School of Creative Arts

PhD (Sao Paulo)

Reader

Pathway co-ordinator for BA Anthropology and Ethnomusicology

Tel: +44 (0) 28 9097 5204
E-mail: s.reily@qub.ac.uk
Office: 13UQ.201

 

Suzel Reily completed her doctoral degree in Social Anthropology in 1990 at the University of Sao Paulo. During her studies she spent a year working with the late Professor John Blacking at Queen's University Belfast. Upon defending her PhD she returned to Belfast for a research fellowship which would later become a full-time permanent lectureship in 1991. She acted as Chair for the British Forum for Ethnomusicology (2000-2003) and for the Society for Ethnomusicology Council (2003 - 2005). She has just returned from the University of Chicago where she held a Tinker Visiting Professorship (2007). Dr Reily acted as co-editor of theBritish Journal for Ethnomusicology (1998-2001) and since 2003 she has been acting as website reviews editor for theYearbook of Traditional Music. Between 2002 and 2003, she held an ESRC research grant and is currently completing a monograph based on this material which addresses the musical life of a small former mining town in Minas Gerais, Brazil, from the colonial period to the present. 

 

Research Interests

Suzel Reily has been conducting research on Brazilian musics since the early 1980s. Her main focus has been the musical traditions of southeastern popular catholicism, the topic of her book Voices of the Magi (Chicago 2002), but she has also written about various popular styles, such as bossa nova and musica sertaneja as well as issues pertaining to the development of ethnomusicological research in Brazil, a central concern of her edited volume Brazilian Musics, Brazilian Identities (BJE 2000). She is also interested in the ways ethnomusicologists and anthropologists might use hypermedia, and she has been involved in the construction of a website based on John Blacking's ethnographic material, titled  , while also overseeing the student-led Music Making in Belfast Project. Her most recent hypermedia venture involved the representation of the Holy Week celebrations in Campanha, Minas Gerais, Brazil.

 

Publications

2010. 'The "Musical Human" and Colonial Encounters in Minas Gerais, Brazil', in South African Journal of Musicology,29

2010. 'A Experiencia Barocca e a Memoria Local na Semana Santa de Minsa Gerais', in Per Musi, 22.

2009. 'Bandas de sopro - um dialogo transcultural', in M.A. Biason (ed.), Anais de I Seminario de Musica do Museu da Inconfidencia.

2009. 'Jornadas encantadas: as folias de reis de Minas Gerais' in Revista Textos do Brasil, 15: 7-14.

2007. The Musical Human: Rethinking John Blacking’s Ethnomusicology in  the 21st century. Aldershot: Ashgate.

2006. “Remembering the Baroque Era: Historical Consciousness, Local Identity and the Holy Week Celebrations in a Former Mining Town in Brazil.” Ethnomusicology Forum, 15(1): 39-62.

2003. “Más allá del nacionalismo: trayectorias etnomusicológicas en Brasil.” Desacatos, 12:11–23.

2003. “Ethnomusicology and the Internet,” Yearbook of Traditional Music, 35: 187–92.

2002. Voices of the Magi: enchanted journeys in southeast Brazil. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

2001. "To Remember Captivity: The Congados of Southern Minas Gerais." Latin American Music Review 22(1): 4-30.

2001. "Hybridity and Segregation in the Guitar Cultures of Brazil." In A Bennett and K Dawe, eds., Guitar Cultures.Oxford: Berg. Pp. 157-77.

2000. "Introduction: Brazilian Musics, Brazilian Identities." British Journal of Ethnomusicology, 9(1):1-10.

1998. "The Ethnographic Enterprise: Venda Girls' Initiation Schools Revisited." British Journal of Ethnomusicology, 7:45-68.

1998. "Central and Southern Brazil." The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music, vol IX. Pp. 300-322.

1996. "Tom Jobim and the Bossa Nova Era." Popular Music, 15(1):1-16.

1995 "Political Implications of Musical Performance." World of Music, 37(2):72-102.

1994. "Macunaíma's Music: National Identity and Ethnomusicological Research in Brazil." In M Stokes, ed., Ethnicity and Identity: the Musical Construction of Place. Oxford: Berg. Pp71-96.

1992. "Música Sertaneja and Migrant Identity: The Stylistic Development of a Brazilian Genre." Popular Music, 11(3):337-358.

 

Relevant Website Addresses: 

Music Making in Belfast: www.qub.ac.uk/sa-old/resources/Belfast_Project/index.html

Venda Girls' Initiation Schools: http://www.qub.ac.uk/VendaGirls/index.html

Holy Week Celebrations in Brazil: www.qub.ac.uk/sa-old/resources/HolyWeek/index.html

Staff