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

Short URL for this page: http://bit.ly/iwm17ln

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

Prelude: name that tune!

• 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?
• What do these two tracks have in common? How does musical meaning transcend sound?

Musical stretch: Rosie

Call (C), Response (R)

C: Be my woman gal I'll
R: Be your man
C: Whoa Rosie
R: Hold on gal

Try singing Rosie together.

Introductions

• Michael Frishkopf, instructor
• TA?
• all of you!

Course goals

• understand the musical world
• understand the world musically
• understand music as both product and shaper of its environment, especially the power of music to effect change: music as a technology
• broaden your musical horizons: tastes, appreciation, sensitivities
• learn how to think critically about music culture
• intro to ethnomusicology

Course strategies: emphasis on...

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

Course Mechanics

• syllabus
• calendar
• please make name cards, and say your name when you speak in class
• use the course webpage to learn about assignments and review notes (http://bit.ly/iwm17)
• use eclass to submit assignments, always on the day they are due (http://bit.ly/iwm17ec)
• no purchases are necessary! All materials are available free of charge (which is rather nice!)
• collaborative approach: you are divided into 11 groups of 4-5; each group is assigned a Google Drive folder where you can share and edit materials with each other and with me. You have access to each other's 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.
• Course requirements:
  • attendance is essential!
  • short weekly reading/viewing/listening/browsing: I will not assign more than 20 pages per week!
  • very short weekly responses (description + critique), 3-5 sentences MAX! These will be sorted roughly as satisfactory (B+), excellent (A+), and less than satisfactory (C+).
  • one concert review (description + critique)
  • midterm and final quiz: short (one sentence) IDs of terms and musical examples
  • optional creative assignment for extra credit
• office hours: signup at frishkopf.org

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 (10 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 Issues

• Music, World Music, Ethnomusicology
  • Music
    • Western Art Music
    • Folk Music
    • Jazz
    • Popular Music (lots of varieties here)
    • 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 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 -> Ethnomusicology
• Culture, society, identity.
  • Ethnos ("nation", culture and society) = ethos (emotional) + eidos (cognitive) dimensions.
  • Culture as a web of meaning
  • Society as a web of people
  • Cultures and Societies are imagined as plurals: discrete, distinct webs...constituting separate "spheres" of meaning or social relations. But....is that realistic?
  • Identity as a set of overlapping circles: gender, religion, ethnicity, nationality....
• Cross-cultural topics cutting across all regions: religion, ritual, birth, death, gender, politics, aesthetics, depression, protest, war, violence, globalization, economy, trade, migration, human rights, poverty...Thought question: are these themes really the same?
• Geocultural regions (defined by cultural, social, and geographical areas) are cross-cut by multiple topics.... Thought question: is anything really bounded?
• "Ethno" prefix implies "insider cultural approach" (e.g. ethnobotany: the way different peoples classify plants)
  • Thus: Ethnomusicology = Ethno-musicology (studying musicology from a local perspective, mainly via in-depth fieldwork) + 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 civilizations, and folk
  • Until recently usually summarized (a) non-Western musics; (b) folk musics.
  • 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])

Widening our musical horizons...

• Ethnomusicological ethnocentrism, in structure (and perception), and in aesthetics (and valuation): e.g. 12/8
• what kinds of frames can we use to neutrally consider all musics of the world? " open listening” (considering music without prejudice) e.g. western instrument classification vs. H-S. E.g. harmony/melody/rhythm vs. ….
• music analysis (MF categories, cantometrics)
• creative vs critical (source vs. reference). How to watch a film critically - absorb but also reflect. Always ask: Whose point of view is this?
• the nature of “critique” and critical thinking…assignments.

Today's topic: Alan Lomax and Cantometrics

• Alan Lomax (1915 – 2002): one of the greatest folk music collectors of all time, especially in North America.
• But he also theorized about M~E  : how are musical sounds and cultural practices correlated around the world?
• Cantometrics: coding song, towards correlating musical and cultural features (using culture codings from Murdock's Atlas of World Cultures)
• Cantometrics tries to provide a neutral frame for evaluation, but is it ethnocentric?
• Cantometrics training tapes: Structure
• So Cantometrics is also a way of hearing...
• Global jukebox review

• Documentary: Lomax the Songhunter.

Sep 13

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