Medieval to hip-hop, Judith Peraino is employing the 'new musicology'

Judith Peraino, assistant professor of music, sits at the piano in her office in 116 Lincoln Hall earlier this year. Charles Harrington/University Photography

By Franklin Crawford

Judith Peraino's History of Rock Music might sound like a cakewalk to academic easy riders cruising for three cool cross-listed credits. That illusion is quickly shattered once the syllabus is distributed.

"I get a lot of students who think it's an easy 'A' -- and then I tell them in the first lecture they'll have to learn to recognize a few chord changes and they panic and line up to change their grade option to 'satisfactory-unsatisfactory,'" said Peraino, assistant professor of music. "Students don't need music training for the course (but) close listening means developing an ear for another type of language and being able to hear the cultural codes. This can be challenging."

Any vacancies are filled almost instantly. Peraino's very popular class, cross-listed in music and American studies, can have well over 100 students on its waiting list. About one-third of all students are registered through American studies. History of Rock takes students on a scholarly trip from blues, gospel and Tin Pan Alley roots to current pop incarnations, like alternative rock and hip-hop.

Rock music is but one of three of Peraino's specialties, which include medieval music -- specifically 13th century French secular music -- and music and queer theory. She is affiliated with the Medieval Studies and Women's Studies programs as well as the American Studies Program.

Peraino was appointed to the music faculty in 1997, with a doctorate in music from the University of California-Berkeley, where she also earned her masters. Her arrival at Cornell marked a departure from the more traditional music faculty appointments. Peraino was later joined by Steven Pond, who also has a UC-Berkeley doctorate, and together they represent the department's commitment to new directions in music studies.

"Cornell has certainly taken on what used to be viewed as a very non-traditional study of music of the 20th century -- studies we now view as historical -- with two scholars who have quickly become extremely important voices in the contemporary music world," said Mark Scatterday, chair of Cornell's music department. "Their research in what might be considered modern or popular musicological areas -- including Judith's research in the music before 1600 -- is not only high-powered scholarly work but also gives both our undergraduates and graduate students a new view into jazz, rock, pop and world music. Judith also brings to our department a compelling intellectual voice in gay, lesbian and bisexual studies."

Peraino was an undergraduate at the University of Chicago when she first became intrigued by medieval music and, later, fascinated with Middle Eastern music. For a time she considered a career in ethnomusicology, studying sacred and secular music of the Arabic world. But her love for early music won out in the end, especially fortified by new trends developing within the field of Western music history. The introduction of feminist theory and its sub-field, queer theory, was having an influence even on relatively staid disciplines such as musicology. Peraino eventually refined her calling alongside a cadre of musicologists who were incorporating feminist and queer theory into their music studies. Akin to an underground movement in the field, the trend toward linking music and sexuality gained momentum through the late 1980s and by 1990, Peraino says, she was among a "critical mass" of pioneering musicologists who were moving beyond the discipline's traditional boundaries into new scholarly territory.

"These things were so new to musicology, they actually called what we were doing 'new musicology,' and still do," she said. Along with the new scholarly territory of feminist and queer theory was a new serious consideration of popular musics, especially rock. Most of Peraino's work in queer theory concerns popular musics, although her book, Listening to the Sirens: Musical Technologies of Queer Identity, will cover a wide range of styles and historical eras.

She is one of a few scholars developing in two primary specialties -- medieval music and music and queer theory -- and she has published extensively in both fields. When asked if and how the two connect, she says her work with gender and sexuality theory and rock music informs her research and thinking about medieval music and vice versa. "My work on medieval music concerns forms and uses of musical forms that are more anomalous than normative," Peraino said. "If we conceive of music as a way of thinking, then looking at anomalies tells us something more generally about the culture and its parameters. This line of research is certainly influenced by my studies in queer identity."

Although the Department of Music originally made its reputation on 18th century studies and a fairly traditional Western music tradition, Peraino says she feels supported by her colleagues. And visiting parents love her History of Rock class. "When I lecture during Parents Weekend," she said, "mothers and fathers would come up to me and say, 'This is fantastic, this is everything I've always wanted to know ...' Rock music is the lingua franca of their generation, too."