Dallas International University and the Center for Excellence in World Arts are excited to announce a new publication of work by Dr. Brian Schrag, CEWA Founder, DIU Adjunct Faculty, International Arts Consultant, and SIL Ethnomusicology & Arts.
Artistic Dynamos: An Ethnography on Music in Central African Kingdoms
Brian Schrag, PhD
Artistic Dynamos explains how all communities can use arts to flourish.
Flowing from ethnographic research with Ngiembɔɔn kingdoms of Central Cameroon spanning 15 years, CEWA founder Dr. Brian Schrag narrates the series of discoveries that culminate in a clear picture of the mechanisms underlying artistry’s capacity to invigorate. In the process, he demonstrates ethnographic analyses that account for any and all musical, dramatic, visual, verbal, and dance-related features. He also provides guidance and resources for teaching students how to research and describe communities and their arts. Simply put, artists increase social energy when their actions resonate with shared thought- and life-ways. This vitality swells when artists can predict when, where, and how they enact particular artistic genres. Like an unmoving magnet encasing a spinning magnet (i.e. a dynamo) produces electrical energy, stable cultural features resonating with those more malleable results in social energy. Brian’s treatise will change how scholars across disciplines understand and engage with arts as they exist anywhere in the world. This volume offers methods for improved research and scholarship, whose application results in communities living better lives.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Brian Schrag, PhD, Senior Arts Consultant and professor, worked as a linguist, translator, and ethnomusicologist in DR Congo and Cameroon in the 1990s and 2000s, became SIL’s Ethnomusicology & Arts Coordinator in 2006, and founded the Center for Excellence in World Arts at Dallas International University in 2012. Brian has degrees in Cognitive Science (Brown University), Intercultural Studies (Wheaton College), and Ethnomusicology (University of California, Los Angeles). Brian’s core life project is promoting arts-energized, communication-focused appreciative inquiry for futures more like Heaven.
Imprint: Routledge Press On sale: March 26, 2021 Pages: 252 ISBN: 9780367415167
