Duncan Reehl
Lecturer in Music, Musicology and Ethnomusicology
Duncan Reehl is a Lecturer in the Musicology and Ethnomusicology Department at Boston University School of Music.
“How does sound channel spiritual feelings amidst the media ecosystems of technological modernity? How does technological modernity affect relationships with divinity in the cases of ritual specialists, as well as nonreligious members of secular societies? These are some of the meta-questions that guide my research, which I have investigated through ongoing ethnographic research on ways of sounding Buddhism in contemporary Japan.
My research in Japan centers Buddhist priests who make popular music, drawing on styles such as rock-and-roll, hip-hop, or folk, mixed with sounds commonly coded as “Buddhist” such as chant and bells. Through my focus on this niche trend, which emerged in earnest around 2010, my work problematizes prior ethnography and historiography of Japanese Buddhism by demonstrating how Buddhistic sounds reverberate and resonate beyond the walls of cloistered temple spaces amidst the social relations of contemporary Japan’s political economy, technical infrastructure, and media ecosystem.
For example, I turn to the genre of Buddhist Praise songs—which emerged in the 19th century and continues to be practiced in Japan, Hawai’i and elsewhere in diaspora, but is mostly overlooked in ethnomusicology—to demonstrate that Buddhism is continually made anew in the site of sound, and that mixing Buddhism with European-derived music is not at all unprecedented. Through investigating the practice ritualized performance of the shakuhachi bamboo flute in cloistered, Zen-affiliated Myōan styles, my work explores how highly localized religio-spiritual affects associated with this instrument diverge from, but are always articulated with, Orientalist projections of religio-spiritual significance on the instrument coming from outside of Japan. Through ethnographic, historical, and materialist methodologies, my work problematizes naturalized expectations of sonic and religious authenticity with respect to various ways of sounding Japanese Buddhism.
Through my research, I emphasize how people take and utilize technologies (such as turntables and Buddhist bells) as well as concepts (such as “religion” [Jp: shūkyō]) towards various personal and collective goals such as self-determination, religio-spiritual practice, artistic production, economic viability, and religious revitalization. My work provides critical theoretical frameworks and analytics for investigating how sonorous religio-spiritual affectivity emerges in the course of everyday life from technical activity at interstices of the given (“nature”) and the made (“culture”).”
Honors:
- Japan Foundation Research Fellow
- Society for Asian Music Research Grantee