-minute presentation, that still somehow preserves his original points. Out of necessity, his presentation eschewed some of the finer music theoretical details that were contained in his original thesis, and focused mainly on the relationship between instrumentation, timbre, and ethnomusicology.<\/p>\n

Both the process of writing his comprehensive and the subject matter of \u201cParanoid Android\u201d were extremely important to Neale. He calls the initial process of writing his comprehensive as \u201ctremendously worth doing\u201d but also \u201cvery difficult\u201d saying, \u201cdoing comps changed me.\u201d \u201cParanoid Android\u201d was \u201cvery formative\u201d for Neale as a young listener, and he acknowledges the tremendous influence Radiohead has had on his own songwriting process. The process of sustained scholarship on a single topic is certainly a Herculean task, especially when the topic of one\u2019s scholarship is a piece of art that holds such personal significance. The subject matter of \u201cParanoid Android\u201d particularly resonates with Neale, especially given his experiences at Swarthmore. He describes Swarthmore as a \u201chyper-anxious place,\u201d and says that the only way he has been able to keep his anxiety under control is by \u201cgoing totally low tech\u2026keep(ing) the stimulation really low.\u201d \u201cParanoid Android,\u201d written in the early days of the Internet Age, provides for Neale a distillation of this fear of sensory overload. \u201cThe main point of Radiohead,\u201d he says, \u201cis sort of turning the soundscape of modernity on itself critically.\u201d In a world that can often be hyper-stimulating, Radiohead has provided for Neale a blueprint for survival.<\/p>\n

He cites \u201cthe allure of doing something totally sideways\u2026something very, very non-classical\u201d for his senior comprehensive as one of his reasons in selecting \u201cParanoid Android.\u201d But he is also quick to mention that his primary motivation was his love of Radiohead: \u201cI think the reason that I loved them before is the reason I did comps, is the reason I still love them now.\u201d But when asked how this process of scholarship has informed his conception of the song, Neale wryly chuckles. \u201cIn the end,\u201d he says, \u201cthe research gets so far away from why you loved the song in the first place.\u201d He says he is taking six months off from even listening to \u201cParanoid Android\u201d again, perhaps to give his brain time to rest.\n<\/p>\n

Rachel Hottle ’18<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Saturday, March 24, Swarthmore Professor of Music Lei Ouyang Bryant and recent alumnus Tommy Neale \u201917 presented selections of their respective scholarship at the Mid-Atlantic Chapter of the Society for Ethnomusicology\u2019s annual conference in College Park, Maryland. Neale\u2019s conference presentation consisted of a condensed version of the senior comprehensive paper that he presented to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":7441,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/academics\/music-and-dance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7440"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/academics\/music-and-dance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/academics\/music-and-dance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/academics\/music-and-dance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/academics\/music-and-dance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7440"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/academics\/music-and-dance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7440\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7442,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/academics\/music-and-dance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7440\/revisions\/7442"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/academics\/music-and-dance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7441"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/academics\/music-and-dance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/academics\/music-and-dance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/academics\/music-and-dance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}