This fall, the U.S. Department of State launched the Global Music Diplomacy Initiative to elevate music as a diplomatic tool to promote peace and exchange of ideas. In partnership with the music industry, the initiative includes a music mentorship program to bring artists from around the world to the U.S. for networking and training; a fellowship for scholars researching the intersection of arts and science; and using music as an English language learning tool around the globe.
“Black mustard” is what people call the thick oil that is often visible — particularly at sunset — on the surface of Newtown Creek, which borders Queens and Brooklyn in New York City. The estimated 30 million gallons of oil is one of many toxins in the creek, an Environmental Protection Agency Superfund site. This would seem an unlikely place to not only inspire, but to also be the venue, for an opera, but it is. The opera "Newtown Odyssey," by UC Davis professor Kurt Rohde, visual artist Marie Lorenz and writer Dana Spiotta, is being premiered soon.
A new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows that there is an association between how songs sound and their place in our emotional lives. Sourcing songs from across the globe, Manvir Singh, an assistant professor of anthropology in the College of Letters and Science at UC Davis, and his fellow researchers found that people from different types of societies can successfully identify a song’s type by how it sounds, regardless of the language of its words.
