Thursday, April 23, 2020

BOOKS DON'T SAY


Beyond the sand is the sea
and beyond that who knows?
Books say Africa and Europe
and places further that
I’ll never get to.
Beyond the end of the day
lies night, lie poems,
lie thoughts that sleep
                          throughout the day.
Though why this should be so,
books do not say.


Beyond the sound of song
is the voice of one who,
singer knowing,
still is not known,
and yet the words still come,
gifts as they are,
to surprise singer and listener alike:
and yet, you know
we still don’t know
                           where they come from.

After all this time,
all this music, 
who cares?

Deep within the trees,
folded within soft leaves
lie beautiful lives as yet unseen.
But if we take the time to hold
and open, leaf by leaf,
what lights there are exposed.
What beauty in leg and claw
What spots
in colors we never expected.

GENERAL TRENDS IN ANTHROPOLOGICAL THEORY AND THEIR INTERACTION WITH ETHNOMUSICOLOGY IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY


    During the course of its relatively short history as a science, anthropology has developed a number of specialized branches: there are cultural and physical anthropologists, medical anthropologists economic anthropologists, etc.  When anthropological researchers began to turn their attentions to music in its ethnologic context, and its place and function in the structure of a culture, ethnomusicology was born.  It follows naturally, then, that as a child of anthropology, ethnomusicology has always been dependent on its parent for ideas and direction.  Let us explore how anthropological theory has shaped the course of ethnomusicological research and influenced the ideology behind it, and how ethnomusicology has in turn provided data to support at least one of those theories in anthropology.

    Ethnomusicology has gone through a number of definitions over the years.  Towards the end of the nineteenth century, when the first comprehensive ethnographic collections of musical data were being made, it was called comparative musicology.  It was concerned solely with non-Western music, all of which was then considered “primitive”.  It wasn’t until the 1950’s that the definition began to broaden.  Willard Rhodes called ethnomusicology the study of music of “the Near East, the Far East, Indonesia, Africa, North American Indians, European Folk Music and popular music and dance” (1956).  It was the inclusion of popular music and dance that separated this definition from all that came before.  Jaap Kunst further expanded the horizons of this definition when he called ethnomusicology the study of “the traditional music and musical instrument of all cultural strata of mankind, from so-called primitive peoples to the civilized nations” (1959).  Merriam broadened and simplified the definition further, saying ethnomusicology is simply “the study of music in culture” (1960).  I like this last definition best.  It effectively removes any vestiges of underlying ethnocentric prejudices and allows for the study of all music and its relationship to its respective culture.

    The early ethnomusicologists—those who laid the foundation of the modern science—all came from upper middle class, urban families from central Europe.  These included Robert Lach, Jaap Kunst, Marius Schneider, Curt Sachs, Herzog, Hormbostel and Wachsmann.  It was with these people that the first serious scientific collections of musical data began, between about 1880 and 1910.  Though they considered themselves comparative musicologists, it was one of them, Jaap Kunst, who coined the term “ethnomusicologist”.  Prior to this, the only music that was studied seriously was Western art music and, indeed, it wasn’t until the late nineteenth century that musicological data was put into any kind of orderly historical context.  It should also be remembered that at this time anthropologists were just beginning to conceive an understanding of the idea of culture as we do today.  Boas had just added an “s” to the end of “Culture” at the turn of the century.

    Having turned their attention to non-Western music, early ethnomusicologists developed a strong interest in origins, from which it was hoped the development of mankind’s music could be plotted.  This of course was due to the pervasive evolutionism that was dominating anthropological theory during the nineteenth century.  Thus we find numerous studies that search for the origins of different aspects of music: Adler on polyphony (1909), Bucher on rhythm (1896) and Sachs on instruments (1929).  This evolutionist mode of ethnomusicological research was going on while great changes were altering the theoretical conceptions among anthropologists.  By the time of Sachs’s study on the origins of musical instruments and the progression of their development, many anthropologists were going on to becoming diffusionists or structural functionalists.  This is typical of the relationship between anthropological and ethnomusicological theory—the latter always lagging behind the former—and is an indication of just how dependent ethnomusicologists are on anthropology to supply them with research criteria. 

    The trade in ideas did, however, began to go both ways.  Early twentieth century European evolutionist ethnomusicologists that were influenced by German Kulturkreis diffusionism began to engage in ethnomusicological studies using diffusionist methodology, which in turn wound up playing a reciprocal role in contributing to the further development of Kulturkreis diffusionist theory.  Hornbostel’s use of diffusionist principles to trace the history of musical instruments in Africa (1933) and Sachs’s use of the same to trace instrumental lineages throughout the world (1929) have been acknowledged as major contributions to Kulturkreis anthropological thought.

    The inroads of advanced anthropological theory had its limits, though. Evolutionist theory remained a key element in ethnomusicological thought and methodology throughout the first half of the twentieth century, continuing to have a strong influence up until the 1940’s.  Even when Radcliffe-Brown and Ralph Linton held sway over the anthropological community in the late ‘40’s, with their emphasis on structure and function, the ethnomusicologists of the time still held tight to the historical aspects of their research (Nettl, 1986).  Nettl states that this is most probably because Western ethnomusicologists were brought up at a time when musical tradition add an intense interest in the origins and history of the art.  As most of them were devoted amateur musicians, it is not surprising that they applied this to their research.  It was only when they began to take a more musical, as opposed to a musicological, approach to their research on the ‘50’s and ‘60’s that the emphasis on the historical became less important.

    Diffusionism, however, has left a lasting mark.  As late as 1986, Leanne Hinton published an essay entitled, “Musical Diffusion and Linguistic Diffusion”, in which she discusses the diffusion of linguistic elements such as phonemes and onomatopoeia across linguistic boundaries, through song.  In other words, she discusses the role of music in linguistic diffusion.  Using Native Americans as her study group, she cites as examples of song diffusion the presence of song types from neighboring tribes in the musical tradition of the Havasupai.  They sing songs from the Hopis, Paiutes, Chemehuevis, Navajo, Walapais, Yavapais and Mojaves.  While the Walapais, Yavapais and Mojaves are all in the same Yuman language family as the Havasupais, the rest belong to the Athabascan or Uto-Aztecan families.  Among the examples of foreign phonetic elements she has found, she has traced the occurrence of certain onomatopoeic utterances and voiceless nasals in the Havasupai language to words in Paiute songs and the unique singing techniques they utilize.  Because of the fact that sound is important for its own sake in song (my italics), the tendency is for songs to retain their original phonetic elements even when sung by speakers of different languages.  Foreign phonetic elements are retained in diffused songs and onomatopoeic utterances, due to the foregrounding of sound for its own sake, which consequently allows for the subsequent possibility of the development of a foreign segment in other aspects of language.  (Hinton, 1986)

    Here we have an ethnomusicologist presenting conclusions that are primarily anthropological in character, using classic anthropological theory and sound ethnographic methods to support her ethnomusicological research, all of which in turn support and reaffirm those anthropological theories that she used in the first place.

    As the twentieth century progressed, diffusionism did not remain the only theory in operation among ethnomusicologists.  Mantle Hood, for example, in his book, The Ethnomusicologist (1982) takes a structural-functionalist stance by asking questions that try to place the music, especially musical instruments, with in their respective cultures.  He asks: Is the instrument reserved for players of one or the other sex?  What is its value to the performer, or to society as a whole?  Is it believed to have some sort of magic power?  Is there a ritual connected with its manufacture?  Does it have an indispensable role in the life cycle of man?  Marcia Herndon asks the same type of questions on a more general level, dealing not so much with the place of a particular instrument in society, but with the place of music in general.  In her book, Music As Culture (1980), in the chapter entitled “The Relations of Music to Social Institutions”, she states that there are three main social areas in which music acts: economics, politics and religion.  She concludes that cultural institutions limit musical expression and provide organizational models for musical groups, and that music functions within a culture as a means of personal awareness.  Though this is clearly a functionalist view, it is, as indicated by her statement on personal awareness, operating on more of a psychological level than, say, Hood, who was almost exclusively interested in how music fit into the structure of society.  It is also of interest to note that she spends much more time in her book on the roles of musicians themselves than does Hood.  All this points to a more pronounced culture and personality viewpoint on her part.

    Bruno Nettl has given us a comprehensive account of the directions that ethnomusicology has taken.  He seems the most historically aware of all those I’ve read and has written much on the subject.  That being so, he is much respected and quoted by other authors.  In his The Study of Ethnomusicology: Twenty-nine Issues and Concepts (1983), he presents four models with which ethnomusicologists approach research.  The first is a structuralist approach, in which the researcher desires to study a culture and its individual components, the idea being that culture consists of a large number of parts that are all interrelated, but separable into self-contained domains.  He traces this idea back to Boas. (Lowie, 1937)  The second is a functionalist approach to the relationship of music within its respective culture and how that relationship affects said culture.  Third is the reverse of the second: how a culture affects its music.  The last approach studies how each of music’s three components—concept, behavior and sound (as described by Merriam, 1964)—relate to their parent culture and how they interact.  He also cites three issues that apply to all ethnomusicological research: 1. the emic-etic dichotomy; 2. determinism versus functionalism; 3. the comparative/particularist controversy.  It appears to me that all four research methods are closely related, each differing in the details of where one’s starting point is and the direction taken from there.  Among the issues, the emic-etic and the comparative/particularist are the most interesting…and the stickiest.  It is something I hope to investigate further.

    Except for Leanne Hinton’s unique diffusionist contribution, it seems that as the twentieth century progressed most other ethnomusicologists were dealing with trying to find out music’s place in the structure of culture or how it functioned in that culture.  Though manifesting itself in numerous different ways, the structural-functionalist approach in ethnomusicology reigned supreme at least throughout the ‘80’s.  Unfortunately, this study doesn’t go beyond that date, any further developments would have to be addressed in a future paper.  Unlike diffusionism, structural functionalism, as applied to ethnomusicological research, is parasitic in that it draws off anthropological theory and applies it within its own parameters without giving anything in return.  I could find no evidence of any feedback; certainly none providing the contributions that ethnomusicological diffusionism gave to Kulturkeis anthropology.  The only other prevailing current of thought affecting ethnomusicology was not so much anthropological as it was philosophical.  There are those who deal with the study of music in its cultural context, and there are those who are interested only in musical matters such as melody, meter and rhythm.  It all depends on whether you are coming to ethnomusicology as an anthropologist or a musicologist. (Nettl,1983)  While the anthropologist is an expert at dealing with the interaction of various domains of culture, the musicologist has the ability to make complex analyses of musical artifacts.  The two schools are constantly battling each other, each claiming to be the most important.  The reality, though, seems that one cannot do without the other if they are to produce any kind of valid research.

    Ultimately, though, it begs the question of what an ethnomusicologist is.  One could argue that it’s what a musicologist should be, but isn’t.  One could also argue that it’s a musician turned anthropologist. I can only vaguely see the possibility of it being the other way around; that is, an anthropologist who takes an interest in music and studies its development and function, its place, in culture, and arrive at a comprehensive understanding as such.  Somehow, I can’t accept this.  Music is not a discipline that one can just fall into and totally absorb spontaneously (or at least very rarely so); it is a way of life with a language and symbolism that takes a lifetime to understand.  While the cultural nuances among musicians are myriad, the basic creative impulse cuts across cultural barriers.  Only someone consumed with the making of music, of performing it and of seeking out its deepest meanings could truly understand its place in society.  It would take a musician, properly educated in ethnographic technique, to produce an anthropological study of music that would have intrinsic value for both the scholar and the world in general.