MofA Week 1

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Welcome to Area Studies in Ethnomusicology: The Arab World

In this class, we'll focus on Music of the Arab World

Alaa Wardi's Evolution of Arab music

Course approaches

  • Possible approaches in any course - and corresponding questions...
    • Propositional/interpretive: under what conditions is X true? "facts" about the world and its meaning (inductive, scientific/humanistic knowledge, inquiry within a frame)
    • Critical/problematizing: what is X, what is its history, what are the tacit political or economic forces behind its constitution and study? Acknowledging that knowledge is power. (behind every "absolute" "concept" or "fact" is a silent history of power relations...) (interrogating the "neutral" frame)
    • Procedural/experiential: how to do X? (embodied knowledge)
    • Transformative/applied: using X to change the world?... (praxis....social action)
  • For example, X = "Music of the Arab world uses microtones"
    • When and where are microtones used? See http://maqamworld.com
    • Why do we call them "microtones" and why study them? What is the Arab world and what power relations does this concept reflect?
    • How to sing them?
    • How can they be used for positive social change - e.g. to induce cultural continuity, or evoke memory?
  • Course approach: another way to put it - we will combine understanding and doing
    • Understanding: discursively, experientially, critically...
      • discursive, linguistic, descriptive, propositional, declarative knowledge (cognizing)
      • Non-discursive, pre-linguistic, experiential, bodily, musical knowledge (feeling)
    • Doing: procedural (implicit) knowledge, building on experience
      • Performing (improvising)
      • Creating, composing (editing)
      • Critiquing categories of thought
      • Community Service Learning (CSL): "doing" - students in action, relevant academia, collaborative applied or PAR research, progressive volunteer pedagogy/research towards the broader social good through giving and learning, community commitment and advocacy, engaged knowledge, global citizenship. Entails "commitments to learning, discovery, and citizenship, and to connecting communities..." (View Dean Cormack's speech)

Introductions and preliminaries

  • Who are WE - the course members? INTRODUCTIONS all around... Academic interests? Musical skills, living/working/travel experiences? What brings you here? (Please write up a paragraph also on eClass.)
  • Some important procedural items...
    • We meet Tuesdays and Thursdays, 2 - 3:20 pm. (You may also like to attend MENAME on Thursday evenings, 6:30 - 9:30. See http://bit.ly/mename )
    • Please do come to class on time, prepared - having completed assignments as much as possible.
    • Please participate actively in discussions
    • Please do not use any electronic devices during the class except to support your participation in the class
    • There are two course websites:
    • Most resources are electronic, but there are also physical books for sale in the bookstore and on Reserve. They are not required, but are useful in building a library.
    • This is a CSL course. We'll learn more about our Aswan project today, and hear from partners in CSL and Egypt on Thursday - please come on time.

Listening to Music of the Arab World (MAW)

  • Does MAW cohere? We'll say a set of music coheres if relatively clustered: examples are closer to each other than they are to other music, at least with some statistical reliability. It "sonically coheres" if this clustering depends only on the sound - not on behavior, meaning, history or anything else outside the sphere of sound.
  • Let's start with "sonic coherence": listen to MAW and consider the following four aspects. Take a piece of paper and mark four columns for the following, then take notes on each example.
    • Timbre (aspects of sound color, instrumentation, vocal quality)
    • Temporality (aspects of rhythm, meter, tempo...)
    • Tonality (aspects of intonation, scale, tonality)
    • Texture (aspects of layering and relationships of multiple parts)
  • Here are some examples to consider:
  • So...what about coherence?
    • Is "music of the Arab world" a coherent category?
    • Note that this question can be answered by recourse to people: their behavior and talk (discourse - do people use such a category in speech and writing? i.e. Is it "emic"? If so, what does it mean for them?) or by recourse to sound alone (can we list a set of attributes which define such a category?)
    • If we want to answer the question in relation to discourse, then we'd need to do some interviews or reading local publications...We'd also need to decide: how to ask the question in Arabic! (it's not obvious)
    • If we want to answer in relation to behavior we'd need to do some observing...
    • Either way, first we'd need to decide: who is an "insider"? Who is an "Arab"?
    • What else would you like to know in order to answer coherence questions...
      • Instruments and playing techniques
      • Performance practices
      • Notation
      • Transmission - pedagogy
      • History - lines of continuity
      • Discourse - how people talk about music

in sum...what is your view so far?

  • What is music of the Arab world? Can it be defined by reference to sound alone? Or are other factors required? After doing some more listening, write a paragraph for next time.
  • Are there narrower categories that are more coherent? (e.g. "Arab music").


Listen, watch, read and develop your ideas...


What is Ethnomusicology? (EM)

  • Ethnomusic-ology? Or Ethno-musicology? Roots in Comparative Musicology, and a Critique.
  • What are the Aims of EM today? (propositions, procedures, critiques, or social transformations?)
  • What are the Methods of EM? Ethnography & fieldwork, historiography & archival work, comparison, analysis, bimusicality...
  • Ethnomusicology...
    • Often accompanied with World Music (implying musical diversity), "world music" (marketing gimmick)
    • Ethnomusicology: studying world music in context: culture, society, history
      • semantic networks of symbols: representations, concepts, beliefs (culture, religion, language)
      • social networks of people: relationships, communications, exchanges (society, economy, polity)
      • temporal networks of flow (history)
    • combining: ethnomusic-ology with ethno-musicology (ethnomusic = "world music", implying musical diversity)
    • Ethnomusicology is a kind of Meta-musicology ...in 3 senses:
      • "beyond" the usual domain of music (western art music) to include all music
      • beyond the usual definition of music ("art of tones") to include social/semantic/historical context
      • "beyond" the usual methods (written word and score to fieldwork)
      • "beyond" the usual disciplinary frame (historical, analytical, theoretical) towards culture, society, history (interdisciplinarity)
    • Ethnomusicology is both:
    • Theoretical, conceptual
      • Empirical, grounded
  • Area studies in Ethnomusicology....what is the meaning of "area studies"?
    • in general
    • in ethnomusicology
  • ETIC vs EMIC frames: scientific vs local knowledge
  • Ethnomusicology tries to remain always sensitive to local knowledge - "ethno-musicology": centered on the EMIC. How do various societies understand and classify their own musics?
  • But we must bear in mind the distinction between SOURCE and REFERENCE: the former is what some historically and culturally embedded actor said/wrote/sang....the latter is what is true.
  • Comparative analysis is also crucial to generating interesting questions. Local knowledge is not immediately comparative. To compare requires a consistent FRAME.
  • Ethnomusicology also uses broad ETIC terms of analysis to describe multiple dimensions or aspects of music, in an attempt to come to grips with an entire world of music using a consistent terminology , thus enabling COMPARISON, and using critical tools to push towards REFERENCE... while also remaining sensitive to local knowledge and understanding.
  • One can thus divide all music into "aspects": textual, timbral, temporal, tonal, melodic, textural, formal, emotional/experiential, behavioral/social...
  • Ideally the analytical framework should be objective (etic) [is it possible???] but also amenable to local adaptation.
  • Such frameworks may allow us to answer questions, such as "does Music of the Arab World (MAW) exist (as a coherent category)?"
  • Problematizing, critiquing
    • "only that which has no history can be defined" (Friedrich Nietzsche (d. 1900), Genealogy of Morals)
    • problematization: interrogating concept, thereby turning it into a question, a problem (from the implicit to the descriptive/definitional to the undefinable!)
    • writing a critique: summary/scope + boundaries/limits/relationships

What is ethnomusicology of the Arab world?

  • Course title: "Area Studies in Ethnomusicology: The Arab World" = Ethnomusicology of the Arab world. Deconstructing, it appears we need to consider several key questions. From our discussions so far, let's attempt answers to the following:
    • What is "ethnomusicology"?
    • What is "ethnomusicology of the Arab world"? = "contextual study of music of the Arab world"?
    • What is "music of the Arab world"?
    • What is "the Arab world"?
    • What is "Arab"?
    • What is "Music"? (emic or etic?)
    • What can ethnomusicology contribute (and for what?)

Reviewing course requirements and outline


Problematizing concepts: "Music of the Arab world"

What is music of the Arab world? What is the Arab world? Problematizing concepts

Defining concepts.

Ethnomusicology of the Arab world: analysis

  • Ethnomusicology uses broad ETIC terms of analysis to describe multiple dimensions or aspects of music, in an attempt to come to grips with an entire world of music using a consistent terminology... One can thus divide all music into "aspects": textual, timbral, temporal, tonal, melodic, textural, formal, emotional/experiential, behavioral/social... Ideally the analytical framework should be objective (etic) [is it possible???].
  • Let MA = "Arab music" as shorthand for "Music of the Arab World" ( but perhaps not equivalent to Arabic: "al-musiqa al-`arabiyya")
  • Question for investigation: Does MA exist as a coherent category? Does it display any consistent features for one or more aspects?
  • Method: empirical study and analysis - What does the sonic empirical evidence suggest?
  • Based on your listening (using the foregoing links, or other materials at your disposal), to what extent can you characterize Arab music according to the following musical-social aspects? Please edit each wiki page adding your signed comments for next Tuesday...

Analyze "Music of the Arab World" through systematic consideration of its various Aspects:

MA Textual (aspects of text, poetry, linguistic meaning)

MA Timbral (aspects of sound color, instrumentation)

MA Temporal (aspects of rhythm, meter, tempo...)

MA Tonal (aspects of intonation, scale, tonality)

MA Melodic (aspects of modality, melodic patterning, improvisation)

MA Textural (aspects of layering and relationships of multiple parts)

MA Formal (aspects of large-scale structure)

MA Emotional (the feeling and experience of music, as inferred from behavior)

MA Behavioral (the social aspects of the performance - including audience and performer actions and interactions)


Thought questions:

  • To what degree do these features gather musics of the Arab world?
  • To what degree do these features exclude musics of other worlds?

Is "music of the Arab world" an objectively coherent category? What about "Arab music" - can a satisfactory definition be established, independent of discursive use?

in sum...


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