CHAPTER 2
How Music Lives:
A musicultural approach
Music is significant to human life in many ways:
what people do
who they think they are
what they believe
and what they value.
ETHNOMUSICOLOGY
• Study of music of another culture
and/or one’s own culture
• Requires interdisciplinary (musicology,
anthropology, sociology, others) to
more fully understand the significance
of the music within the culture
• Musicultural – music as sound and
music as culture, mutually reinforcing
CULTURE IN MUSIC
CULTURE IN MUSIC
• Culture (Edward Tylor—1871): “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.”
• Culture is a complex and slippery, yet still
useful term, in contemporary world (p. 10)
• Globalization
• Cultural revelations in music
Meaning in Music
MEANING IN MUSIC
• Music comes into existence at intersection of sound and
culture. Meaning is the glue that binds them, and sounds
don’t come to be perceived as music until meaning is
attached to them.
• Tones have two types of meaning:
• 1) relative to one another
2) cultural - musical sounds acquire meaning
in relation to things beyond themselves
Musical Examples 1 and 2:
Mahler – Mengelberg Mahler - Bernstein
Identity in Music
Conceptions of music are closely tied to conceptions of identity, or people’s
ideas about who they are and what unites them with or distinguishes them
from other people and entities.
Music always provides partial answers to two fundamental questions:
Who am I?
What are we?
Also frames identity in terms of two more questions:
Who is she (or he)?
Who are they?
IDENTITY IN MUSIC
• SMALL GROUPS – 5/7 minutes
What music identifies you? Tell one
another the music style/piece of music
that best identifies you – see if the
others in your group ‘know’ you by
“your” music. Does the music you
chose accurately convey something
about yourself to others? Why or why
not?
LEVELS OF IDENTITY
• Society: a group of persons regarded
as forming a single community (usually
large-scale).
• Interest in how music functions among
members of a society to foster (or
possibly challenge) their sense of
community.
• Balinese sekehe
• Gamelan Club
• Banjar
CULTURES
• Distinct from culture as an anthropological concept,
and from society)
• Defined mainly by a collective worldview shared by
its members
• Cultures are rooted in ideas, beliefs, and practices
that underscore social organization
• Musical Example 3: Balinese
Gamelan
• Balinese sekehe
• Beleganjur
NATIONS AND NATION-STATES
• Nation-State:
• Members share a national society and
culture AND a national homeland
• Nation: NO National Homeland
• Nationalist music: Promotion of “national
identity,” nation-consolidating or building agenda
• Musics of resistance, protest, subversion
Musical Example 4: Apartheid Protest
Music
DIASPORAS/TRANSNATIONAL
COMMUNITIES
Diaspora: international network of
communities linked together by
identification with a common ancestral
homeland and culture.
Brazilian samba an important genre
relating to cultural developments
emerging from African diasporic cultures.
Music Examples 5 and 6
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-J7WuxT7fbo 4.41
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNTSAWhUNqY
The Individual in Music
THE INDIVIDUAL IN MUSIC
Cultures, societies, etc., provide frameworks for
understanding identity. But it is the people, either
alone, or in a group, that make music.
The individual as a community unto him- or herself
Tito Puente
Musical Syncretism: merging of formerly
distinct styles into new forms of expression.
Fieldwork: research method involving living for
an extended period of time among people whom one
studies, learning their culture ways (and often music)
in the process.
Spirituality and
Transcendence in Music
SPIRITUALITY AND
TRANSCENDENCE IN MUSIC
• Music is used in almost all cultures and societies in
worship, religious ritual, and expression of faith.
• Transcendence: connecting to invisible
worlds beyond our own, communing with supernatural
forces
• Communal solidarity: music bringing
people together in unified, communal expression of faith
Musical Example 7: Fijian Church
Hymn
Music and Dance
MUSIC AND DANCE
It seems a universal truth that people seek to express
themselves in dance, and the music that accompanies
it.
Reveals positive and negative aspects of humankind
• Music in Ritual
• Special events during which individuals or
communities enact, through performance their core
beliefs, values, and ideals.
• ZAAR
Musical Example 8: Zaar Ritual
Music as Commodity and
the Patronage of Music
MUSIC AS COMMODITY,
PATRONAGE OF MUSIC
The issues of “Support” and “Ownership” of music influence how
it lives, what it means, how it’s valued: Who owns it, if anyone?
Who controls its distribution?
THREE EXAMPLES
In India, a certain family can own a piece of music and it is theirs
alone to perform.
Copyright issues in the USA and Western Europe
In the Australian Aboriginal culture, a song can come to a person
in a dream and then becomes that person’s exclusive property
Patronage: Who supports and encourages the creation
of the music?
The Transmission of Music
and Musical Knowledge
TRANSMISSION OF MUSIC,
MUSICAL KNOWLEDGE
Production and Reception
Modes of transmission
Notation
Oral/Aural
Teaching large groups (class)/Single person (mentor)
Electronic media
Education – is music art/entertainment?
Creating the Music
Written down new
Improvised
Arranged
Interpretation
Music in the
Process of Tradition
MUSIC IN THE PROCESS OF
TRADITION
Tradition: a process of creative transformation
whose most remarkable feature is the continuity it nurtures
and sustains.
Music of tradition can be old or new,
conservative or radically experimental; however diverse and
far-flung it appears on the surface, there is always something
at the core that connects it to the tradition from which it
springs.
MUSICAL EXAMPLE 9
Charlie Patton (1891-1934) “High Water Everywhere
Paul Pena, Kargyraa Moan
LISTENING EXERCISE
MONGOLIAN THROAT SINGING
• Singers in the khoomii tradition of Mongolia,
the khmooei tradition of Tuva, monks in
Tibetan monasteries produce simultaneous
multiple tones through manipulations of his or
her vocal apparatus
• Listen again to Paul Pena performance. Pena
was a blind blues musician who mastered the
kargyrra subtype of Tuvan khoomei and
developed a synthesis of khoomei and blues.
BRIEFLY COMPARE AND CONTRAST THE TWO
PERFORMANCES
• Briefly describe the various vocal sounds
• How do you think the sounds may have been
produced?
• In which ways are the performances similar?
• In which ways are the performances dissimilar?
