The Music of the Other

New Challenges for Ethnomusicology in a Global Age

Laurent Aubert

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9780754653431
• eBook ISBN: 9781351217927
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music

We are surrounded by new musical encounters today as never before, and the experience of musics from elsewhere is progressively affecting all arenas of the human conscience. Yet why is it that Western listeners expect a certain cultural and ethnic 'authenticity' or 'otherness' from visiting artists in world music, while contemporary musicians in Western music are no longer bound by such restraints? Should we feel uncomfortable when sacred rites from Asia or Africa are remade for Westerners as musical entertainment? As these thorny questions suggest, the great flood of world musics and of their agents into our most immediate cultural environment is not a simple matter of expanding global musical exchange. Instead, complex processes are at work involving the growth of intercontinental tourism, the development of new technologies of communication and our perceptions both of ourselves and of the new musical others now around us. Elegantly tracing the dimensions of these new musical encounters, Laurent Aubert considers the impact of world musics on our values, our habits and our cultural practices. His discussions of key questions about our contemporary music culture widen conventional ethnomusicological perspectives to consider not only the nature of Western society as a 'global village' but also the impact of current Western demands on the future of world musics and their practitioners.

Chapter 1
The Elsewhere of Music Paradoxes of a Multicultural Society

Identity in Question

If music has its own place in all reflections on culture, it does so in my opinion by the stakes it represents. Music is indeed never insignificant. It is simultaneously a strong and unifying means of communication and a revealer of identity within the abundance of models that characterise our society. We identify ourselves with music that we like because it corresponds to our sensibility and vision of the world; we draw apart from other music when it is foreign to our affinities and fail to ‘speak’ to us. Through its content music is always a bearer of meanings. If Plato could write that ‘the music and literature of a country cannot be altered without major political and social changes’ (1974: 191) that is because the music he is referring to was at the same time the echo and model of something other than itself. Furthermore, it was endowed of powers susceptible to affect the whole bundle of realities, as much physiological as political and cultural.

One of the main aims of ethnomusicology is to approach these relations between music and society, to consider the complex networks of interdependence existing in any social entity between, on one hand, the context and circumstances of a musical act – collective or individual – and, on the other, the nature and modalities of the act itself. Thus, musical and social structures coexist in a relation of close solidarity, and every reflection on the significance or the aesthetics of music will necessarily send us back to the study of mentalities. A musical fact does not define itself only by its acoustic components and the technical means by which these are produced, but equally by its substance and by what it implies, by our grasping of a coherent set of criteria, a social and spiritual function, an attested psychological and possibly ritual efficacy, the role traditionally assigned to its producers and receivers, and, finally, the appropriate methods of learning and diffusion.

In this conception of music, Plato deliberately disregards the role of the individual in the process of musical creation. He tends to reduce music to its social role, assimilating its work or production to a merely utilitarian, social, ritual and symbolic function. This form of reductionism, which is to say the negation of the autonomy of the individual, seems to predominate in numerous traditional societies and is opposed to the modern ideology of art, which is fundamentally individualistic and libertarian.¹ In this respect, the process of globalisation causes a kind of ‘reciprocal exoticism shock’ through the imposed confrontation of these two universes and the new perception that each develops of the other. If one believes Victor Segalen (1995: 25): ‘Exoticism is therefore not an adaptation; it is not the perfect understanding of oneself that one would embrace in itself, but the sharp and immediate perception of an eternal incomprehension.’

Perspectives opened up in the wide market for world music have an impact on the evolution of this music, leading it into a confrontation with new challenges. Does the rise of migratory movements and communicative freeways place in question principles of everyone’s identity in the name of integration? Or is this integration the major opportunity of our time, one which will allow us all to reach a more just and tolerant, humanistic perception of each other? Obviously, this question does not concern music alone; it could apply to practically all the other domains of human activity, whether politics, religion, art, handicraft or even cuisine or sexual practices. Does the multiplicity of present models contribute to self-enrichment, or does it rather generate a simple juxtaposition of ethnic or ideological ghettos without bridges to some by way of the others?

The question of identity is placed simultaneously on the collective level (with ‘objective’ components such as adherence to a civilisation, religion, community, ethnicity, social class, age, political party and so on) and on the individual level (with ‘subjective’ components – how individuals situate themselves in relation to these components). Far from being insignificant, the problematic of identity is perhaps one of the most challenging that we must face; it is at the source of schisms and the most serious conflicts generated by the present postcolonial period. The remarkable work of Amin Maalouf, On identity (Les identities meurtrières), pinpoints the problem with rare acuity (2000: 30):

In the age of globalisation and of the ever-accelerating intermingling of elements in which we are all caught up, a new concept of identity is needed, and needed urgently. We cannot be satisfied with forcing billions of bewildered human beings to choose between excessive assertion of their identity and the loss of the identity altogether, between fundamentalism and disintegration. But that is the logical consequence of the prevailing attitude on the subject. If our contemporaries are not encouraged to accept their multiple affiliations and allegiances; if they cannot reconcile their need for identity with an open and unprejudiced tolerance of other cultures; if they feel they have to choose between denial of the self and denial of the other – then we shall be bringing into being legions of the lost and hordes of the bloodthirsty madmen.

Even if the risks incurred are not of the same kind, the case of musical identity is nevertheless exemplary. The reason for this is that all music is a bearer of a set of values, at the same time ethical (by use of a set of references to which it appeals and expresses according to appropriate means) and aesthetic (through codes put to work and their effects on the senses and the psyche). As a means of expression, musical identity acts to reveal notions beyond those of the field of musical production and consumption.

The question of musical identity is evidently not always put so sharply. For example, it has practically no raison d’être in so-called ‘archaic’ societies, or even in the past of civilisations with a more varied social fabric, including our own. The role of every musical category was clearly determined, and its use the object of relative consensus within a community. Music constituted a resonant representation of social structures, and the full array of its demonstrations expressed the consistency of a civilisation as a functioning unit and of its principles. It goes without saying that in such a society the field of music was likely to contain internal contradictions.

The field of music is practically unlimited in the contemporary world. Consciously or not our individual choices are established according to education, sensitivity and a whole body of affinities, among them artistic, social, political and ideological. The individual choices made demonstrate a person’s position, sometimes even in opposition to the ways and conventions of the social group to which he or she belongs. Thus, a taste for baroque music, rap or techno is not neutral: to a certain extent in every case it implies an adherence to the vision of the world displayed by one or another of these genres. Is it then necessary to unravel, as Sartre remarks, ‘the pragmatic truth [which] has replaced the revealed truth’? In this respect, Jean During (1994a: 27) points out that in music in the modern world, as in all the arts, one of the most significant features, if not the most evident, is the replacement of the concept of beauty, which is subjected to a concept of Truth, by the concept of taste, which lies in the domain of contingency and individual subjectivity.

The Local and the Global

It is no secret that the proliferation of modern Western civilisation and its ideals all over the world has provoked deep and irreversible distresses whose consequences have affected each and every domain of culture. Clearly the colonial age established the premises for this; but, paradoxically, colonial power remained on the whole rather indifferent to matters of art and culture. One might say that it was as if colonialisation limited itself to the planet’s political conquest, to the seizure of its economic wealth and commercial networks and, more incidentally, to Christianisation. In fact, it was the old colonies’ declarations of independence and the formation of nation states that, essentially for economic reasons, accelerated and disseminated the various processes of de-culturation. Today, crystallised and inevitable political and social tensions in numerous regions of the world ensue directly from these circumstances, and, as a direct consequence, we see the consolidation of existing antagonisms opposing ‘fundamentalists’, ‘revivalists’ and ‘progressivists’.

Given the scale of this crisis, its musical repercussions can appear anecdotal. They are nevertheless informative of the movement in which they play a part. Indeed, rare are the cases where the introduction of modern production tools had no impact on the foundations of a culture’s traditional thought and its artistic expressions, and therefore of its music. In extreme cases nothing but the most recent developments remain today from millennial traditions. They are subject to different pressures – ideological and economic – imposed by the contemporary environment, or subsequently by the touristic, commercial or political usages of official, ‘sweetened’ folklore revivals.

Every alteration of music’s role and context inevitably implies a structural and semantic displacement of its manifestations. Certainly, musical forms have always evolved during their history, whatever the time or scale in which one considers the process. At all times, migrations of peoples have permitted a confrontation of knowledge and techniques which has contributed to the widening of the field of individual experience, often causing regenerative cross-breeding. Musicians met, exchanged experiences, techniques, repertoires and instruments, contributing through their capacity for absorption and synthesis to the broadening and renewal of their musical idiom. Nevertheless, the generalisation all over the planet of the cultural hybridisation process observed today is a phenomenon without precedent.

Whereas historic intertwinings and syncretisms result in a way from ‘natural’ factors, linked to migrations – voluntary or forced – and to the consequential meeting of cultures, hybridisation distinguishes itself above all by its experimental, voluntary and utilitarian aspects. It inevitably introduces a relation of power between the existing parts because of their respective inequality. Back in 1976, the Vietnamese musicologist Tran Van Khê revealed that the application of hybridisation has the tendency to provoke the deterioration of the ‘musical body’, which is often the weakest component of the symbiosis with regard to its resistance and adaptability. On this subject, he noted in particular a kind of ‘… enrichment when borrowed elements are compatible with the original tradition and impoverishment in the contrary case. In sum, it is a problem of compatibility or incompatibility between the existing elements, just as in the case of successful graft or biologic rejection’ (1976: 8).²

The most eminent and widespread example of musical hybridity is the variety of national or international music that is progressively under way, spilling out and saturating the resonant environment of the world’s cities and countries. Systematically disseminated by the media, it tends to become universally the new norm, insofar as it is nearly the only music whose propagation reaches all layers of the population, crossing comfortably political, social and linguistic borders. Everywhere is the same: the ‘preparation’ process involves an intellectual dose of traditional significations, the manipulation of mentalities, fashion movements and associated technologies. It aims to reinforce a frame of mind that is compliant to modern tastes, ‘politically correct’ and devoid of all subversive desire. Hence, it diverts the public from its autonomy, and in a large measure from its legitimate preoccupations, and towards a diet of easily accessible, easily consumed products.

One of the extreme forms of this tendency is so-called ‘ambient music’. It is distilled throughout the day by loudspeakers in supermarkets, waiting rooms and public places of all kinds. Destined to ‘furnish the silence’, this supposedly ‘light’ music is, nevertheless, not created to be as insignificant as it appears to be. Some specialised producers have studied the mechanisms of conscience penetration. They have done so scientifically from research advances in acoustics, marketing, statistics and in the psychology of the masses. Without expanding a great deal on the topic, let us note that this type of insidious resonant environment is envisaged and achieved via the following precise goals: to generate passivity, bait the customer, create a dream to anaesthetise pain or hunt down problems, to create a climate of confidence and soft euphoria and to cause some physiological mechanisms, such as salivation or the slowing of the cardiac rhythm. Generally speaking, it aims to soothe or even depersonalise the individual in order to direct and increase productive behaviour.

The New Stakes

Some music genres seem to have benefited from the present phenomenon of the globalisation of communicative means, allowing them for the first time the legitimacy to spread beyond their usual borders. In civilisations belonging to the developing world in the global economy, the ear lent by the stranger – that is, by the empowered stranger – contributed paradoxically to invigorating the practice of arts with a millenary past. This interest caused the merchandising, sometimes extreme, of some ‘crystal-clear values’. These corresponded to international market criteria and were dictated by the fashions and tastes of a large public. Despite the fact that many performers were of modest quality, it offered them the opportunity to present their art abroad.

According to a simplistic vision, the African plays the drum, and thus he has it in his blood; the Indian from the Andes loves the wind and the sentimental, monotonous chant of the reed flute; the Gypsy knows how to move us with melismas of his overflowing soul; and the Oriental enjoys showing his mystical tendencies in interminable improvisations with hypnotic properties. Independent of their talent (which is not questioned), the success of artists such as the Drummers of Guinea, Los Calchakis, Gheorghe Zamfir or Ravi Shankar can be explained by these clichés alone. Some genres export better than others because they correspond to the expectations of their new audiences. Even though they may possibly provide a biased, partial or even simply false idea of a culture, people or whole civilisation, these musical styles contribute at least to reinforcing the reassuring picture created by some; and they have a decided interest in preserving this image of a region of the world and its inhabitants.

Fortunately, today we need not remain at that point, and the music lover’s judgement is much facilitated by greater accessibility of the necessary information. in Europe, as in North America and East Asia – that is, in regions with the capacity to take such action – some institutions have begun to develop a coherent and global pathway for the revalorisation of so-called traditional music. This happens not only through comprehensive research and documentation, but also sometimes by sustained action of the music’s holders and potential audiences. Over the years, such initiatives have introduced a large panorama of musical practices which, until recently, remained pretty much inaccessible to non-specialists, and which have substantially modified our way of thinking about, producing and discerning music in general.

By reinforcing the sense of cultural belonging and the legitimate pride of some performers, international appreciation for these musical genres has allowed some of them to survive transformation or even evade the decay and impoverishment of their environment. However, the effects of such a line of thinking are not durable enough to fully take into account the totality of parameters of musical expression. It is not sufficient to preserve art forms by privileging their most prestigious performers; it is necessary also to question what should be done in order to ensure the conditions necessary not only for maintaining, but also for developing or even renewing the music’s practice in contemporary society.

In the eyes of its collectors, this valorisation of traditional music can be seen in different ways. Their most urgent concern is evidently the music’s transmission, which no longer happens through the normal ways – it may be attended to, for example, by the circulation of audio documents. In this respect, the systematic collections recorded by ethnomusicologists prove to be of vital importance. It is also desirable to create new prospects, in situ and abroad, for those musical categories considered ‘at risk’. The creation of centres for the preservation and performance of traditional arts has already seen its success in certain countries. Furthermore, the establishment of international networks of recognition, notably in Europe, plays a role today that is far from negligible in the transmission of traditional genres and the recognition of their inherent values.³ To distinguish this music from modern world music, these institutions typically apply certain precise criteria in choosing guest artists:

• authenticity: artists are considered representative of their culture;
• quality: they are qualified and, when possible, according to the opinion of competent people, are among the best of the kind;
• exportability: they are ‘exportable’, meaning that their performances, once transposed out of context, retain as far as possible their full significance and do not appear either to be misused or to incite cultural voyeurism.

Each of these criteria is clearly a topic of debate: who is indeed really able to judge the authenticity, quality and exportability of an artist or a musical ensemble? What is it important to present from a culture, and how should one go about it? Is it necessary, for example, to avoid inviting certain ensembles or musical genres because they would not be spectacular enough? If so, one manages to condemn them to silence under the pretext that they do not ‘make the grade’. Is it necessary to reject the use of amplification or of modern and electronic instruments in these genres because these means are not traditional? When applying excessively narrow selection criteria, cultural experts responsible may expose themselves to the criticism of holding overly purist attitudes, or even becoming dictatorial. If a movement of ‘early music’ has to establish itself in other cultures as it has in Europe, this movement should logically emanate from the performers themselves, not from foreign promoters anxious to see these genres matching an image they themselves have created and want to spread.

All judgements of value are evidently subject to validation in the domain of cultural appreciation; systematic opposition always proves to be fruitless and leads to dead ends. It would be just as absurd to want to hold exclusively to a traditional image of other cultures of the world as it would be to live content merely in the immediacy of their modern production. The great paradox of present times is perhaps the tendency for the standardisation of cultural models which goes together with a marked capacity for the absorption of the most diverse influences and which leads some to drop their own traditions, turning instead toward those of others.

The taste for the practice of certain music taken out of its cultural context is occurring in a spectacular way. One hears too often that music is a universal language, but without specifying what music one is referring to, such that it becomes obvious that the comment is about one’s own. This ordi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword
• Translator's Note
• Preface
• 1 The Elsewhere of Music: Paradoxes of a Multicultural Society
• 2 Shared Listening: An Ethnomusicological Perspective
• 3 Tradition in Question: A Problem of Boundaries
• 4 The Paradox of the Concert, or the Evocation of Tradition
• 5 An Artist's Life, or the Challenge of Representation
• 6 The Art of Hearing Well: A Sketch-Typology of the Listener
• 7 The Invention of Folklore, or the Nostalgia of Origins
• 8 World Music: The Last Temptation of the West
• 9 The Great Bazaar: From the Meeting of Cultures to the Appropriation of the Exotic
• 10 Learning the Music of the Other: A Transcultural Itinerary
• 11 The Fascination of India: Lessons from Personal Experience
• References
• Index