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Ethnomusicology
SOME QUESTIONS THAT CONCERN ETHNOMUSICOLOGISTS
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To make an acceptable response one must first apprehend whatever features of the gestures and larger configurations to which one is responding exert the strongest constraints on the response’s potential meanings (some of which will be articulated in further responses). In this respect, a response follows from the performer’s recognition of a cluster or bundle of distinctive features: for example, a dancer hears that the principal stress has now shifted from the fourth to the third beat in a group of six and responds with appropriate movements. Performers are often able to judge the effectiveness of their acts from the responses of other participants in the performance, whether these are patrons or fellow performers.
Regula Qureshi’s study of qawwâli, a genre of Sufi devotional music in India and Pakistan, offers an excellent model for analysis of a performance idiom in relation to the constraints that arise in the course of performance. The basic aim of qawwâli performance is to create a state of spiritual arousal in individual listeners, especially those of higher status in the Sufi hierarchy. The options available to the performer, the qawwāl, are organized so as to enable him to select whatever features are most likely to effect the desired result at a particular moment in the performance. In carrying out her analysis, Qureshi made intensive use of video-tapes which showed many of the cues received by the qawwāls from their patrons.
Qureshi’s method shows one way in which the concerns of anthropology of music and music analysis can be joined. An enormous gulf between these two kinds of work has been a chronic problem of American ethnomusicology; in Europe the division is perhaps not as pronounced. Our ethnomusicologists have tended to be more interested, and to accomplish more, in anthropological research than in music analysis. This may now be changing – at least, I hope so. When we read musical notations correctly, we become aware of possible movements, desires and intentions of people who might have produced, or who might reproduce, music that corresponds more or less closely to whatever notation we are reading, and we can assess the actions we observe people making in relation to these possibilities.
A large quantity of rather pointless analytic work has resulted from the naive assumption that analysis of scores or recordings does not require consideration of the interpretive habits of those who are competent to read the notations or to hear the recordings. Ethnomusicologists often familiarize themselves with such habits by playing recordings for competent musicians in order to elicit their critical comments on positive and negative attributes of both the performance and the recording quality (Wachsmann 1969: 187; Stone 1982 : 52-54, 138-157; Wegner 1993 : 237-241). Invaluable though these comments commonly prove to be, no humans are capable of fully describing all of their habits, and no sensible analyst expects them to do so. Musical performance (which includes all listening apart from the most passive) inevitably involves skills that are “increasingly relegated to the background once [they are] acquired” (Gerstin 1998: 150) and that are often considered a kind of “tacit knowledge” for this reason. People’s discourse about what they hear, read, and perform often points to the coexistence of more than one set of interpretive habits within a single community, even within one individual. The habits furnish a basis for thinking - as when a listener interprets a musical event or sequence (of whatever length) as a response to a prior event and weighs potential implications of the response.
Although the discourse associated with performance may well include terms for several varieties of cues and responses, analysts can often identify cues by observing regularities in the responses elicited by those cues, quite apart from whatever the performers may or may not have said. Perhaps the most common ways in which ethnomusicologists become aware of habitual responses to specific cues are by studying transcriptions of recorded performances (e.g., McLean 1968) and by learning to take part in performances (e.g., Gerstin 1998, Brinner 1995: 193-200). Either approach may lead to an understanding of habits that expects and allows for exceptions and changes, though in general we stand a better chance of receiving indispensable corrections from teachers and fellow members of ensembles than from our critical interrogation of recordings and transcriptions. The best strategies combine both approaches (as, for example, in Widdess 1994).
Encountering different sets of interpretive habits is perhaps the most rewarding – and also the most challenging – aspect of research in ethnomusicology. Ethnomusicologists understand and practice our discipline somewat differently in every nation, for a number of reasons. Yet we are always concerned with relationships – including misunderstandings – among multiple social groups, defined in various ways (by language, religion, nationality, class, profession, gender, and the like). The boundaries that separate the musical habits and practices of these groups may or may not prove to be fluid – that is one of the questions we investigate.
NOTES
LITERATURE CITED
Blacking, J. Deep and surface structures in Venda music. «Yearbook of the International Folk Music Council» 1971, pp. 91-108.
Brinner, B. Knowing music, making music: Javanese gamelan and the theory of musical competence and interaction. Chicago-1995.
Erlanger, Rodolphe d’. La musique arabe, II. Paris-1932.
al-Farabi, Abu Nasr. Kitâb al-műsîqâ al-kabîr, ed. Đ.A.M. Khashabah and M.A. al-Hifni. Cairo-1967.
Feld, S. “Flow like a waterfall’: the metaphors of Kaluli musical theory. “Yearbook of the International Folk Music Council” 1981, pp. 22-47.
Friedrich, P. The language parallax: linguistic relativism and poetic indeterminacy. Austin, Texas-1986.
Gerstin, J. Interaction and improvisation between dancers and drummers in Martinican bčlč. «Black Music Research Journal» 1998, pp. 121-165.
Kubik, G. 1983. Emica del ritmo musicale africana. «Culture musicali» 1983, # 3, pp. 47-92.
McLean, M. Cueing as a formal device in Maori chant. «Ethnomusicology» 1968, #1, pp. 1-10.
Picken, L.E.R. Folk musical instruments of Turkey. Oxford-1975.
Qureshi, R.B. Sufi music of India and Pakistan: sound, context, and meaning in qawwâli. Cambridge-1988.
Shiloah, A. The theory of music in Arabic writings, c.900-1900. Munich-1979.
Stęszewski, J. Sachen, Bewusstsein und Benen-nungen in ethnomusikologischen Untersuchungen. «Jahrbuch für Volksliedforschung» 1982, pp. 131-170.
Stone, R.M. Let the inside be sweet: the interpretation of music event among the Kpelle of Liberia. Bloomington, Indiana-1982
Wachsmann, K.P. Music. «Journal of the Folklore Institute, Indiana University» 1969, pp. 164-191.
Folk music. In The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. S. Sadie. London-1980, Vol. VI, p. 693.
Wegner, U. Cognitive aspects of amadinda xylophone music from Buganda: inherent patterns revisited. «Ethnomusicology»1993, # 1, pp. 201-241.
Widdess, Richard. Involving the performers in transcription and analysis: a collaborative approach to dhrupad. «Ethnomusicology» 1994, # 1, pp. 59-79.
Zemp, H. “Are”are classification of musical types and instruments. «Ethnomusicology» 1978, # 1, pp. 37-67.
Aspects of “Are”are musical theory. «Ethno-musicology» 1979, # 1, pp. 5-48
Example 1. One line from the Bustan of Sa‘di as sung by two different men
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