My music

I have a few different home recording projects linked online.

Giant Panda

• Jack Krebs, guitar, bass, percussion, vocals, production
  
• Jerry Fess, cello, percussion
  
• Matt Sumera, drums, percussion, keyboards, vocals

Incinarator

• Scott Hreha, bass, guitar, vocals, keyboards, production
• Matt Sumera, drums, marimba, percussion, vocals, keyboards, production, samples

Aremus
Mostly solo stuff I've done over the years.

Book Chapter

I've been asked to contribute a book chapter to Berghahn Books' "Critical Interventions" series. The issue will be devoted to "Magic and the global war." Working title for my chapter: "Mapping the Auditory Logic of War on Screen."

Music and Violence: A Working Bibliography

The following bibliography reflects my own specific interests in the study of music and violence, particularly the relationships between music, war, and representation. To that end, it includes a fair amount of general literature (especially anthropological in nature) that I have found useful in thinking through these connections. It is almost exclusively a bibliography of scholarship written in English and does not include a number of excellent dissertations published in the last few years that are well-worth exploring. If you have suggestions for addition, please contact me at sumera [at] wisc.edu.

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Anderson, Paul. 2006. "The World Heard: Casablanca ad the Music of War." Critical Inquiry 32(3): 482-515.

Arajuo, Samuel, et. al. 2006. "Conflict and Violence as Theoretical Tools in Presnt-Day Ethnomusicology: Notes on a Dialogic Ethnography of Sound Practices in Rio de Janeiro." Ethnomusicology 50(2):287-313.

Baer, Ulrich. 2002. Spectral Evidence: The Photography of Trauma. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Baker, Catherine. 2009. "War Memory and Musical Tradition: Commemorating Croatia's Homeland War through Popular Music and Rap in Eastern Slavonia." Journal of Contemporary European Studies 17(1):35-45.

Beckett, Wheeler. 1943. Music in War Plants. Washington D.C.: War Production Board, U.S.A.

Ceribasic, Naila. 2000. "Defining Women and Men in the Context of War: Images in Croatian Popular Music in the 1990s." In Pirkko Moisala and Beverly Diamond, eds. Music and Gender. Urbana and Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Cloonan, Martin and Bruce Johnson. 2002. "Killing Me Soflty with His Song: An Initial Investigation into the Use of Popular Music as a Tool of Oppression." Popular Music 21(1):27-39.

________. 2008. Dark Side of the Tune: Popular Music and Violence. Aldershot, England: Ashgate.

Cook, Susan C. 1994. " 'Cursed Was She': Gender and Power in American Balladry." In Susan C. Cook and Judy S. Tsou. eds. Cecilia Reclaimed: Feminist Perspectives on Gender and Music. Urbana: University of Illinois.

Cusick, Suzanne G. 2006. “Music as Torture/Music as Weapon.” Revista Transcultural de Música/Transcultural Music Review. 10:1-18.

________. 2008. “ ‘You Are in a Place That is Out of the World . . .’: Music in the Detention Camps of the ‘Global War on Terror.’ ” Journal of the Society of American Music 2(1):1-26.

Das, Veena and Arthur Klienman. 2000. “Introduction” to Veena Das, Arthur Kleinman, Mamphela Ramphele, and Pamela Reynolds, eds. Violence and Subjectivity. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1-18.

________. 2001. “Introduction” to Veena Das, Arthur Kleinman, Margaret Lock, Mamphela Ramphele, and Pamela Reynolds, eds. Remaking a World: Violence, Social Suffering, and Recovery. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1-30.

Deaville, James. 2007. “The Sounds of American and Canadian Television News after 9/11: Entoning Horror and Grief, Fear and Anger.” In Jonathon Ritter and J. Martin Daughtry, eds. Music in the Post-9/11 World. London and New York: Routledge, 43-70.

Denisoff, R. Serge and William D. Romanowski. 1989. “The Pentagon’s Top Guns: Movies and Music.” The Journal of American Culture 12:67-78.

Elder, J.D. 1964. “Color, Music, and Conflict: A Study of Aggression in Trinidad with Reference to the Role of Traditional Music.” Ethnomusicology 8(2):128-136.

Farmer, Henry George. 1950. Military Music. New York: Chanticleer Press.

Feldman, Allen. 2000. “Violence and Vision: The Prosthetics and Aesthetics of Terror.” In Veena Das, Arthur Kleinman, Mamphela Ramphele, and Pamela Reynolds, eds. Violence and Subjectivity. Berkeley: University of California Press, 46-78.

Ferguson, Kennan. 1999. The Politics of Judgement: Aesthetics, Identity, and Political Theory. New York: Lexington Books.

George, Kenneth M. 1996. Showing Signs of Violence: The Cultural Politics of a Twentieth-Century Headhunting Ritual. Berkeley: University of California Press. Chapters 4, 6, 7.

________. 2004. “Violence, Culture, and the Indonesian Public Sphere: Reworking the Geertzian Legacy.” In Neil Whitehead, ed. Violence. Sante Fe, NM: School of American Research Press: 25-54.

Gilbert, Shirli. 2005. Music in the Holocaust: Confronting Life in the Nazi Ghettos and Camps. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Gussow, Adam. 2002. Seems Like Murder Here: Southern Violence and the Blues Tradition. Chacago: The University of Chicago Press.

Hill, Errol. 1989. “Calypso and War.” Black American Literature Forum 23(1):61-88.

Hinton, Alex. 2004. “The Poetics of Genocidal Practice: Violence under the Khmer Rouge.” In Neil Whitehead, ed. Violence. Sante Fe, NM; Oxford: School of American Research Press: 157-184.

Hutson, C. Kirk. 1996. " 'Whackety Whack, Don’t Talk Back': The Glorification of Violence Against Females and the Subjugation of Women in Nineteenth-Century Southern Folk Music." Journal of Women’s History 8:114-42.

James, David. 1989. “The Vietnam War and American Music.” Social Text 23:122-143.

Jenkins, Jennifer. 2001. “ ‘Say it with Firecrackers’: Defining the ‘War Musical’ of the 1940s.” American Music 19(3):315-339.

Jones, John Bush. 2006. The Songs that Fought the War. Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press.

Kateb, George. 2000. "Aestheticism and Morality: Their Cooperation and Hostility." Political Theory 28(1):5-37.

Kelly, Bruce and Mark Sneel, eds. 2004. Bugle Resounding: Music and Musicians of the Civil War Era. Columbia and London: University of Missouri Press.

Kleinman, Arthur, Veena Das, and Margaret Lock. 1997. “Introduction” to Arthur Kleinman, Veena Das, and Margaret Lock, eds. Social Suffering. Berkeley: University of California Press, ix-xxvii.

Kleinman, Arthur and Joan Kleinman. 1997. “The Appeal of Experience; The Dismay of Images: Cultural Appropriations of Suffering in Our Times.” in Arthur Kleinman, Veena Das, and Margaret Lock, eds. Social Suffering. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1-24.

Lewis, Jeff. 2005. “Introduction” and “Mediated Terror and the Politics of Representation,” in his Language Wars: The Role of Media and Culture in Global Terror and Political Violence. London: Pluto Press, 1-54.

Longinovic, Tomislav. 2000. “Music Wars: Blood and Song at the End of Yugoslavia.” In Ronald Radano and Philip V. Bohlman, eds. Music and The Racial Imagination. Chicago: University of Chicago Press: 622-643.

Magrini, Tullia. 2000. "Manhood and Music in Western Crete: Contemplating Death." Ethnomusicology 44(3):429-459.

Massad, Joseph. 2003. “Liberating Songs: Palestine Put to Music.” Journal of Palestine Studies 32:21-38.

McDonald, David. 2009. "Poetics and the Performance of Violence in Israel/Palestine." Ethnomusicology 53:1(58-85).

McDowell, John Holmes. Poetry and Violence: The Ballad Tradition of Mexico's Costa Chica. Urbana and Chicago: Unviersty of Illinois Press.

________. 2007. “Corridos of 9/11: Mexican Ballads as Commemorative Practice.” In Jonathon Ritter and J. Martin Daughtry, eds. Music in the Post-9/11 World. London and New York: Routledge, 225-254.

McNeill, William H. 1995. Keeping Together in Time: Dance and Drill in Human History. Cambridg, MA: Harvard University Press.

Meintjes, Louise. 2004. “Shoot the Sergeant, Shatter the Mountain: The Production of Masculinity in Zulu Ngoma Song and Dance in post-Apartheid South Africa.” Ethnomusicological Forum 13(2):173-201.

Miller, Terry and Sean Williams. 1999. "Culture, Politics, and War." In Bruno Nettl, Ruth M Stone, James Porter, Timothy Rice, eds. The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music, Volume 4: Southeast Asia. London and New York: Routledgs, 87-94.

Moynihan, Michael and Didrik Soderlind. 1998. Lords of Chaos: The Bloody Rise of the Satanic Metal Underground. Los Angeles: Feral House.

Nordstrom, Carolyn and JoAnn Martin. 1992. “The Culture of Conflict: Field Reality and Theory.” In Carolyn Nordstrom and JoAnn Martin, eds. The Paths to Domination, Resistance, and Terror. Berkeley: The University of California Press, 3-17.

Ochoa, Ana María, ed. 2006. "Dossier: Música silencios y silenciamientos: música violencia y experiencia cotidiana/Dossier: Music, silences, silencings: music, violence and quotidian experience." Revista Transcultural de Música/Transcultural Music Review. 10 (December). Available online at http://www.sibetrans.com/trans/trans10/indice10.htm.

Ohnuki-Tierney, Emiko. 2002. “The Field of Meaning, Images, and Aesthetics.” In her Kamikaze, Cherry Blossoms, and Nationalisms: The Militarization of Aesthetics in Japanese History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 27-60.

Pettan, Svanibor. ed. 1998. Music, Politics, and War: Views from Croatia. Zagreb, Croatia: Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Research.

Pieslak, Jonathon. 2007. “Sound Targets: Music and the War in Iraq.” Journal of Musicological Research 26:123-149.

________. 2009. Sound Targets: American Soldiers and Music in the Iraq War. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.

Radford, Katy. 2001. “Drum Rolls and Gender Roles in Protestant Marching Bands in Belfast.” British Journal of Ethnomusicology 10(2):37-59.

Riches, David, ed. 1986. The Anthropology of Violence. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

Ritter, Jonathon. 2002. “Siren Songs: Ritual and Revolution in the Peruvian Andes.” British Journal of Ethnomusicology 11:9-42.

________. 2007. “Terror in an Andean Key: Peasant Cosmopolitans Interpret 9/11.” In Jonathon Ritter and J. Martin Daughtry, eds. Music in the Post-9/11 World. London and New York: Routledge, 177-208.

Ritter, Jonathon and J. Martin Daughtry, eds. 2007. Music in the Post-9/11 World. London and New York: Routledge.

Robben, Antonius C. G. M. and Carolyn Nordstrom. 1995. “The Anthropology and Ethnography of Violence and Sociopolitical Conflict.” In Antonious C. G. M. Robben and Carolyn Nordstrom, eds. Fieldwork Under Fire: Contemporary Studies of Violence and Survival. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1-25.

Russolo, Luigi. 1986. The Art of Noises. New York: Pendragon Press.

Smith, Kathleen E.R. 2003. God Bless America: Tin Pan Alley Goes to War. Leington, KY: The University of Kentucky Press.

Stewart, Pamela and Andrew Strathern. 2002. Violence: Theory and Ethnography. London: Continuum. Chapters 1-3.

Stokes, Martin. 1994. “Introduction: Ethnicity, Identity and Music.” In Martin Stokes, ed. Ethnicity, Identity and Music: the Musical Construction of Place, ed. Martin Stokes. Oxford: Berg, 1-28.

Strathern, Andrew and Pamela Stewart. 2006. “Introduction: Terror, the Imagination, and Cosmology.” In Andrew Strathern, Pamela Stewart, and Neil Whitehead, eds. Terror & Violence. London: Pluto Press, 1-39.

Suarez-Orozco, Marcelo and Antonius C. G. M. Robben. 2000. “Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Violence and Trauma.” In Antonius C. G. M. Robben and Marcelo Suarez-Orozco, eds. Culture under Siege: Collective Violence and Trauma. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1-43.

Sweeny, Regina. 2001. Singing our Way to Victory: French Cultural Politics and Music During the Great War. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.

Taussig, Michale. 1987. Colonialism, Shamanism, and the Wild Man: A Study of Terror and Healing. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Van Alphen, Ernst. 1999. 'Symptoms of Discursivity: Experience, Memory, and Trauma." In Mieke Bal, Jonathan Crewe, and Leo Spitzer, eds. Acts of Memory: Cultural Recall in the Present. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England. 24-38.

van Ordern, Kate. 2005. Music, Discipline, and Arms in Early Modern France. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Virilio, Paul. 1989. War and Cinema: The Logistics of Perception. London and New York: Verso.

Whitehead, Neil. 2004. “Introduction: Cultures, Conflicts, and the Poetics of Violent Practice.” In Neil Whitehead, ed. Violence. Sante Fe, NM; Oxford: School of American Research Press. 3-24.

________. 2004. “On the Poetics of Violence.” In Neil Whitehead, ed. Violence. Sante Fe, NM; Oxford: School of American Research Press: 55-79.

________. 2006. “Afterward: The Taste of Death.” In Andrew Strathern, Pamela Stewart, and Neil Whitehead, eds. Terror & Violence. London: Pluto Press, 231-238.

Yudice, George. 2003. The Expediency of Culture: Uses of Culture in the Global Era. Durham and London: Duke University Press.

My courses: descriptions, discographies, etc.

History of Punk Rock: 1967-1984

This was a three-day mini course offered through UW-Madison's student union.

Course description (44K pdf)
Discography (116K pdf)

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Jazz Sounds: Bop and Beyond

This was a five week mini course offered through UW-Madison's student union. Although I can't find the course description at the moment, I've uploaded the discography, which provides a general listening guide to all periods of jazz although it is heavily geared towards later developments.

Discography (88K pdf)

The sound of Iranian Protest?

According to MSNBC, Iranian protest sounds a lot like The Who, "Baba O'riley." Music starts at 6:35.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Recent Updates

I successfully completed my Ph.D. preliminary exams in December 2008. Glad to have those out of the way.

In May 2008 I completed my M.A. in ethnomusciology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. My thesis, titled "Hearing War, Seeing Music: Violence, Aesthetics, and Technology in Online War Music Videos," was based on a yearlong, ethnographically-informed research project on war music videos, their creators and audiences. I plan to expand on this current research for my Ph.D. dissertation.

My article, "Free Jazz/Punk Rock," will be available in the forthcoming collection titled Nyuu jazu sutadizu [The New Jazz Studies] (Tokyo: Kirara shobou), co-edited by Micahel Molasky and Toshifumi Miyawaki. My essay addresses the intersections of the two seemingly disparate genres beginning in the late 1960s.

My current project interests include online military/war music videos; audiovision and violence; avant-garde jazz and the proto-punk movement; sound studies and ethnomuiscological theory; genres of free improvisation and Noise; post-bop jazz drumming; gender and violence in American balladry; and jazz, civil rights, and the black power movements.