Engendering Song: Singing and Subjectivity at Prespa Albanian Weddings [Mixed media product]

For Prespa Albanians, both at home in Macedonia and in the diaspora, the most opulent, extravagant, and socially significant events of any year are wedding ceremonies. During days and weeks of festivities, wedding celebrants interact largely through singing, defining and renegotiating as they do so the very structure of their social world and establishing a profound cultural touchstone for Prespa communities around the world.

Combining photographs, song texts, and vibrant recordings of the music with her own evocative descriptions, ethnomusicologist Jane C. Sugarman focuses her account of Prespa weddings on notions of gendered identity, demonstrating the capacity of singing to generate and transform relations of power within Prespa society.Engendering Songis an innovative theoretical work, with a scholarly importance extending far beyond southeast European studies. It offers unique and timely contributions to the analysis of music and gender, music in diaspora cultures, and the social constitution of self and subjectivity.

Jane C. Sugarmanis assistant professor of music at the State University of New York, Stony Brook.

List of Illustrations
Musical Excerpts on Compact Disc
Note on Textual and Musical Transcriptions
Pronunciation Guide
Acknowledgments
1: Approaching Prespa Singing
2: Singing as a Social Activity
3: Singing as a Gendered Activity
4: The Order of Weddings
5: The Prespa System
6: Singing and the Discourse of Honor
7: Singing as the Practice of Patriarchy
8: Emergent Subjectivities
Glossary
Notes
Bibliography
Discography
Index