Lecture notes Sep 6: Introduction to World Music (Fall 2017)

Sep 6: Introduction. Hearing music of the world: World Folksong, Alan Lomax, and Cantometrics

Prelude: Listening and Understanding

• The sound of the nay ("reed" in Persian). What do you hear? What does it mean? Expansion of meaning in mystical Islamic poetry, or in practice.
• An African rhythm heard, and seen. (Were you surprised?)
• Global Jukebox: Rosie (under Learning/Lesson plans). Just listen first. Then read. Note song, explanation, cantometrics coding, metadata. Watch short video. What do you think of Lomax's comments?
• Comments on these tracks? Musical observations? Contextual/functional observations?
• What do these tracks have in common - musically, contextually?? How is musical meaning shaped by culture, beyond sound?

Introductions

• Michael Frishkopf, instructor
• TA?
• all of you!
• Please remember to send in your written introductions on eClass

Musical stretch: Rosie

Call (C), Response (R)

C: Be my woman gal I'll
R: Be your man
(repeat several times)

C: Whoa Rosie
R: Hold on gal
(repeat several times)

Try singing Rosie together.

Goals

• understand some of the many dimensions of our diverse musical world, in sound and in meaning
• learn about world music through film - mainly documentary ethnographic...and meanwhile learn how the medium of film facilitates understanding of world music
• learn to understand our world -- as a whole -- through music
• understand music as both product and shaper of its socio-cultural environment, especially the power of music to effect change: music as a social-cultural technology
• broaden our musical horizons, develop our musical capacities
• learn how to think critically about (music) culture and society
• get introduced to the discipline of ethnomusicology

Course strategies: emphasis on...

• Visual world music/ visual ethnomusicology: learning music/music culture/critical thinking through the audio-visual, mainly ethnographic, documentary films
• Collaborative work
• Participation in class
• Mixing ethnographic, critical, and creative approaches

Course Mechanics and Requirements

• Course mechanics
  • We will start promptly at 6:30 - please be here a few minutes in advance so we can start on time.
  • course syllabus: http://bit.ly/iwm17 . use the course syllabus to learn about assignments and (via weekly links at the top of each section) review lecture notes
  • course calendar: http://bit.ly/iwm17cc . consult the calendar regularly to learn about upcoming events
  • course eclass page: http://bit.ly/iwm17ec . use eClass to submit assignments, always on the day they are due
  • please introduce yourself when you speak in class, so we can all get to know one another
  • textbooks: none! All materials are available free of charge, most of them online, and the rest on Rutherford reserve
  • groups: this course adopts an active-learning collaborative approach. I have divided you at random into 11 subgroups of 4-5; each group is assigned a Google Drive folder (you sholud have received an invite) where you can share and edit materials with each other - and with me. You have access to others' group materials as read-only. Please communicate as you wish - via email, social media, or face to face. You will have short collaborative assignments each week.
  • for more help: sign up for my office hours at http://frishkopf.org or email me
• Course requirements:
  • Participation is essential! Please arrive on time, stay until the end, and do not miss any classes!! Your group will be presenting nearly every week. And the course centers on visual ethnomusicology: nearly every evening will center on a film we will watch together.
  • Short weekly reading/viewing/listening/browsing: I will not assign more than 20 pages per week! Please don't wait until the last minute to do the assignments. (They're interesting!)
  • Very short weekly responses (description + critique) to those weekly assignments, amounting to one short paragraph (3-5 sentences) per week MAX!
  • One world music concert review (an event description + critique), 2 pages - due by end of term.
  • Midterm quiz and final quiz: these will center on short (one sentence) IDs of terms, musical examples, map locations.
  • Optional creative assignment for extra credit (everyone is encouraged to submit this assignment and share with the class; musical "talent" not required!), due by end of term.

Structure of a typical three hour session (from next week on...)

• Prelude: name that tune!
• Musical stretching
• Group presentations: 3-5 minutes each, on previous week's film. Group should come to the front of the classroom to present. Everyone should be there, and everyone should participate. Presentations can be verbal, musical, or visual - feel free to use media (embed in Google Slides in your Google folder)
• B R E A K (5 minutes)
• Introduction to the film and its musical world (occasionally we'll have a guest instead of a film)
• Film (or guest)
• Discussion
• Assigning group topics and assignments

Some Key Definitions and Topics/Issues

• Music, World Music, Ethnomusicology
  • Music: a contextual term; what does it mean...at the UofA? On the street? In a jazz club?
    • Western Art Music
    • Jazz
    • Popular Music (lots of varieties here)
    • Folk Music (several definitions)
    • Broaden definition of "music": musical discourses, practices (dancing, or talking about a favorite artist - or practicing and rehearsing...or researching!)
  • World Music
    • A strange "genre"...?
    • Isn't all music "world music"? It would appear so...
    • So maybe "world music" is "collections of music" that span the world...
    • ...or individual musical instances (like music of the nay) that imply such a collection by implicit comparison to local (western) music
    • Came to prominence in 1980s to sell African popular musics
  • Ethnomusicology (EM)
    • Ethnomusicology is the study of world music: people making music – in & all around the world. Ethnomusicologists ask big questions of music: what, who, where, and why in the world ? They attend especially to the local perspective on music's sound, structure, and meaning. Study ethnomusicology to broaden your musical horizons, and better understand the world around you.
    • EM: implies extensions to the usual boundaries of music study:
      • extended cultural range of music and related arts (e.g. dance)
      • extended context: spatial-temporal frames
      • extended disciplinary perspectives and methods (especially anthropology)
    • Comparative Musicology (CM) -> Ethnomusicology (EM)
  • Visual Ethnomusicology (VEM): conveying ethnomusicological research through film - ethnographic and documentary, usually.
    • EM entails broadening circles of context
    • CM and EM was enabled by fieldwork and recording technology
    • Therefore visual culture is crucial to understanding musical sound, encompassing also related arts such as dance, costume, theatre, staging, etc.
• Culture, society, identity.
  • Ethnos ("nation", culture and society) = ethos (emotional) + eidos (cognitive) dimensions.
  • Society as a web of people, connected by culture
  • Culture as a web of meaning, connected by people
  • Cultures and Societies are often imagined as plurals: discrete, distinct "webs"...constituting separate "spheres" of meaning or social relations. But....is that realistic? What is Canadian culture? Ghanaian culture? Amazonian culture? Just because we can add an adjective doesn't mean it exists... And what about diasporas, musical travelers, sailors, who connect? People move, music moves. The "web" doesn't want to subdivide...
  • Identity as a set of overlapping circles: gender, religion, ethnicity, nationality....
• Cross-cultural topics cutting across all regions: religion ; ritual (seasonal; life cycle: birth - marriage - death); domestic life; labor ; gender; politics; visual art; music ; depression; protest; war; violence; globalization; migration; travel; migration, human rights; poverty...Thought question: are these topics really the same across regions, "universals"? Does "music" really exist everywhere? How can they be neutrally defined?
• Geocultural regions (defined by cultural, social, and geographical areas) are cross-cut by multiple topics.... Thought question: is anything really bounded?
• "Ethno" prefix implies "culture" (or sometimes "insider cultural approach" - e.g. ethnobotany: the way each culture classifies plants)
  • Thus: Ethnography = writing about culture
  • Thus: Ethnomusicology = Ethno-musicology (studying musicology from a local perspective, mainly via in-depth fieldwork; upcoming unit on 'Are'are music) + ethnomusic-ology (studying local varieties of music from a global perspective, e.g. comparative musicology)
  • Originally, ethnomusicology was defined by objects of study summarized as: primitive (or tribal), Oriental, and folk...some of these terms have come to be considered pejorative or ambiguous and were dropped.
  • Until recently ethnomusicology was said to study (a) non-Western musics, whether "art" or not; (b) folk musics everywhere, (c) "traditional" music (pre-modern, unmediated...).
  • Or ethnomusicology was (a) the study of music in its cultural context, music in culture, or music as culture, or (b) the study of music through fieldwork.
  • Today, ethnomusicology studies any music - the difference is in how it is studied: in broadened frames, from broadened perspectives.

• Relation of music M and culture/society/identity E: Three basic relations:
  • Music shaping Ethnos: M > E
  • Ethnos shaping Music: E > M
  • Correlation: M ~ E
• Problem: ethnocentrism! (implicitly presuming one's own culture as a standard, e.g. for musical judgment: "That scale is out of tune!!." ([1])

Today's topic: Alan Lomax and Cantometrics

• How to oppose ethnomusicological ethnocentrism, both in perception, and in value? How to evaluate music in an unbiased fashion? Can it even be done through sound alone?
• Consider perceptual organization: e.g. tap this pattern: how do you hear it? XXOXXOXO
• What kinds of frames can we use to neutrally consider all musics of the world? " open listening” (considering music without prejudice)?
• One attempt: Cantometrics, developed by Alan Lomax
• Alan Lomax (1915 – 2002): one of the greatest folk music collectors of all time, especially in North America.
• But Lomax also theorized about the broad relation M~E  : how are attributes of musical sounds and cultural practices correlated around the world? Need to code both and compare!
• For instance, might fast rhythms be found more often in a "fast paced" society?
• Cantometrics: coding song, towards correlating musical and cultural features (using culture codings from the 'Atlas of World Cultures of anthropologist George Murdock (1897 – 1985), what later became the Human Relations Area Files)
• Cantometrics tries to provide a neutral frame for evaluation... (see Global Jukebox)
• ... but is it really unbiased and consistent? or ethnocentric?
• Let's try listening to a few segments of the Cantometrics training tapes, and see how we do...
• So Cantometrics is also a means of analytical hearing...

• Documentary: Lomax the Songhunter 1:30

Assignments.