How Music Lives: A
Musicultural Approach
Chapter 2
Music as a phenomenon of culture
• Ethnomusicology
• Understanding music as a musicultural phenomenon
• Culture: “that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, law,
morals, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man
[humankind] as a member of society” (Tylor, 1871)
• What does all of that include? Examples?
• But where do we draw the line of what a culture is, who it includes, who it
excludes?
• Ceza and Killa Hakan, “Bomba Plak” (Turkish/German hip hop) [PL 2-1]
• “Music is a mode of cultural production and representation that reveals much
about the workings of culture, from the resilience of traditional ways to our
remarkable human capacities for adaptation, innovation, and transformation.”
(p. 10)
Meaning in Music
• “Music comes into existence at the intersection of sound and
culture.” (p. 11)
• Tones in music have at least two levels of meaning:
• Relative to one another (“Mary Had a Little Lamb”)
• In relation to things beyond themselves (culture, memory, emotion, etc.)
• How does the textbook distinguish these two different types of meaning through
the example of “Mary Had a Little Lamb”?
• Musical meaning as a phenomenon of culture, not of sound alone
• Warao shaman songs – some believed to heal, others to cause illness
• Chinese opera [also PL 2-2]: beautiful or otherwise to you? Why?
Identity in Music
• Identity: “people’s ideas about who they are and what unites them with
or distinguishes them from other people and entities: individuals,
families, communities, institutions, cultures, societies, nations,
supernatural powers.” (pp. 11-12)
• Who am I? Who are we? Who is s/he? Who are they?
• What do Mongolian khoomii [PL 2-3] and Javanese gamelan [PL 2-4]
suggest about the identities of Mongolian and Javanese people? How
much should we trust our impressions? How might we dig deeper to
understand better?
• What about “Rabbit Dance” [PL 2-5]? Do our impressions of “Native
American identity” change as we listen?
• How about if we see this “Rabbit Dance” video?
Vocables
• “Rabbit Dance” featured vocables (nonlinguistic syllables used in
vocal performances)
• Vocables common throughout the world and in many traditions,
including:
• Jazz scat singing, Ella Fitzgerald, “Flying Home” [PL 2-6]
• Beatboxing in classic hip hop, Run-DMC, “Son of Byford” [PL 2-7] Kecak from
the island of Bali, Indonesia [PL 2-8]
• Contemporary Native American styles, like Eagle & Hawk’s “Dance” [PL 29], which is described in your text as “a powwow song recontextualized in a
rock music setting” (p. 13). What elements of the recording account for this
characterization? (For a live concert version, watch this video.)
Levels of Identity
“Identity is located in music at many different levels. Societies,
cultures, nations, transnational communities, and other large-scale
social units fundamentally define people’s conceptions of who they
themselves are and who other people are, at home and throughout
the world.” (p. 15)
Societies
• A society is “a group of persons regarded as forming a single
community of related, interdependent individuals.”
• Organized around social institutions
• What are some examples of different types of social institutions?
• “The study of music and society focuses on how musicians and musical
organizations act and function relative to their societies. It explores how
they enter into, are affected by, and contribute to the interplay of the
social institutions that keep the engine of a society running, or that may in
some instances cause it to stall.” (p. 16)
• Societies are typically imagined communities
Music and Society Case Study
Balinese sekehe gong
• A “gamelan club,” dedicated to the performance of certain types
of Balinese gamelan music [also PL 2-10]
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Based in banjar
Important functions in Hindu-Balinese ritual and ceremonial life
Also perform in competitions
Traditionally all male, but now there are women’s clubs as well.
(This is due to what types of influence?)
Cultures
• A culture is “a particular type of social formation that is at once
complementary to, overlapping with, and distinct from society.”
(p. 17).
• A culture is defined “mainly by a collective worldview shared by
its members.” (p. 17)
• How does this differ fundamentally from what defines a society?
• “Put another way, societies are rooted in social organization,
whereas cultures are rooted in ideas, beliefs, and practices that
underscore social organization.” (p. 17)
• What types and categories of ideas, beliefs, and practices are these?
Music and Culture Case Study
• Here again, we focus on the Balinese sekehe gong, specifically on
sekehes that play gamelan beleganjur music
• Gamelan beleganjur
• Processional ensemble traditionally associated with cremation processions
and warfare
• Today showcased in music competitions as well
• Beleganjur music quintessentially male, but due to political pressures
women’s groups emerged in 1990s
• How does the discussion in the text shed light on the cultural values and
challenges related to those values resulting from the “women’s beleganjur”
phenomenon?
Nations and Nation-States
• Nation-state vs. nation
• The members of a nation-state share a national society, a national culture, and
a national homeland (e.g., Canada).
• The members of a nation also share a national society and culture, but in some
cases they do not have political autonomy over the geographical area they
claim as their homeland (e.g., Palestinians).
• Nationalist musics
• Nation-building or nation-consolidating agenda
• Typically emerge and develop through some form of collaboration between
musicians and political authorities
• Postcolonialism a key feature of the relationship between music,
nations, nation-states, and nationalism in the modern world
Music of Protest, Resistance, and Subversion
• According to the text, the “flipside of nationalist musics”
• Such music has been important in many social and political
movements
• U.S. Civil Rights movement
• James Brown, “Say It Loud – I’m Black and I’m Proud” [PL 2-12]
• South African anti-Apartheid struggle
• Miriam Makeba, “Ndodemnyama” [PL 2-13]
Diasporas and Other Transnational
Communities
• Diaspora: “an international network of communities linked together by
identification with a common ancestral homeland and culture” (to which
they often have no guarantee, or even likelihood of return).
• Term originated with the Jewish Diaspora
• Klezmer music [PL 2-14] a genre that reflects older and contemporary layers of
Jewish diasporic experience
• Today, many diasporas recognized
• African and Irish diasporas especially important for this course [examples: PL 215, 2-16, 2-17, 2-18]
• Virtual communities (Internet-based) also relevant in consideration of
diasporas and other transnational communities
The Individual in Music
• Individuals as “communities unto themselves,” comprised of multiple,
intersecting identities
• ‘…we bring the full range of these varied identities to all that we
experience in music and all that we express through it.” (p. 21)
• Tito Puente as case study: Nuyorican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, master of
musical syncretism -- “Oye Como Va” [PL 2-19]
• Ethnomusicologists increasingly interested in studies that focus on
individuals (rather than cultures, nations, etc. per se)
• Timothy Rice, May It Fill Your Soul: Experiencing Bulgarian Music
• Kostadin Varimezov (gaida) [PL 2-20]
• Gaida played by Kostadin’s son, Ivan Varimezov
• Fieldwork as basis of ethnomusicological research
Spirituality and Transcendence in Music
• Music almost always associated with worship, religious ritual,
expressions of faith
• Transcendence
• Beleganjur “musical ladder” to Upper World
• Baal Shem Tov “became music” after his death
• In Santería, specific drum rhythms summon orishas [PL 2-21]
• Musical design often symbolizes religious cosmology, cosmic order
• Cyclicity of Indian talas and Indonesian gamelan gong cycles
• Music often used to show communal solidarity to supernatural
beings and forces (e.g., Fijian church hymn of PL 2-22)
Music and Dance
• On the one hand, dance and its music “may serve as a lens
through which to view social celebration, community solidarity,
the physical expression of culture, and the performance of
identity.”
• On the other hand, it “may provide revealing and sometimes
troubling insights into how people treat and classify each other in
terms of constructs like gender, race, and ethnicity.”
• Marginalization of female dancers in the Middle East
• Racist stereotyping of “natural rhythm” among African peoples and people
of African descent.
Music in Ritual
• “Rituals are special events during which individuals or
communities enact, through performance, their core beliefs,
values, and ideals. They often take the form of communal
performances of myths, legends, epics, or sacred texts or stories
that are foundational to a culture’s identity.” (p. 24)
• Rituals “tend to have a transcendent quality to them, since they
are, by definition, events that are set off from the regular course
of everyday life.” (p. 24)
• Music is often a key element that marks this “setting off” from the
everyday.
Egyptian Zar Ritual
Healing and exorcistic ritual
Egypt and Sudan
Technically not “legal” in Egypt, but practiced widely nonetheless
Specific rhythms used to accompany the dance of the afflicted woman,
who is believed to have been entered (possessed) by an asyad.
• Her dancing “is driven by the powerful percussive rhythms of the music,
[which] is performed with the intention of convincing the intruding
asyad to depart.” (p. 25)
• Rhythms such as that heard in PL 2-23 are featured in zar rituals. This
zar video provides excellent examples.
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Music as Commodity and the Patronage of
Music
• Many different models of music “ownership” in different world cultures
• Western copyright
• Bequeathing of songs to individuals by supernatural beings (e.g., Alan Maralung,
Aboriginal Australian wangga song “Ibis” [PL 2-24]
• Didgeridoo featured
• Communal vs. individual notions of who the “composer” is
• When different concepts of music ownership collide and converge, complex (as
in case of “Ibis” discussed in text)
• Music patronage a related matter – Who pays for music, to support
musicians? In what contexts? With what goals and objectives?
• Sting and Cheb Mami, “Desert Rose” [PL 2-25]
The Transmission of Music and Musical
Knowledge
• Production and reception of music
• Roles of music maker and receiver may be very distinct, somewhat
overlapping, or entirely fluid
• Western classical music: clear roles of composer, performers audience
• In many African musicultural traditions, no such distinction at all
• Music teaching and learning
• Again, tremendous diversity of approaches and models worldwide
• Formal vs. informal
• Individual instruction vs. group-based learning
• Notation-based vs. oral/aural tradition
Music Creation Processes
• Composition
• Balinese gamelan [PL 2-26]
• Japanese shakuhachi [PL 2-27]
• Western symphonic (Mozart) [PL 2-28]
• Interpretation
• Mozart “Jupiter” Symphony, as interpreted by the Berlin Philharmonic under the direction of
Sir Simon Rattle [for a different interpretation, listen to PL 2-28]
• Improvisation
• Charlie Parker, “Scrapple from the Apple” (bebop jazz) [PL 2-29]
• Gurdev Singh, “Raag Bhairavi” (Hindustani raga) [PL 2-30]
• Ahmed Mukhtar, “Iraqi Café” (Arab taqsim) [PL 2-31]
• Arranging
• Dan Air Scottish Pipe Band, “Amazing Grace” [PL 2-32]
• Hossam Ramzy and Pablo Cárcamo, “La Cucaracha” [PL 2-33]
Music in the Process of Tradition
• Tradition: “a process of creative transformation whose most remarkable feature
is the continuity it nurtures and sustains.” (p. 30)
• Traditional music (Spiller) vs. music of tradition (Bakan)
• “Music of tradition can be very modern, radical, and experimental. It can draw upon a
great variety of different kinds of music and the resources of many different cultures. It
can embody multiple meanings and levels of meaning and may reflect, embody, and
inform many different identities. It also can be ancient and archaic, very specific in its
cultural meanings, or deeply conservative in the values it expresses. Or it can represent
the synthesis of a host of seemingly incongruous elements, from the most resolutely
traditional to the most ultramodern.” (p. 30)
• In the approach of this course (and its textbook), the above definitions of
tradition and music of tradition converge with Bakan’s definition of
ethnomusicology as “the study of how people make and experience music, and
of why it matters to them that they do.” (p. 31)
“High Water Everywhere” and “Kargyraa
Moan”
• Charlie Patton, “High Water Everywhere”
• Traditional, historic Mississippi Delta blues recording
• Music “that takes us back to the roots of the blues tradition.”
• Paul Pena, “Kargyraa Moan”
• Combines old-style blues such as that heard in the Patton recording with
Tuvan khoomei “throat singing” or “overtone singing”
• Yet while adopting khoomei into blues, Pena was also hearing in khoomei
echoes of the “rough-voiced” blues singers like Patton and Howlin’ Wolf
• The song was featured in the amazing documentary film Genghis Blues