Week One Notes
- Introduction to World Music
- Preface: This section of the text is about the study of music when looking at cultures other than our own. The pioneers of this field gathered, documented, and analyzed music from a range of cultures including Native Americans. Finding such a diverse range of music scholars broadened refined our own definition of what constitutes music.
i. John Blacking (1973)
1. Definition of music …
a. humanly organized sound
The broad study of music from around the world has come from empirical research. That is, participant-observation of a particular culture for a year or longer. Like many anthropologists and a growing number of sociologists and other social scientists, ethnomusicology derives its core methodology and theories from fieldwork.
Below are the three ways in which ethnomusicologists have historically understood their field. Pay close attention to the difference between A and B. The last definition is how the editor of your textbook understands the field and what’s worth studying.
ii. Ethnomusicology
1. The study of music
a. in culture
i. Culture: people’s way of life, learned and transmitted
b. as culture
i. Music as a way of organizing activity
c. The study of people making music (Jeff Todd Titon)
As I mentioned, we considered music the sole study of music departments limited to profession musicians, composers, and musicologists. Ethnomusicologists have come from many different academic departments along with the more traditional music fields.
2. Interdisciplinary Study
a. Before 1950’s
i. Ethnomusicology was done outside of music departments
1. Psychology
2. Anthropology
Each of the following chapters/sections involves scholars who have devoted their professional life to understanding a particular group/s of people making music. They are ethnomusicologists who have conducted important research increasing not only our understanding of specific cultures and their music but music in general.
- Chapter 1
Why is there such wide variance in the sound of music from around the world? This is one of the biggest questions that ethnomusicology has answered. The basic concept is that our environment plays a role along with our interactions with others. Like a landscape effects what the visual arts might draw upon for their creativity, a musician will certainly draw upon what he/she hears throughout their lifetime. We call this environmental component a soundscape.
i. Soundscape
1. Characteristic environmental sounds
a. human/nonhuman
i. What distinguishes the hermit thrushes singing from our concept of music?
ii. Think about Los Angeles and what kind of soundscape is created. Would we expect a composer who grew up in a large congested city to think and hear sound in a different way than someone who grew up surrounded by open spaces?
One of the clearest ideas that comes from knowing more about other cultures and their music is that as ubiquitous as music is there is very little consensus on what constitutes a meaningful musical experience.
ii. Meaning in Music
1. Music is universal but its meaning is not
a. EX 150 years ago
i. Think about the Asian musician who was brought to a classical music concert. What were his expectations versus what he considered the most meaningful part of the concert?
The most important concepts discussed in this course and in the textbook is the idea of a music culture. It’s not enough to discuss music as somehow separate from culture to ethnomusicologists is to ignore the fact that without culture no music can endure. We do not separate music from its environment or its interaction with people.
iii. Music Culture
1. A group of people’s total involvement with music
a. Ideas, institutions, artifacts, actions
One of the more fascinating discoveries in studying music cultures is that what we think of as music does not necessarily work in other parts of the world. The strongest case of not finding what one thinks is self-evident comes from the work of Nahoma Sachs. She studied the Rosa and found that when she asked her group about their ‘music’ she didn’t get very far. They didn’t understand the abstract use we have when discussing music. They had songs and instrumental music. They did not have one word that described these activities as linked. Something that may be useful at this point is to look at the anthropological concepts of etic and emic perspectives. These are suffixes that describe a particular viewpoint. Think about the words phonetic or epidemic. In these instances, they describe perspective. Etic is the perspective from the outside while Emic is the perspective from inside. Nahoma Sachs wanted a broader cultural comparison (etic) while the Rosa could only describe their music the way understood it (emic). Both perspectives are useful. On the one hand, etic perspectives allow for broad cross-cultural comparisons while on the other hand, emic perspectives allow for more substantive details to be illuminated. In the US, Baptists say they don’t have music in their services. Music to them only involves instruments not singing hymns.
iv. Music and Nonmusic (Etic/Emic)
1. Not all cultures have a word of music
a. Nahoma Sachs (1975)
i. Rosa (Gypsies)
ii. Macedonia Village
1. “Traditional Rosans have no general equivalent to English ‘music.’
a. Pesni: songs
b. Muzika: instrumental music
b. In the US
i. Old-time Baptists in the south
1. “we don’t have music in our service”
a. Music = Instrumental music
World Music References
Adorno, Theodor W. 1989. Introduction to the Sociology of Music. New York, NY, Continuum.
Arom, Simha. 1987. African Polyphony and Polyrhythm. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press.
Barz, Gregory F. and Cooley, Timothy J. eds. 1997. Shadows in the Field: New Perspectives for Fieldwork in Ethnomusicology. New York: Oxford University Press.
Berliner, Paul. 1993. The Soul of the Mbira. (rev. ed.) Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.
Blacking, John. 1973. How Musical is Man? Seattle: University of Washington Press.
Cooper, David ed. 1995. A Companion to Aesthetics, Cambridge, MA, Blackwell, 2nd ed.
Feld, Stephen. 1990. Sound and Sentiment: Birds, Weeping, Poetics, and Song in Kaluili Expression. 2nd ed. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Gates, Henry Louis. 1988. The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African American Literary Criticism. New York: Oxford Univ. Press.
Garfias, Robert. 1975. Music of a Thousand Autumns : The Togaku Style of Japanese Court Music. Berkeley: University of California Press.
______. 1981. Speech and Melodic Contour Interdependence in Burmese Music, College Music Symposium (Journal of the College Music Society). 21/1: 33-39.
______. 1983. The Marimba of Mexico and Central America. Latin American Music Review 4/2:203-208.
______. 1991. Culture Equity: Cultural Diversity and the Arts in America, in S. Benedict, Public Money and the Muse. New York: W.W. Norton.
Hood, Mantle. 1982. The Ethnomusicologist. 2nd ed. Kent, Ohio: Kent State Univ. Press.
Jones, LeRoi. 1963. Blues People. New York: Morrow.
Keil, Charles. 1966 Urban Blues. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.
Lomax, Alan. 1976. Cantometrics: A Method in Musical Anthropology. Berkeley: University of California Extension Media Center.
Merriam, Alan P. 1964. The Anthropology of Music. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press.
Malm, William. 1959. Japanese Music and Musical Instruments. Rutland, VT: Charles E. Tuttle.
McClary, Susan. Feminine Endings: Music, Gender, and Sexuality, Minnesota, University of Minnesota Press, 1991.
McPhee, Colin. 1966. Music in Bali. New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press.