Lecture notes Sep 13: Introduction to World Music (Fall 2017)

Definitions, continued

• Etic vs. Emic VS. Outsider vs. Insider. Thought question: is anything truly "etic"?
• Source vs. Reference, critical thinking about representations.
  • A pure reference contains true assertions
  • A pure source cannot be assumed to contain any true assertions; all we can assert is that its creator --operating in a context -- asserts something (which may be false)
  • Critical thinking (critique) moves source towards reference, through widening circles of context.
  • Consider the work of Austrian psychologist and musicologist Richard Wallaschek (1860-1917), who wrote on comparative musicology and the origins of music. Its assertions may be false. But that the author said these things is true; that these things may have been believed in his contemporary Vienna is true, etc.
  • Thought question: is anything truly "reference"?
• Representing music:
  • Sound
  • Writing
  • Notating
  • Drawing and photographing
  • Film and video
  • Status of film and how to critique filmic genres (especially: ethnographic and documentary, but also feature). The film may appear seamless but is the outcome of so many decisions...
• Tradition vs modernity: e.g. Agbekor vs. Kpanlogo
• live vs. mediated (performance, transmission)
• community vs. professional (labor, commodified)
• Oral/collective memory/internal vs. external (notated or recorded) (for performance, transmission): e.g. jazz, versions
• Ethnocentrism. Question: is "music" itself ethnocentric?
• Analyzing world music
  • Cantometrics
  • A set of musical parameters