MESSAGE FROM THE PRIZE COMMITTEE:
Dear Norcal AMS chapter members,
We would like to thank all the participants of our chapter meeting two weekends ago in Reno! It was a gratifying and rewarding study day.
All the graduate student papers presented were original and rich, reflecting years of devoted study on the part of all participants. We on the prize committee had a very difficult time choosing a recipient of the Norcal AMS Prize for a graduate student paper. We spent about an hour conversing because each and every paper contained so much great content.
It is our delight to announce Mariana Da Silva Gabriel of UC Davis as the winner of the Northern California Prize in Musicology for her paper, “More Than Words: A Study of Chico Buarque and Gilberto Gil’s ‘Cálice’ and ‘Covert’ Musical Protest.” Mariana’s paper examined the imbrication of religious resonance and potent play with linguistic homophony and non-lexical singing in the protest music of Gilberto in the context of military dictatorship in 1970s Brazil. She brought in original archival sources from the Divisão de Censura e Diversões Públicas to interrogate the effects of institutional censorship on live protest performance. We appreciated how Mariana brought the listener into the song she described, “Cálice,” highlighting clearly salient features of the music and bringing her argument to life.
We are also happy to announce an honorable mention: Saagar Asnani’s paper, “The Curious Case of mi doint: Tracing Transmission Through Textual Variants of an Occitan-French Hybrid Motet,” presented an original comparative analysis of several medieval manuscripts around the themes of oral transmission vs. transcription and the reductive effects of the standardization of language across time. Saagar’s project is as original as it is virtuosic.
Thanks again to all the participants, and best wishes with your studies and work!
Sincerely,
Edmund Mendelssohn, chair
Ruthie Meadows
Paul Johnson
(Prize committee members)