Excursions in World Music [8 ed.] 9781138359369, 9781138359390, 9780429433757

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Dedication
Title Page
Copyright Page
Contents
About the Authors
Foreword
Preface
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1 Introduction: Studying Musics of the World’s Cultures
A Concert at the Mann Center
Presenting the World of Music
A Model for Studying Musical Cultures
Summary
Bibliography
Chapter 2 Music of South Asia
Introducing South Asia
Hindustani Music: The Growth of a Tradition
Hindustani Music: Theory and Performance
Carnatic Classical Musics: The Growth of the Southern Tradition
Hindu Music and Dance: Temples, Gender, and Caste
Bollywood
Important Genres and Regional Styles: Qawwali
Important Genres and Regional Styles: Afghanistan
Important Genres and Regional Styles: The Bauls of Bengal
Important Genres and Regional Styles: Sri Lanka
Coke Television: Rock, Hip-Hop, and the New Folk Music
The South Asian Diaspora
Summary
Key Terms
Bibliography
Chapter 3 Music of the Middle East and North Africa
Introduction: A Sufi Performance
Overview of the Region
Themes in Middle Eastern and North African Music
Modal Organization
Music, Healing, and Affect
Music and Religion
Popular Music, Politics, and Otherness
Music and the Arab Spring
Summary
Key Terms
Bibliography
Chapter 4 Musics of East Asia I: China and Taiwan
Introduction
China: People’s Republic of China
Chen Jiebing and “Shaoshan”
Modern Chinese Orchestras and “Dance of the Golden Snake”
Taiwan: Republic of China
Song Kun Traditional Arts and Wushi (Lion Dance) in Contemporary Taiwan
Puyuma song, “Naluwan”
Soundwalk: Taipei
Summary
Key Terms
Bibliography
Chapter 5 Musics of East Asia II: Korea
Watching the World Cup in Seoul
History
The South Korean Road to Tradition and National Culture
“Arirang” and the Agonies of Korea’s Modernization
Shamanist Music: Roots, and a Resolutely Modern Traditional Music
Shamanism’s Derivative Genres: From Ritual to Classical
Court Music and other “Elegant Music”: Music, the State, and Social Order
Percussion Traditions and the Modern Transformation of Time
More Recent Genres
Beyond “Korean Music”
Music in North Korea
Summary
Key Terms
Bibliography
Chapter 6 Musics of East Asia III: Japan
Introduction: Sounds on the Streets
The Ainu
Okinawa
Bon-odori: Dances for the Dead
Gagaku
Noise/Japanoise
Listening to Silence
Summary
Key Terms
Bibliography
Chapter 7 Music of Maritime Southeast Asia
A Heavy Metal Fan in Indonesia
A Malay Drummer in Singapore
Comparing Jokowi and Riduan
Navigating This Chapter
Malay Histories of Musical Exchange
Framing Maritime Southeast Asia: Ethnicities, Religions, Politics
Gong Cultures of Maritime Southeast Asia
Musicians at the Intersection of Southeast Asia and the West
Summary
Key Terms
Bibliography
Chapter 8 Music of Sub-Saharan Africa
The Idea of “Africa”
Composing “Africa”
The Lion’s Griot
The Other Half of the Sky
Summary
Key Terms
Bibliography
Chapter 9 Music and Europe
Introduction
The Musical Instrument
Musical Place
The Musical Self
Musical Movement
Summary: Resounding Europe
Key Terms
Bibliography
Chapter 10 Music of Latin America
Louis Towers in Philadelphia
Latin America: Definitions and Shared Histories
Colonialism, Race, and Urbanization
Themes in Latin American Music
Summary
Key Terms
Bibliography
References
Chapter 11 Music of the Caribbean
Cat Island, June 2, 2006: Ninth Annual Rake ’n’ Scrape Festival
Shared Histories, Mutual Challenges
Themes in Caribbean Music
Summary
Key Terms
Bibliography
Chapter 12 Music of Indigenous North America
Winnipeg Powwow Club
Indigenous Music and Colonialism
Indigenous Instruments and Musical Materials
Indigenous Music and Relationships
Summary
Key Terms
Bibliography
Further Listening
Chapter 13 Music of Ethnic North America
Music, Ethnicity, and Politics in Public Performance
Unity, Diversity, and Difference in North American Music
Themes in North American Music
Soundly Organized Time
Musical Particularity and Historical Continuity
Particular and General Musical Practices
African American Contributions to North American Music
North American Musical Concepts
Summary
Key Terms
Bibliography
Glossary
Index

Citation preview

EXCURSIONS IN WORLD MUSIC Eighth Edition

Excursions in World Music is a comprehensive introductory textbook to the musics of the world, creating a panoramic experience for students by engaging the many cultures around the globe, and highlighting the sheer diversity to be experienced in the world of music. At the same time, the text illustrates the often profound ways through which a deeper exploration of these many different communities can reveal overlaps, shared horizons, and common concerns in spite of, and because of, this very diversity. The new eighth edition features six brand new chapters, including chapters on Japan, Sub-Saharan Africa, China and Taiwan, Europe, Maritime Southeast Asia, and Indigenous Peoples of North America. General updates have been made to other chapters, replacing visuals and updating charts/statistics. Another major addition to the eighth edition is the publication of a companion Reader, entitled Critical Themes in World Music. Each chapter in the Reader is designed to introduce students to a theoretical concept or thematic area within ethnomusicology and illustrate its possibilities by pointing to case studies drawn from at least three chapters in Excursions in World Music. Chapters include the following topics: Music, Gender, and Sexuality; Music and Ritual; Coloniality and “World Music”; Music and Space; Music and Diaspora; Communication, Technology, Media; Musical Labor, Musical Value; and Music and Memory. Instructors can use this resource as a primary or secondary path through the materials, either assigning chapters from the textbook and then digging deeper by exploring a chapter from the Reader, or starting with a Reader chapter and then moving into the musical specifics offered in the textbook chapters. Having available both an area studies and a thematic approach to the materials offers important flexibility to instructors and also provides students with additional means of engaging with the musics of the world. A companion website with a new test bank and fully updated instructor’s manual is available for instructors. Numerous resources are posted for students, including streamed audio listening, additional resources (such as links to YouTube videos or websites), a musical fundamentals essay (introducing concepts such as meter, melody, harmony, form, etc.), interactive quizzes, and flashcards. Timothy Rommen is the Davidson Kennedy Professor in the College and Professor of Music and Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. Bruno Nettl was Professor Emeritus of Musicology at the University of Illinois School of Music, and recipient of the Charles Homer Haskins Prize (by the American Council of Learned Societies) as a distinguished humanist.

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To the Memory of Bruno Nettl (1930–2020) I continue to believe that fundamentally, despite differences in complexity and technology, all musics are equal, equally valuable. “Have You Changed Your Mind? Reflections on Sixty Years in Ethnomusicology” (Acta Musicologica, 2017)

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EXCURSIONS IN

WORLD MUSIC

Eighth Edition Edited by Timothy Rommen and Bruno Nettl Marié Abe, Andrea F. Bohlman,

Byron Dueck, Richard Jankowsky,

Joshua D. Pilzer, Chérie Rivers Ndaliko,

Lei Ouyang, and Jim Sykes

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Eighth edition published 2021 by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2021 Taylor & Francis The rights of Timothy Rommen and Bruno Nettl to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of Marié Abe, Andrea F. Bohlman, Byron Dueck, Richard Jankowsky, Joshua D. Pilzer, Chérie Rivers Ndaliko, Lei Ouyang, and Jim Sykes for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. First edition published by Pearson, 2001 Seventh edition published by Routledge, 2017 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Rommen, Timothy, editor. | Nettl, Bruno, 1930-2020, editor. Title: Excursions in world music / edited by Timothy Rommen and Bruno Nettl. Description: Eighth edition. | New York : Routledge, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020010804 (print) | LCCN 2020010805 (ebook) | ISBN 9781138359369 (hardback) | ISBN 9781138359390 (paperback) | ISBN 9780429433757 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: World music--Analysis, appreciation.

Classification: LCC MT90 .E95 2020 (print) | LCC MT90 (ebook) |

DDC 780.9--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020010804 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020010805 ISBN: 978-1-138-35936-9 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-138-35939-0 (pbk) ISBN: 978-0-429-43375-7 (ebk) Typeset in Janson and Optima by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire Visit the companion website: www.routledge.com/cw/rommen

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CONTENTS

xi

xiii

xix

xxv

About the Authors Foreword: Bruno Nettl Preface: Timothy Rommen Acknowledgments

1 INTRODUCTION: STUDYING MUSICS OF THE

WORLD’S CULTURES Timothy Rommen A Concert at the Mann Center 1

Presenting the World of Music 6

A Model for Studying Musical Cultures Summary 16

Bibliography 16

1

14

2 MUSIC OF SOUTH ASIA Jim Sykes

18

Introducing South Asia 18

Hindustani Music: The Growth of a Tradition 24

Hindustani Music: Theory and Performance 27

Carnatic Classical Musics: The Growth of the Southern

Tradition 32

Hindu Music and Dance: Temples, Gender, and Caste 36

Bollywood 39

Important Genres and Regional Styles: Qawwali 40

Important Genres and Regional Styles: Afghanistan 43

Important Genres and Regional Styles: The Bauls of Bengal 45

Important Genres and Regional Styles: Sri Lanka 46

Coke Television: Rock, Hip-Hop, and the New Folk Music 49

The South Asian Diaspora 50

Summary 53

Key Terms 53

Bibliography 54

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vi

CONTENTS

3 MUSIC OF THE MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICA Richard Jankowsky Introduction: A Sufi Performance 56

Overview of the Region 63

Themes in Middle Eastern and North African Music Modal Organization 66

Music, Healing, and Affect 72

Music and Religion 78

Popular Music, Politics, and Otherness 83

Music and the Arab Spring 89

Summary 91

Key Terms 91

Bibliography 92

56

66

4 MUSICS OF EAST ASIA I: CHINA AND TAIWAN Lei Ouyang

94

Introduction 94

China: People’s Republic of China 99

Chen Jiebing and “Shaoshan” 100

Modern Chinese Orchestras and “Dance of the Golden Snake” 104

Taiwan: Republic of China 108

Song Kun Traditional Arts and Wushi (Lion Dance) in Contemporary

Taiwan 110

Puyuma song, “Naluwan” 116

Soundwalk: Taipei 120

Summary 128

Key Terms 128

Bibliography 128

5 MUSICS OF EAST ASIA II: KOREA Joshua D. Pilzer

130

Watching the World Cup in Seoul 130

History 133

The South Korean Road to Tradition and National Culture 136

“Arirang” and the Agonies of Korea’s Modernization 137

Shamanist Music: Roots, and a Resolutely Modern Traditional

Music 140

Shamanism’s Derivative Genres: From Ritual to Classical 146

Court Music and other “Elegant Music”: Music, the State, and Social

Order 151

Percussion Traditions and the Modern Transformation of Time 156

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CONTENTS

vii

More Recent Genres 161

Beyond “Korean Music” 168

Music in North Korea 169

Summary 172

Key Terms 172

Bibliography 172

6 MUSICS OF EAST ASIA III: JAPAN Marié Abe

174

Introduction: Sounds on the Streets 174

The Ainu 179

Okinawa 184

Bon-odori: Dances for the Dead 190

Gagaku 195

Noise/Japanoise 201

Listening to Silence 205

Summary 208

Key Terms 208

Bibliography 209

7 MUSIC OF MARITIME SOUTHEAST ASIA Jim Sykes

212

A Heavy Metal Fan in Indonesia 212

A Malay Drummer in Singapore 216

Comparing Jokowi and Riduan 220

Navigating This Chapter 221

Malay Histories of Musical Exchange 222

Framing Maritime Southeast Asia: Ethnicities, Religions, Politics 230

Gong Cultures of Maritime Southeast Asia 235

Musicians at the Intersection of Southeast Asia and the West 250

Summary 252

Key Terms 252

Bibliography 252

8 MUSIC OF SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA Chérie Rivers Ndaliko

254

The Idea of “Africa” 255

Composing “Africa” 263

The Lion’s Griot 268

The Other Half of the Sky 279

Summary 285

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CONTENTS

Key Terms 285

Bibliography 286

9 MUSIC AND EUROPE Andrea F. Bohlman

288

Introduction 288

The Musical Instrument 299

Musical Place 301

The Musical Self 306

Musical Movement 311

Summary: Resounding Europe 317

Key Terms 319

Bibliography 319

10 MUSIC OF LATIN AMERICA Timothy Rommen Louis Towers in Philadelphia 322

Latin America: Definitions and Shared Histories Colonialism, Race, and Urbanization 329

Themes in Latin American Music 330

Summary 357

Key Terms 357

Bibliography 357

References 358

322

328

11 MUSIC OF THE CARIBBEAN Timothy Rommen

360

Cat Island, June 2, 2006: Ninth Annual Rake ’n’ Scrape Festival Shared Histories, Mutual Challenges 367

Themes in Caribbean Music 369

Summary 398

Key Terms 398

Bibliography 398

12 MUSIC OF INDIGENOUS NORTH AMERICA Byron Dueck Winnipeg Powwow Club 400

Indigenous Music and Colonialism 405

Indigenous Instruments and Musical Materials Indigenous Music and Relationships 415

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400

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CONTENTS

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Summary 425 Key Terms 426 Bibliography 426 Further Listening 428

13 MUSIC OF ETHNIC NORTH AMERICA Byron Dueck

430

Music, Ethnicity, and Politics in Public Performance 430 Unity, Diversity, and Difference in North American Music 433 Themes in North American Music 434 Soundly Organized Time 436 Musical Particularity and Historical Continuity 442 Particular and General Musical Practices 446 African American Contributions to North American Music 450 North American Musical Concepts 457 Summary 458 Key Terms 459 Bibliography 459

Glossary Index

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Taylor & Francis Taylor & Francis Group http://taylorandfrancis.com

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ABOUT THE AUTHORS Bruno Nettl (March 14, 1930–January 15, 2020) studied at Indiana University and taught, since 1964, at the University of Illinois. He conducted fieldwork in Iran (where he studied the Persian setar), among the Blackfoot people of Montana, and in South India. A profoundly influential ethnomusicologist, Nettl authored numerous discipline-defining books, including The Study of Ethnomusicology, Blackfoot Musical Thought: Comparative Perspectives, Heartland Excursions: Ethnomusicological Reflections on Schools of Music, and Nettl’s Elephant: On the History of Ethnomusicology. Timothy Rommen studied at the University of Chicago and has, since 2002, taught at the University of Pennsylvania. Working primarily in the Caribbean, his research interests include coloniality/decoloniality, the political economy of music and sound, creole musical formations, tourism, diaspora, music and religion, and the ethics of style. He is the author of “Funky Nassau”: Roots, Routes, and Representation in Bahamian Popular Music, and “Mek Some Noise”: Gospel Music and the Ethics of Style in Trinidad. Marié Abe studied at the University of California, Berkeley and teaches at Boston University. Working primarily in Japan, the US, and Ethiopia, her research interests include the politics of sound and public space, affect, social precarity, as well as the intersection of music, violence, social movements, and the everyday. She also likes to play the accordion, which helps her to think about issues of migration, diasporic formations, colonialism, and circulation. She is the author of Resonances of Chindon-ya: Sounding Space and Sociality in Contemporary Japan. Andrea F. Bohlman studied at Harvard University and teaches at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Her research on music, sound, and social movements in eastern and central Europe was recently published in a book, Musical Solidarities: Political Action and Music in Late Twentieth-Century Poland. She has additional interests in listening and media, especially tape recording; migration and mobilities; nationalisms and dissent; emotion and environment; and memory work. She also writes on the Eurovision Song Contest.

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ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Byron Dueck studied at the University of Chicago and is Senior Lecturer and Head of Music at the Open University in the United Kingdom. His research interests include North American Indigenous music and dance and the music of Cameroon. He is the author of Musical Intimacies and Indigenous Imaginaries, the coeditor with Martin Clayton and Laura Leante of Experience and Meaning in Music Performance, and the coeditor with Jason Toynbee of Migrating Music. Richard Jankowsky studied at the University of Chicago and teaches at Tufts University. His research interests include music of North Africa and the Middle East, trance and healing, ritual and religion, and rhythmic theory. He is the author of Stambeli: Music, Trance, and Alterity in Tunisia; and editor of The Continuum Encyclopedia of Popular Musics of the World: Genres of the Middle East and Africa. Joshua D. Pilzer studied at the University of Chicago and teaches at the University of Toronto. His research interests include the relationships between music, sound, voice, survival, memory, traumatic experience, marginalization, gendered violence, everyday life, and identity. He is the author of Hearts of Pine: Songs in the Lives of Three Korean Survivors of the Japanese “Comfort Women” and is currently finishing another ethnographic book on the musicality of everyday life among Korean victims of the atomic bombing of Japan and their children. Chérie Rivers Ndaliko studied at Harvard University and teaches at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She also serves as director of research and education at Yole!Africa in Goma, DRC. Building on decolonial and subaltern perspectives, her research and activism on expressive culture, epistemology, and ecology seek to subvert global systems of power. Her books include Necessary Noise: Music, Film, and Charitable Imperialism in the East of Congo and The Art of Emergency: Aesthetics and Aid in African Crises. Lei Ouyang studied at the University of Pittsburgh and has, since 2017, taught at Swarthmore College where she co-directs the Chinese Music Ensemble. She previously taught at Skidmore College and Macalester College. Her research interests include memory, politics, race and ethnicity, and social justice. She has conducted fieldwork in the United States, Japan, People’s Republic of China, and Taiwan. She is the author of the forthcoming book Music as Mao’s Weapon: Songs and Memories of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Jim Sykes studied at the University of Chicago and teaches at the University of Pennsylvania. His research interests include music, religion, personhood, modernity, and the politics of disaster in the Indian Ocean region, with a focus on Sri Lanka and Singapore. He is the author of The Musical Gift: Sonic Generosity in Post-War Sri Lanka and coeditor with Gavin Steingo of Remapping Sound Studies.

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FOREWORD

Bruno Nettl THE WORLD OF MUSIC HAS CHANGED Each of the peoples, ethnic groups, and nations of the world have their own music. We take this for granted, but we also take for granted, generally speaking, that just about all people in the world can listen to virtually any kind of music at will, on the Internet, on the radio, or with CDs. Some of this music may sound very attractive to us—whatever our own national or ethnic background— some of it may sound just terrible, some of it boring, some disturbing. But every kind of music sounds familiar, cozy, grand, ideal, heart-warming, or inspiring, to the people who make it. One major purpose of this book is to help readers and students understand what makes these musics different from each other, and how the different peoples of the world think about music. But we take it for granted that we can hear any of this music whenever we wish. It’s useful to remind ourselves that about 120 years ago, most people in the world, and surely most people in the United States, only got to hear music that belonged to their own culture. Someone in a small Midwestern town about 1910—if you are a student, it might have been your great-grandmother—might have heard some popular songs, sung hymns in church, and might possibly even have taken an excursion to the big city to hear a symphony concert. She very likely also heard some Sousa marches on the Fourth of July, heard some folksongs that her grandma had learned, and listened to some songs sung by a German or Polish choir at a festival. Your great-grandma’s musical life— in some ways it is surely a rich musical environment—might be considered very restricted compared to our ability today to be musical omnivorous. If someone in that small town in 1910 had heard Japanese, African, or even Native American music, they might have said, “oh, that’s so strange, I can’t listen to it,” or even asked “is this really music?” Today, members of all of the world’s societies hear each other’s music, and recognize that every society is musically different, that the world consists of a large number of musics. What has also happened is that people take elements they find attractive from strange musics and combine them, fuse them, with their own, inventing new, hybrid kinds of music in the process. Millions of people take part in discovering, interpreting, and re-creating the musics of the world. The people who are most concerned with trying to figure out what makes musics different from each other (and why they are different), and to figure out how different peoples think about and use music are members of a profession

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FOREWORD

called “ethnomusicology.” Ethnomusicologists (and their predecessors, who called themselves comparative musicologists, or had no designation at all) began to work—at first in tiny numbers—in the late nineteenth century, when it became possible to travel to obscure places to hear music and to make recordings on wax cylinders. About 1900 there might have been about a dozen of them, and now there might be about 5,000 in the world—still not a very large profession. In that time, they have tried to learn what the world’s musical cultures were like, and to teach about what they found out in schools and colleges and through publications; they have tried not only to preserve the world’s musical diversity by encouraging the world’s peoples to maintain their old traditions, but also to figure out why and with what mechanisms musics change. The authors of the chapters in this book are ethnomusicologists, and while this is not a book actually about ethnomusicology, it may help the reader to understand a bit of how the minds of ethnomusicologists work—if I may put it that way.

ETHNOMUSICOLOGISTS CONTEMPLATE THE WORLD’S MUSIC(S) How did our attitude toward listening to sounds from a distant land and saying, “can we even call that music?” or “this must be some kind of prehistoric sound” shift to thinking, instead, “well, this sounds strange to me, but it might not if I got to know it better” or, “sounds a bit weird, but then, our music probably sounds weird to those people, too?” There are several ways of going at this question, but let me try just one. Ethnomusicologists have changed in their way of interpreting the world of music. The person who is sometimes thought to have blown the first trumpet, Alexander John Ellis, a British polymath, writing in 1885, said in effect that all musics were equally natural and normal. After that, students of the world’s musical cultures tended to adopt an “ours–not ours” attitude. They saw Western classical music as the purview of academics who called themselves historical musicologists, and everything else—the music of non-Western cultures and the folk music of all peoples—as the subject matter of ethnomusicology. Later on, the people who called themselves ethnomusicologists divided music into the categories of folk, classical, and popular musics—folk music as the music of oral transmission, classical music as the art of highly skilled professionals, and popular music as the music promulgated by mass media (recording, radio, TV) and often the result of cultural mixes. We still use these categories. But also, in the early days before about 1955, ethnomusicologists looked at the world of music as one vast continent, variegated, to be sure, but something one could learn to understand with a single set of methods and approaches, and by finding ways of comparing musics with each other. Later they began to look at the world of music as a group of distinct musics—more like islands, as it were—each of which could be best comprehended by using a distinct approach derived from the way the people who created that music viewed it.

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FOREWORD

xv

That included intensive fieldwork, and perhaps also learning to be part of that musical culture by performing the music. We still maintain this view, but we have also added a further one: We think of the world of music as distinct units relating to each other in many ways, like islands connected by bridges, realizing that in addition to studying the world’s musics as individual systems, and perhaps getting insight from comparisons, we are enormously interested in how the world’s musics interrelate. And so, studying what I’ve labeled as “bridges” between these islands has become one of our major tasks. And indeed, a very large proportion of the music that the peoples of the world perform and listen to today is based on many different kinds of fusion, combination, and interaction.

HOW WE GOT TO THIS BOOK This is a book that tries to inform the reader about the music of the world’s cultures, presenting each of the world’s principal cultural areas such as East Asia or Sub-Saharan Africa by looking in some detail at the music of one of its cultures or societies. It has changed through its eight editions that have appeared every few years, trying to reflect advances in the approaches of ethnomusicologists as well as changes in the world of music, and the authors are proud now to join the distinguished program at Routledge, which has made many significant contributions to ethnomusicology and world music. But it is still, in essence, the book that first appeared under the title Excursions in World Music in 1992. Let me give a personal account of its genesis, beginning with its prehistory. Ever since Alexander Ellis made his point about the diversity and equality of the world’s musics in 1885, various scholars have tried to provide overviews of this realm—well, more accurately, of the world’s musics outside those of Western civilization. Before 1950, the authors of these accounts were largely German or Austrian—I’ll just mention some of their names, because they are major figures in the early history of this field: Carl Stumpf, Robert Lachmann, Curt Sachs, Marius Schneider. They tended to think that the diversity of the world’s musics represented stages through which all musics were passing, some more quickly than others. But none of them wrote books that were directed to students or to laypersons; that came to be an American specialty. By now, as I write, there are a number of books that try in various ways to survey the world’s musics. Today, too, virtually every music department at an American university or college offers at least a survey of the music of the world’s cultures, and there is a widespread need for textbooks. But when I began teaching, in the 1950s, there was no textbook or set of readings that I could recommend to my students. In the six decades since then, various approaches to teaching have been developed, and these books surveying world music constitute a kind of genre. But in the development of this genre, the previous publisher of the book at hand, Prentice Hall (and publishing houses related to it) played a major role. Let me tell you a bit of the role of Prentice Hall in this history.

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FOREWORD

In 1961, I received a call from H. Wiley Hitchcock, a distinguished music historian specializing in American music then teaching at the University of Michigan, telling me that he had undertaken to edit a series of textbooks to be titled The Prentice Hall History of Music Series, which was to consist of nine volumes—six about the major periods of European classical music, one about the classical music of the United States, and two about, well, everything else. Mr. Hitchcock asked me to write one of these volumes, and told me that William P. Malm, a professor at Michigan and an authority on Japanese music, would write the other. What, you might exclaim, seven volumes on Western classical music, and only two for everything else? Indeed. But I know that Mr. Hitchcock had a hard time persuading the publisher that even two volumes for “everything else” were justified. Anyway, what was being requested was material that might satisfy the need of courses people were actually teaching or planning to teach. Two volumes for music of the non-Western cultures, and for all folk music? But how were we to divide this world of music into two halves? Well, Mr. Hitchcock said, it’s up to you guys to decide, you can duke it out. So Professor Malm and I did just that, and while we’ve never been quite sure that we did a good job—it has been a half century since that time—the books in that series did appear between 1964 and 1966: Malm’s volume, titled Music Cultures of the Pacific, the Near East, and Asia; and mine, Folk and Traditional Music of the Western Continents (“Western” included the Americas, Europe, and Africa). These short books were revised a few times and continued to be published and to be used as texts rather widely for some thirty years. Indeed, they were published in Spanish, Korean, and Japanese translations. Well, there were many things about my volume, at least, that one might criticize, but one fundamental weakness—and this applies to William Malm’s volume, too—was that while each of us had done field research as ethnomusicologists, most of what we wrote we knew only from books and records. Another was our inability to integrate Western music with the rest of the world, and a third one was the absence of popular music. To address this last issue, Prentice Hall in 1975 brought out a text titled Contemporary Music and Music Cultures, by Charles Hamm, Ronald Byrnside, and Bruno Nettl. Never widely used, because it did not fit a sufficient number of courses, its nine chapters included essays on music and society in twentiethcentury USA, jazz improvisation, current developments in the music culture of Native Americans and in Iran, and the fusion of musics in American popular music. Through the 1970s and 1980s I kept in close touch with editors at Prentice Hall, who recognized that courses on world music were becoming an academic standard, and one of them said to me in about 1985, “when you write a text on world music you owe it to us.” Indeed, I had all along felt very much at home in the publishing world of Prentice Hall. But I didn’t think I should try to write a book about world music by myself; those early days when one person could survey the music world seemed long past. Parenthetically I had better point out that today there are still authors willing to try this, but most of their books don’t

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pretend to be comprehensive but provide spot-checks largely from the authors’ own research experiences. Now,to the book at hand:The moment came in 1987,when ethnomusicology at the University of Illinois, at which I had been teaching for years, had developed sufficiently to employ four of us. And further, our sister-campus, the University of Illinois at Chicago, had also appointed an ethnomusicologist, Philip Bohlman, to its faculty. When I thought about the interests of these colleagues, a light went on in my head: We really, in our research experience, did do a pretty good job of covering the world. And so, in the late fall of 1987, the five of us— Charles Capwell and his wife Isabel Wong, Thomas Turino, Philip Bohlman, and myself—sat for three or four hours in the Capwells’ kitchen, brainstorming an idea for a text that we could present to Prentice Hall. Our plan was to provide a book of ten essays plus an introduction, each of them based on an area of the author’s expertise, providing some introduction to the area in the broad sense, but with a focus on the nation or culture with which the author had worked. Thus, Tom Turino would write about Latin America, with emphasis on Peru; and on Africa, with emphasis on Zimbabwe. I would write about Native Americans, concentrating on the peoples of the Northern Plains; and on the Middle East, with emphasis on Iran. Philip Bohlman, writing about Europe, would find ways to integrate Western classical music. Isabel Wong would write about East Asia, and Charles Capwell would consider South and Southeast Asian music. Prentice Hall approved, and we stuck to that plan as much as we could. We decided that each author should write essays appropriate to his or her personal style of writing and research, but we also agreed that all chapters should have things in common. For one thing, of course, the length. More important: We thought that the best way to introduce students to a music would be to present, right off the bat, one aspect of the culture in detail. Usually it might be a musical event—performance or ceremony, but it could also be an instrument or a particular musician. This would provide the basis for expansion into the musical culture as a whole, and into the larger musical area. Thus, my description of a Blackfoot powwow would expand into the ideas about music and the musical style of Blackfoot culture and then further into the things that Native American musics had in common, and the ways in which they exhibited significant diversity, and also how they had interacted with the musical cultures of white and black Americans. One other thing we agreed on: Each chapter would talk about the music itself, its sound and style, instruments; but also about the role of music in culture, the ideas about music and the musical events that characterized each society we discussed. All of this we presented to our editor at Prentice Hall, with a plan for recorded musical examples and black-and-white photographs. Well, with quite a lot of support and encouragement from the publisher, we completed a manuscript, and the first edition appeared in late 1991, with editions following in 1997, 2001, 2004, 2008, 2012, 2017, and now in 2020. In the fifth edition, Timothy Rommen was added to the roster of authors, in the sixth edition, Byron Dueck wrote a chapter, and in the seventh—which also found Excursions in World Music looking to the future with a new publishing home at

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Routledge—Richard Jankowsky, Joshua D. Pilzer, and Jim Sykes contributed chapters. In this eighth edition, the voices of Marié Abe, Andrea Bohlman, Lei Ouyang Bryant, and Chérie Rivers Ndaliko join the conversation. Over the years, we have added devices to help students and teachers—definitions and verbal illustrations in the text, teacher’s manuals, more color photos, and more sound examples with better Listening Guides. But the basic structure and the principles with which we began have, in essence, remained.

A NEW KIND OF ETHNOMUSICOLOGY We, the original authors, are happy to have our work replaced by younger scholars who are more up on recent technologies and current events in world music. We can’t deny it: The world of music has changed a lot even in the thirty years since we began working on this book, and the world of ethnomusicology too has changed. Ethnomusicologists look at the world of music somewhat differently than back in the long-ago era of the twentieth century. Some of these changes in both music and ethnomusicology are reflected in the most recent editions of Excursions in World Music. How have we, the kinds of people who write books like this one, changed our attitudes? Let me give a couple of examples: They—well, really “we”— have stopped looking for “authentic” music. Decades ago, listening to Native American music, we would ask ourselves whether this was really like the music the singer’s grandfather had sung; whether it was truly the music accepted by the entire nation or tribe; whether it showed influences of the music of white people; whether, in other words, it was or wasn’t “authentic.” We don’t worry about that anymore but have not entirely abandoned that concept. Second— and I’ve mentioned this already—we are more interested in music that exhibits fusion, music that combines elements from various cultures, and that we once scorned. Along with that, we are much more interested in the study of popular music, and in the role of technology such as the Internet in the culture of music. And finally, we have begun to take a greater interest in discovering how music can help people. We continue to try to discover what the musics of the various peoples of the world are like, as sound and also as bodies of idea and concept. Maybe even more, we are interested in how music is used to express identity, to communicate inside the society, and with the outside world, and with the supernatural, and what different societies believe music can do. Ethnomusicologists in fairly large numbers have begun to use this knowledge to do people some good—helping to develop equitable systems of music education, to aid in conflict resolution and in the problems occasioned by forced migrations, to understand the potential of music in healing, and even to do our part to fight the effects of poverty and help to save the environment. Learning something about the world’s musics can lead to great aesthetic and intellectual experiences, to an understanding of art and of society. It can also show us that music can be a powerful force for good of all kinds.

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PREFACE

Excursions in World Music, Eighth Edition is designed to draw you into a series of musical encounters that open onto the widest possible range of social, political, ethnic, religious, racial, historical, and economic concerns facing communities throughout the world today. But this book is also designed to achieve this broad scope while remaining very accessible to you. Without requiring a working knowledge of music theory or harmony, the chapters in this book invite you to consider many pressing questions: How does music function? What does it mean to (or accomplish for) the communities who produce it? How is it mediated and circulated and why do these flows of sound, bodies, and capital matter? How does music illuminate or complicate race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality? What are the spiritual implications of performance? How do dance and theater participate in these musical contexts? In what ways do history and geography contribute to the conditions of possibility for musical creativity? What, moreover, can we learn about ourselves in the process of learning about the many musics of the world?

FEATURES Your excursions will take you into the middle of musical advertisements in the streets of Japan (chindon-ya); immerse you in the things you can learn from listening to the soundscapes of cities like Taipei; allow you to get a working understanding of Javanese Gamelan performance; and challenge you to think with and listen to popular musicians hailing from Trinidad to Benin, and from India to Colombia, and that’s just a start. Excursions in World Music is: • Organized along an area studies model, in which individual chapters work to represent the multiple musical cultures of a given region. • Comprised of a set of essays—by nine different scholars describing, with conviction and a sense of devotion, cultures in which they have had substantial field experience and done personal research, providing information and in-depth syntheses of the musical cultures of the world. • Dedicated to illustrating what Bruno Nettl has, in his Foreword, called the “bridges” that exist between these various regions and nation-states.

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• Written for students with no formal musical training, and challenging them to engage with the musics of the world and become motivated listeners. • A complete course with book and dedicated web site that hosts instructor and student resources.

NEW TO THE EIGHTH EDITION The most significant new components of the eighth edition are six new chapters, which incorporate new musical developments in these regions, integrate new approaches within ethnomusicology, and open new ways of considering these musical communities in global perspective. They all replace existing chapters from the seventh edition, expanding on and, in some cases, reframing the content to open onto additional topics and to offer new points of emphasis. These include: • Musics of East Asia III: Japan, written by Marié Abe, replacing the previous chapter by Isabel K. Wong. • Music of Europe, contributed by Andrea F. Bohlman, replacing the previous chapter by Philip V. Bohlman. • Musics of East Asia I: China and Taiwan, written by Lei Ouyang Bryant, replacing the previous chapter on China by Isabel K. Wong. • Music of Indigenous North America, contributed by Byron Dueck, replacing the previous chapter on Native American music by Bruno Nettl. • Music of Sub-Saharan Africa, written by Chérie Rivers Ndaliko, replacing the previous chapter by Thomas Turino. • Music of Maritime Southeast Asia, contributed by Jim Sykes, replacing the previous chapter on Indonesia by Charles Capwell. Although each of these chapters confronts the impossibility of writing a satisfactorily comprehensive single essay on an entire region, or even about a nation-state, the chapter on Sub-Saharan Africa, in particular, engages with the politics and stakes of teaching “Africa” in the context of a world music course. It is challenging by design, asking you to think carefully about the history of power and empire, the legacies of race and racism, and the systematic and continued economic exploitation of the continent. Some of these concerns are shared in other contexts, of course, but they are succinctly and powerfully articulated in this chapter and raise questions that you can productively apply to other chapters within the textbook. Further, the authors of Excursions in World Music continue in this edition their commitment to the approach, structure, and content with which they have always conceived this work. The eighth edition: • Responds to many of the significant changes that the world of music continues to experience (and this especially with regard to popular musics)— Chapter 2, for instance, considers the importance of Coke Studio for the production of South Asian popular musics.

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• Interprets the rapidly changing conditions, repertories, and styles of world music since the beginning of the twenty-first century, focusing on traditional, art, and popular musics throughout the world. Chapter 3, for instance, explores the music and politics of the Arab Spring. • Explores the world as a collection of places in which globalization, the explosion of new technologies, media flows, and the often dramatically shifting landscapes of a postcolonial and neonationalist world dominate the musical scene. Chapter 10, for instance, presents champeta (Colombia) and nortec (Mexico) as examples of how music is shaped by all of these factors. • Enhances the instructional resources for educators with a test bank, PowerPoint slides, and a thoroughly updated instructor’s manual.

HOW TO USE THIS BOOK Each chapter has several features that will enable you to get the most out of your experience with Excursions in World Music. Each chapter includes: • An opening vignette or set of framing questions that introduces the musical ideas and social contexts you’ll be studying for the rest of the chapter. • A running glossary that helps you keep track of key words and concepts, and familiarizes you with vocabulary you might not have encountered before. • A series of Listening Guides that help you listen closely to examples of the musical genres and instruments under discussion throughout the chapter. These Listening Guides offer you the chance to follow along and come to a deeper understanding about the significance, structure, and/or technical aspects of the musical examples. Where appropriate, they also offer translations of the lyrics. • Icons in margins alerting you to supplemental materials on the companion website. These icons come in three varieties: LISTEN: These are placed above the Listening Guide and direct you to the website. Most musical examples are linked to YouTube or Spotify, where you will need to establish a (no charge) account to listen to certain tracks. See www.spotify.com. REVIEW: These are placed at the end of each chapter and alert you to the set of resources available for studying. These include flashcards for key terms and ideas, and interactive quizzes for your practice, and an instrument chart sorted by country or continent. EXPLORE: These are placed at various points in the margins, illuminating topics for which we have sought out additional information on the internet. • A bibliography compiled in order to provide you with additional reading possibilities.

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COMPANION WEBSITE:

www.routledge.com/cw/rommen The website for Excursions in World Music hosts two separate sites for Instructors and Students. Entrance is password protected, and instructions are given when you open the home page. Instructors will find: an Instructor’s Manual; Test Bank; a general essay on “Music Fundamentals” that presents some of the most common ways of talking about music and understanding concepts such as melody, harmony, and rhythm; and links to further resources for each chapter. Students will be able to access: Learning Objectives for each chapter; Interactive Quizzes; an Instrument Guide, aligned by country/continent; the “Music Fundamentals” essay described above; and “Explore” topics. Both Instructors and Students have access to an audio compilation of musical examples, keyed to the textbook. Links to these are organized by chapter.

NEW COMPANION READER: CRITICAL THEMES IN WORLD MUSIC An exciting new resource that stands separate from Excursions in World Music but is integrated into its content is a new companion Reader, entitled Critical Themes in World Music. This new Reader includes an introduction and eight chapters on themes that are central to ethnomusicological inquiry. These include: • • • • • • • •

Music, Gender, and Sexuality Music and Ritual Coloniality and “World Music” Music and Space Music and Diaspora Communication, Technology, Media Musical Labor, Musical Value Music and Memory

Each short chapter (approx. 4,000 words) introduces you to the theme at hand and then illustrates it with reference to musical examples drawn from at least three chapters of Excursions in World Music. In so doing, the Reader becomes a way for you to engage with the musics of the world thematically as well as from the area studies perspective presented in the textbook. More on this below.

FOR STUDENTS You will find resources available both within each chapter and on the thoroughly redesigned companion website for the book. Within each chapter, you will be

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able to focus your learning with the help of integrated sidebar definitions of key terms; additional and, in many cases, updated photos; detailed Listening Guides; a word bank of key words and concepts, distilling the most salient ideas from each chapter; and updated bibliographies and discographies designed to point students toward further reading and listening. Callouts for additional material, housed on the companion website, are also common throughout each chapter. You can turn to the companion website for a range of additional resources including: videos and photos of instruments, ensembles, and genres discussed in various chapters; study guides and sample quizzes; flashcards; and audio Listening Guides keyed to those found in each chapter. You should think of the audio examples, in particular, as a major component of your learning, paying close attention to the Listening Guides and working to understand the performances as growing out of and deeply connected to the issues and ideas each chapter’s author is presenting in the text. Ideally, you’ll find that the companion website gives you a wide range of material to take your inquiries further and ground your understanding in additional examples more deeply. Make sure you make use of both the book and the companion website in your studies, and you’ll find that you’ll gain a great deal more from your experience. Excursions in World Music was written with a belief that knowledge of the world’s musics not only opens many doors to a better understanding of today’s most pressing social, political, and cultural problems, but also engenders respect for those who make and experience music everywhere. The new Reader, too, should be considered a major resource for generating deeper engagement with and understanding of the musical practices and communities you read about in the textbook. Your instructor may choose to assign only a few chapters from the Reader to augment thematically the goals of the course, but it is equally possible to use the Reader as the first point of entry into materials in the textbook. However the Reader is integrated into your classroom experience, it is my hope that you’ll explore all of the short chapters in order to get a better sense of the enduring concerns and political stakes that animate ethnomusicological inquiry.

FOR INSTRUCTORS You will find the eighth edition of Excursions in World Music more explicitly dedicated to providing teaching resources and pedagogical support than ever before. The photos and videos available to students are also made available to you in a secure portion of the companion website, where you can also find: a completely redesigned instructional guide; a generous set of sample test questions; a general essay on elements of music that you may use to supplement your lectures or simply assign to your students; PowerPoint slides to supplement your lectures; and links to further resources for each chapter. The goal is to provide a ready set of tools that can be deployed in the classroom, both during lectures and for testing purposes and I believe that you will find the textbook more user-friendly and easier to teach from than ever before.

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The authors of Excursions in World Music know that there is never enough time to cover every chapter in a given semester or quarter. As such, we have designed the chapters to work as discrete units. Feel free to teach them out of order, and to select those chapters that help you craft the narrative and set of issues you are most interested in conveying to your students. The companion website is envisioned as a repository of resources to help you manage the course, and I hope you’ll make use of the PowerPoint slides, and the user guide in particular. You should feel free to modify the PowerPoint slides as you see fit, using them as templates for creating your own path through the material. They are, however, designed to provide you with the basics of what you’ll need for each chapter. The user guide, too, is designed to offer you some starting points for lecture notes and to offer support for the concepts and issues that emerge in the course of each chapter. We hope that you’ll also find the test bank and the essay on the elements of music helpful in managing the range of students and skill levels that you may encounter in the course of teaching this material. One of the most exciting new resources for your course design is the publication of the companion Reader, entitled Critical Themes in World Music. This thematic Reader can be integrated into your course plans in any number of ways. You could choose to introduce students to a chapter from the textbook and then augment their engagement with that material by assigning a chapter from the Reader that connects, in its examples, to that chapter. Conversely, you could decide to engage a broad theme (such as gender and sexuality, or music and memory) first, and then follow the examples offered in the Reader to the chapters in the textbook for further study.The goal here is to offer multiple paths through the material, such that those instructors more comfortable teaching thematically have a strong set of essays to help organize such an approach while still connecting directly to the textbook. But, for those instructors who prefer the area studies approach of the textbook, the Reader offers a set of additional readings to generate more depth, opportunity for classroom discussion, and thematic focus for a few units within a given semester.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Many thanks to Greg Robinson for revising a new instructor’s manual for the eighth edition, and Kendra Millis for composing the index. Thanks are also extended to Lauren Flood for her assistance in preparing the manuscript for production and to Blenda Im for compiling the online content. I and my fellow authors also wish to express our gratitude for the numerous helpful suggestions provided by our students, and all loyal users of the book alike. We especially thank the reviewers for the eighth edition. We are also grateful to Routledge Senior Editorial Assistant Peter Sheehy, and Senior Editor Constance Ditzel, as well as the production team who copyedited, set up the design, and worked with our proof pages, especially production manager Helen Evans. The result is a true example of teamwork and dedicated collaboration. Timothy Rommen January, 2020

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INTRODUCTION Studying Musics of the World’s Cultures

Timothy Rommen

For some people, when you say “Timbuktu” it is like the end of the world, but that is not true. I am from Timbuktu, and I can tell you we are right at the heart of the world. Ali Farka Touré, liner notes, Talking Timbuktu

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CHAPTER

1 A CONCERT AT THE MANN CENTER It’s a beautiful summer evening and my daughter, Natalia, and I have just managed to find our seats at the Mann Center for the Performing Arts in Philadelphia, PA. The Center is presenting a double billing that has brought people out en masse. It’s still an hour before show time, and already the amphitheater is full. The lawn behind the seating area, moreover, is almost completely covered in blankets and lawn chairs as patrons mill about, making preparations for the evening’s entertainment. Natalia and I have been looking forward to this evening, because we’re going to hear the South African vocal group Ladysmith Black Mambazo open a show that also features the famous gospel group, the Blind Boys of Alabama. Both of these Grammy Award-winning ensembles are iconic in their own way, the former for showcasing a South African style of singing called isicathamiya and the latter for sustaining upwards of seven decades of innovation within the African American gospel tradition in the United States (the group was

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founded in 1939). Both of these groups have achieved notoriety within their respective national contexts and have also garnered tremendous international fame. Ladysmith Black Mambazo tours extensively and visits the United States regularly. The Blind Boys of Alabama are also veterans of heavy international touring schedules. Ladysmith Black Mambazo take the stage around 8 pm and perform their trademark show, complete with stories from Joseph Shabalala, the group’s leader and principal arranger, humorous and playful interactions between members of the ensemble, choreographed dancing, heavy on Zulu aesthetics, and, of course, complete control over their subtle and virtuosic vocal production. Most of the songs are sung in languages like Zulu and Sotho, and only a few are performed in English. The Blind Boys of Alabama, for their part, take everyone to “church.” Dressed in matching, bright blue suits and gathering emotional momentum as the set wears on, they call boisterously to the audience for participation (and receive it), tell jokes, and generally put on a great show, singing in their trademark, close harmony while treating us to a series of gospel standards. The concert, as it turns out, is amazing, and both groups live up to their considerable reputations, leaving the audience buzzing about the night’s musical experiences. As Natalia and I walk to the parking lot, I am struck by how well this concert highlights many of the issues with which ethnomusicologists (and this book) are concerned. For instance, the concert offers a glimpse at the ambiguity inherent in the terminology we use to discuss the music of groups like Ladysmith Black Mambazo. The music industry, based largely in the North Atlantic, tends to market groups like Ladysmith Black Mambazo as “World Music,” whereas the Blind Boys of Alabama are categorized as “gospel” musicians. Ironically, the Ladysmith Black Mambazo. Source: Steve Mack/Getty Images.

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Blind Boys of Alabama. Source: Przemek Tokar/ Shutterstock.com

expansive-sounding label—World Music—achieves a rather delimiting effect. It inscribes difference, otherness, and, at times, exoticism onto musical practices that do not squarely fit into North Atlantic modes of traditional, popular, or art music. The many musics of the world are, thus, homogenized into a category that serves as a catch-all for the performances of artists who, unlike, say, the Blind Boys of Alabama, do not sing primarily in English and do not, generally, hail from a North Atlantic nation-state. And yet, both of these groups are clearly “world musicians” in the broadest and best sense of the word—in the sense that opens the world to new sounds, new encounters, and new possibilities. The authors of this book explore the world’s music in this broad, open-ended way. They consider each of the many musics of the world as offering meaningful and vital experiences on both local and translocal levels. In this book, the authors explore how music functions in communities throughout the world; how musical practice intersects with politics and economics; how it is bound up in questions of ethnicity, class, race, and identity; how religion, aesthetics, and ideology affect the production and consumption of music; and how dance and art are intertwined with it, to name but a few of the book’s major themes. Setting its flaws and ambiguities aside for a moment, however, the music industry markets “World Music” with recourse to difference precisely because it is a quantifiable (if often over-determined and essentialized) performative and sonic reality. Indeed, the musics of the world are endlessly diverse. This evening’s musical performances offer a good case in point, for the styles of these two groups are quite different from each other. Ladysmith Black Mambazo sing relatively softly, though there are many members in the group, while the Blind Boys of Alabama are few in number but are very loud in terms of their vocal production. Ladysmith’s music is called isicathamiya, a Zulu-derived word

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that means something like “walk softly,” and which conveys in the name of the genre itself the necessity for the low volume required of the early performers and innovators of this style. These performers, active in the early decades of the twentieth century, were employed as migrant laborers at South African mines and thus lived in the mine barracks. Their after-hours singing and dancing needed to be quiet enough so that security would not notice and come shut them down. The gospel music sung by the Blind Boys, by contrast, is rooted in the notion of proclamation and is, thus, intended to be heard both far and wide. Ladysmith works with small units of musical material that they gradually transform over the course of performances, often lasting more than ten minutes. The Blind Boys work mostly within a shorter, verse–chorus structure that easily opens up to an improvisatory jam toward the end of the song—a jam that can extend these three- or four-minute compositions to well over ten minutes as well. Ladysmith is an a capella group, which means that they sing unaccompanied by instruments, once again because the genre developed within a context where playing instruments would have, in many cases, been impractical. The Blind Boys, though, travel with a small gospel band (organ/piano, guitar, bass, drums). One group sings primarily in African languages; the other sings exclusively in English. These divergent approaches to musical structure, aesthetics, language, dance, and style suggest an important way of thinking about musical difference: Difference, like sameness, is best understood as a matter of perspective. Sameness is constructed out of identifying difference and, as such, is bound up in who you are, the experiences you’ve been in a position to accumulate, and the traditions from which you are selecting in the process of assembling your own sense of the world. As we all know, throughout history, difference has been mobilized to tragically destructive purpose—genocide, slavery, the Holocaust, exile, religious fundamentalisms, and exoticisms of one stripe or another have all been justified through such mobilizations of difference. And yet, difference can also become truly productive if it is mobilized in service of mutual exchange and open encounter. It is in this sense that ethnomusicology is engaged with the musics of the world. Importantly, acknowledging the ways that the musics of the world differ from each other can (and often does) lead to new insights and to rich and meaningful musical encounters that illustrate sameness, solidarity, and shared horizons. Difference can, in other words, enable us to see (and hear) ourselves in the other and the other in ourselves. This is especially the case if we approach these musical encounters open to the possibility that our own perspective is subject to reinterpretation and to change in the face of new experiences. Returning, just briefly, to this evening’s concert, these two ensembles share several significant themes in common. First, both groups have overcome devastating social inequality tied to race and class. Ladysmith Black Mambazo was formed during the height of the Apartheid regime in South Africa, while the Blind Boys of Alabama have lived and performed through Jim Crow laws and the Civil Rights Movement in the United States. In this sense, both groups have been affected by the prior and unequal movements of money, goods,

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and people that characterized the colonial period. Ladysmith’s ancestors were witness to the colonial subjugation of the Zulu and the successive injustices that culminated in Apartheid. The ancestral heritage of the Blind Boys is rooted in West Africa, the slave trade, and the southern plantation economy. Both groups have chosen to perform music of deep spiritual significance, raising their voices in defense of social justice and contributing in significant ways to the ongoing process of articulating a way forward after Apartheid and in building on the as yet unfulfilled promise of the Civil Rights Movement, respectively. Both groups have also benefitted from the long-term exchange of musical practices. This exchange has seen African practices inform musical lives throughout the African diaspora, including the musical practices of African Americans and Afro-Caribbean communities. As such, a whole host of musical ideas—often called African retentions, and including instruments, drumming styles, ensemble structures, dance styles, and rhythmic cells—have been incorporated into and adapted to the musical contexts of traditional, sacred, and popular musics throughout the African diaspora. This exchange has also witnessed the return of new genres and practices from the diaspora to Africa. For instance, isicathamiya is, itself, informed by the sounds of vaudeville and ragtime groups—such as the Virginia Jubilee Singers and Orpheus McAdoo— who toured South Africa during the 1890s. A closer exploration of these two groups, then, reveals a deep solidarity, born of shared social and political histories (though experienced in different contexts) and worked out in shared musical horizons through the multiple crossings and re-crossings of what has been called the Black Atlantic. Both groups, moreover, have remained committed to the musical traditions they grew into locally while collaborating with a wide range of other musical artists (including Peter Gabriel, the English Chamber Orchestra, Lucky Dube, Paul Simon, Bonnie Raitt, and Ben Harper to name but a few), thereby modeling the possibility of pursuing shared musical horizons and solidarity—of seeing the other in one’s self and one’s self in the other. The historical, economic, political, and social horizons of Ladysmith Black Mambazo and the Blind Boys of Alabama are thus different in detail and local context, but very similar in terms of the way that music is being mobilized to address local issues and struggles. When viewed from this perspective, the concrete musical differences so obvious in their back-to-back performances are no longer central to an analysis of the musical power of these two groups. What emerges instead is an appreciation for the shared human concerns and histories that these two ensembles have consistently confronted throughout their careers, an appreciation that is deepened by the powerful illustration these two ensembles offer of the multiple musical paths that artists forge in addressing these concerns. The title of this book, Excursions in World Music, then, is chosen in order to question and explore the overarching category “World Music.” The book engages the many musics of the world, offering excursions that highlight the concrete differences and sheer diversity to be experienced in the world of music. At the same time, however, the text illustrates the often profound ways

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through which a deeper exploration of these diverse communities of practice can reveal overlaps, shared horizons, and common concerns in spite of and, at times, because of this very diversity.

PRESENTING THE WORLD OF MUSIC As the preceding vignette has illustrated, an ears-wide-open approach to sameness and difference—a recognition that concepts like home and away, self and other, are constructed and constantly shifting based on one’s perspective— is crucially important as we embark on journeys that explore the musics of the world. With this in mind, let’s briefly explore how such an approach informs our answers to the following basic, yet foundational question: “What is music?” This question seems harmless enough at first, but as soon as an explanation or definition of the term is offered, things become a bit more complicated. Webster’s New World Dictionary, for example, offers the following entry for music: “Music 1. the art of combining tones to form expressive compositions. 2. such compositions. 3. any rhythmic sequence of pleasing sounds.” Now, this definition introduces an array of additional concepts that, when we begin to unpack them, make an answer to our question more difficult to come by, for in defining “music,” Webster’s New World Dictionary invokes the concepts of composition, of time, and of aesthetics, each of which presents us with a set of serious complications on the road to a workable definition. In an earlier edition of this textbook, Bruno Nettl, one of the pioneers of ethnomusicology, suggests a more general understanding of music when he writes that music is “a group of sounds” (2011). You’ll notice that Nettl avoids mentioning how these sounds are grouped, what they sound like, or even whether or not they are in sequence, for he understands the multiple ways that music is conceptualized around the world and has learned to be careful when dealing with words or ideas that can delimit the horizons of possibility inherent in musical life. In fact, he points out that “to be properly understood, music should be studied as a group of sounds, as behavior that leads to these sounds, and as a group of ideas or concepts that govern the sound and the behavior” (2011).

Composition In order to understand more fully why Nettl chooses such a broad definition over a more specific and bounded definition such as the one offered by Webster’s New World Dictionary, let’s take a closer look at the three concepts that Webster’s definition raised. The first of these concepts is composition itself. Composition is one of the most ubiquitous of all musical ideas, but by ubiquitous, I do not mean to suggest that everyone conceptualizes composition in the same way. For example, a composition in the Western art music tradition is inextricably tied to written notation—to a score—whereas a Trinidadian calypso can be famous and well-known as a composition but is almost never written down. So, we need to

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Calypso singer. Source: Wolfgang Kaehler/Getty Images.

free the idea of notation from the concept of composition. While a composition can, and in many contexts does, exist as a text within a written tradition, it may also exist as a different kind of “text” within an oral tradition. In fact, oral traditions are much more prevalent throughout the musics of the world than are notated ones. It is important for us to recognize from the outset, then, that the concept of composition suggests a combination of musical elements that somehow forms a logical whole—a unit of some sort—and this without regard to how that unit is preserved and transmitted. The emphasis here is on a unit of “some sort,” for the authors of this book make a point of illustrating that the methods for generating musical elements as well as the combinations themselves are infinitely varied. For example, the concepts of scale and/or mode are articulated in most musical contexts, but the variety with which scales are built and modes function is virtually endless. The highly developed maqam system, used in one variant or another throughout North Africa and the Middle East, is predicated on the performer being able to hear and appropriately reproduce microtonal content that shifts in quality and quantity from maqam to maqam, of which there are dozens (hundreds according to some ways of categorizing them). More importantly, the maqam within which a performance is played determines which paths can be pursued in terms of modulations (i.e., some modulations [transitions from one maqam to another] are simply not possible from a given maqam, while others are common and conventional). The tonal content of a Javanese gamelan, by contrast, is derived from just two scales or tuning-systems, one made up of five pitches (slendro), the other comprised of seven pitches (pelog). In addition, neither of these tuning systems is consistent from gamelan to gamelan, because the instruments of each gamelan are commonly tuned to each other without being tethered to a common

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Oud player. Source: ALI YUSSEF/Getty Images.

reference pitch (like the A440 of Western art music). The compositional horizons of possibility in these two examples are thus shaped in very different ways, and this not least because the musical materials in play for compositional purposes grow out of radically divergent approaches to mode/tuning-system. We also find that musical building blocks and techniques commonplace in one community of practice or musical context are almost unheard of in others. Take, for example, the practice of throat singing (sometimes called overtone or diphonic singing) in Tuva and Mongolia. Throat singing is predicated on singing a fundamental pitch as a drone and manipulating the tongue, lips, velum, larynx, and jaw in order to isolate and then amplify individual overtones already present in the fundamental pitch being produced, such that two pitches (and sometimes more) are simultaneously sounded by the performer. Entire melodies are then constructed from the overtone content that the performer isolates, and it is in this fashion and from these musical materials that songs are formed (composed). While throat singing is commonplace in Tuva and Mongolia, this technique for generating vocal music is quite rare outside of Central Asia (though the Xhosa in South Africa, and the Inuit also practice forms of throat singing). Of course, the types of musical combinations at which communities arrive have a great deal to do with the functions assigned to music in a given society. Before addressing the second concept introduced by Webster’s definition— time—let’s briefly explore the various functions that music fulfills and how these very functions can drastically impact the shape of music. Because music is so deeply implicated in human experience, we find that it enhances religious practices (trance, transcendence, ritual, meditation, etc.), politics (propaganda, nationalism, minority rights, human rights, etc.), social functions (such as

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Gamelan performer. Source: Education Images/Getty Images.

weddings, funerals, life cycle events, and community festivals), and other arenas of human interaction such as work (threshing songs, boat launching songs, and sea shanties) and play (ring plays and chants at sporting events). What we find as students of the world’s musics is that it becomes increasingly difficult to know what functions music is fulfilling and what the basis of its role in society is without knowing about the society itself in some deeper way. In fact, if we only think about music from our own perspective, we might even make serious mistakes in our assessments of various “musics.” A case in point is found in the realm of Qur’anic recitation. This religious exercise, which sounds convincingly musical to many North Atlantic ears, in part because it is modeled on the conventions of Arabic Art music, is, in fact, not considered music at all in Islamic contexts. It is, instead, understood as a form of heightened speech fit for religious use. This is an extremely important point of distinction within Islamic thought—a distinction that develops out of an approach that confines “music” to the secular realm of human experience and, as such, makes it less suited for use as a sonic vehicle for the sacred (the Qur’anic text). What the authors of this book stress—and what I’m sure will become very apparent over the course of the chapters that follow—is that ethnomusicology is, in fact, about people and that we, as students of the world’s musics, are therefore ultimately concerned about what is important to people as reflected in the ways that they use and configure their various musics. As such, ethnography (fieldwork) is a crucial methodological element in pursuing the study of the musics of the world, for it allows us to engage with people about the musics that they love, use, and produce, both within and outside of their communities. And it is in this context that the merits of Nettl’s choice to omit specific discussion

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of musical elements such as “composition” and “time” from his definition begin to shine. These musical specifics are, according to Nettl, best explored through encounter rather than delineated at the outset, and the flexibility inherent in this approach is central to ethnomusicology as a discipline and to the excursions that follow. In other words, we come to understand what music is not only through attending to sound itself, but also by studying it ethnographically as “behavior that leads to these sounds, and as a group of ideas or concepts that govern the sound and the behavior” (2011).

TIME It is surely clear from the preceding pages that this book’s authors are committed to encouraging a relativistic approach to studying music. In other words, we are going to take Nettl’s lead and examine each musical context on its own merits and attempt to understand it on its own terms. This intellectual stance is extremely important in every facet of our study, and the concept of “time,” introduced to us in Webster’s definition, provides us with an apt illustration. North Atlantic conceptions of time have consistently stressed linearity, the teleological idea that things progress from a beginning to an end. It should come as no surprise that this understanding of time is reflected in the way that music is put together. If we explore, for instance, the way that the great majority of canonical, Western art music is structured (think of composers like Brahms, Beethoven, and Mozart), we find a few clues to the way that linearity informs compositions in this tradition. Small units like motives (from as short as a few notes to slightly larger structures) are combined to create phrases that, when combined with other phrases, themselves form periods. Periods, in turn, combine with each other to form sections that, when combined with other sections form entire movements and pieces. There is, in other words, a progression from beginning to end based upon the very way that pieces are constructed. The average rock song is no different in this regard. If you’ve ever played in a band or memorized your favorite tune, you’ll no doubt recognize the following structure: Intro, Verse 1, Chorus, Verse 2, Chorus, Bridge, Solo, Verse 3, Chorus, Chorus, Outro. The musical materials here can be schematically represented as follows: A, A1, B, A2, B, C, A solo, A3, B, B, A. So, there are basically three ingredients with regard to melody and chord progression in this (admittedly formulaic) rock song. “A” covers the intro, outro, solo, and all the verses; “B” stands for the chorus; and “C” is the bridge. Each of these ingredients is connected to the next through time in performance (or recording) in order to create a linear progression from beginning to end. South and Southeast Asian conceptions of time, however, are often cyclical as opposed to linear in nature. Although they, too, unfold through time and are, in this sense, progressing linearly through the performance, the musical emphasis is placed on returning to points that have already been visited—to cycling through instead of moving through musical material.

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For example, the system of tala in Hindustani music (a bit like time signatures in Western traditions, but much more complicated in its implications for performance) is predicated on returning to the beginning, and musicians (especially drummers) go through incredibly complex calculations in order to ensure that their improvisations arrive back at the place where they started. Within jhaptal (just one of the many taals available to musicians), for instance, each cycle consists of ten beats (2+3+2+3) and the goal is to move as elegantly and virtuosically as possible through the cycle, completing beat 10 (and approaching beat 1 of the next cycle) anew each time throughout the performance. Each arrival is, as such, by necessity also a new departure. Drummers in particular have developed this cyclic approach to time into an art, and aspiring tabla players apprentice themselves for many years in order to learn from masters how to perform effectively and with sufficient improvisational creativity. At an even more fundamental level, however, the very concept of music within Hindustani thought offers a much broader view of time as it pertains to performance. For instance, each raag (part melodic possibility, part scale/mode) comes complete with prescriptions for the time of day, and Sitar player, Anoushka Shankar. Source: Jack even the appropriate season, in which the particular raag should Vartoogian/Getty Images. be performed. There is, in short, a much more cosmological,

temporal framework in place in North Indian thought about music than we tend

to find in Western art music. And, just as days, weeks, and seasons are cyclical,

so too the approach to performing a raag in a particular taal is conditioned by a

cyclical conception of time.

If we think of the ways that time is configured when it is combined with and subsumed into religious practices, then additional possibilities emerge. Within Aboriginal Australian ritual life, for instance, there are, in fact, two distinct modes of interacting with time. On the one hand stands the clock time of everyday life—a type of time with which we are all familiar. On the other hand stands the spiritual realm, which can be accessed through what is commonly called dream time. It is during excursions into this ritual time, into this time-out-of-time, that musicians are given songs, artists are inspired to paint, and clock time becomes meaningfully filled. Trances associated with music, too, function in conjunction with but also outside of clock time, affording both individuals and communities the opportunity to experience time anew. In each of these contexts, time is experienced and conceptualized in specific and localized fashion. Depending on the context, then, referring to music as consisting of a “sequence” of sounds, as Webster’s definition does, can describe local conceptions of time in ways that are by turns apropos, misleading, or flat out inaccurate. So we see, once again, the reasoning behind the thoughtful omission of these specific references to musical elements in Nettl’s short definition.

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Aesthetics/Culture Now that I’ve briefly explored the ideas of composition and time, I turn to the last of the concepts that Webster’s dictionary invoked in defining music— aesthetics. Unlike the first two concepts, which are concerned with the sound and structure of music, aesthetics is ultimately bound up in the tastes and values of a particular community or society and extends right down to individuals’ preferences and conceptions of beauty. As such, it trades on the dynamic I’ve already raised regarding sameness and difference. For the purposes of this book, the way that aesthetics is deployed—and this by critics and practitioners alike— offers a window onto the larger concept of culture. “Culture” is one of the least defined but most used (and perhaps misused) words of all time and it has, for good reason, been subjected to increased scrutiny within academic circles since the 1980s. Think, for example, of how the concept of culture has been mobilized to justify hesitant action or inaction in the face of human rights abuses (like genocide) or, conversely, to advocate for political and economic encroachment by one group on another (colonialism, neocolonialism, even war). Think of the ways that culture has, in conjunction with difference, been used to “naturalize” hierarchies of power (narratives of savage-civilized and third world–first world, for instance), and this even as it continues to thrive in everyday parlance (think of comments you’ve likely heard, such as “it’s really multicultural” or “that’s her culture,” etc.). The concept of culture, then, is not benign, and can be turned to destructive ends in spite of its rather ubiquitous presence in our everyday discourse. The authors of this book are keen to create an intellectual atmosphere within which a healthy skepticism about the idea of culture as it is generally (and uncritically) deployed—that is, as referring to a group of people, or a region of the world, wherein most people share the same values and like the same things—can be questioned without abandoning the concept out of hand. This monolithic approach to culture was popular in anthropology during the 1950s, when scholars attempted to describe the world by splitting it up into what were then called “culture areas.” But, in a world that is increasingly globalized in terms of communications, technology, and travel—in a world where we are all, to some degree, travelers—the idea of a “culture area,” or even of a culture in the singular, becomes suspect. So, in order to get at any working definition of culture, it is important for us to view culture not as a monolithic set of values and practices that a particular society claims as its own, but as something far more complex, fluid, and negotiated. To that end, I would like to steer our understanding of culture in a direction that will be more fruitful and that is able more accurately to portray the everyday workings of social interactions. In order to illustrate this, let’s take a closer look at the idea of aesthetics. Clearly, none of us are going to be able to agree on what is beautiful or on what sounds good all of the time. Just think for a moment about the arts and entertainment section of any major online magazine, dedicated blog, or newspaper and you will find critics who vehemently disagree with each other

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over films, plays, and music that are all considered a part of “our culture.” Performers, too, struggle with aesthetics, disagreeing with each other about how best to play, say, bluegrass, tango, or salsa. The aesthetic, along with the authentic, then, is always negotiated in practice and subject to change, for the fact of the matter is that each “culture” also incorporates many subcultures within its broad umbrella, some of which are entirely opposed to the normative values and structures promoted by the society (or community of  practice) in which they happen to be living. Multiply this complexity within individual communities out across the globe and it becomes clear why an approach to culture that privileges sameness (patterns of homogeneity) is no longer considered a viable analytical tool for studying the musics of the world. It is more productive to approach culture by focusing on the multiple registers within which cultures are in motion (changing and fluid, that is). There are many arenas within which we can observe and analyze this motion, including ethnicity, technology, finance, media, and ideas/ideology, to name a few. Because there are multiple arenas of action and flow, there are also different rates and directions of cultural change occurring at any given time across these arenas. So, for instance, technology might rapidly be moving from an industrialized nation to a developing one, but a simultaneous movement of media (fueled by that very technological change) might be streaming back to that industrialized nation (among others), contributing to changes in perceptions of that developing nation and inspiring new cultural practices in both locations. What I like very much about exploring culture through recourse to several arenas of action (what Arjun Appadurai has called scapes (as in techno-scape and media-scape)) is that this approach goes a long way toward explaining the movements we see all around us, not only within but also between cultures. And if we remember that these arenas are activated by human interactions, if we make the people who are animating these contact zones from day to day central to our efforts at understanding a given cultural context, then we will come to appreciate the degree to which the musics of the world are consistently at play in these arenas, affected by and also affecting the ever-shifting terrain we think of as culture. The popular forms of “World Music” often provide excellent examples of this kind of dynamic change, for we can witness how technology, money, media, religion, and ideology variously shape the efforts of artists and even the formation and dissemination of new styles such as hiplife (Ghana), zouk (French Antilles), dangdut (Indonesia), and K-pop (Korea), to name but four. The authors of this book are thus committed to viewing culture as a concept that should immediately suggest many levels of complexity and movement, and this both within and between individual cultural contexts. Although I have only begun to unpack the concepts of composition, time, and aesthetics (along with culture), I now return to the definitional task at hand. At this point, it should be clear why Bruno Nettl suggests that music constitutes “a group of sounds.” This definition affords the greatest amount of flexibility for addressing the variety and multiplicity of musics and musical approaches

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on offer throughout the world. Unlike Webster’s definition, Nettl chooses to allow encounter with a given musical context to flesh out the structural, temporal, and cultural details. And yet, I think we can make this definition a bit more specific without sacrificing its flexibility. I suggest that we add an observation by Martin Stokes to Nettl’s words. Stokes (1997: 5) defines music as follows: “music is what any social group consider it to be.” When combined with the more element-oriented words of Nettl, this definition is about as close as we are likely to get to a working definition of music—“Music, being a group of sounds, is what any social group consider it to be.” This definition successfully sets up the study of the world’s musics—of ethnomusicology, that is—as an intellectual enterprise that requires: flexibility; a recognition that sameness and difference are a matter of perspective; an understanding that musical approaches to composition and musical materials, to formal structures and to time itself, as well as to aesthetics are all negotiated in and through practice; and a commitment to people (to ethnography), for we need to engage with “social groups” in order to better understand what sounds and practices they recognize as constituting music.

A MODEL FOR STUDYING MUSICAL CULTURES The preceding pages have introduced some of the complexities attendant to the study of the world’s musics and they have also offered an introduction to the way that ethnomusicologists go about thinking musically with people. The definition we have arrived at is, itself, subject to critique, of course, but it has the benefit of further articulating the intellectual approach we will be pursuing throughout this book. It also maps well onto a three-part model for the study of music articulated by one of the pioneers of ethnomusicology, Alan Merriam. Merriam posited that music should be analyzed in three arenas of action: sound, behavior, and conception.

Sound Musical instruments, tuning systems, rhythmic ideas, ensembles, genres, styles, vocal timbre, language use, and a whole host of music-specific “nuts-and­ bolts” elements fit into Merriam’s category of “sound.” One of the tasks that ethnomusicologists have set for themselves throughout the last century or so has been to categorize and come to a better understanding of all of the elements that contribute to sound. So, for example, Alexander John Ellis classified as many scales as he could during the late nineteenth century and also worked extensively on measuring pitch (suggesting the cents system still in use today). In the same spirit and at roughly the same time, Erich M. von Hornbostel and Curt Sachs developed four categories of instruments as a means of clarifying their sonic principles and also in order to distinguish them more carefully from one another. These included: areophones, chordophones, idiophones,

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BOX 1.1 CLASSIFICATION OF MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS

•

•

•

Aerophones (wind instruments) — Flute-like — Trumpet-like — Reeds Chordophones (string instruments) — Zithers — Lutes Idiophones (self-vibrating instruments) — Rattles/shakers — Gongs — Xylophone

•

Membranophones (membrane instruments or drums)

•

Electrophones (electronic instruments) — Synthesizer — Computers

and membranophones, to which another classification—electrophones—was later added. These classifications are still apropos and useful, but in an era of increasingly digital circulations of sound, and in a moment when phones, tablets, and computers are becoming ubiquitous platforms for both production and consumption of sound, new tools are necessary. So, although ethnography remains firmly at the core of how ethnomusicologists approach their research, ethnomusicologists are also incorporating ideas from disciplines such as new media studies and sound studies (among others) in order to explore and explain “sound” in the contemporary moment.

Behavior Merriam’s category of “behavior” focuses attention on how people interact with music and with each other (how people engage with music at concerts, for example); the contexts within which it is performed (is the event occurring at a church, in a concert hall, or on an urban street-corner?); and the kinds of conventions that govern interactions among musicians and within audiences (who leads, who gets to sing, who dances, gender issues, class issues, etc.). It should be clear that behavior often results in direct consequences for the way that music sounds. For instance, social conventions and gender roles often impact directly on who sings, who is able to perform on instruments, or who dances. Often it is in the controversy generated by non-normative performance and in the sounds that such performances generate that a great deal can be learned about “behavior.” Merriam’s categories are, as such, crosscutting and overlapping. It may also be obvious to you that ethnomusicologists regularly draw on ideas and literatures across a wide range of disciplines in order to find

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vocabulary and achieve analytical sharpness in the process of thinking about “behavior.” So, for example, if an ethnomusicologist is working on women practitioners of sacred music in an Afro-Caribbean context, it is likely that she will, in addition to her ethnographic work and musical expertise, at the very least, also incorporate ideas from religious studies, gender studies, transnational studies, and postcolonial studies.

Conceptions about Music The category that Merriam calls “conceptions about music” incorporates more abstract ideas relating to music that, nevertheless, often dramatically affect the sound and attendant behavior of musical life in a given context. Time, composition, aesthetics, philosophy, ideology, theology, nationalism, ethnic identity, and ownership, to name but a few common sources of these conceptions, are thus intimately involved in the formation of “behavior” and “sound.” In this connection, recall our earlier exploration of the complexities attendant to cyclic time and the incorporation of these principles into Hindustani musical performance. With regard to ownership, in particular, one important area of ethnomusicological inquiry involves work on intellectual property rights and questions surrounding appropriation. Here, too, ethnomusicologists find themselves pursuing their projects in interdisciplinary fashion, requiring tools from legal studies, globalization, economics, and, depending on the communal context at hand, also indigenous studies.

SUMMARY REVIEW CHAPTER RESOURCES

Merriam’s model, thus, helps open our excursions into the musics of the world to the whole range of ideas, practices, and sonic experiences that comprise musical life the world over. It also helps focus attention on the necessarily interdisciplinary nature of ethnomusicological thought. The authors of this book put this model into action in the chapters that follow, offering insights into all three of these categories and illustrating how they are interdependent and mutually entangled. Applied to specific case studies, this model affords us a means of encountering the musics of the world in a way that encourages us to decenter our own perspective in the process of centering the sounds, behaviors, and conceptions of others such that we can understand that “music, being a group of sounds, is what any social group consider it to be.”

BIBLIOGRAPHY The Field of Ethnomusicology Bader, Rolf, Christiane Neuhaus, Ulrich Morgenstern, Eds., Concepts, Experiments, and Fieldwork: Studies in Systematic Musicology and Ethnomusicology (New York: Peter Lang, 2010); Barz, Gregory F., and Timothy J. Cooley, Shadows in the

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Field: New Perspectives for Fieldwork in Ethnomusicology, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008); Blacking, John, How Musical is Man? (Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 1973); Koen, Benjamin, and Jacqueline Lloyd, Eds., The Oxford Handbook of Medical

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Ethnomusicology (New York: Oxford University Press); Koskoff, Ellen and Suzanne Cusick, A Feminist Ethnomusicology: Writings on Music and Gender (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2014); Merriam, Alan P., The Anthropology of Music (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1964); Myers, Helen, Ed., Ethnomusicology: An Introduction (New York: Norton, 1992); Nettl, Bruno, Nettl’s Elephant (Champaign, IL: University of Illinois, 2010); Nettl, Bruno, The Study of Ethnomusicology: Thirty-Three Discussions, 3rd ed. (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2015); Nettl, Bruno, and Philip Bohlman, Eds., Comparative Musicology and Anthropology of Music: Essays in the History of Ethnomusicology (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1991); Pettan, Svanibor, and Jeff Todd Titon, Eds., The Oxford Handbook of Applied Ethnomusicology (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015); Post, Jennifer, Ethnomusicology: A Guide to Research (New York: Routledge, 2004); Rice, Timothy, Ethnomusicology: A Very Short Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press); Stobart, Henry, The New (Ethno) Musicologies (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2008); Stokes, Martin, “Introduction: Ethnicity, identity, and music,” in Ethnicity, Identity, and Music: The Musical Construction of Place, edited by Martin Stokes, 1–28 (Providence: Berg Publishers, 1997); Stone, Ruth, Theory for Ethnomusicology (New York: Routledge, 2007). Surveys of World Music and Musical Cultures The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music, 10 vols. (New York: Routledge, 1997–2001); Bohlman, Philip V., World Music: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002); Bohlman, Philip V., and Goffredo Plastino, Eds., Jazz Worlds/World Jazz (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2016); Campbell, Patricia Shehan, Lessons from the World: A Cross-Cultural Guide to Music Teaching and Learning (New York: Schirmer Books, 1991); Fletcher, Peter, World Musics in Context (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002); Kaemmer, John E., Music in Human Life (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1993); Koskoff, Ellen, Ed., Women and Music in Cross-Cultural Perspective (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1989); Lomell, Kip, and Anne Ramussen, Eds., Musics of Multicultural America (New York: Schirmer Books, 1997); Magowan, Fiona, and Louise Wrazen, Eds., Performing Gender, Place, and Emotion in Music: Global Perspectives (Rochester, UK: University of Rochester Press, 2015); Malm, William P., Music Cultures of the Pacific, the Near East, and Asia, 3rd ed. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1996); May, Elizabeth, Ed., Musics of Many Cultures (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1980); Miller, Terry and Andrew Shahriari, World Music: A Global Journey (New York: Routledge, 2006); Nettl, Bruno, Folk and Traditional Music of the Western Continents, 3rd ed. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1990); Nettl, Bruno with Melinda Russell, Ed., In the Course of Performance: Studies in the World of Musical Improvisation (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1998); Post, Jennifer,

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Ed., Ethno-musicology: A Contemporary Reader (New York: Routledge, 2006); Reck, David, Music of the Whole Earth (New York: Scribner’s, 1977); Shelemay, Kay, Soundscapes, 2nd ed. (New York: Norton, 2007); Sullivan, Lawrence, Ed., Enchanting Powers: Music in the World’s Religions (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997); Titon, Jeff, et al., Worlds of Music, 4th ed. (New York: Schirmer Books, 2002); Turino, Thomas, Music as Social Life: The Politics of Participation (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2008). Musical Change Behague, Gerard, Ed., Performance Practice: Ethnomusicological Perspectives (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1984); Blum, Stephen et al., Eds., Ethnomusicology and Modern Music History (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1991); Johansson, Ola, and Thomas L. Bell, Eds., Sound, Society and the Geography of Popular Music (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2009); Keil, Charles, and Steven Feld, Music Grooves (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1994); Nettl, Bruno, Ed., Eight Urban Musical Cultures: Tradition and Change (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1978); Nettl, Bruno, The Western Impact on World Music (New York: Schirmer Books, 1985). Instruments The New Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments (New York: Macmillan, 1984); Marcuse, Sibyl, Musical Instruments: A Comprehensive Dictionary (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1964); Sachs, Curt, The History of Musical Instruments (New York: Norton, 1940). Determinants of Music Blacking, John, Music, Culture, and Experience (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1994); Clayton, Martin, Richard Middleton, and Trevor Herbert, Eds., The Cultural Study of Music (New York: Routledge, 2003); Lomax, Alan, et al., Folk Song Style and Culture (Washington, DC: American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1968); Sachs, Curt, The Wellsprings of Music (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1961). Views of Western Music Blaukopf, Kurt, Musical Life in a Changing Society (Portland, OR: Amadeus Press, 1992); Kingsbury, Henry, Music, Talent, and Performance: A Conservatory Cultural System (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1988); Nettl, Bruno, Heartland Excursions: Ethnomusicological Reflections on Schools of Music (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1995); Nettl, Bruno, and Gabriel Solis, Eds., Musical Improvisation: Art, Education, and Society (Champaign, IL: University of Illinois, 2009); Small, Christopher, Musicking (Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press, 1998). Periodicals These provide articles as well as book and recordings reviews. Asian Music; Ethnomusicology: Journal of the Society for Ethnomusicology; Ethnomusicology Forum; Popular Music; Popular Music and Society; The World of Music; Yearbook for Traditional Music.

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MUSIC OF SOUTH ASIA Jim Sykes

INTRODUCING SOUTH ASIA By 2050, India is expected to have a population of 1.6 billion, surpassing China as the world’s most populous nation. India is already the world’s largest democracy, and in the first two decades of the twenty-first century, the country emerged as a global economic powerhouse. Regardless of whether this era really turns out to be the “Asian century,” India will undoubtedly have an essential role to play in shaping the world’s dynamics for years to come, from geopolitics and information technology to debates on environmental regulations. It is worth emphasizing, then, that if India seems to be just on the verge of achieving a global prominence worthy of a population of over a billion, Indian culture is already ubiquitous. Bollywood films are screened on international flights and watched daily in cities such as Lagos, Jakarta, and London. Classes on Bollywood dance can be found in many small towns across the world. Yoga is practiced so widely that some practitioners probably don’t know of its Indian

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CHAPTER

2 roots. Buddhism, a religion whose founder lived in what is now a border region between India and Nepal, long ago spread globally but achieved much recognition in the West in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. And while the British rock group the Beatles inspired a generation of Westerners to turn to India in the 1960s through their use of the sitar (a North Indian instrument), musicians in recent decades have continued to reference Indian sounds, such as by sampling them in hip-hop songs. In the past few decades, Indian pop musicians have broken through the global mainstream, perhaps most notably A.R. Rahman with music for the 2008 film Slumdog Millionaire. In the 1990s, British Indian electronic music artist Panjabi MC reached a global pop audience with a modernized version of a folk music genre called bhangra (more on this below). Perhaps no South Asian musician has captured global attention in recent years more than the rapper and visual artist

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“South Asia” is the collective name for the countries of India, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, and the Maldives. The category “South Asia” is a term used by scholars typically more than the people of the region, and the countries included in South Asia have shifted over time. For instance, sometimes Tibet is considered a part of South Asia, though we do not include it here. Source: Rainer Lesniewski/ Alamy Stock Vector.

Maya Arulpragasam (better known as M.I.A.), who grew up in London but was born in Sri Lanka, a small island off of India’s southeastern coast. Amidst this rampant circulation of South Asian cultures and sounds, the musicians who perform the region’s “traditional” musics are hardly standing still. The two Indian classical music systems—Hindustani music (from North India) and Carnatic music (from the South)—continue to develop in the digital age. Today, Indian classical musicians travel internationally to perform and give clinics, after which they might log on to Skype and teach one of their students (who might live in New York, Singapore, or Copenhagen). While the musical knowledge contained in North India’s famous gharanas (lineages) used to be heavily guarded and revealed only through a long and arduous apprenticeship

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to a guru (esteemed teacher), today it is easy to gain at least a cursory musical knowledge of different regional styles by watching videos online—a situation that does not please musical purists. Hinduism is a vastly diverse religion whose followers constitute about 80% of the populations of India and Nepal, with significant numbers in Sri Lanka and Bhutan. South Asian Hindu cultures are globally audible, as well, though here it is worth considering their physical presence in ethnically and religiously diverse public spaces. Trinidad, South Africa, and Malaysia are all countries with significant Hindu diasporic populations and temples that routinely hold festivals and processions, bringing Hindu musics to a wide array of people. The annual Hindu festival Thaipusam is held at a cave complex (Batu Caves) outside Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia), now drawing 1.5 million people a year, with a procession that cuts right through the Malay-majority city. Likewise, Islam is a diverse religion whose followers constitute the majority of the populations of Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, with significant minorities in India (where there are over 200 million Muslims), Sri Lanka (2 million), and Nepal (1 million). Sufism, the mystical form of Islam, emerged in the Middle East and found roots in South Asia centuries ago. A network of saints’ shrines (dargahs) developed across the region, some of which draw enormous crowds for special events like the commemoration of a saint’s death. South Asian Sufi musics became globally known through the music of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, a Pakistani Qawwali singer (see below) who achieved global fame in the 1990s. This Sufi shrine network expanded during the British colonial period across the Indian Ocean, as South Asian Muslims moved west to South Africa and east to Singapore and Malaysia, leading to a lively contemporary circulation of Sufi teachers (sheikhs), pilgrims, and musicians. Finally, a discussion of South Asian religious musics should not skip over Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism, three major South Asian religions with a global reach. Buddhism is a majority religion in Sri Lanka and Bhutan, while significant Buddhist communities exist in Nepal and the regions of Ladakh and Sikkim in India. For many centuries, the growth of Hinduism in India facilitated a decline in the amount of Buddhists in India, though Buddhism spread far and wide to places like Thailand and China. Sites associated with the Buddha’s life in North India fell into disrepair until they were increasingly revitalized and developed as tourist sites for foreign Buddhists in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Though Buddhism is today a small, minority religion in India, one can find Buddhist shrines and pilgrims in many places in India, such as Bodh Gaya (where the Buddha found Enlightenment) and Sarnath (where he taught his first disciples). In turn, South Asian Buddhists have moved throughout the world, opening temples and bringing Buddhist chant and lay devotional musics to new communities. While Buddhism is not globally famous for music, farther below in this chapter we will consider an example of a lay Buddhist musical tradition from Sri Lanka. Jainism is a religion from Western India that dates back to the time of the Buddha, which still thrives; and Sikhism (which we return to below) is associated with India’s Sikh community who trace their heritage to the Punjab region (now split between India and Pakistan).

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Given the astounding circulation of Indian musical traditions, one could be forgiven for thinking “South Asian music” is synonymous with “Indian music.” But as we have already glimpsed above, this would be a mistake. The impact of India’s musical reputation on other South Asian musicians was brought home for me by a story recounted by the anthropologist Anne Sheeran, who researched Sri Lankan music in the mid-1990s. A tiny island nation, Sri Lanka is roughly the size of the U.S. state of West Virginia, but with a population of 22 million people (by comparison, West Virginia’s population is around 1.8 million). Sheeran found the Sri Lankan people welcoming, but when she mentioned she was there to study music they looked bewildered: Didn’t she know that India is nearby, and so much more famous for music? As one local put it, “Music in Sri Lanka? Haven’t you come a bit too far south?” South Asian musics are not equivalent to Indian musics, but as Sheeran’s experience shows, musicians from other South Asian nations now have to grapple with India’s global musical prominence. Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, and the Maldives each has its own musical traditions worthy of recognition. It is important to stress at the outset that the borders of today’s South Asian nations are modern constructions. What is known as India was, throughout history, numerous regional kingdoms, whose populations spoke different languages and had their own cultural traditions. Regional identities are still evident in India today: such as the Bengalis (a population whose global total is estimated to be about 300 million, whose homeland is split between the Indian state of West Bengal and the country of Bangladesh, and who speak Bengali); the Tamils (an ethnic group comprising 65 million people who live in the southeastern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, and who speak the Tamil language); and the Malayalis (who live in the southwestern state of Kerala, number about 33 million, and speak Malayalam). Amidst such regional identities are smaller populations, such as the scattered indigenous peoples the Indian government calls “Scheduled Tribes,” who tend to live in rural areas (e.g., the Nilgiri Hills in Tamil Nadu) but who make up a significant portion of the population of India’s northeastern territories. Medieval Muslim travelers from Central Asia were apparently the first to use the term “Hindu” as a geographical designation—it originally referred to “the people beyond the Indus River” (which runs through present-day Pakistan). Something more closely resembling today’s national borders arose through the efforts of the Mughal Empire (1526–1857), a dynasty of Central Asian Muslim migrants and their descendants, whose power spread throughout much of the Indian subcontinent. From the early seventeenth century, European traders began coming to South Asia, including the Portuguese, Dutch, British, and French. By the late nineteenth century, the British had gained control of the old Mughal provinces while forging treaties with some nominally independent regional kings to rule over most of the subcontinent and Ceylon (the British name for Sri Lanka). Not long after World War II, in 1947, India finally achieved independence, but the achievement was bittersweet, as growing divisions between the region’s

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Hindu majority and Muslim minority resulted in the cataclysmic Partition— the largest mass migration in recorded history—during which a huge portion of northwestern India was split off to become Pakistan, and many Hindus and Muslims moved from one country to the other (India still has a sizeable Muslim minority, however). Meanwhile, another region with a large Muslim population, Bengal, had by 1947 already been long divided between Hindu and Muslim populations, and with Partition the Muslim-majority part of Bengal became East Pakistan (in 1971, it would split off and become the independent country of Bangladesh). Partition is far from the only important border reconfiguration in the recent South Asian past. For example, the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan was drawn in 1893 by a secretary of the British Indian government, Mortimer Durand, and named the Durand Line: It divided the Pashtun ethnic group between Afghanistan (where they are the ethnic majority) and what is now Pakistan, which has a Pashtun population of about 26 million. Similarly, there was much movement between Sri Lanka and South India over the centuries, and a sizeable Tamil population has lived in Sri Lanka’s north and east; but the British ruled Ceylon as a separate province, and in 1948 the entire island became an independent country (later renamed Sri Lanka), separating Sri Lankan and Indian Tamils. So where does this leave us for our discussion of South Asian musics? For simplicity’s sake, in what follows I adopt a “national” lens, describing musical genres and histories of various South Asian nations; but I want you to keep in mind that, as Sheeran’s story above shows, the historical construction of South Asian borders is perhaps most important as a factor that has shaped how South Asians understand their own music histories today, rather than something that can be taken to mark natural divisions between people. In sum, to know South Asian musics is to know the historical construction, similarities, and differences between music in places like India and Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal; between regional folk musics in places like Rajasthan (a state in northwestern India) and Kerala (a state in southwestern India); between the famous classical dance traditions of North India (such as Kathak) and South India (such as Bharata Natyam); and between diverse sacred musics associated with world religions, like the Hindu temple music played by South Indian Tamils (the nadaswaram reed instrument and thavil drum), Christian musics in the former Portuguese colony of Goa, Buddhist ritual musics in Sri Lanka or Nepal, or the Sufi Muslim devotional music Qawwali, associated with Pakistan and North India. Knowing South Asian musics requires exploring the hip-hop and rock scenes in cities like Mumbai, Bangalore, and Delhi; the globally circulating pop musics of the South Asian diaspora; and the famous film musics of Hindi language-dominated Bollywood (centered in Mumbai) and the regional film traditions in South Indian languages like Malayalam and Tamil. These days, one can learn about Indian musics by watching Coke Studio (a television show created by MTV India and sponsored by Coca-Cola), in which pop and folk musicians perform on television, sometimes together. In other words, knowing South Asian musics requires learning about a range of pop,

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classical, folk, and sacred music traditions; it requires being able to place some of these in specific regions, while drawing commonalities between them; and it requires realizing that terms like “Hindu” and “Muslim” denote populations with a lot of regional musical variation. Confused yet? The rest of this chapter attempts to unpack this overwhelming buzz of musical, cultural, and demographic diversity.

HINDUSTANI MUSIC: THE GROWTH OF A TRADITION VEDAS The ancient texts of Hinduism, traditionally recited by Brahmins and passed down by them orally. VARNA Division of society in Indian culture, sometimes translated as “caste.” BRAHMINS The highest varna, or caste, in Indian society.

NATYASASTRA An early treatise on the performing arts attributed to Bharata and concerned with music, dance, theater, and drama. RASA The aesthetic “flavor” or feeling connoted by a raga or other artistic expression.

According to Indian lore, the country once had a uniform musical tradition that dates back to the time of the Vedas—ancient Hindu texts divided into four canonical books—whose earliest sections were completed circa 1200 bc (they were passed down orally for many centuries and only written down much later). One book of the Vedas, the Samaveda, contains hymns sung to a collection of melodies, called the Samagama. The Rigveda is a collection of poems that tells stories of Hindu deities. In the Rigveda one finds the earliest articulation of India’s “caste system” (varna), through which people were divided into different categories based on profession (each with their own subcategories and regional differences), including the Brahmins (ritual specialists), Kshatriya (warriors), Vaishyas (merchants, landowners), and Shudras (servants and subordinates). The Brahmins received an extensive education in memorizing and reciting Vedic hymns. The sound of the recitation was crucially important for Vedic recitation to work, more than the meaning of the text recited. The proper pronunciation was necessary for the gods to accept the offerings made by the Brahmins in ritual contexts (this connection between recited words and supernatural power can still be found in many South Asian religions today). Outside of the varnas were peoples who became known in English as “untouchables”: they were formally outside the caste system, considered impure because they were forced to engage in impure activities, such as playing drums at funerals or cleaning latrines. Scholars still debate the historical emergence of the caste system and its relative strength or weakness in Indian society today, and later on I will consider its continuing musical importance. Sometime before the fifth century ce, a treatise called the Natyasastra was written that would have an enormous impact on the Indian arts. As with the Vedas, the Natyasastra was written in Sanskrit (an ancient and sacred language of Indian origin that spread throughout South and Southeast Asia). According to legend, it was written by a person named Bharata, though scholars believe it may have been compiled by several individuals. The text provides detailed discussions on music, dance, and drama, showing an affinity for complex systems of categorization—a tendency one still finds in Indian musics. Over 36 chapters, the Natyasastra describes three types of acting and ten types of theater. It is famous for its theorization of rasa, the moods, emotions, or flavors produced through artistic expression. Over the centuries, rasa became integral to understandings of Indian music.

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The twelfth century was a watershed period when the musical system of North India is said to have broken off from the South due to the musical influence of Muslim migrants. Two systems of Indian music emerged that remain separated to this day: Hindustani and Carnatic music. The conquering Mughals were descendants of the Mongol Empire who lived in the Central Asian Turkestan region, but they spoke Persian—a language from Iran, which had widespread cultural currency during this period. The classical music tradition of the north, Hindustani music, became heavily influenced by Persian cultural traditions, and one can still find similarities between Hindustani, Iranian, and related musical traditions of the Middle East (such as in Turkey, Iraq, and Egypt). As Hindustani music developed, much of its musical knowledge came to be owned and guarded in large part by Muslim families of professional musicians. By the nineteenth century these musical lineages, called gharanas, were well defined and associated with certain places across the north of the subcontinent. A rigorous system for learning Hindustani music developed. It involved years of training through apprenticeship to an ustad (the word for a Muslim musical master) or pandit (Hindu musical master). In this day of easy access to information over the internet, it may surprise readers to learn how difficult it was to obtain the most esteemed musical knowledge. As a student apprentice (shishya), one might labor for a few years simply doing household chores for one’s teacher (guru)—the goal at this point would be just to hang about and soak up musical knowledge. It could take a few years before one would be allowed to learn anything substantial on one’s instrument, and the more guarded musical secrets could take the better part of a decade or more. Many of the best musicians during the Mughal and British periods were associated with the courts of regionally-based kings, even as courts lost their political power during British rule. One famous example is the court of Lucknow, a city southeast of Delhi, which before and during the rule of Wajid Ali Shah

HINDUSTANI In music, referring to North Indian musical style. CARNATIC In music, referring to South Indian music style. GHARANA A lineage of professional musicians in India who trace their heritage through certain guru-shishya relationships, and usually associated with a particular city. USTAD A Muslim teacher. SHISHYA A term for pupil, typically used to describe the teacher-student relationship in Hindustani music (guru-shishya). GURU A term for “master teacher” that is prominent especially in the teaching of musical instruments. Classical vocalist Kaushiki Chakraborty along with Ajay Joglekar on harmonium and Ojas Adhia on tabla. Source: Arunabh Bhattacharjee/Alamy Live News.

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Ustad Ali Akbar Khan playing a sarod. Source: Jack Vartoogian/Getty Images.

SAROD A fretless, plucked string instrument of Hindustani music originally coming from Afghanistan.

(ruled 1847–1856) was known for its musicians and dancers. The British exiled the king to a suburb of Calcutta (in Bengal), where he brought many of his musicians and dancers in what now seems like a golden age for the Hindustani arts—an achievement that occurred during a time of immense political and social turmoil. There are many legendary stories about the lengths to which students would go to obtain musical training and secrets from gurus. One of the most famous is about Baba Allaudin Khan (circa 1862–1972), one of the twentieth century’s most revered virtuosos on the sarod, a fretless plucked lute. As a boy, Khan was fascinated by music, but his parents tried to turn him away from the profession. At ten, he ran away and joined a musical theater troupe. Lured to Calcutta, he learned singing and instrumental music as a young man from two well-known gurus. But his musical curiosity was not satiated. Khan’s dream was to go to the court of Rampur, a city east of Delhi, to learn from esteemed sarod player Wazir Khan, who was a court musician and descendant of the famous Mian Tansen (c. 1493–1586), one of the most revered Hindustani musicians of all time. According to legend, every day Allaudin Khan went to the gates of the Nawab (an honorific title granted by the Mughal emperor to semi-autonomous Muslim rulers) to ask to learn music from Wazir Khan. Every day he was turned away. Allaudin Khan was married by this point, and he had given up his family in the hopes of studying with Wazir Khan. According to legend, one day Khan wrote a suicide note and tied a cyanide capsule around his neck; when the gates opened and the Nawab left his estate, Khan flung himself on the Nawab and said he was determined to study with Wazir Khan or die. When the Nawab learned that Khan had left his family to study music, he remarked that he must be very serious. The Nawab invited him inside, whereupon Khan dazzled him with a virtuosic display of his performance ability on several musical instruments—but that is not the end of the story. For a few years after this, Khan was allowed only to do chores and simply watch Wazir Khan. It was after this point, and another bout of desperation,

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that Khan finally managed to gain a proper audience with Wazir Khan, after which he become his favorite disciple, and the rest is history. Allaudin Khan’s son, Ali Akbar Khan, would become one of India’s most famous musicians in the twentieth century, eventually setting up a music school for the Indian arts in California (the Ali Akbar Khan College of Music) which still exists today. Another student, the sitarist Ravi Shankar (1920–2012), would achieve global fame in the latter twentieth century on account of his association with the Beatles and concert tours. One can imagine what kinds of musical complexity are involved in a tradition that requires such devotion, dedication, and—in myth if not in reality—such suffering for one’s art. Indeed, Hindustani musicians are famous for virtuosity, a skill they achieve through hours of laborious practice—though whether such feats are real or exaggerated is open for debate. In his study of the Hindustani gharana tradition, ethnomusicologist Daniel Neuman describes Hindustani musicians’ practice routines as a common topic of conversation, something that musicians brag about to others, in order to display their prowess. One well-known trick, associated with the tabla (a set of bowl-shaped drums) player Ustad Ahmed Jan Thirakwa, was to grow his hair long and tie it by a rope to the ceiling, so that when he fell asleep his head would jerk and he would wake up, enabling him to practice longer.

HINDUSTANI MUSIC: THEORY AND PERFORMANCE The standard melodic framework for Hindustani music is called raga, and the rhythmic framework is called tala. Each raag (the singular) is not only a scale (a precise ordering of tones in a row) but also a system of rules about how to play that scale. For instance, a raag might have a slightly different scale going up and down, and it might necessitate emphasizing one note in the scale over others. Musicologist Harold Powers came up with a way to define the word “mode” that can help us here (raga is a good example of a “modal system”). To paraphrase Powers, he said that if we think of a continuum with a basic “scale” at one end and a full-fledged “tune” at the other, “mode” falls in between. A particular raag might have some melodic turns of phrases that frequently appear when it is performed— i.e., it is more than just a scale—but these phrases do not coalesce into a specific song. It is best to think of each raag as a modal framework (a scale plus a set of rules that state how to perform that scale) in which performers improvise. Hindustani raags are classified according to many extra-musical criteria, according to their rasa (mood, emotion, flavor). Traditionally this includes a specific time of day or season in which the raag should be performed; some raags were accorded supernatural power, such as one that is supposed to start fires, and another that drives away evil spirits (jinns). Raag Malhar, for instance, is thought to bring down buckets of rain. While raags continue to hold such metaphysical connotations today, it is common nowadays to perform Hindustani music on a concert stage and merely tell the audience (if they are not

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TABLA A pair of drums used in Hindustani music.

EXPLORE Hindustani Music RAGA The melodic framework for Hindustani classical music (spelled “ragam” in Carnatic tradition) that includes a scale in ascending and descending versions, its predominant pitch, certain standard melodic fragments, and even non-musical elements like certain moods (rasa), deities, and images. TALA The metric framework or system of beat cycles in Hindustani musics (”talam” in Carnatic tradition).

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ALAP The opening section of a raag, which is improvised in free rhythm. SAM The first beat in a taal. JOR The section of Hindustani instrumental performance that follows alap and introduces a pulse. JHALA The concluding section of instrumental improvisation following jor in Hindustani music during which the performer makes lively and fast rhythmic patterns on the drone strings of an instrument. TIHAI A formulaic cadential pattern, normally repeated three times with calculated rests between each statement so that the performance ends on sam. TAAN A rapid and florid kind of improvised melodic passage in Hindustani music.

already familiar) what the raag’s name is and what its extra musical associations are (especially the time of day at which it is supposed to be performed). Raags might also connote stories about Hindu gods and goddesses, as well as colors, flowers, and animals. Medieval Indian painters devised a style of painting that represents each raag visually, and they often strung together such paintings in a series, called ragamala, or “garland of raga.” The opening of a Hindustani classical music performance begins with the alap—an unmetered, free-flowing introduction without percussion—in which the soloist explores the raag. I like to think of the alap as akin to carving a statue: unlike a pop song, where a riff or melody may be presented right away, in an alap the characteristics of the raag are revealed gradually. It takes much experience with Hindustani music to understand this unfolding. In an alap, the instrumentalist or vocalist typically begins at the low or middle of the scale and starts off slow, eventually going up higher and then descending in fast runs, while picking up speed. After the alap section, the percussion usually kicks in, which in Hindustani music is typically played on the tabla (two bowl-shaped drums, played with the fingers while sitting down). At this point the soloist, along with the percussionist, improvises not only in a raag but also in a system of “beat cycles” called tala. Each taal (the singular) includes an amount of beats that are additive in nature. For instance, Jhaptaal has ten beats and is counted 2 + 3 + 2 + 3, while Rupak Taal has seven beats and is divided 3 + 2 + 2. Most taals are easier than this; for instance, the most widely played taal is probably Teentaal, which has 16 beats split into four divisions of four each (it sounds a lot like the Western meter 4/4). Just as each raag includes rules about what to do and not do while performing, each taal has its own rules, as well. Most importantly, each taal contains “claps” and “waves” that denote which beats are stressed (the claps) and unstressed (the waves). In Teentaal, for instance, claps are on beats 1, 5, and 13 (that’s every four beats, skipping over beat 9, which is not stressed—that is the wave). An audience member will commonly clap or tap their leg on beats 1, 5, and 13, and wave (usually marked by simply turning one’s hand upside down while tapping one’s leg) on beat 9 (the term for the “wave” is khaˉli, which means “empty”). The khaˉli is important for tabla players: in Teentaal, for instance, drummers will often leave out the lower-pitched tabla drum between beats 9 and 12, creating an audible emptiness due to the lack of a bass sound; the drummer then returns with the low drum from beats 13 through 16, creating heightened tension (perhaps adding some complicated fills along the way) that resolves on beat 1, after which the cycle repeats. The first beat of each cycle is called the sam, an important concept in Hindustani music: as the music gets more and more complicated, performers will often make eye contact before the sam, and smile when they reach it—for it means they made it through a difficult section of music without messing up! Have you ever seen a sitar? A plucked lute instrument, it has around 18 to 21 strings, including six or seven that lie above the frets, with the rest being smaller strings that lie beneath the frets and which are not usually played by hand. These smaller ones are “sympathetic strings” that resonate when particular pitches on the main strings are played. In other words, playing one note on the sitar

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LISTENING GUIDE 2.1

DEMONSTRATION OF RAGA

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Performed by Allyn Miner (sitar) and Aqeel Bhatti (tabla)

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T CANNOT BE stressed enough that each raag is much more than a musical scale: each raag contains rules that state how its scale should be played going up and going down, as well as details on when it should be played, and its association with gods, colors, and objects. Here is how The Raga Guide (p. 164) describes Raag Yaman: Since Mughal times, Kalyan (today usually referred to as Yaman) is described by Meshakarna (1570) as a “lord in white garments and pearl necklace on a splendid lion-throne, under a royal umbrella, fanned with a whisk, chewing betel.” Later authors also describe him as a brave, noble-minded hero . . . From here, The Raga Guide describes the performance aspects of Raag Yaman, for which you will need to know something about the Indian solfege system. You may already be familiar with Western solfege (do-re-mi-fa-sol-la-ti-do), which applies certain words to represent notes in a scale. The Indian solfege system is “Sa-Re-Ga-Ma-Pa-Dha-Ni-Sa.” The Raga Guide states, In today’s Yaman, both Sa and Pa are frequently omitted in ascent . . . The ascent may begin on low Ni or low Dha [that is, notes below the lower Sa]. Ga and Ni are the sonant-consonant pair, while Pa and Sa are frequently sustained and function as final notes. When natural Ma is occasionally added in a concluding figure leading to Sa, the raga is known as Yalman kalyan. In other respects, today’s Yaman kalyan is so similar to Yaman that many musicians do not recognise it as an independent raga. Time: early night, 9–12. This Listening Guide includes two recordings (2.1a and 2.1b). The first is by the sitarist Allyn Miner, who plays a short alap in Raag Yaman. Note that her performance here is shortened and only intended to demonstrate the different sections of an alap: in an actual recital, the alap would go on much longer, perhaps an hour or more. Miner’s performance begins with an unmetered alap [0:00–2:20], followed by jor (which introduces a pulse to the music) [2:20–4:15], and the up-tempo jhala (the concluding section, which includes fast rhythmic strums on the drone strings of the instrument) [4:15–5:58]. Listen to how she concludes with a short tihai, a cadential pattern that is played three times. The second recording in this Listening Guide is a performance of Raag Yaman by Miner with a tabla player, Aqeel Bhatti. After a short alap, the tabla enters (at 00:57). What they are playing here is a gat, in middle speed Teental, a common 16-beat cycle. A gat is an instrumental composition that is always set to a taal and played with the tabla. It usually consists of three composed lines, called sthai, manjha, and antara. Miner plays these, and then some variations, called taan. A longer performance would have more and longer taans.

resonates the sympathetic string tuned to that pitch. Many Indian instruments have sympathetic strings, but they are perhaps most famously associated with the sitar, giving it the bright, chiming sound for which it is well known. I already mentioned the sarod (another lute instrument) above, which is originally from Afghanistan (it is derived from the Afghan rubab) but found its way into Hindustani classical music; though it, too, has sympathetic strings,

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LISTENING GUIDE 2.2

DEMONSTRATION OF TALA

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Performed by Aqeel Bhatti (tabla)

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HROUGHOUT SOUTH ASIA, drum strokes are given specific names—that is, hitting a drum in a certain place (such as hitting the edge of a drum and letting it ring, or hitting the middle of a drum and dampening it by pushing one’s fingers into the drum head) is given a specific name. For example, when playing tabla, striking near the edge of the drum with the index finger is called “ta,” while arching the wrist and hitting the middle and ring fingers in the area between the middle and edge of the drum is called “ghe.” In a Hindustani music performance, these drum strokes are placed in a system of “beat cycles” called tala. Try clapping (and waving) these examples of taals so that you can gain a better understanding of how they sound and feel. Keep in mind that the bolded words are the “claps” (stressed beats), and the italicized words are the “waves” (unstressed beats).

(1) Teentaal—16 beats (4 + 4 + 4 + 4): dhaa dhin dhin dhaa / dhaa dhin dhin dhaa / dhaa tin tin taa / taa dhin dhin dhaa (2) Ektaal—12 beats (2 + 2 + 2 + 2 + 2 + 2): dhin dhin / dhaage tirikiTa / tu naa / kat tin / dhaage tirikiTa / dhi naa (3) Jhaptaal—10 beats (2 + 3 + 2 + 3): dhi naa / dhi dhi naa / ti naa / dhi dhi naa (4) Rupak Taal—7 beats (3 + 2 + 2): ti ti naa / dhi naa / dhi naa (5) Dadra Taal—6 beats (3 + 3): dhaa ge naa / dhaa ti naa (6) Keherwa Taal—8 beats (4 + 4): dhaa ge naa ti / naa ka dhi naa Tabla drummers have taken the art of naming drum strokes to a complex level. Tabla bols (syllables) can be arranged in elaborate compositions and improvisations. This Listening Guide includes two recordings (2.2a and 2.2b). In the first, Aqeel Bhatti demonstrates three taals: Teentaal, Jhaptaal, and Rupak Taal. He follows these with a peshkar (meaning “to commence”), a kind of tabla composition with variations that is played at the start of a tabla solo. Peshkars introduce the different sounds of the tabla gradually, building in complexity. In the second recording, Bhatti plays more advanced tabla compositions at a fast tempo. SARANGI A short-necked fiddle used in Hindustani music. BANSURI Hindustani flute. SANTOOR A hammered dulcimer associated with the folk music of the Kashmir region. It is historically related to the Persian santur. SANTUR A Kashmiri hammered dulcimer now used in Hindustani music.

unlike the sitar it is a fretless instrument, and to my ears it has a less smooth (though no less beautiful) sound to it, somewhat like plucking an acoustic guitar with a coin. Other famous Hindustani instruments include the sarangi, a bowed instrument that used to play an accompanying role but which is now commonly used as a lead instrument; the bansuri, or flute; and the santoor, a hammered dulcimer associated with the folk music of the Kashmir region (its ancestor is a Persian dulcimer called the santur)—the santoor has a mellow, reverberating sound and in the twentieth century it also found its way as a lead instrument. The tanpura is an interesting case: it is an instrument with four simple strings that only provides a drone, which forms the backdrop for a performance. The tanpura is traditionally played by a shishya, who sits onstage and provides the drone while watching the guru. Finally, no discussion of Hindustani musical instruments is complete without  mentioning the harmonium, a hand-pumped organ similar to an

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Sitar player. Source:

robertharding/Alamy Stock

Photo.

accordion and also of European descent. The harmonium has always been controversial in India, for some purists feel it cannot capture the nuances of instrumental or vocal music, which traditionally included much vibrato (a kind of trill, or shaking of a note subtly into another). Traditionally, Hindustani and Carnatic musics incorporate microtones (notes that cannot be found on the keys of a piano), called shrutis; the harmonium, with keys spaced apart identically to a Western keyboard, is accused by some to have changed Hindustani performance by forcing musicians to approximate Western scales.

HARMONIUM Portable reed organ, with a single keyboard and a handoperated bellows; of European origin, but used widely in parts of Maritime Southeast Asia and in the sacred and semiclassical musics of Pakistan and North India. Arvind Kumar Azad on tabla, Somnath Mishra on harmonium & Sangeet Mishra on sarangi. Source: Arunabh Bhattacharjee/Alamy Live News.

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CARNATIC CLASSICAL MUSICS: THE GROWTH OF THE SOUTHERN TRADITION EXPLORE Carnatic Music

THE TRINITY Three foundational composers of Carnatic music: Tyagaraja (1767–1847), Muthuswami Dikshitar (1775–1835), and Syama Sastri (1762–1827).

Because the Beatles went to North India, they popularized Hindustani music in the West. To this day, South Indian Carnatic music remains less well known outside of India, but this is not because of a lack of quality or historic importance. Carnatic (sometimes spelled Karnatak) music emerged from the music of Hindu wandering minstrels in South India in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and in courts such as at the famous Tanjore Court under the rule of Serfoji II (1798–1832). To be clear, there is a long tradition of music and dance (which have always been closely related) in South India for centuries before this, such as during the golden age of the medieval Tamil Chola Dynasty (circa ninth–thirteenth centuries), where there was an elaborate system of music and dance that grew up in Hindu temples. But it was only later that what is now known as Carnatic classical music developed. The grandfather of Carnatic music is considered to be Purandara Dasa (1484–1564). He was born in what is today the southwestern Indian state of Karnataka. Purandara Dasa gave away his possessions at the age of 30 to join an itinerant Hindu sect called the Haridasa. He is famous for, among other things, developing a system for teaching Carnatic music that continues to be used today. What we now call Carnatic music, though, was not fully developed until a group of three composers, now called “The Trinity,” emerged onto the scene: Tyagaraja (1767–1847), Muthuswami Dikshitar (1775–1835), and Syama Sastri (1762–1827). These composers lived at roughly the same time as Beethoven (1770–1827), and the idea of a canon of “great composers” may have arisen through colonial influence—the British were ruling South India during this period. The Trinity’s compositions have a unique style that came to define Carnatic music. They also developed a number of structural forms still used in Carnatic music today. Each composer is known for certain compositions: Tyagaraja is so famous that he is treated as a saint in his hometown of Thiruvaiyaru, and a music festival is held in his honor every year in Cleveland, Ohio, where musicians from all over the world come to sing his music. Though Carnatic music is associated with the Tamil people who live mainly in the modern state of Tamil Nadu, most of the classical Carnatic compositions are not sung in the Tamil language—Purandara Dasa sang in Kannada (the language of his native Karnataka region), Syama Sastri and Tyagaraja sang mainly in Telugu (a language associated with the state of Andhra Pradesh, just north of Tamil Nadu), and Dikshitar sang almost entirely in Sanskrit. Most composers that followed them did not sing in Tamil, a situation that meant that by the early twentieth century, Carnatic music was performed mainly by Tamils but not sung in Tamil. This led to the growth of a “Tamil Music Movement,” through which more Tamil music was unearthed and composed. Upon first listen, one could be forgiven for thinking that Carnatic and Hindustani musics are one and the same genre. In fact, they are quite different, though they share some vocabulary (for instance, the melodic system in the south is called ragam and the rhythmic system is called talam). Perhaps the most

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important difference is that, while Hindustani classical music is famous as an instrumental, improvised tradition, Carnatic music is based primarily on a set of compositions whose composers (such as Tyagaraja) are known. But here is where confusion sets in. Hindustani music does have its own vocal genres (which I have not discussed here for simplicity’s sake), and it does have its own prominent vocalists who sing various types of poetic compositions, some of which date back centuries. Meanwhile, Carnatic music does have many kinds of improvisation, and improvisation occurs during the performance of compositions. The distinction between improvisation and composition (as mapped respectively onto Hindustani and Carnatic traditions) is thus problematic. Two musical forms in Carnatic music are the most revered. The first type of composition is the kriti, which is typically the main type of composition performed at a Carnatic recital. The structure of a kriti includes three sections: pallavi (refrain), anupallavi (second verse), and charanam (final, long verse). As one might expect from a refrain, the pallavi appears at the end of the anupallavi and charanam. Meanwhile, the charanam will often borrow elements from the anupallavi. A performance of a kriti may be preceded by an improvised exploration of the ragam in free meter, called alapanam (this is the Carnatic version of what in Hindustani music is called alap). The kriti traditionally ends with the composer’s signature, or mudra, a set of words (which may include the composer’s name or favorite deity) that identifies the piece as being composed by a specific composer. After the kriti is completed, the performer might play ragam-tanam­ pallavi, an improvisational sequence that itself can be performed as a separate component of a Carnatic concert, and which is the second important structure of Carnatic music. The ragam is the alapanam (unmetered introduction), the thanam is the improvisation on “nonsense syllables” like “nam,” “na,” “thaa,” and “thom,” and the pallavi can be the first section of a kriti or new music composed by the soloist. There are many kinds of improvisation in Carnatic music that are woven into these formal structures, and it will take a student much time to learn how and when to use them. Some examples include niraval (improvising on a line from a kriti, thereby bringing out the essence of the ragam), kalpanaswaram (improvising on solfege syllables), and trikala (doubling, tripling, and quadrupling the duration of the notes of the pallavi). After such demanding music, a Carnatic recital will often conclude with lighter compositions that are less virtuosic, such as padams and javalis—genres historically associated with dance. Carnatic music has its own musical instruments associated with it.The veena is about four feet in length, with a thin neck and two large gourds holding up each end. While the Hindustani sitar is held at a sharp angle (almost as one holds a guitar, but much more upright), the veena is often held horizontally along the ground, or at a very slight angle. While the sitar has moveable frets, the veena’s frets are built into the instrument. The veena is sometimes called the Saraswati Veena, as it is the instrument associated with Saraswati, the Hindu goddess of knowledge and the arts. You may wish to search online for performances of the veena, sitar, and sarod, and see if you can hear the differences between them.

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Indian postage stamp featuring Tyagaraja. Source: Hipix/ Alamy Stock Photo. KRITI The major song type of Carnatic music, divided into three parts: pallavi, anupallavi, and charanam. RAGAM-TANAM-PALLAVI A form of Carnatic music that favors improvisation. NIRAVAL A type of improvisation in Carnatic music that retains the text and its rhythmic articulation but alters the pitches of the melody. TRIKALA A type of Carnatic improvisation in which the durational values of the notes in a phrase or piece are systematically augmented or diminished. VEENA Primary plucked string instrument of Carnatic music.

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LISTENING GUIDE 2.3

KRITI BY TYAGARAJA, “BANTURITI”

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Vocal: Seetha Rajan; mridangam: N. Venkataraman; violin: Jayashankar Balan

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ET’S CONSIDER this brief but complete performance of the kriti “Banturiti.” Composed by Tyagaraja, this kriti illustrates many of the musical ideas discussed in the section on the Carnatic recital. After the briefest of alapanams in a ragam called Hamsanadam (scale c-e-f♯-g-b), the singer begins the kriti, which is in the most common talam, called Adi. This eight beat talam is indicated by a clap on samam (the first beat) and two other claps on beats 5 and 7; the three beats following samam are indicated by tapping the fingers of the right hand, starting with the little finger, on the palm of the left and “waving” the right hand, that is, turning it palm upward on the palm of the left hand, for beats 6 and 8. These claps and taps are not audible in the recording, but serve as a customary way to orient oneself in relation to the music. 1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

Clap

Tap

Tap

Tap

Clap

Wave

Clap

Wave

The eduppu or opening phrase of this song falls midway between beats 2 and 3—that is, after a clap and a tap of the little finger—and the performer must return to this point accurately whenever finishing a passage of niraval or kalpanaswaram (improvisation). Alternatively the performer may choose to conclude at samam. In this performance, the singer is accompanied by violin and mridangam (double-headed, barrelshaped drum); note that these instruments are briefly heard alone after the conclusion of the pallavi and anupallavi. When these instruments are next heard alone, about midway through the charanam, the singer is alternating niraval improvisation with the violinist; then the performance quickly proceeds to kalpanaswaram as she improvises by singing the note names—sa, ri, ga, ma, pa, dha, ni—before coming to a conclusion by returning to the pallavi theme. TIME

SECTION

MUSICAL EVENT

0:00–0:03

Alapanam: Listen for the way that the performer systematically, though quite rapidly, explores the individual pitches of the ragam, revealing its shape in the process.

Brief drone introduction by the violin.

0:03–0:31

The vocalist begins the alapanam, rapidly introducing the full shape of the ragam.

0:31–0:42

The vocalist and violinist exchange improvised melodic fragments as they complete the alapanam.

0:43–0:49

Pallavi: Listen for the clear articulation of the eduppu.

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Pallavi theme is introduced. The theme includes the melodic fragment called the eduppu that initiates the pallavi theme. The eduppu falls on beat 2.5 and is followed by the whole melodic phrase. (If you’re having trouble hearing the eduppu, listen for the return of the first word “Banturiti,” for example, at approximately

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TIME

SECTION

MUSICAL EVENT [00:49–00:50], and approximately every 5 seconds thereafter through the pallavi.)

0:49–0:55

The pallavi theme is repeated.

0:56–1:35

Repetitions of the pallavi theme with variations (called sangati).

1:35–1:40

Anupallavi: Listen for the introduction of the new melodic/rhythmic theme and for the return of the pallavi theme as a refrain.

The first half of the anupallavi phrase is introduced.

1:40–1:55

The full first phrase is introduced and repeated.

1:55–2:14

The second phrase of the anupallavi theme is introduced, followed by a repeat of the first and second phrases.

2:14–2:30

The pallavi theme returns as a refrain (listen for the eduppu beginning with “Banturiti”).

2:30–2:53

Charanam: Listen for the introduction of new charanam text, but sung to the established pallavi and anupallavi melodies. Listen also for the niraval and kalpanaswaram improvisation so prominent throughout this section of the performance.

Introduction of the charanam text, but performed by using the melodic materials of the pallavi theme.

2:54–3:24

Repeat of theme from the first phrase of the anupallavi, also with charanam text. This is followed by niraval improvisation on this theme.

3:24–4:02

The vocalist and the violinist are alternating their improvisations during this portion of the performance.

4:03–4:21

The niraval section of improvisation is concluded by the vocalist.

4:22–5:15

Introduction of kalpanaswaram improvisation. The voice and violin again alternate throughout this section.

5:15–5:55

Vocalist returns to anupallavi theme and then concludes with an ornamented pallavi refrain.

Three percussion instruments stand out in the South: the mridangam, a thin, cylinder-shaped drum played with the hands, which is usually the main drum in a Carnatic classical performance; the ghatam, a clay pot played with one’s fingers (sometimes a performance might include a mridangam and a  ghatam); and the thavil, a fatter, barrel-shaped drum played with one stick and one hand, associated with South Indian Hindu temples (the thavil is usually found along with the nadaswaram, a very long and loud reed instrument). It is important to stress the importance of the violin to Carnatic music, a European instrument that has long been indigenized and which is played in South India in a unique style. While in the North, the sarangi is the main bowed instrument, in the south this honor goes to the violin, which may be played as a

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MRIDANGAM Double-headed, barrel-shaped drum in Carnatic music.

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Acclaimed Carnatic singer and Magsaysay Award winner T. M. Krishna in concert in Bangalore. Source: Ajay Bhaskar/Alamy Stock Photo.

lead instrument or as an accompanying instrument during vocal performances. When the singer improvises, the violinist plays just behind, mimicking the vocal melody and providing a mellifluous backdrop for singing.

HINDU MUSIC AND DANCE: TEMPLES, GENDER, AND CASTE

DEVADASI Traditionally, a woman who was wed to a deity and danced for the deity in Hindu temples.

Throughout India, dance maintains a vitality, vibrancy, and cultural relevance perhaps unparalleled in the West. Music and dance should be understood as deeply integrated in South Asian thought and practice: though we are focusing on music in this chapter, it is important to realize that historically, South Asian musics often developed in contexts where dance was prevalent. In medieval South India, a practice grew up whereby women were married to gods in formal wedding ceremonies, after which it was their job to dance and sing for the deity in a Hindu temple. These women, called devadasis, had become controversial by the late nineteenth century. During that era of conservative Victorian mores, India’s British colonists looked down upon devadasis, defining them as “dancing girls” and assuming they were prostitutes. Due to the efforts of Hindu social reformers, some of whom came from devadasi families, being a devadasi was eventually outlawed in India, though today some devadasi communities do still exist. Scholars continue to debate devadasi history, but the current scholarly consensus is that they were treated unfairly. Rather than being in a destitute position, some devadasis enjoyed a kind of freedom not possible for some Hindu women of the day. They were allowed to have romantic partners outside the temple and many had children, but they did not face the stigma attached to widows, for their husbands (the gods) never die.

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In the early- to mid-twentieth century, an enormous transformation occurred in devadasis’ dance, which was then called sadir. Some upper-caste Brahmin women lamented that the most developed and highly esteemed dance tradition of South India was performed by women of “low” repute. A move was made to take sadir from the devadasis and transform it into a “respectable” dance suitable for Brahmin women. This was portrayed as a project of redemption, reclamation, and progress, a rescuing of the tradition so that it could be remade into the dance of the nation. The woman most responsible for this was Rukmini Devi (1904–1986), a choreographer and dancer. She initially faced skepticism and hostility from some upper-caste South Indians on account of her promoting what was then considered a degraded art form. She eventually succeeded, though the result was that the devadasis no longer had control of their tradition. The new version of the dance was called Bharata Natyam (“Indian Dance”), and Rukmini Devi emerged as one of its most well-known practitioners. In hindsight, we can see that both sadir and Bharata Natyam should be valued, and they differ from one another in many ways. A famous dancer in the old style was Tanjore Balasaraswati (1918–1984, often called “Bala” for short), a woman from a devadasi family who persisted and achieved much acclaim despite the changes to her dance form. Bala’s style is emblematic of the traditional sadir, as it is slower with more hand gestures and facial expressions (abhinaya). (One of India’s premier filmmakers, Satyajit Ray, made a 1976 documentary about Bala—simply called Bala—that can be found online and is well worth watching.) Bharata Natyam tends to be faster and involves much elaborate footwork; unlike the dance of the devadasis, Bharata Natyam dancers do not sing (both versions involve musicians sitting off to the side of the stage, with the dancer’s guru usually playing the role of singer). Bharata Natyam is now a global phenomenon, learned by many (especially South) Indian women. As mentioned above, according to the Hindu caste system there are some individuals who are considered so low and impure that they are technically outside the system. To put it simply, if the caste system stipulates that some groups are pure, some must be impure—otherwise there would be no such hierarchy. Such outcastes, who are often called “untouchables,” were and in some cases still are a downtrodden group in India. Historically, their job was to perform services for the middle and upper castes that those castes did not want to perform themselves. One of the untouchable communities, the Paraiyars (from whom we derive our English word “pariah”), performed drumming in a number of different contexts (including some auspicious occasions), but they are most associated with performing work that has to do with death. This includes drumming at funerals and scavenging dead cattle for drum skins. The Paraiyars traditionally lived in their own villages or on the outskirts of villages, were not

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Bharata Natyam dancer in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, South India. Source: Tibor Bognar/ Alamy Stock Photo. BHARATA NATYAM Major dance style in South India, derived from the dance of the devadasis. ABHINAYA Gestural interpretation of text in dance.

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LISTENING GUIDE 2.4

VIRIBONI – BHAIRAVI – KHANDA ATA – VARNAM

LISTEN

Vocal: M.S. Subbulakshmi

M

.S. SUBBULAKSHMI (1916–2004) was a famous South Indian vocalist from a devadasi family, whose father was a veena player. She was a child prodigy and became a star at a young age by making her first record at age ten and her first performance at thirteen. Eventually she acted in films (such as the 1945 film Meera, in which she plays a female medieval Hindu saint and poet from Rajasthan, northwest India) that made her famous all over India. As with some child stars and women celebrities in the West, Subbulakshmi’s life was partly controlled by outside forces. In a book on the classicization of Carnatic music, Amanda Weidman describes how “M.S.” (as she is called) married a Brahmin man who helped manage her public persona. Because M.S. was from a devadasi family, she had to be careful about how she appeared in public. The radio gave her a way to be present in public without having to appear physically in public all the time; Weidman notes that because women were associated with the domestic sphere, they appeared somehow untouched by colonialism and were perceived as channeling Indian authenticity. And M.S. was a powerful woman in her own right. She famously performed at the United Nations General Assembly in 1966, and in 1998, she would become the first woman to win India’s highest civilian honor, called Bharat Ratna. This performance is of a varnam, a complex type of song in Carnatic music in which vocalists demonstrate the major components of a ragam. This particular varnam is attributed to Pacchimiriam Adiappayya, the famous eighteenth-century musician who performed at the Thanjavur court, then a lively center for Carnatic music and dance. He was the teacher of one of the famed Carnatic Trinity of composers, Syama Sastri. Notice how M.S. begins this performance with long tones in a middle register that descend quite low, with the violin playing softly behind her and mirroring the subtle changes in her singing. Listen for the entrance of the mridangam (drum) at 1:21, as the violin continues to follow her melody. It takes until about 3:40 for her to sing in a higher register, shortly after which she begins quite virtuosic and fast improvisation (from 4:50 to 5:37), concluding with a fast cadence.

DALITS The politically correct name for the formally “untouchable” community called the Paraiyars, who traditionally performed the parai frame drum at funerals in South India and Sri Lanka.

allowed to wear shoes, and could not enter Hindu temples. In the early to mid-twentieth century, a reformer named B.R. Ambedkar promoted the rights of the untouchable groups; he helped usher in a change in their name, as they are now called Dalits (a word meaning “crushed” or “broken”)—a politically correct term that acknowledges the historically downtrodden situation of untouchable groups but which avoids the stigma associated with their original names. The Paraiyars (that is, Dalits) play a frame drum called parai. Ethnomusicologist Zoe Sherinian has documented a revival and resignification of the parai currently underway in South India: some Dalit groups now embrace the drum as a way to make money playing at staged events—a transformation of their ritual music into “culture” and heritage. Anti-caste and Dalit activists have begun to embrace the drum (originally a source of stigma) as a way to generate communal pride.

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BOLLYWOOD

EXPLORE Bollywood

Chances are you have heard of Bollywood, the Indian film industry based in Mumbai (India’s most populous city, formerly called Bombay). You may not know that Bollywood emerged out of a lively and already globally influential Indian musical theater scene in the nineteenth century. A small community of Persian descent, called the Parsis, has long lived in Mumbai, and in the last decades of the nineteenth century they set out on steamships to travel the Indian Ocean, performing a hodgepodge of music, theater, dance, and drama now referred to as “the Parsi theatre.” The style found its way to Sri Lanka, where it was adopted and turned into a local style called nurthi, and to Malaysia, where it gave birth to a musical theater form called bangsawan. These theater forms were a syncretic mix of Indian and sometimes Middle Eastern plots, and bangsawan in particular used a diverse set of actors including Indians, Arabs, Javanese, Malays, Ceylonese, Eurasians, and Chinese. The first Bollywood film productions grew directly out of the aesthetics of FILMIGIT the Parsi Theatre and a few comparable theater genres of the day. Film song Popular songs composed for (filmigit) emerged as an essential component of Bollywood films. At first, much of Indian films. this music was played in a “light classical” style that used tabla, sitar, harmonium, and flute, but over time Bollywood musics developed sounds that owed much to the global popular musics of any period (such as 1970s disco, or Michael Jackson in the 1980s), while retaining a unique Indian feel that, in turn, would influence the globe. Most Bollywood films are not about music per se but include song and dance sequences; occasionally, however, films use music and dance to conjure specific communities and eras. The 1960 film Mughal-e-Azam (The Emperor of the Mughals), for instance, includes scenes of dancers and musicians at the court of Mughal Emperor Akbar. Many films include renditions of folk and wedding songs; one example (chosen at random, for there are many) is the 2011 film Jugni, which includes modern versions of Punjabi folk songs. The 2011 film Rock Star is about a debaucherous Indian rock star who seemingly has it all, except for love, and includes rock music and the Sufi genre Qawwali. It is worth stressing that there are many regional cinemas throughout South Asia besides Bollywood. A good musical example is the 1968 Tamil film Thillana Mohanambal, which is in the Tamil language and tells the story of a nadaswaram player who falls in love with a Bharata Natyam dancer. As the Indian film industry was being established, a system emerged whereby films often passed through the same recording studios. Many of the songs were recorded by the same artists, even though they were lip synced by someone else onscreen. The singers who sing Bollywood songs but do not appear in the films themselves are called playback singers. One of the world’s most famous playback singers is Lata Mangeshkar (born 1929), Bollywood film poster of Mughal-e-Azam. who has recorded music for over a thousand Hindi films, and Source: Dinodia Photos/Alamy Stock Photo.

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sung in over 30 languages (mainly in Hindi and Marathi, a language from western India). Lata’s younger sister Asha Bhosle (born 1933) has recorded music for over a thousand films, supposedly for a total of over 12,000 songs. She was certified by the Guinness Book of World Records as the most recorded vocalist in history. If you have spent any time listening to old Bollywood songs, you may remember a high-pitched, nasal-sounding female voice—if so, it is probably one of these two singers you are imagining.

IMPORTANT GENRES AND REGIONAL STYLES: QAWWALI QAWWALI A genre of Sufi Muslim music popular throughout North India and Pakistan, that uses harmonium and tabla, involving the singing of Persian poems called ghazals. SUFISM Form of Islamic worship involving communal ritual ceremonies featuring participatory practices such as singing, chanting, music, and dance.

EXPLORE Qawwali Music GHAZAL A form of poetry associated with Perso-Arabic Muslim culture enthusiastically taken up by Urdu speakers in North India and Pakistan, where it is often sung. In Maritime Southeast Asia, a Malay musical genre named after this South Asian poetic tradition. EXPLORE Ghazal

Film songs are not the only popular music in South Asia—far from it. One genre that straddles our standard genre distinctions between folk, classical, sacred, and popular is Qawwali. The genre is a Sufi Muslim music that is spread throughout North India and Pakistan and contains many vernacular styles (and thus can also be considered a kind of folk music). It is also a national music, for it is now considered the national music of Pakistan, and yet it is also a popular music, as many Qawwali songs have become enormous hits—sometimes by appearing in Bollywood films! As mentioned above, Sufism is the mystical dimension of Islam. As with Islam itself, Sufism emerged in the Middle East towards the end of the first millennium ce. It spread rapidly in many directions, and Sufi orders (tariqa) were established in places like Egypt, Turkey, and North India (the famous Sufi poet Rumi was born of Persian parents in present-day Afghanistan, and his tomb is in the city of Konya, in present-day Turkey). A Sufi pir is a guide who instructs disciples how to follow the Sufi path; a key practice is dhikr or zikr (“remembrance”), which involves the chanting of the words for God but can also be taken as a generic name for some Sufi devotional practices. One kind of dhikr is sama (or sema), a word that means “listening” and refers to Sufi rituals involving music, dance, recitation, and poetry. Qawwali is a kind of sama that is traditionally held at Sufi saints’ shrines in North India and Pakistan. The genre has an important connection with Hindustani classical music. Qawwali as we know today it is said to have developed through the efforts of the legendary thirteenth century poet and musician, Amir Khusrao, who is widely considered one of the founders of both Qawwali and Hindustani classical music. Khusrao resided in Delhi and was a member of the Chisthi order (a Sufi tariqa with roots in Afghanistan); legend has it that he invented the tabla by taking the pakhawaj (a barrel-shaped drum) and splitting it in two. (This story is surely more of a legend than historical truth, but it demonstrates Khusrao’s importance to the Hindustani tradition.) Khusrao was a disciple of Sufi master Nizamuddin Auliya, and today you can visit the tombs of each at the Nizamuddin Auliya shrine in Delhi. Amir Khusrao is famous for poetry composed in Persian called ghazal (a poetic form consisting of rhyming couplets and a refrain), which still forms the content of many of the Qawwali songs sung today. A ghazal’s themes often revolve around unrequited love, not

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Scene at a Sufi shrine with Qawwali singers in Pakistan. Source: Christine Osborne Pictures/Alamy Stock Photo.

LISTENING GUIDE 2.5

QAWWALI*

LISTEN

“Na’at Sharif,” The Sabri Brothers

T

HIS SONG is a na’at, a type of poem that praises the Prophet Muhammad. It is sung here in Urdu, the national language of Pakistan (which is mutually intelligible with Hindi—the most widely spoken language in North India—but written in the Persian script with many Persian loanwords). The form of a na’at is similar to that of a ghazal in that it alternates between sections called sthayi (an initial phrase that is returned to throughout as a refrain) and antara (verse), usually in the following order: (1) sthayi, sthayi; (2) antara, sthayi; (3) antara, sthayi. The sthayi tune thus appears in the first line of the first couplet, after which it appears in the second line of each remaining couplet. The antara sections are where improvisation usually takes place; they are often sung solo, while the refrain (sthayi) is typically sung by a chorus of singers (in this example, though, the antara is sometimes also sung by a chorus, interspersed with solo improvisation; there is also some solo improvisation on the sthayi at the very beginning of the track, which may have occurred in light of a positive response from the audience). This particular na’at is by the famous Sufi poet Amir Khusrao (1253–1325). The track fades in with the song already in progress. What we hear first is a solo improvisation on the sthayi, followed by a group singing of the sthayi (0:55). The lyrics to the sthayi are, “Woh hai kya magar, woh hai kya nahin, yeh muhibb habib ki baat hai” (“But what is that? What isn’t it? This beloved is the [desired] object of the lover”). This is followed by the fourth verse of Khusrao’s poem, including: (1) an antara sung by a chorus, followed by solo improvisation, and then a return to a shtayi; (2) then we hear a fifth verse with * Thanks to Katherine Butler Schofield for help preparing this Listening Guide.

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an antara (“Tujhe”/“Dare”) and sthayi (“Jo nashin”/ “Yeh bare naseeb”) that is then repeated (“Tujhe”; “Jo nashin”); (3) followed by a new antara (or this may be just improvisation, it is hard to tell), ending with the sthayi. TIME

MUSICAL EVENT

0:00–0:55

Improvisation on the sthayi, “Woh hai kya magar, woh hai kya nahin, yeh muhibb habib ki baat hai” (“But what is that? What isn’t it? This beloved is the [desired] object of the lover”).

0:55–1:10

Clear rendition of the refrain. (sthayi)

1:10–2:07

Section of improvisation, where singers take turns improvising on text and the chorus repeating it. (antara)

2:07–2:30

Refrain (sthayi)

2:30–3:45

Another section of back and forth vocal improvisations on text. (antara)

3:45–4:14

Refrain (sthayi)

4:14–4:48

Another section of back and forth vocal improvisations on text. (antara)

4:48–5:08

Refrain (sthayi)

5:08–5:30

Another section of back and forth vocal improvisations on text. (antara)

5:30–end

Refrain (5:38: the tempo drastically slows down) (sthayi).

for a lover but for God. Qawwali singers take great care in repeating the lines of a ghazal, for doing so brings out different meanings. Nowadays, the standard instrumentation for Qawwali includes one or two harmoniums, a few drummers, a chorus of singers who sing and clap, and a lead vocalist (often one of the harmonium players acts as a secondary vocalist, trading off with the main singer). A Qawwali group is called a “Qawwali party,” and sometimes they are family bands. The most famous Qawwali singer, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan (1948–1997), was born in Faisalbad, Pakistan (his family had migrated their from a city in West Punjab, India, during Partition). Nusrat’s father was a qawwal (a singer of Qawwali), and from a young age, he sang in his family’s Qawwali party. After his father passed away in 1971, Nusrat became head of the Qawwali party and the group began appearing steadily on radio and television. During the world music craze of the 1980s, Nusrat appeared at the WOMAD festival in London (this is an organization founded by the British singer Peter Gabriel) and he eventually signed to Gabriel’s Real World Records. Nusrat became an enormous star, gracing the world’s largest stages; he even had moments of pop crossover, such as the two duets he sang with Pearl Jam’s vocalist Eddie Vedder on the soundtrack to the 1996 Hollywood film Dead Man Walking. Special mention must be made of Abida Parveen, a highly regarded female Pakistani Sufi singer. Active since the early 1970s, Parveen sings ghazals and kafi (another kind of Sufi poetry). She has become a pop icon in her own right, singing fusion music and collaborating with rock musicians, and appearing as a judge on Sur Kshetra, a singing talent show (like American Idol) that stages singing contests between Indian and Pakistani singers.

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IMPORTANT GENRES AND REGIONAL STYLES: AFGHANISTAN Given the political turmoil that tore Afghanistan apart in the past few decades, readers may be surprised to learn the country had a vibrant pop music scene in the years before it was devastated by violence. Ahmad Zahir (1946–1979) was the son of a doctor and health minister who was Prime Minister of Afghanistan in 1971–1972. Zahir is referred to as “the Afghan Elvis” because of his sideburns and Elvis-like swagger. He began playing in pop bands in high school (groups which included instruments like the piano, guitar, and congas) and then sang Persian poetry. He wound up recording over 30 albums that show an incredible range of sounds and lyrical themes, including social commentary and criticism of the government of his day. The music is hard to categorize; his voice typically has a lot of reverb placed on it, his tone and style (and lyrics) are often romantic, and the instrumentation often includes tabla and harmonium—but some of his songs use a drum set and have a rock vibe. Zahir died at 33 in mysterious circumstances, a car crash widely viewed as not being an accident. This was just after the Communist takeover of Afghanistan, which Zahir did not support (this would be one of many changes in governance Afghans would experience over the following decades). Zahir’s music is widely remembered by Afghans all over the world and now conjures a golden age for music in pre-war Afghanistan. While Herat is a city with a clear Tajik majority, Kabul is more ethnically mixed (with a majority Tajik population and large numbers of Hazaras and Pashtuns); by contrast, the city of Kandahar is Pashtun-majority (the Pashtuns are the ethnic majority of Afghanistan). Located in the west of the country, Herat looks more towards Iran for musical inspiration, while Kabul traditionally turned towards India. In the 1860s, Amir Sher Ali Khan of Kabul invited Hindustani musicians from hereditary Muslim families in North India to serve as his court musicians. While this is usually considered as the first wave of Hindustani musicians brought to Afghanistan to serve as court musicians, ethnomusicologist John Baily (2011: 15) has argued this was in fact the second wave, the earlier one coming during the rule of Dost Mohammed (1833–1863). The musicians brought by Amir Sher Ali Khan, it seems, were musicians who supplied music for female dancers. Whatever the case, by the early twentieth century, these Hindustani musicians were maintaining ties with Hindustani ustads through intermarriage and discipleship, and performing art music rather than dance music. A tradition called Klasik emerged, which is the Afghan version of Hindustani classical music. The term “Klasik” is obviously derived from the English term “classic”; Baily (1988: 74) notes the term in its narrowest usage was applied to vocal music, but he also met Afghans who used the term to mean “difficult.” The phrase “naghmeh-ye-klasik” (classical instrumental piece) refers to the performance of instrumental music typically on a rubab (plucked lute), with tabla accompaniment. While approaches and terminologies of Klasik and Hindustani musics are largely shared, there are differences in performance style.

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EXPLORE Afghanistan

KLASIK The classical music of Afghanistan, founded by Hindustani musicians from hereditary Muslim families who moved from North India to Kabul in the nineteenth century.

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Woman painting a mural of Ahmad Zahir. Source: AFP/ Getty Images.

Klasik is usually heard as having a rhythmic style all its own that distinguishes it from Hindustani music—call it a groove, an attitude, a way of strumming, plucking, and phrasing. In his book on the music of Herat, Baily documents the naghmeh-ye-klasik as having two sections, the first an instrumental solo in free rhythm, the second a fixed composition in Teentaal (16-beat cycle). The musical situation in Afghanistan changed drastically with the coming of the Taliban (a Pashto word meaning “students”). After the Communist takeover of Afghanistan in 1979, a proxy war was fought between the United States and Soviet Union that devastated the country. (As is well known, the group that fought against the Communists, which received funding from the  CIA, were called the mujahideen and included a young Osama bin Laden.) The Taliban trace their origins to this group of mujahideen, though they emerged in full in the Pasthun-majority city of Kandahar in the mid-1990s, eventually taking over the country in the years before the U.S. government’s response to the September 11, 2001 attacks. The Taliban are infamous for their ban on music, which they believe to be so sensual as to lead people into improper behavior. For justification they turned to the sayings of the Prophet Mohammed (called hadiths), one of which states, “Those who listen to music and songs in this world, will on the Day of Judgment have molten lead poured into their ears.” (It should be stressed that many Muslims disagree with the Taliban’s readings of the Qu’ran and hadiths on music.) Upon gaining control in Kabul in 1996, the Taliban issued an infamous decree stating that those with cassette tapes would be imprisoned. Musical instruments and cassettes (along with television sets) were hung in mock executions or publicly burned, people were publicly flogged and even had limbs amputated.

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Here we would do well to consider once again the work of ethnomusicologist John Baily, who has also written about the Taliban’s ban on music. Baily rightly points out that the Taliban are not the only people to have taken an extreme stance on music—though they are unquestionably extreme in their attitude. Baily notes, for instance, that he comes from a Christian Quaker background, and this group at one point in English history also had an extremely negative stance towards music. (I have already mentioned above that Theravada Buddhism looks down upon certain kinds of music, deeming it unacceptable for monks.) Baily emphasizes that the Taliban didn’t ban all music, since they allowed the frame drum, which is often played by women and was sanctioned by the Prophet Mohammed. They also developed their own genre, a kind of chanting that they forced some singers to sing at the radio station, with lyrics praising the Taliban, which was not considered music because it didn’t contain instruments. In Afghanistan, Baily emphasizes, “music” has historically meant “instrumental music,” so vocal chants are in a different category. For Baily, what the Taliban initiated was a competition between kinds of “music,” though undoubtedly the Taliban took an extreme position that had a terrible impact on the country’s musicians—many of these had already been persecuted during the period when the mujahideen had control of the country. Though the Taliban were driven out of Kabul during the 2001 invasion, they remain an active presence in the country, particularly in the Pashtun­ majority provinces in the south. Baily’s later work explored how hereditary professional musicians who used to live in the musicians’ quarter of Kabul moved to Peshawar, a Pashtun-majority city over the border in Pakistan, while more affluent and educated amateur musicians have moved to various sites known for Afghan migrant populations, such as Fremont, California. In 2011, a rock music festival was held in Kabul, the first such performance in over 30 years. The event was held inside the walls of the Bagh-e Babur (Gardens of Babur), a park that houses the tomb of the first Mughal Emperor, Babur, who had captured Kabul in 1504 and died in 1530. The festival returned in the years after its debut, growing in size to become categorized as an “alternative arts festival,” with bands from mainly Central Asian and European countries.

IMPORTANT GENRES AND REGIONAL STYLES: THE BAULS OF BENGAL It would be hard to find a community more different from the Taliban than the Bauls, a community of itinerant musicians in West Bengal (India) and Bangladesh who preach tolerance and oneness through music and dance. “Baul” is derived from the Sanskrit word vatula, meaning “mad,” “possessed,” “lashed by the air,” or “crazy.” The Bauls are not insane, for their madness is their passion for God. Rather than argue that one religious stance is purer than another, Bauls believe we each contain divine power inside us and should enjoy the world’s pleasures without becoming attached to them. They tend to wander and perform music for sustenance. The Bauls draw on aspects of Sufism and

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LISTEN Baul Song BAULS A community of itinerant musicians in West Bengal and Bangladesh who preach tolerance and oneness through music and dance.

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Parvathy Baul, a well-known Baul singer. Source: Jordi Vidal/Getty Images.

Vaishnavism (the worship of the Hindu god Vishnu), both of which are found in Bengal and Bangladesh, though technically speaking they do not belong to either tradition. Their philosophy centers on Sadhana, a spiritual practice aimed at transcending the ego. The Bauls are perhaps most famous for their music. Baul Sangeet (Baul music) involves singing and dancing, usually with an ektara (“one-string”)—a skinny neck with one string, attached to a small drum at its base. The Bauls use this instrument because it is simple and easy to make. They often wear jangles on their feet to keep rhythm when they dance. While Baul songs are learned orally and often improvised, Lalon Fakir (1774–1890) is a famous Baul whose songs are still known today. As with most Bauls, Lalon famously rejected belief in class, caste, and other such divisions between people. His poems were an inspiration to Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941), a towering Bengali intellectual figure and one of the fathers of the Indian independence movement. A playwright, novelist, and musician with a famously long beard, Tagore was the first (and to date, only) Indian to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, in 1913. His lyrics echoed many of the themes found in Lalon’s music, and today his music is recognized as a national treasure in India and considered the national music of Bangladesh. Tagore’s songs (Rabindra Sangeet, or Rabindra songs) are compiled into a book (Gitabitan, “garden of songs”), containing six sections on diverse themes like love, God, and celebrations. Tagore’s biggest influence on South Asian music probably stems from his founding of a school at Santiniketan, now called Visva-Bharati University. Many individuals came to Santiniketan in the mid-twentieth century from outside Bengal to study music. The school invested in music as the cultural heritage and lifeblood of various nations, such that the musicians who came there often went back to their home region and collected folk songs of their homeland. They also learned the techniques of Hindustani music and brought them back home. Perhaps the most important case of this was in Sri Lanka, where many of the island’s best mid-century musicians studied at Santiniketan and incorporated Hindustani influences into their music.

IMPORTANT GENRES AND REGIONAL STYLES: SRI LANKA In contrast to India, the musics of Sri Lanka are among the least known in the world. Ethnomusicologists have tended to pass the island by entirely, presumably because it is so much smaller than neighboring India. Yet Sri Lankan musics display a number of important themes in the history of South Asian musics that are present in India, but which are too easily forgotten about when discussing Indian musics: namely Buddhism, Portuguese colonialism, and the influence of Portuguese and African musics. It should be stressed that Sri Lanka is diverse, including a significant Tamil population whose traditional homeland is in the north and east; here we are concerned with the musics of the island’s ethnic

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majority, the Sinhalas (roughly 74% of the population), the vast majority of whom are Theravada Buddhist (meaning “Way of the Elders,” the oldest form of Buddhism that is now prominent in Sri Lanka and the mainland Southeast Asian countries of Burma, Thailand, Cambodia, and Laos). Perhaps one reason Sri Lanka has been ignored in ethnomusicology is that the view persists that Buddhism is an unmusical religion. It is hard to pinpoint exactly where this view comes from, but it probably arises in part from the tendency to associate “Buddhist music” with “what monks do”: Buddhist monks take a set of precepts, one of which says they should refrain from engaging in music and dance. Monks are usually depicted in silent meditation. Such a situation, though, should not lead one into thinking Theravada Buddhism looks down on all music and dance (this would be equivalent to defining “Christian music” as “what pastors do”). In fact, there are many traditions of lay Buddhist devotional music, and music that turns one’s mind towards the Triple Gem (the Buddha, his teachings of Dhamma, and the community of monks or Sangha) may be performed in Sri Lankan Buddhist temples and is deemed acceptable according to Buddhist orthodoxy. The berava are a caste of ritualists, dancers, and drummers (the word berava means “drummer,” but they perform many activities besides drumming). In all-night rituals, the berava give offerings of music, dance, food, incense, sung poetry, and other offerings to the Buddha and deities (the latter are the focus of the rituals). These events are held mainly in the south of the island and are split into three categories. Deva tovils are offerings to deities for the purpose of avoiding calamities like drought and chicken pox; these rituals are held primarily for two deities, the god Kataragama and the goddess Pattini. Sinhala Buddhist deities are placed in a rank according to their karma (as are people); the gods are boddhisattvas, or “Buddhas-to-Be.” Deities may be benign or malevolent, depending on their mood and whether they have received the proper offerings; for instance, while Pattini is cherished as a beneficent deity, she is traditionally considered the cause of chicken pox, so one ceremony is held for her for this (and other) purposes. The second set of rituals are yak tovils, which heal people suffering from demonic affliction—a traditional source of some illnesses in Sinhala society. In these rituals, demons are tricked by the offerings of music and dance: they are treated as if they are gods, a process that draws them to the ritual space, whereupon they appear as masked dancers are mocked by ritual specialists. During the appropriate time, a ritualist recites mantras (sacred utterances found throughout South Asia in a variety of languages) to eliminate their malignant glance (dishtiya) on the patient. The third category of Sinhala ritual is bali, a single ritual of offerings to the deities of the planets, which wards off the negative effects of certain planetary alignments. While some people have questioned whether berava rituals are “Buddhist,” they are performed by a group of Sinhala Buddhists (the berava), who conceive of the music, deities, and ritual through Buddhist aesthetics, mythology, and concepts. The Buddha receives offerings at the start of the rituals, including a drum composition called magul bera (“auspicious drumming”). Today, the drumming and dances from

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BERAVA The caste of Sinhala Buddhist drummers, dancers, and ritualists in Sri Lanka who perform all-night rituals to protect and heal communities.

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Dance students after a performance at a village school in southern Sri Lanka. Source: courtesy of the author, Jim Sykes.

this ritual genre are frequently performed as staged excerpts on concert stages, on special occasions, and for tourists at hotels. While women are still generally not allowed to perform in ritual contexts, many young women train as dancers and are dance teachers. Sri Lanka’s coasts were conquered by the Portuguese (1505–1658) and Dutch (1656–1796). The British (1796–1948) took control of the whole island in 1815. During the Portuguese times, a number of people fled inland and a kingdom in the interior, the Kandyan Kingdom (1469–1815), gained in power. The island’s most renowned Buddhist temple, the Temple of the Tooth (dalada maligawa), lies in Kandy; it contains the Buddha’s tooth relic, which has been historically associated with Sinhala Buddhist kingship. Each year during the month of esala (July/August), the Buddha’s tooth is placed on the back of an elephant in a grand procession during the festival called the Esala Perahera and marched around the city of Kandy, accompanied by hundreds of dancers and drummers. The national music and dance genre of Sri Lanka, Kandyan Dance, is derived from a berava “up country” (Kandyan) ritual called the Kohomba Kankariya and the vannams, a set of dances on Buddhist themes composed during the heyday of the Kandyan Kings. It is now widely agreed that the prevalence of Kandyan music and dance emerged in the years after the island’s independence because Kandy was the last region to be colonized by the British, and at the time, Kandyan traditions seemed “more authentic” and “more Buddhist” than those elsewhere on the island. The Kandyan drum is the gäta bera, a cylinder-shaped drum with a bulge in the middle played with the hands, whose two ends are not of equal size. One side uses monkey skin, giving it a high-pitched sound (“like a monkey,” musicians say). The low country drum (pahata rata beraya) is also

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cylinder-shaped and played with both hands, but the drum has a straight shape with skins made from a cow’s stomach, producing a low, booming tone (“like a cow,” musicians say). Similar to Indian traditions, students learn music and dance through apprenticeship, in this case with a gurunnaˉnse (esteemed teacher). Not only are the yak bera and gäta bera heavy, but in ritual performances, players stand upright with the drums and play vigorously, almost continuously, from about 7 pm to 9 am in the morning! The Portuguese brought African slaves to the island, likely from Mozambique. About four hours north of today’s capital, Colombo, a small group of Afro-Sri Lankans live in the village of Sirambiadiya. These villagers know the old songs and dances, sung in a Portuguese creole, and recently have begun donning Portuguese-style dress and singing and dancing for tourists, accompanied by percussion made of coconut shells. The mixture of Portuguese and African musics generated a music genre called baila, which continues to be popular on the island. The Burgher (Eurasian) version of the genre, still performed at Burgher weddings and social engagements in Batticaloa (Eastern Sri Lanka), uses a Portuguese creole and relies heavily on the violin. In the 1940s, a singer named Wally Bastiansz (a policeman by trade) recorded pop songs in the baila style that were huge hits. The genre became the dominant Sri Lankan pop music in the late twentieth century, accruing global pop influences like calypso and disco. One kind of baila  is called “non-stop” because record companies made cassettes (from the 1980s through the early 2000s) where the songs literally went non-stop, with  no pauses between songs (these were often played on busses at top volume). While the baila has been somewhat supplanted in recent years by rock, hip-hop, and a generic genre called “Sinhala Pop,” it remains a distinctly Sri Lankan music with Portuguese and African roots that can be traced back 400 years.

COKE TELEVISION: ROCK, HIP-HOP, AND THE NEW FOLK MUSIC In 2007, a show named Coke Studio (sponsored by Coca-Cola) launched in Brazil, where performances held on a concert stage are broadcast for the viewing public; a year later, the company started Coke Studio (Pakistan), which has a quite different format, with performances filmed in a recording studio. The show was a surprise success and is now widely credited as one of the most influential forums for South Asian musical invention in the past decade. What makes the show unique is its focus on live performances, musical collaborations, and its dedication to providing a wide representation of religious and ethnic communities from various regions across Pakistan, as well as a mix of genres, from rock and hip-hop to Qawwali and beyond. The show makes good use of social media, providing free videos and MP3s of each performance online. The Pakistani show became popular in India, and in 2011, an Indian version of the show was launched. Coke Studio (India) continues the same format, forging

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EXPLORE Coke Studio

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Siddharth Malhotra, Alia Bhatt, and Anusha Dandekar, along with other guests at the launch of the latest season of MTV Coke studio. Source: Milind Shelte/The India Today Group/ Getty Images.

unique collaborations between musicians. To take one example, at some point producers came across a YouTube clip of a 75-year-old singer, Sawan Khan, who is from a rural area of Rajasthan, northwestern India; they sent someone to Rajasthan to search for the singer, who was eventually flown to Mumbai, where he performed a duet in a recording studio with a rock singer, Clinton Cerejo. Apparently the Rajasthani singer Khan expressed doubts he could sing before the performance, since he had never been in an air-conditioned room before. In 2012, Coke Studio Bel 3arabi premiered (the Middle Eastern version of the program) and Coke Studio Africa has recently emerged in Tanzania, Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda, and Mozambique.

THE SOUTH ASIAN DIASPORA This chapter would not be complete without pointing towards the immensely large South Asian diaspora, who are influenced by South Asian musics and whose influence is felt in turn. As the East Indian community in the Caribbean is mentioned in the Caribbean chapter of this textbook, I will conclude here by speaking of the musics of two important South Asian diaspora communities, Tamils and Punjabis. In the nineteenth century, the British Empire encouraged (and in some cases, coerced) Indian laborers to work on plantations in their various colonies. Many of these laborers were from South Indian untouchable groups (see above), who certainly hoped for better opportunities outside India. Sadly, this was not always the case. The British set up tea and rubber plantations in places like the interior of Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), the island of Mauritius (western Indian

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Ocean), and colonial Malaya (now Malaysia and Singapore). The conditions were often squalid, and many laborers died. The system usually involved an English-speaking, comparatively elite Indian or Ceylonese Tamil (called a kangani), who would round up the laborers (who were usually South Indian Tamils), accompany them to the plantation, and act as a go-between on the plantation between the laborers and the British who owned the estate. These Indian Tamil workers often lived in housing estates called labor lines, which were sometimes decrepit. Happily, this system has now fallen apart. While Indians remain a sometimes-stigmatized minority in Malaysia and Singapore (roughly 8% and 9% of the populations respectively), they now have many more rights than they used to; in Mauritius, Indians now form the majority population (the music performed in Mauritius, Séga, is a hybrid African-Indian musics that is outside the bounds of this chapter). An interesting outcome of these (mainly Tamil) diasporic populations is that they are in touch with Tamil culture from Tamil Nadu, mainly through Tamil films and Hindu religious developments. A kind of feedback loop has emerged, where cultural developments are transmitted between Tamil Nadu and the Tamil diaspora, in multiple directions rather than from one to the other. One of the most exciting developments to come from this relationship is the emergence of a Hindu devotional drumming genre in Malaysia and Singapore, which has achieved some popularity in Tamil Nadu via its placement in South Indian films. The genre is called urumi melam, a term that refers to a drum ensemble played at Hindu festivals in Malaysia and Singapore. Because many of the first migrants to Southeast Asia were from untouchable groups, they did not want to keep the tradition of playing the stigmatized drum; over the generations, a gap emerged in that much of the drumming at Hindu festivals was on “found” percussion like bottles and trashcan lids, or on non-Indian instruments like timbales. Urumi melams filled this gap by taking traditional Indian percussion instruments and playing them in an exciting new way. The style first developed in the town of Ipoh, Malaysia, in the late 1980s, after which it spread like wildfire throughout Malaysia and Singapore. The groups use a drum traditionally associated with Dalits, called the urumi, which is played with one stick and one hand, and which generates a unique, low sound due to the pushing and rubbing of the stick against the drum; the ensemble also uses the thavil (the drum used in South Indian Hindu temples) and a few other percussion instruments. The music tends to be extremely fast, with singers using a portable loudspeaker—this is necessary because the musicians walk with their drums in Hindu processions. The groups are typically composed of Tamil Hindu young men. A main place they perform is Thaipusam, the largest Hindu festival in Southeast Asia (the festival has Indian roots but is arguably more important today in Southeast Asia than in India). At Thaipusam, devotees perform acts of penance to the god Murugan, showing their devotion to the deity in return for a favor that has been granted. Some devotees undergo extreme acts of penance, such as piercing their tongues or backs, walking on spikes, and walking for miles with huge contraptions encasing them with metal rods piercing their

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URUMI MELAM A drum ensemble in Malaysia and Singapore that plays fast, brash music to accompany Hindu devotees undergoing penance in Hindu festivals.

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Urumi melam. Source: CHEN WS/Shutterstock.com.

chests. These are called kavadis (a word that means “burden”); urumi groups accompany kavadi-bearers. The kavadi symbolizes the devotee’s burden that he or she wishes to eliminate through penance for the god Murugan. Urumi melams are now ubiquitous at Hindu festivals on Thaipusam and other Hindu festivals throughout Malaysia and Singapore. Perhaps the most widely heard example of an urumi drum is on the track “Bird Flu,” a song by the British-born, Sri Lankan Tamil rapper Maya Arulpragasam (better known as M.I.A.). Born in West London, Maya and her family moved to Jaffna in northern Sri Lanka when she was just six months old. Sri Lanka had many political problems at this time, and the island’s Tamil population was (and remains) highly disenfranchised. A rebel movement sprung up to fight for an independent homeland, which her father played a part in. The family moved back to London, where Maya gained fluency in English and pursued an interest in the visual arts. No one could have expected M.I.A. would blow up as much as she did. After achieving underground success, she signed to Interscope Records, and through her inclusion on the Slumdog Millionaire soundtrack, she became a global success and performed at the 2009 Grammy Awards ceremony. In retrospect, one of the interesting and frustrating aspects of M.I.A. is her engagement with Sri Lankan politics. When Sri Lanka’s civil war was careening towards its end in 2009—a tragic moment when perhaps 40,000 innocent Tamil civilians were used as human shields by the rebel group the LTTE, and slaughtered by the Sri Lankan government—she was the only Tamil with enough of a public profile to speak out about the atrocity. She appeared on talk shows pleading the world’s governments to intervene. Yet paradoxically, though she has tried to educate the public about the political situation in Sri Lanka, M.I.A. has also produced music videos that trade in a crass and obfuscating

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exoticism. For instance, her video for the song “Bad Girls” depicts women in burqas (an enveloping outer garment, including a head scarf), used mainly in the Middle East and adopted only recently in Sri Lanka by a small segment of the Muslim population. The women in the video are shown racing cars and holding guns in a dusty, unspecified country. Through such imagery, the video regurgitates traditionally Orientalist images of Middle Eastern women (in a song by a South Asian singer), along with stereotypical imagery of Islamic terrorists. Even if M.I.A. thought she was appropriating these images in order to resignify them, the effect is an undifferentiated mishmash. Nevertheless, M.I.A.’s story is a significant one, for perhaps no musician of South Asian descent has achieved such renown since Ravi Shankar (mentioned above). Last but not least, I turn backwards to a genre that achieved much success in the diaspora in the 1980s and 1990s—bhangra—and its surprising persistence in the present day. The Punjab is an area now split between northwest India and Pakistan. The Indian side of this divide is known for its Punjabi population that follows the monotheistic religion called Sikhism, which developed in the sixteenth century. Bhangra is descended from a Punjabi folk dance, traditionally associated with harvest festivals. In the 1980s, Punjabi DJs in the U.K. began spinning an electronic version of bhangra, a genre identifiable by its fast, fun, and unique beat (usually played on a large drum called dhol). The genre took off to become the first globally recognizable Indian diasporic popular music. By the 1990s, the British Punjabi musician and DJ Panjabi MC was fusing bhangra and hip-hop. Since then, the story of bhangra took an interesting turn. Over the past two decades, the music has found a home on college campuses in the United States. Many Punjabi and Indian associations at U.S. schools have formed bhangra dance troupes, where students form elaborate dance routines— sometimes in elaborate costumes, with much cheering from the crowd—to bhangra and various pop musics.

SUMMARY No one knows how the story of South Asian music will grow in the next few decades. Undoubtedly, new musicians and genres will emerge, in accordance with the development of new media. The material presented in this chapter is a “tihai” of sorts, a cadence to the musical innovation and changes that characterized three domains of South Asian musics in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries—classical, popular, and folk/religious traditions. What I have provided is a partial story that did not even consider countries that deserve broader musical recognition, namely Nepal, Bhutan, and the Maldives (the latter are a nation of islands off the southwest coast of India). I did not consider many regional Indian traditions, such as the widely known music of Rajasthan, nor did I consider certain Indian diasporic populations of growing global importance, such as the large community of Indians living in Dubai. Nevertheless, I hope this chapter can serve as a starting point for further exploration, for which I urge you to consider the following bibliography.

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BHANGRA Pop music of the South Asian diaspora combining aspects of hip-hop, trance, and remix techniques with a traditional folk dance music from the state of Punjab. EXPLORE Bhangra

REVIEW CHAPTER RESOURCES

KEY TERMS Alap Bhangra Bharata Natyam Carnatic Devadasis Filmigit Gharana Guru Hindustani Klasik Kriti Qawwali Raga Ragam-tanam-pallavi Rasa Shishya Sufism Tala The Berava The Trinity Urumi Melam Vedas

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BIBLIOGRAPHY Hindustani/North Indian Musics Alter, Andrew, Dancing with Devtas: Drums, Power, and Possession in the Music of Garhwal, North India (London: Ashgate, 2008); Bakhle, Janaki, Two Men and Music: Nationalism and the Making of an Indian Classical Tradition (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005); Bor, Joep, Françoise “Nalini” Delvoye, Jane Harvey, and Emmie te Nijenhuis, Eds.Hindustani Music: Thirteenth to Twentieth Centuries (New Delhi: Manohar Publishers & Distributors, 2010); Clayton, Martin, Time in Indian Music: Rhythm, Meter, and form in North Indian Rag Performance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000); Kippen, James, Gurudev’s Drumming Legacy: Music, Theory and Nationalism in the Mrdang Aur Tabla Vadanpaddhati of Gurudev Patwardhan (London: Ashgate, 2006); Kippen, James, The Tabla of Lucknow (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1988); Manuel, Peter, Cassette Culture: Popular Music and Culture in North India (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1993); Miner, Allyn, Sitar and Sarod in the 18th and 19th Centuries (Wilhelmshaven, Germany: F. Noetzel, 1993); Morcom, Anna, Illicit Worlds of Indian Dance: Cultures of Exclusion (London: Hurst, 2013); Neuman, Daniel, The Life of Music in North India: The Organization of an Artistic Tradition (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1990); Qureshi, Regula, Sufi Music of India and Pakistan: Sound, Context and Meaning in Qawwali (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006); Schofield, Katherine Butler, “Reviving the Golden Age Again: ‘Classicization’, Hindustani Music, and the Mughals,” Ethnomusicology 54(3) (2010), 484–517; Slawek, Stephen, Sitar Techniques in Nibaddh Forms (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidas, 1987); Wade, Bonnie C., Khyal: Creativity within North Indian Classical Music Tradition (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1984); Walker, Margaret, India’s Kathak Dance in Historical Perspective (London: Ashgate, 2014); Widdess, Richard, and R. Sanyal, Dhrupad: Tradition and Performance in Indian Music (London: Ashgate, 2004); Wolf, Richard, The Voice in the Drum: Music, Language, and Emotion in Islamicate South Asia (Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2014). Carnatic/South Indian Musics Allen, Matthew Harp, “Rewriting the Script for South Indian Dance,” The Drama Review, 41(3): 63–100; Nelson, David,Solkattu Manual: an Introduction to the Language of Rhythm in South India (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2008); Pesch, Ludwig, The Oxford Illustrated Companion to South Indian Classical Music (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2009); Peterson, Indira and Davesh Soneji, Eds. Performing Pasts: Reinventing the Arts in Modern South India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2008); Sherinian, Zoe, Tamil Folk Music as Dalit Liberation Theology (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2013); Soneji, Davesh, Unfinished Gestures: Devadasis, Memory, and Modernity in South India (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2012); Subramaniam, Lakshmi, From the Tanjore Court to the Madras Music Academy: A Social History of Music in South India (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011); Viswanathan, T., and Matthew Harp Allen, Eds., Music in South India: Experiencing Music, Expressing Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003); Weidman, Amanda, Singing the

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Classical, Voicing the Modern: The Postcolonial Politics of Music in South India (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010); Wolf, Richard, The Black Cow’s Footprint: Time, Space, and Music in the Lives of the Kotas of South India (Delhi: Permanent Black, 2005). Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal Baily, John, Music of Afghanistan: Professional Musicians in the City of Herat (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1988); Baily, John, Songs from Kabul: The Spiritual Music of Ustad Amir Mohammed (London: Ashgate, 2011); Baily, John, War, Exile, and the Music of Afghanistan: an Ethnographer’s Tale (London: Ashgate, 2015); Banerji, Debashish, Rabindranath Tagore in the 21st Century: Theoretical Renewals (New York: Springer, 2014); Capwell, Charles, Sailing the Sea of Love: The Music of the Bauls of Bengal (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago, 2010 [1986]); Doubleday, Veronica, “The Frame Drum in the Middle East: Women, Musical Instruments and Power,” Ethnomusicology, 43(1) (1999), 101–134; Field, Garrett, “Music for Inner Domains: Sinhala Song and the Arya and Hela Schools of Cultural Nationalism in Sri Lanka,” The Journal of Asian Studies, 73(4) (2014), 1043–1058; Stirr, Anna, “‘May I Elope’: Song Words, Social Status, and Honor among Female Nepali Dohori Singers,” Ethnomusicology, 54(2) (2010), 257–280; Sykes, Jim, The Musical Gift: Sonic Generosity in Post-War Sri Lanka (New York: Oxford, 2018); Widdess, Richard, Daˉphaˉ: Sacred singing in a South Asian city. Music, performance and meaning in Bhaktapur, Nepal (London: Ashgate, 2013). Bollywood, Popular Musics, Diaspora Bakrania, Falu, Bhangra and Asian Underground: South Asian Music and the Politics of Belonging in Britain (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006); Beaster-Jones, Jayson, Bollywood Sounds: The Cosmopolitan Mediations of Hindi Film Song (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014); Booth, Gregory, Behind the Curtain: Making Music in Mumbai’s Film Studios (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008); Booth, Gregory Booth and Bradley Shope, Eds. More than Bollywood: Studies in Indian Popular Music (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013); Gera Roy, Anjali, Bhangra Moves (London: Ashgate, 2010). General Surveys Arnold, Allison, Ed., South Asia, The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music, Vol. 5 (New York: Garland Publishing, 2000); Farrell, Gerry, Indian Music and the West (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997); Ghuman, Nalini, Resonances of the Raj: India in the English Musical Imagination, 1897–1947 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014); Jones, Jaime, “Music, History, and the Sacred in South Asia,” in Cambridge History of World Music, edited by Philip V. Bohlman, 202–222 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2013); Kalra, Virinder S., Sacred and Secular Musics: A Postcolonial Approach (London: Bloomsbury, 2015); Rowell, Lewis, Music and Musical Thought in Early India (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1992); Wolf, Richard, Theorizing the Local: Music, Practice, and Experience in South Asia and Beyond (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009).

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Taylor & Francis Taylor & Francis Group http://taylorandfrancis.com

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MUSIC OF THE MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICA Richard Jankowsky INTRODUCTION: A SUFI PERFORMANCE Every May, Sufis from all around northern Tunisia gather at the shrine of Sidi ‘Ali Hattab to kick off their 14-week summer ritual season of music and dance ceremonies. The shrine, built in honor of the thirteenth-century holy man Sidi ‘Ali Hattab, is one of the most important sites of pilgrimage and sacred music and dance performance in northern Tunisia. During these three spring days, many different Tunisian Sufi traditions—each with its own distinctive musical and ritual practices—converge to perform in the shrine’s vast courtyard in front of hundreds of visitors. While some of these visitors are Sufis, most are not. Instead, they are Tunisians from all walks of life who have come to the pilgrimage to socialize, partake in the food and spectacle, and to hear the music that, for many listeners, maintains a venerable Tunisian musical tradition that not only constitutes the historical source of other Tunisian musics, but also demonstrates the power that music has to act on individuals, most dramatically evidenced in the act of trance.

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CHAPTER

3 Inside the courtyard, I am seated on the ground alongside a circle of about 12 Sufi singers from the ‘Iˉsaˉwiyya (the Sufi order named after its founder, Sıˉdıˉ Ben ‘Iˉsaˉ) as they perform the “entrance liturgy,” the opening song of the musical part of their ritual called h.ad. ra. They begin by singing in unison: God’s magnificence never sleeps He is unique and eternal in his kingdom O God, keep deprivation and misery far from us. This praise of God and supplication for protection is then repeated by a line of dancers, dressed in white robes, holding hands, and stepping forward and bending at the waist in time with the music. The call and response between the circle of singers and the line of dancers continues:

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God’s magnificence never sleeps

The light filled my heart

O Master Ben ‘Iˉsa ˉ O sultan of the “intoxication”

The sweetness filled my heart.

HADRA . . The musical ritual ceremony of Sufis in North Africa.

BENDIˉR Handheld circular frame drum, often with snares. NAQQARAˉT Small kettledrums in North Africa.

These words, which open every ‘Iˉsaˉwiyya ceremony, not only praise God and his saint Sıˉdıˉ Ben ‘Iˉsaˉ, but also emphasize the capacity for ritual to keep away misery and create joy in the form of sweetness and light filling one’s heart, especially through the symbolic intoxication of music and trance. This “intoxication” is a focal point of the ceremony and a specialty of the ‘Iˉsaˉwiyya. After the entrance liturgy, the singers and dancers transition to the second ritual section, called mjarred, which involves songs accompanied by handclapping in a five-beat rhythm (another specialty of the ‘Iˉsaˉwiyya): clap-rest-clap-rest­ rest. The dancers, all in one line, step forward on the first clap and backwards on the second one, singing “huˉwa” (“He,” referring to God), in response to the circle of singers. As the mjarred section continues, some of the Sufis pick up a number of percussion instruments, including several handheld frame drums (bnaˉdir; sing. bendıˉr), a tambourine (taˉr), and a small pair of kettledrums (naqqaraˉt), and distribute them to the singers. The leader of the dancers approaches the singers,  stretches his arms outward, and brings his hands together in a dramatic clap that coincides with the thunderous first beat of the drums (see photo). This introduction of drums, which play the eight-beat rhythmic cycle called bta . ˉyhı . ˉ, marks the beginning of the trance or “intoxication” section of the ceremony. As the singing and dancing gradually increase in tempo, one person breaks free from the line of dancers. He takes a position closer to the singers and continues to dance, but in a more forceful fashion than the others, and removes his shirt. He is given two stalks of burning hay, which he holds in his hands as he enters into a trance dance, passing the flames underneath his bare, outstretched arms and across his chest, eliciting no apparent damage or pain. After several minutes of dancing with the flames, he drops the stalks on the ground and puts out the flames by slapping them with his bare hands. He resumes dancing for a few minutes before raising his hands in the air and trembling, a sign recognized by one of the Sufi leaders who holds the dancer, places a hand on his forehead, and recites Qur’anic verses into his ear to end the trance state. As the songs progress, other dancers occasionally leave the line in order to enter into trance. Some dance with fire or roll bareback over cactus stalks while others even eat shards of glass. Such profound states of trance are the domain of the few who are able and compelled to enter them; trancers are understood as possessing a special ability to communicate with the divine and are held in particular esteem in Islamic societies. These dramatic acts of trance, all supervised closely by the elder Sufi sheikhs, draw gasps and celebratory ululations from members of the ever-growing audience, which forms an enormous circle that envelops the Sufis. The crowd only moves back during the final trance of the ceremony, which

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Line of Tunisian Sufis dancing and drumming. Source: courtesy of the author, Richard Jankowsky.

involves a dancer in chains who breaks the restraints and escapes into the crowd, eliciting quick retreats by audience members. This dance is performed to the song called “Khammaˉr Yaˉ Khammaˉr” (Fill My Cup with Wine, O Cupbearer), which, like some classical Sufi poetry, explicitly likens the sacred experience to intoxication. The dancer eventually returns to the performance area to be carried away by his fellow Sufis, and the ceremony ends with the recitation of the faˉtih∙a, the opening verse of the Qur’an. After the ceremony, I spoke with several participants in order to get a better sense of the meaning of the ritual performance. I soon realized that there was no singular meaning, but rather a multiplicity of meanings and experiences. For example, when I discussed the ceremony with the singers, they spoke at length about the musical rules that dictate the progression of the ceremony. The ritual is structured, in part, in accordance with a strict succession of particular rhythms and techniques of intensification. The ceremony begins with no percussion at all, then progresses to a section in which the rhythm is provided by hand claps in the mjarred 5-beat rhythm, then the drums enter, commencing a sequence of rhythmic modulations: the 8-beat btayhı . . ˉ rhythm gives way to the 4-beat dkhuˉl braˉwil rhythm before the sequence concludes with the 2-beat hruˉbıˉ rhythm. After this cycle is repeated numerous times, the cycle of intensification ends with another 8-beat rhythm called khammaˉrıˉ that concludes the ceremony. These sonic techniques of transformation create a sense of large-scale intensification throughout the ceremony. First, each rhythmic modulation leads to a new rhythm that is faster and denser. Second, each section of the ceremony adds a layer of musical texture: a cappella singing is replaced by singing accompanied by handclaps, which then cedes to drum ensemble accompaniment for the most intense musical and trance episodes. Every song is also in a particular melodic mode ( .tabʿ, pronounced tub-aah), which implies not only a discrete, named set of pitches but also conventions of performance that shape how those pitches are used and organized in practice. Once the btayhı . . ˉ rhythm begins, the lead

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QUR’AN The holy book of Islam, considered the word of God.

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ARAB-ANDALUSIAN MUSIC Refers to a number of related art music traditions of North Africa that trace their origins to the Islamic courts of medieval Spain. ˉF MA’LU The Arab-Andalusian art music of Tunisia. SUFISM Form of Islamic worship involving communal ritual ceremonies featuring participatory practices such as singing, chanting, music, and dance. TAKHT Small traditional ensemble in the Arab world, typically including the `uˉd, naˉy, kamanja, and riqq. `UˉD Plucked lute of the Middle East, usually with four to six pairs of strings. NAˉY End-blown flute used throughout the Middle East and North Africa. TA . ˉR North African tambourine. KAMANJA Middle Eastern fiddle (kemençe in Turkish).

ʿI¯sa¯wiyya ritual – musical progression

Ritual stage

Percussion

Rhythmic mode

Entrance liturgy

None

None

Mjarred

Handclaps

Mjarred (5 beats)

Intoxication (takhmı¯r)

Drums Drums

Bt·a¯yh·¯ı (8 beats) Dkhuˉl Barwal (4 beats)

Drums

Hruˉbı¯ (2 beats)

Drums

Khamma¯rı¯ (8 beats)

singer must choose songs that remain in the same melodic mode of the previous songs; if not, the change indicates that the subsequent songs must be in the new melodic mode, and the group is prohibited from returning to the previous melodic mode. Table 3.1 shows the progression just described. The musicians’ concern with the details of musical performance reflects not only the artistic rigor of Sufi musical traditions in Tunisia, but also the specific role of ‘Iˉsaˉwiyya Sufis in preserving and developing the highly esteemed ArabAndalusian musical tradition that would later become the basis for Tunisia’s officially designated national music, called ma’luˉf. In the eighth century AD, Andalusia (i.e., the Iberian Peninsula consisting of most of present-day Spain and Portugal) became part of the Islamic Empire and experienced an age in which music and the arts flourished. During the Christian Reconquista of Andalusia, which ended in 1492, Jews and Muslims were expelled from the region, many of them landing in North Africa. This influx of Andalusians influenced the secular and religious musical landscape of Tunisia, giving rise to what came to be called the Arab Andalusian musical tradition of North Africa. Before the emergence of music schools in the twentieth century, Sufi orders were considered veritable conservatories of this tradition. Indeed, many of Tunisia’s most esteemed popular singers and musicians of the twentieth century were active in Sufism. Moreover, some ‘Iˉsaˉwiyya orders, especially in Tunisian areas where many Andalusians settled, also featured small takht ensembles comprised of an ‘uˉd (fretless lute, often spelled oud), naˉy (endblown flute), kamanja (fiddle), and .taˉr (tambourine) that would perform at weddings and after Sufi rituals to “cool down” the atmosphere. Whereas the musicians were often preoccupied with the musical details of performing, several dancers told me they focused on the meanings of the sung words and the potential for the music to carry them to another level of consciousness. Many dancers find profound spiritual comfort in the words, some of which were written as early as the thirteenth century. Thus, these ritual songs also keep history alive in the present by referencing people, places, and events from the past. Indeed, several ‘Iˉsaˉwiyya dancers told me they were proud to be following in their ancestors’ footsteps. They described their trance state actions as evoking the legend of Sıˉdıˉ Ben ‘Iˉsaˉ and his followers running out of food in the desert as they made their pilgrimage to Mecca in the sixteenth century. According to the legend, through divine intervention mediated by

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Sıˉdıˉ Ben ‘Iˉsaˉ, he and his followers were able to sustain themselves by eating whatever they found in the desert—including cactus, scorpions, and pieces of glass and metal—with no ill effects. Other dancers viewed trance as a test of the limits of the human body’s capacity for endurance and tolerance for suffering or as a form of physical and mental therapy, while others still understood it as a physical and spiritual need that they could not explain.

LISTENING GUIDE 3.1

‘ISAWIYYA MEDLEY

LISTEN

Recorded by the author in Tunis, Tunisia at the shrine of Sıˉdıˉ Belh.assen, June 27, 2014

T

HIS TRACK is a compilation of excerpts of Sufi ritual songs from the ‘Iˉsaˉwiyya Sufi order in Tunisia. The excerpts, which are presented in their prescribed ritual order, are meant to give the listener a sense of the rhythm-based ritual progression through the ceremony, in which intensification is achieved through acceleration, rhythmic modulation, and the addition of layers of sound, beginning with no percussion, moving on to handclaps, and ending with multiple drums. TIME

SECTION

MUSICAL EVENT

0:00–1:46

Entrance Liturgy section. Song selection: “‘Az.z.am ‘Az.z.am” (Magnificence, Magnificence).

A cappella singing without rhythmic accompaniment, but there is a strong sense of pulse. Listen for the vocalists singing together in unison, the long duration of the sung syllables at this slow tempo, and the occasional shouts of encouragement to praise the Prophet Muhammed.

The lyrics to this section of the song are: ‘az.z.am ‘az.z.am b-illaˉh laˉyanaˉm waˉh.id fıˉ maliki zaˉd niyaˉra, niyaˉra yaˉ mawlaˉ ben ‘Iˉsaˉ aˉl-h.abıˉb yaˉ sult.aˉn al-khammaˉra, al-khammaˉra 1:46–3:10

Mjarred section. Song selection: “al-Kaˉs Yduˉr” (The Cup Goes Round).

God’s magnificence never sleeps He is unique and eternal in his kingdom He increased the light in me O Master Ben ‘Iˉsaˉ, the beloved O sultan of the “intoxication”

After the entrance liturgy, the singers begin the mjarred section, which is distinguished by the 5-beat clapping rhythm of the same name: Clap-Rest-Clap-Rest-Rest. Listen for antiphonal singing as two groups of singers take turns singing their lines. Additionally, you’ll notice the line of dancers repeating the word “huˉwa” (“He,” referring to God) in the background.

The lyrics to this section include: al-kaˉs yduˉr, al-kaˉs yduˉr al-khamra l-ahl al-h.aqıˉqa yaˉ khammaˉr, w-yaˉ ‘ammaˉr isqıˉnaˉ khamra sharıˉqa yaˉ sattaˉr, yaˉ jabbaˉr ij alnaˉ min ahl al-h.aqıˉqa

The cup goes round, the cup goes round The wine of the people of truth O cupbearer, O pourer Pour us the wine of illumination O Veiler, O Almighty Make us the people of the truth continued

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TIME

SECTION

MUSICAL EVENT

3:10–3:43

End of Mjarred section. Song selection: “Anaˉ Bdayt Bismillah” (I Began in the Name of God).

At the end of the mjarred section the musicians sing a song that begins anaˉ bdayt bismillah al-h.ayy al-‘az.ˉı m (I Began in the Name of God the Living and Magnificent). Listen for increased intensification as the musicians speed up the tempo and transition, without stopping, to the trance section of the ritual at 3:43.

3:43–end

Takhmıˉr (trance; lit. “intoxication”) section. Song selection: “Nibtada Bismillah ‘Alim bi-Kul alMakaˉn.”

The first sounding of the drums announces the beginning of the takhmıˉr, or trance section, of the ceremony. This is the ritually appropriate time for individuals to move out of the line of dancers and trance dance near the singers. The rhythmic mode is an eightbeat pattern called bt.aˉyh.ˉı : dumm-dumm-dumm-takk-ess-dumm­ takk-ess. The singers begin the song with the words nibtada bismillah ‘alim bi-kul al-makaˉn (We begin in the name of God, knower of all places). Listen for unison singing, repetition of the sung melody, and the interplay between the frame drums and the tambourine.

Takht ensemble, Palais Jamal Hotel, Fez, Morocco. Source: robertharding/Alamy Stock Photo.

This performance, then, alludes to several themes that will be addressed in this chapter. Most obvious of these is music and affect, that is, the way music impacts emotional states and supports altered states of consciousness for listeners. However, the Sufi performance also illustrates other chapter themes, including music and religious expression, histories of displacement and migration, and the organization of musical performances through modality and progressive sequencing.

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OVERVIEW OF THE REGION This chapter on the music of the Middle East and North Africa stands apart from others in this textbook because the region is defined by its relative proximity to those defining it (namely, Europe and the United States). The phrase “Middle East” is a remnant of a geopolitical system of classification in which Western powers, for the purposes of handling international affairs, conceptualized Asia, the Indian subcontinent, and parts of North Africa as the Far East, the Middle East, and the Near East, although consensus on which countries should be included in each designation was rarely achieved and changed over time. While “Far East” and “Near East” have fallen out of common usage, “Middle East” remains in use both inside and outside the region, although definitions still vary. Most include the west Asian countries, both Arab (Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and the Palestinian Territories) and non-Arab (Iran, Israel, and Turkey), as well as the countries of the Arabian Peninsula (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and the United Arab Emirates). The countries of North Africa (particularly Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt) are commonly grouped together with the Middle East, owing to certain commonalities in language, religion, and culture developed during their shared experience as part of the Islamic and Ottoman Empires. Map of the Islamic Empire. Source: courtesy of the University of Texas Libraries, The University of Texas, Austin.

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Modern political map of North Africa and the Middle East. Source: MapMaster/CC/ Wikimedia Commons.

The ambiguity that emerges from defining the borders of the Middle East and North Africa has historical precedent in the expansion and contraction of a succession of empires that dominated the region. From about the third century to the mid-seventh century ce, the region was roughly divided into two empires: the Byzantine in the west and the Persian in the east. By the end of the eighth century, major parts of these polities had been replaced by a rapidly expanding Islamic Empire that would eventually rule most of the Arab world as well as Turkey and Persia (modern-day Iran), stretching as far east as India and as far west as al-Andalus (modern-day Spain and Portugal) in Europe. Throughout the extensive and multicultural Islamic Empire, there were no clear-cut boundaries between music cultures, and musicians traveled freely throughout the empire to learn neighboring styles and often borrowed from each other. Indeed, the important tenth-century treatise called The Book of Songs (kitaˉb al-aghaˉnıˉ) describes the travels of the innovative musician Ibn Muh∙ruz, who traveled to Medina (a city in modern-day Saudi Arabia), Persia (modern­ day Iran), and Syria to learn the musics of those places, combining those influences to compose Arabic songs in a new style (Sawa 2002). By the middle of the thirteenth century, the empire, facing military attacks on numerous fronts, had fractured into various local polities, giving rise to the Persian Empire in the east and a succession of Arab and Berber dynasties in west. By 1574, the Ottoman Empire, based in modern-day Turkey, expanded to include most of the Arabic-speaking world as well as the Balkans and part of Hungary. While the Christian Church survived the Ottoman Empire in Europe, by this time Islam had become the dominant religion of the rest of the region and Arabic, the sacred language of Islam, gave the region a shared language of religious and literary expression, existing alongside local Arabic vernaculars as well as Turkish and Persian in their respective lands.

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65

By the late nineteenth century, the Ottoman Empire had relinquished control of most Arab provinces to European powers, with France and the United Kingdom controlling most of the Middle East and North Africa, and Italy and Spain laying claim to some parts of North Africa. Anti-colonial movements in the twentieth century pushed the European empire out of the Middle East as most countries in the region achieved independence in the 1950s and 1960s. The establishment of Israel in 1948 had a profound political and geocultural impact on the region as it attracted hundreds of thousands of Jews living in Arab countries and largely dominated a succession of military conflicts with its neighbors. While the statehood of Palestine remains unsettled, much of the Palestinian population is spread throughout Israel, the Palestinian Territories, Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan. The expansion and contraction of empires through history have helped shape the region’s music culture, creating, as Philip V. Bohlman (n.d.) notes, a “top-down” unity of some fundamental musical principles that sometimes competes with a “bottom-up” musical diversity. This diversity takes many forms. Numerous languages are spoken in the Middle East and North Africa, including Arabic (Classical Arabic, Modern Standard Arabic, and the myriad local dialects), Armenian, the many varieties of Berber, as well as Hebrew, Kurdish, Persian, and Turkish, not to mention colonial languages (English, French, Spanish, Italian), liturgical languages (e.g., Aramaic and Syriac of Eastern Christian traditions), and languages no longer spoken locally, such as sub-Saharan dialects common during the era of slavery. While Islam is the most widespread religion, it is important to keep in mind not only that there are multiple styles of Islam (including Sunni and Shi’a traditions, as well as more localized approaches such as Ibadhism), but also other traditions with centuries of history in the region, such as Judaism, Christianity, and Zoroastrianism. The geocultural distinction between rural areas and cosmopolitan urban centers provides yet another layer of diversity within the region. As a region that touches three continents, the Middle East and North Africa also has been a historical site of exchange and intersection between Europe, Asia, and Africa. Major paths of exchange into and from the region include the trade ways of the Mediterranean Sea in the west, trans-Saharan trade routes to the south, and the Indian Ocean and Silk Road to the east. These routes have brought, for example, sub-Saharan instruments such as the gumbrıˉ into Arab countries, and the Middle Eastern tambourine, shawm, and lute into Europe (in fact, the name of the latter derives from the Arabic name of the instrument, al-‘uˉd). The musical landscape of the modern Middle East thus features layers of histories of intercultural contact. Today, in festivals and the media, on recordings, and in the digital circuits of exchange, localized village music may share a stage with classical art repertoires, and musicians on their way to perform a traditional healing ritual may listen to Arab hip-hop. The goal of this chapter, then, is twofold: to draw attention to this rich diversity of music cultures while identifying some common themes shared throughout the region.

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THEMES IN MIDDLE EASTERN AND NORTH AFRICAN MUSIC In this chapter, we will use four main themes to examine the musical traditions of Middle East and North Africa, including (1) modal organization (including musical sequencing and improvisation) and the significance of the voice; (2) music and affect, including various states of trance; (3) the dynamic relationship between music and religion; and (4) the musical experiences and contributions of migrants and minorities in the region. Along the way, additional themes will emerge, including philosophies and theories of music, the social meanings of particular musical instruments, the social status of musicians, and the relationship between music and politics. EXPLORE Maqaˉm

MELODIC MODES Named musical scales that have conventions for how the pitches are used in performance and may be associated with particular moods or extramusical associations. MAQAˉ M Melodic mode in the eastern Arab world. ˉ SABA . Melodic mode in North Africa.

MODAL ORGANIZATION Much of the music in the Middle East and North Africa is conceptualized according to melodic and rhythmic frameworks that musicologists refer to as “modes.” Melodic modes—called maqaˉm (in the eastern Arab world) or tab‘ . (in North Africa) in Arabic, makam in Turkish, and dastgah in Persian—are (1) discrete, named sets of pitches that (2) have rules or conventions for how those pitches are used and (3) have individual characters that may be related to specific moods, emotions, or extramusical associations. (To simplify matters, from now on I will use the term “maqaˉm” unless specifying a particular tradition.) The thirteenth-century theorist Safı . ˉ al-Dıˉn Urmawıˉ organized the melodic modes according to whether they inspired strength, courage, pleasure, or sadness. However, while extramusical associations played a role in describing modes in medieval Middle Eastern music theory, today there are but faint traces of past associations for some modes. Modes named after specific places, such as Hijaz (a region in Saudi Arabia) or Nahawand (a village in Turkey), are unlikely to evoke those geocultural referents for musicians and listeners. However, many musicians and listeners continue to associate some maqaˉms with emotions; many find raˉst to evoke pride and soundness, while saba . ˉ may imply sadness or lamentation. Certain performance genres are also associated with particular modes, but not in a restrictive way: bayyaˉtıˉ and .sabaˉ are common in folk music, and bayyaˉtıˉ may also evoke religiosity because traditionally the cantillation of the Qur’an begins and ends in this mode. Nahaˉwand and kuˉrd are common modes for love songs. The most explicit extramusical associations have been preserved by religious communities, such as the Turkish Jewish liturgy that reserves the use of certain modes for certain times of day, holidays, and even texts (indeed, there is a different maqaˉm associated with each of the Ten Commandments). Table 3.2 summarizes the extramusical associations of several Arab modes. There is also a modal framework for rhythms, called ˉıqaˉ‘ in Arabic and usul in Turkish.An ˉıqaˉ‘ or usul is a discrete, named rhythmic cycle defined by the structural relationship between two drum strokes: low (sounded by hitting the drum near the center) and high (sounded by hitting the drum near the rim). Musicians learn

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MUSIC OF THE MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICA TABLE 3.2

Eastern Arab modes and their effects

Rast: Nahaˉwand: Nawaˉ Athar: Bayyaˉtıˉ: Kuˉrd: H . ijaˉz: S. abaˉ: Sıˉka: ‘Ajam ‘Ushayran:

dignity and gravity; religious songs delicate and tender, suitable for sad or sentimental songs enchantment, sweetness, coquetry folk songs, Qur’anic recitation, Coptic church weddings extreme longing, delicate and sweet simplicity and prettiness; enchantment of the “east”; religious songs delicate and tender; sorrow unsettled (it begins on a half-flat); many folk melodies strength and sincere seriousness

Source: Marcus, 1989.

BOX 3.1 MUSICAL MODES IN PRACTICE

I

N THE MIDDLE EAST and North Africa, there are more pitches available to musicians than there are in the Euro-American musical system that staff notation was designed to represent. For example, while in many musics the only available note between D and E is E♭, in Arab, Turkish, and Persian music there are at least two additional notes, D-half-sharp (D♯) and E-half-flat (E♭). These notes are not available on the piano; they would fall in-between adjacent piano keys, just as they would fall in-between adjacent frets on a conventional guitar. Yet they are easily playable on instruments with moveable frets, such as the Turkish saz or the Arab buzuq, as well as fretless instruments such as the ‘uˉd. Indeed, the ‘uˉd is considered the “king of instruments” in the Arab world, where analysis of its tunings and finger positions has been used a basis for Arab music theory and philosophy since medieval times. Piano keys

D

Arab maqaˉm

D

E♭ D♯

E♭

E E♭

E

As in a Western scale, only one version of any note is allowed in a single maqaˉm; thus E♭ and E would not be part of the same maqaˉm. For instance, D E♭ F G A B♭ C D are the pitches of maqaˉm kuˉrd, while just slightly raising the E♭ to E♭ produces maqaˉm bayyaˉtˉı: D E♭ F G A B♭ C D. Yet the difference between the two maqaˉms is not limited to their use of different tunings of the note E. Rather, it is also how the pitches are used that differentiate them, as each maqaˉm has specific compositional and improvisational conventions that define them. For example, according to Scott Marcus (2002), maqaˉm bayyaˉtˉı has specific tunings for certain pitches (such as F and B♭, which are played slightly lower than their equaltempered counterparts). Pieces in this maqaˉm also tend to begin by emphasizing the middle of the scale (notes between F and B♭) and descend to the tonic D, as well as proceed through modulations to specific other maqaˉms in the higher register. These are not rules of composition per se, but are rather common conventions. These conventions are often featured in the taqsˉım—a solo improvisational piece in which performers can demonstrate their mastery of the maqaˉm—and art compositions such as the samaˉʿıˉ—an instrumental composition that often features a modulation to a new maqaˉm in different sections. these rhythms by memorizing these sequences of low and high sounds represented by the vocables “dumm” (rhymes with “room”) and “takk” for the low and high pitches, respectively, and “ess” for rests or silences between the duˉms and teks. For example, the 10-beat rhythm named samaˉʿıˉ thaqıˉl is represented as:

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LISTEN Taqaˉsıˉm Bayyaˉtıˉ and Sama‘ıˉ Bayyaˉtıˉ alAryan

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RHYTHMIC MODES Named rhythmic patterns played in repeated cycles; they have conventions for how they are played and may be associated with particular moods or extramusical associations. WASLA . Multi-sectional organizational scheme for a performance of eastern Arab music, featuring melodic modal unity and rhythmic modal diversity.

DASTGAH Melodic mode in Persia/Iran. EXPLORE Persian Classical Music

dumm

ess

ess

takk

ess

dumm

dumm

takk

ess

ess

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

Rhythms can also be understood as modal because they (1) are named, finite, and repeatable sets of sounds in time; (2) have conventions for how those sounds are played and varied; and (3) have extramusical associations that contribute to the “feel” of each rhythm. Samaˉʿıˉ thaqıˉl, for example, is considered to be a stately, austere rhythm, while maqsuˉm is considered lively and danceable. Others, such as s∙a‘ıˉdıˉ, are associated with particular geographic locations (in this case, the sa‘ı . ˉd region of Egypt). While Middle Eastern music theorists have identified hundreds of rhythmic modes with up to 176 beats, in common practice most have anywhere from 2 to 16 beats, though some repertoires, such as that of the Turkish Mevlevi Sufis or Ottoman art music, regularly use cycles of up to 28 beats or more (listening example 3.2 has a 64-beat rhythmic mode). In the context of performance, these patterns are repeated throughout a piece until a modulation to another rhythmic cycle is called for. Percussionists rarely play only the dumm-takk rhythmic skeleton represented in their vocables. Rather, they embellish the rhythms with ornamentations, especially on the “ess” beats. In Middle Eastern and North African art music traditions, entire performances are generally organized according to melodic and rhythmic mode relationships. The eastern Arab wasla, the North African nuˉba, the . Yemeni qawma and tawshıˉh, and the Turkish fasil, for instance, are all musical . traditions featuring sequences of pieces unified by melodic mode (maqaˉm) and diversified by rhythmic mode (ıˉqaˉ‘). In other words, in these performances, most pieces are in the same (or a related) maqaˉm, but they follow a sequence of different rhythms. These compound forms involve a mix of vocal and instrumental pieces, as well as precomposed and improvised sections (see Tables 3.3 and 3.4). They also often adhere to a logic of progression, such as moving from slower, more stately rhythms to faster dance tunes. The Iraqi fasl . is distinctive in that it adds a prescribed sequence of modulations and is based on a particular poetic text. The Persian dastgah, while also based on the concept of modes, provides a rather different approach to modality. There are 12 dastgah modes, but in performance each one is not presented as a sequence of songs and interludes TABLE 3.3

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

Typical format of the Egyptian Wasla .

‘uˉd taqaˉsıˉm duˉlaˉb or sama‘ıˉ naˉy or violin taqaˉsıˉm muwashshah. qaˉnuˉn taqaˉsıˉm layaˉlıˉ and mawwaˉl dawr

Instrumental, improvised Instrumental, pre-composed Instrumental, improvised Vocal, pre-composed Instrumental, improvised Vocal, improvised Vocal, mostly pre-composed

Source: Racy, 2003.

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MUSIC OF THE MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICA TABLE 3.4

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

69

Ottoman fasil

instrumental taksim pes¸rev vocal taksim (optional) two beste agˇir semai takim (small suite) of s¸arki yürük semai saz semai vocal taksim (optional)

Solo free-rhythm instrumental improvisation Instrumental prelude Solo free-rhythm vocal improvisation Vocal genre with long melody lines and numerous usul Vocal piece in the 10-beat agˇir semai rhythm Suite of urban folk songs Vocal piece in the 6-beat yürük semai rhythm Instrumental finale in the 10-beat aksak semai rhythm Solo free-rhythm vocal improvisation

Source: Feldman, 1996.

like  the traditions mentioned above. Rather, a dastgah performance is based on an extensive collection of individual melodies called guˉshe. Performers usually go through years of training memorizing these melodies but, crucially, must not  play those melodies in performance. Rather, the guˉshe melodies are used as musical themes that form the basis for vocal or instrumental improvisations.  These improvisations can vary greatly; they can be as short as  a  few minutes or as long as an hour. However, there is a general formal contour for  each performance: each guˉshe typically has a prescribed progression, beginning with the daramad (opening), and progressing through the owj (climax) to the forud (closing). In such a system, there is no “composer” of a piece other than the performer who creates something new in each performance. The Ottoman fasil crystallized in the eighteenth century as a sequence of pieces juxtaposing vocal and instrumental selections, solo and ensemble textures, precomposed and improvised compositions, and different rhythmic cycles. The fasil begins with an instrumental improvisation (taksim), a solo, freerhythm improvisation that introduces the makam of the fasil. This is followed by the pes¸rev, an instrumental prelude played by the entire ensemble. After an optional vocal taksim, the group plays a series of beste, a vocal genre utilizing numerous rhythmic cycles and featuring long melodic lines, which forms the centerpiece of the fasil. Next comes an agˇir semai, a vocal piece in the 10-beat rhythm of the same name, followed by a small suite of urban folk song melodies called .sarki. A 6-beat vocal yürük semai and an instrumental saz semai conclude the fasil (with an optional vocal taksim). It is not only art music that adheres to this kind of logic of progression. Many ritual traditions in the Middle East also feature prescribed sequences of pieces. As we saw at the beginning of this chapter, Sufi liturgies often proceed in a prescribed musical sequence that complements a hierarchical spiritual progression from God to the Prophet to saints and other spiritual figures. Similar logics underlie musical healing practices such as zaˉr, tambura, and stambe ˉlıˉ, discussed below. In other words, modal organizing principles may . intersect with religious considerations.

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GUˉSHE Melodic phrases that constitute the main musical pieces of the Persian dastgah.

FASIL Multi-sectional organizational scheme for a performance of Turkish art music, featuring melodic modal unity and rhythmic modal diversity. MAKAM Melodic mode in Turkey. PES¸REV Instrumental prelude in Turkish art music.

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LISTENING GUIDE 3.2

BUSELIK AS¸IRAN PES¸REV

LISTEN

Performed by the Dünya Ensemble

T

HIS IS A seventeenth-century instrumental prelude in makam Buselik As¸iran. The Turkish term for rhythmic mode is “usul”; the usul of this piece is called Havi, which has 64 fast beats. The original composer of this piece is unknown, but the melody was transcribed by Ali Ufki, the seventeenthcentury Polish captive of the Ottomans who converted to Islam and became a dragoman of the court. Instruments on this recording include: santur (hammered dulcimer), ud (fretless lute), ney (end-blown flute), rebab (spike fiddle), çeng (harp), nekkare (small kettledrums), and daire (frame drum with cymbals). The Havi rhythmic mode is represented in the table below. You will hear the percussion begin on beat 57, playing the end of the cycle (marked in bold face) as a lead-in to the beginning of the Mülâ­ zime (refrain). Low-pitched sounds (“dumm”) are indicated by the letter “D” and high-pitched sounds (“takk”) are represented by “T.” If you do not have a drum, you can play along on your thighs or a table by assigning the dumm sounds to one open hand and the takk sounds to your knuckles. 1

2

3

4

T

T

5

8

D 26

27

D 49

7

9

10

T

D 25

6

28

11

12

13

14

T

T

T

T

D

29

30

31

32

T

T

T

T

D

33

51

T

T

52

D

53

34

35

36

T

T

37

17

18

19

20

T

T

T

T

55

T

T

56

38

39

57

40

41

42

D

22

23

24

T

44

59

60

45

61

47

48

T

T

D 62

T D

46

T D

T D

43

T

D 58

21 D

T D

54

D

16

D

D

50

15

63

64

T

T

D

TIME

SECTION

MUSICAL EVENTS

0:00–0:19

Serhâne (first verse)

Introduction with ud and çeng.

0:19–0:56

Mülâzime (refrain)

Drums enter with an 8-beat lead-in. The 64-beat cycle begins at 0:20 with the entire ensemble entering on a shared low note (A).

0:56–1:31

Hâne-i Sani (second verse)

The rebab begins a new melody; at 1:15 the santur and çeng take over the melody.

1:31–1:50

Hâne-i Salis (third verse)

The nay flute is prominent here.

1:50–2:27

Mülâzime

The Mülâzime is repeated by the entire ensemble.

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Improvisation and the Voice Improvisation is an important element in musics of the Middle East and North Africa, where it can take the form of a stand-alone piece composed on the spot or as an introduction to, or an interlude within, a pre-composed piece. The Arab taqsıˉm (also spelled taqaˉsıˉm), Turkish taksim, and Persian avaz are all solo improvisational genres performed in a free, or non-pulsatile, rhythm. While the avaz may be vocal or instrumental, the taqsıˉm/taksim is instrumental. Musical improvisation in the region, as in other parts of the world, is not an exercise in absolute freedom in the sense that a performer may play anything that comes to mind. Rather, improvisation entails maintaining the balance of being faithful to the conventions of performing a particular mode and making an original musical statement within those conventions (listen to WEB/SPOTIFY example Taqaˉsıˉm Bayyaˉtıˉ/Samaʿıˉ Bayyaˉtıˉ al-Aryan). Vocal improvisation is especially prized. Arab music features two styles of non-metered vocal improvisation. Layaˉlıˉ refers to vocal improvisation on a single phrase, either “yaˉ layl” (O night), “yaˉ laylıˉ” (O my night), “layaˉlıˉ” (nights), or sometimes “yaˉ ‘ayn” (O eye) or “yaˉ ‘aynıˉ” (O my eye). Using these vocables, rather than a fixed text, enables singers to focus attention on the musical details of the improvisation, much like an instrumentalist performing a taqsıˉm, without concern for conveying textual meaning. Mawwaˉl, in contrast, refers to vocal improvisation of a poetic text. This compels singers to match their musical decisions to the rhythm and form of the poetry. In Iran, singers performing a vocal dastgah also select poetry to improvise on. They also incorporate a distinctive vocal technique called tahrı . ˉr, which involves an emotive, quasi-yodeling oscillation in pitch (see Web examples Arab Layaˉlıˉ and Persian Avaz). The primacy of the voice and language is also evident in the prestige and ubiquity of sung poetry in the region. Sung poetic forms, such as the pre-Islamic Arabic qas∙ˉıda, continue to enjoy great prestige in the Arab world, and the ability to spontaneously improvise creative poetic verses is highly valued. The musical expression of poetry takes many forms in the region. Epic singers create hours-long performances by reworking verses from an enormous corpus of memorized verses. Female poet-singers hired for wedding sing songs of passion, fertility, and collective history. Public song duels bring battling poets to the stage to give and endure a barrage of insults and riddles. And ordinary men and women comment on social issues or express personal sentiments through short, clever, spontaneous verses of sung poetry. Historically, the poetic traditions of the nomadic, desert-dwelling Bedouin served social functions beyond aesthetic enjoyment. They narrated history, conveyed news of recent events, and carried interpersonal messages. Bedouin poetry exalts Bedouin cultural ideals such as generosity, honor, and heroism, while also encouraging the expression of individual sentiments of love and other emotions in socially acceptable ways. The Sıˉrat Banıˉ Hilaˉl, arguably the most widely known epic poem in the region,

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USUL Rhythmic mode in Turkish music. ÇENG Classical Turkish harp. TAQSLˉM Solo instrumental improvisation. MAWWAˉL Solo vocal improvisation in the Arab world, usually involving the singing of a piece of poetry. QASL . ˉ DA A vocal piece based on classical Arabic poetic form of the same name. LISTEN Two Forms of Vocal Improvisation

Egyptian epic singer with rebaˉb. Source: David Taylor Photography/Alamy Stock Photo.

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REBAˉB Upright fiddle of one or two strings.

features tales of heroism, romance, and intrigue within a broader narrative that recounts the migration of the Bedouin from the Arabian Peninsula, their conquests as they spread westward, and their final defeat in Tunisia. Professional singers of this epic poem accompany themselves on the rebaˉb, a two-stringed fiddle. In some areas, such as the Egyptian village where Dwight Reynolds performed his research, this instrument has negative connotations that denigrate its performers as “beggar-poets,” a stereotype that the poets resist by portraying the rebab as “the respected tool of the epic-poet profession” by associating it with the heroes and warriors exalted in the epic (Reynolds 1995: 208). Sung poetry also provides women a forum for expressing their “veiled sentiments” (Abu-Lughod 1986) about love, marriage, family relationships, and society. Among Berber women in the rural Rif Mountain area of Morocco, composing and singing poetry is considered a virtue: “it is expected that each girl will be a poet just as it is expected that each woman will bake bread for her family” (Joseph 2003: 237). Groups of professional women poet-singers animate Berber weddings by singing ‘aita, . a tradition of sung poetry that recalls the deeds of heroes and extols the virtues of rural Berber society. It also takes license with traditional gender codes by sanctioning erotic images, the verbal abuse of unfit suitors, and social critique sometimes directed at government policy (ibid.). Sung poetry often serves as a strategic social device, enabling people to give voice to their feelings and concerns that might otherwise be considered unacceptable outside the formalized codes of musico-poetic performance.

MUSIC, HEALING, AND AFFECT In the Middle East and North Africa, music is understood to have a powerful impact on its listeners. It is a defining feature of religious and secular musical practices that produce at least three different kinds of altered states of consciousness, including: (1) a healing trance state that remedies psychological and physiological symptoms associated with affliction by spirits; (2) a religiously inspired trance state that brings listeners closer to the divine; and (3) a non­ religious, heightened emotional state called .tarab that is sometimes described as musical ecstasy. Medieval Muslim philosophers and practitioners of musical healing encouraged the playing of certain maqaˉms to treat psychological and physical ailments. Al-Kindi, the ninth-century scholar known as the first Muslim philosopher, mapped onto the four strings of the ‘uˉd the four humors of the body (blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile), four emotional attributes of accompanying poetry (bold, sad, soothing, cheerful), and the stages of human life (infancy, youth, middle age, old age), and prescribed certain combinations of strings (and their associated maqaˉms) be played to restore balance to a patient. While such approaches to music therapy are uncommon today (though there is renewed interest, especially in Turkey), there exist today numerous musical traditions in the region that are associated with healing, often through trance

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dancing. Such trances often take the form of spirit possession. Indigenous spirits known as jinn, which are mentioned in the Qur’an and therefore theologically sanctioned in Islam, may afflict humans and require certain rituals in order to be propitiated.

Music and Spirit Possession In addition to indigenous jinn, other spirits were brought from sub-Saharan Africa to the Middle East and North Africa, where communities of displaced sub-Saharans developed musical traditions to treat people who were afflicted by the spirits. These traditions—such as the zaˉr in Egypt, Iran, and the Arabian Peninsula, stambe ˉlıˉ in Tunisia, diwan in Algeria, and the gnaˉwa in Morocco— . produce trance to alleviate the suffering caused by those spirits. In these traditions, the cure results from the patient temporarily giving up his or her body to the spirit so that the spirit may enjoy the sound of its song and the movements of its dance. This process is performed within the appropriate confines of a formal ritual ceremony, where music is understood to attract the spirit to enter into the dancing host for the duration of a song. This, then, is not a process of exorcism, but rather of bringing back into balance the relationship between the world of humans and a population of unseen beings that coexist within it. Tunisian stambe ˉlıˉ is one such tradition that was created by displaced sub­ . Saharans, many of whom were descendants of slaves forced northward across the Sahara Desert into North Africa. While subsequent generations of this sub-Saharan diaspora were born Muslim and spoke Arabic as a native tongue, Stambe ˉlıˉ ensemble. Source: . courtesy of the author, Richard Jankowsky.

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GUMBRIˉ Three-stringed lute used in Tunisian stambeli. SHQAˉSHIQ Metal clappers used in Tunisian stambeli. MUʾADHDHIN (TURK. MUEZZIN) The person responsible for intoning the call to prayer (adhaˉn; Turk. Azan) five times per day in Islamic communities.

EXPLORE Music and Sufism

they also developed a spirit possession music tradition that maintained some instruments, musical aesthetics, and linguistic influences from sub-Saharan Africa. The stambe ˉlıˉ troupe is led by the gumbrıˉ, the three-stringed lute that is . said to “speak to the spirits.” The gumbrıˉ features three layers of sound: strings that are strummed, a drumhead that is struck with the fingers of the strumming hand, and a metallic plate nestled between the strings that ensures that every strum is accompanied by a subtle buzzing sound. The gumbri is flanked on either side by two to four musicians who sing and play metal clappers called shqaˉshiq. The lyrics they sing, some of which still feature words in Hausa, Kanuri, and other sub-Saharan languages, praise the tradition’s sub-Saharan spirits and Muslim saints and invite them to join the ceremony to heal the dancer and bless the gathering. Every spirit and saint in the stambe ˉlıˉ tradition has his or her own song. The . musicians perform a predetermined succession of songs, which means that every musical performance of stambe ˉlıˉ is also a presentation of the spiritual beings . of the tradition. While not every spirit or saint is conjured at every ceremony, each one does begin with songs for the Prophet Muhammad and Bilal, the first caller-to-prayer (muʾadhdhin) in Islam and one of the Prophet’s companions. Bilal was an African slave and one of the earliest converts to Islam; he is thus praised by many musical traditions developed by sub-Saharan communities in the Islamic world, who assert an African presence in Islam from its very origins. After these two songs, the musicians commence with the songs for the saints and spirits. Dancers, who often present with symptoms ranging from tremors and strange visions to partial deafness or paralysis, have gone through a process of diagnosis with a stambe ˉlıˉ healer, who determines which of the . dozens of stambe ˉlıˉ spirits has afflicted her. Once the spirit has been identified, . a ceremony is held to propitiate the spirit. Animal sacrifices (such as goat, lamb, chicken, or rooster, whose meat is then cooked for a communal meal) are made and the spirit’s preferred incense is burned. Most important, the musicians play the spirit’s preferred song while the patient dances and enters into a trance, opening herself up to possession by the spirit, who enjoys the rare opportunity to experience the world of humans by listening to music and dancing. The dance concludes once the spirit takes leave of the patient, who falls to the ground and often faints. This is a sign that the spirit has accepted the dancer’s offering of her body and that the spirit will not harm the patient again for at least a year, when another ceremony will be held.

Music and Sufism While some Sufi orders are known for alleviating individual suffering from spirit affliction, most of them engage in communal devotional rituals called h∙adra . that can carry listeners to a state of profound spiritual revelation or divine illumination. While Sufis are often called the “mystics” of Islam, it is important to note that they generally do not remove themselves from society or become ascetics. Indeed, Sufi orders (called .turuq, meaning “paths” or “ways”; sing.

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LISTENING GUIDE 3.3

“SIˉ‐DIˉ MARZUˉG”

LISTEN

Recorded by the author in Bizerte, Tunisia, May 1, 2009. Gumbrıˉ and lead vocals: Salah el-Ourgli; shqaˉshiq and vocals: Belh.assen Mihoub, Noureddine Soudani, and Noureddine Jouini

S

IˉDIˉ MARZUˉG” is a nuˉba (song) for the saint of the same name in the st.ambeˉlıˉ tradition of Tunisia. This recording was made at a trance healing ceremony in northern Tunisia. Note the short threestroke rhythm of the shqaˉshiq repeated incessantly throughout the song. Imagine yourself a trance dancer swaying forward and back to these rhythms for the entirety of the song. What might at first sound like an abrasive metallic clashing can become, over time and with empathetic listening, more like a reliable rhythmic cushion supporting your physical and psychic movements, always ready to welcome you back in case you wander too far.

“

TIME

MUSICAL EVENT

0:00–0:36

Brief instrumental introduction on the gumbrıˉ, ending with the shqaˉshiq entering at a moderate tempo as soon as the gumbrıˉ establishes a regular pulse. At 0:15 the gumbrıˉ introduces the main melody of the nuˉba.

0:36–5:37

Lead vocals begin, singing: saleˉm ‘alıˉh, saleˉm ‘alıˉh, saleˉm ‘alıˉh Sıˉdıˉ Marzuˉg (Greet him, greet him, greet Sidi Marzug). Gumbrıˉ plays ostinato figure under the lead vocals.

At 0:42

The response singers enter, singing: saleˉm ‘alıˉh, saleˉm ‘alıˉh, saleˉm ‘alıˉh Baˉbaˉ Marzuˉg yaˉ muˉll al-dıˉwaˉn (greet him, greet him, greet Father Marzug, master of the ceremony) as the gumbrıˉ plays the main melody.

Call and response continues for the next several minutes. Notice the lead singer is free to alter the lyrics, often through substitution. Response singers also occasionally interject with shouts such as “Allah Allah.” At 3:55

The lead singer raises the register of his singing, and adds emphatic plucks on the gumbrıˉ.

5:37–6:57

New, shorter repeated theme introduced.

At 6:16

The main gumbrıˉ melody returns, but at faster tempo and without vocals. Tempo continues to increase gradually until the end.

.tarıˉqa) have been important social institutions throughout the Islamic world, providing social services such as education, dispute arbitration, and aid to the poor in addition to religious ceremonies. Most Sufi orders perform some form of dhikr (Turkish: zikr; lit.: “remembrance”), a devotional practice that combines bodily movement and special breathing techniques with the communal chanting of the names or attributes of God. Some, such as the Shaˉdhiliyya of Egypt, only engage in chanting and unaccompanied singing, while others, for example the Sulaˉmiyya of Tunisia, add percussion. Some traditions, such as the Tunisian ‘Iˉsawiyya, use wind instruments such as the zukra, while others, for example the Turkish Alevi, use stringed instruments like the bagˇlama. The most well-known Sufi tradition is that of the Mevlevi (the so-called Whirling Dervishes), which involves a highly choreographed spinning dance. Although the Mevlevi have become iconic of Sufism, they are in fact one of the

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TARI . ˉQA A Sufi order (lit. “path” or “way”). DHIKR A Sufi devotional practice involving the chanting of names of God. MEVLEVI Turkish Sufi order in which a whirling dance and the preservation of Ottoman classical music play important roles.

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Ottoman Mevlevi music ensemble. Source: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images.

SAMAˉʾ The act of listening, associated particularly with Sufism.

most idiosyncratic forms of Sufism because they dance to the stately, gentle melodies and rhythms of an Ottoman classical music ensemble featuring ney (reed flute), kanun (plucked zither), tanbur (fretted lute), kemençe (upright, bowed lute), and kudüm (kettledrum). Mevlevi Sufism influenced the larger Ottoman music culture in numerous ways. Mevlevi lodges served as conservatories of music, transmitting the principles of Ottoman art music into the twentieth century and in some regions of the empire were the only social institutions teaching and performing art music repertoires. Their concerts, moreover, were designed to be both ritually effective for participants and aesthetically pleasing for an audience of non-members, including non-Muslims and women. Mevlevi lodges were constructed with a gallery designated for a nonparticipating audience and until the nineteenth century provided the only public art music concerts in Turkey (Feldman 1996). Medieval Muslim philosophers and theologians debated the appropriateness of using music to achieve higher states of spiritual consciousness. The strongest proponents argued that music was the only known way to get close enough to God to have divine secrets revealed, while the strongest opponents argued that the devout should only be listening to the recitation of the Qur’an; these latter considered any other auditory practices to be bidaˉ’, or religiously unlawful innovations, that drive the listener away from God. Between these two extremes was the influential argument of Sufis such as al-Ghazzali, who maintained that while samaˉʾ was indeed the most effective means of achieving divine inspiration, it needed to be performed at the right time and place and in the right company—that is, with other trained Sufis—to ensure that the exercise remained spiritual in nature. This debate is interesting to students of world music for two reasons. First, it is an argument about music focused explicitly on the act of listening to music,

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placing the listener at the center of the inquiry. In the world of Islam, listening is an active endeavor with ethical implications. Music is understood to have the power to bring listeners closer to the divine and toward right moral action, or away from the divine and toward questionable moral action. Second, all sides of the argument have in common the deep conviction that music has a profound power over its listeners and must be treated with great care. In this context, music has the capacity to affect the human soul, whether by tapping into a wide array of emotions or granting access to otherwise unattainable states of spiritual consciousness.

Tarab (Musical Enchantment) . Music’s capacity to profoundly transform consciousness is not only relegated to ritual and religious traditions. Traditional Arab music is associated with the production of .tarab, a heightened state of emotion that is often described as a kind of musical ecstasy brought about through deep listening. Tarab, which is mainly . associated with urban musics of cities such as Cairo, Damascus, Aleppo, Jerusalem, and Beirut, is an elusive term with no exact equivalent in English. Under optimal tarab conditions, the listener . may be emotionally transformed and may respond physically at musically appropriate moments with silence and stillness, verbal exclamations, hand-clapping, or even weeping. Ali Jihad Racy, the prominent musician and ethnomusicologist of Arab music, notes that the maqaˉm concept is central to tarab: musicians must not only firmly establish the pitches of the . maqaˉm, but must also internalize the characteristics of the mode to the point that they become “captivated” by the maqaˉm and even “haunted” by its tonic pitch (Racy 2003). Through repetition, variation, improvisation, and creative engagement with song lyrics, musicians bring their listeners through a journey full of musical tension and release, suspense, climaxes, and unexpected detours. A live performance by the legendary Egyptian singer Umm Kulthuˉm illustrates some of the conditions for cultivating tarab (see Track 3.4 for a . detailed description). Umm Kulthuˉm was, hands-down, the most renowned and successful singer in the twentieth-century Arab world: to this day she is held up as a model of artistry and originality that embodies the ideals of Arab music performance. Although her songs were some of the most popular of her time, they were based on the modal principles and improvisatory conventions of classical Arab music, demonstrating that in the Middle East, the line between “art” and “popular” music can be a blurry one. It is difficult to convey the extent of her immense popularity, but photographs of the millions of Egyptians who flooded the streets of Cairo for her funeral in 1975 or the fact that her songs can still be heard regularly in taxis and cafes throughout the Middle East and North Africa (and even on streets bearing her name) are suggestive. For 40 years she gave Thursday evening concerts in Cairo that were broadcast throughout the

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Umm Kulthuˉm. Source: Howard Sochurek/Getty Images. EXPLORE Umm Kulthuˉm TARAB . Heightened state of emotion or musical enchantment associated with listening to traditional Arab music.

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ˉN QAˉNU Plucked zither (spelled kanun in Turkey). ˉ KA DARBU A goblet-shaped drum.

region; anecdotes from the period abound with stories of life coming to a virtual halt as listeners tuned into these much-anticipated live radio broadcasts. One song that was performed at one of her monthly concerts and entertained millions of listeners at home and in cafés is “Ghannıˉlıˉ Shwaya Shwaya” (“Sing to Me a Little”), composed by Zakariyya Ahmed with lyrics by Bayram al­ Tuˉnsıˉ. The ensemble backing Umm Kulthuˉm includes orchestral instruments such as the cello, string bass, and numerous violins, as well as the traditional instrumental core of qaˉnuˉn (plucked zither), ‘uˉd, naˉy, darbuˉka (goblet-shaped drum), and riqq (tambourine). Typically, the entire orchestra, called a firqa, plays in unison for the introduction and some instrumental interludes, while only traditional takht instruments accompany the vocalist during the more improvisatory sections. Spontaneity is an important element of the performance, and is necessary for cultivating the sense of anticipation and excitement that characterizes t. arab. Listening example 3.4 illustrates how Umm Kulthuˉm circles back to particular lines, phrases, or even single words to repeat as she sets them to newly improvised vocal melodies. At the end of any given section of a song, her accompanying musicians often did not know whether she would move on to the next section, repeat the current line, or return to a previous line in this or a preceding section. There is thus often an audible sense of uncertainty in between sections as the musicians wait to see where the singer will take them. Rather than indicating professional unpreparedness, such musical moments of uncertainty are crucial to creating the ebbs and flows of tension and release, and show that the musicians must be highly prepared to go to or return to any part of the song at any time. The lyrics of this song are about the power of music itself. Umm Kulthuˉm applies extensive techniques of repetition and variation when she arrives at the evocative line “music is the life of the soul” that begins the second stanza. It is at this point that the song modulates from maqaˉm suznaˉk to maqaˉm bayyaˉtıˉ. Bayyaˉtıˉ is a very common melodic mode that is especially prominent in religious music and the recitation of the Qur’an, adding another potential layer of aural associations to the sung text. Her virtuosic melodic variations on the words and phrases she chooses to repeat—especially al-maghna (“music”), hayaˉt al-ruˉh. (“life of the soul”), and wa-tdaˉwıˉ (“it heals”)—are often met with approving exclamations and sighs of appreciation that are typical of tarab listening . experiences.

MUSIC AND RELIGION The diversity, widespread popularity, and historical depth of the musical traditions of the region that we have just encountered, along with the popular and ritual traditions we will read about below, all deny the common misconception that music is forbidden in Islam. The actions of some religious extremists, such as the ban on music and the burning of musical instruments by the Taliban regime in Afghanistan in the 1990s, should not be taken as representative of

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LISTENING GUIDE 3.4

“GHANNIˉLIˉ SHWAYA SHWAYA”

LISTEN

Performed by Umm Kulthuˉ m, Music: Zakariya Ahmed, Lyrics: Bayram al-Tunsi

T

HIS RECORDING illustrates several aspects of how t.arab in Arab music cultivates anticipation through spontaneity in live performance. The characteristics of t.arab, or “musical enchantment,” include performer–audience interaction, modulation, varying of textures, and repetition and variation. The lyrics to this song amplify the musical affect of the t.arab experience by emphasizing the power of music. This example is the first eight minutes of a 22-minute live performance of the song by Umm Kulthuˉm from one of her famous Thursday night Cairo concerts. Umm Kulthuˉm’s orchestra (firqa) features numerous violins, cellos, and other stringed instruments, in addition to the instruments of the takht (‘uˉd, qaˉnuˉn, naˉy, and riqq). Notice how the entire firqa only plays together in between vocal sections; during the vocal sections only the traditional instruments of the takht support the singer. Notice also how the uncertainty of the musicians generates anticipation and excitement; they, too, are sometimes unsure of which musical choices Umm Kulthuˉm will make in her interpretation of the song. The song is in maqaˉm suznaˉk (scale: C D E♭ F G A♭ B C), with a modulation (at 3:23) to maqaˉm bayyaˉtˉı” on G (G A♭ B♭ C D E♭ F G). The selection begins with an ıˉqaˉʿ called maqsuˉm [D T – T D – T –] played during the ensemble passages, with the sparser ıˉqaˉʿ called wahda [D – – T – – T –] played during the vocal sections. TIME

SECTION

MUSICAL EVENTS

0:00–0:18

Instrumental Introduction

Entire firqa plays melody.

0:18–1:22

First verse

Umm Kulthuˉm sings the first line to the same melody as the instrumental introduction. The lyrics of the first line are: ghannıˉlıˉ shwaya shwaya, ghannıˉlıˉ wa- khudh ‘aynaya (sing to me a little and enchant me). She repeats this line a second time; between vocal sections the entire firqa repeats the melody.

1:22–1:50

The first verse continues with the lyrics: khalıˉnıˉ aquˉl alh.aˉn titmaˉyil lahaˉ as-saˉm‘aıˉn wa-tarafrif lahaˉ al-aghs.aˉn an-nargis ma‘ al-yaˉsmıˉn wa-tsaˉfir ma‘haˉ ar-rukbaˉn t.awin al-bawaˉdıˉ t.ayy Let me sing the melody that makes the listeners sway And the branches of the narcissus and jasmine trees flutter And travels with the Bedouin caravans crossing the desert

1:50–2:01

Qafla (octave descent) on last line of stanza: shwaya shwaya, shwaya shwaya ghannıˉlıˉ ghannıˉ, wa-khudh ‘aynayya Just a little, just a little, sing to me, sing and enchant me

2:01–2:15

The firqa plays the main melody again as the crowd cheers.

2:15–2:54

Umm Kulthuˉm decides to return to line 2 of the first verse (khalıˉnıˉ . . .), which she repeats twice before finishing the rest of the stanza.

2:54–3:23

The firqa repeats the main melody; slight hesitation due to uncertainty over where Umm Kulthuˉm will go next is audible at 3:09. continued

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TIME

SECTION

MUSICAL EVENTS

3:23–5:32

Second verse, line 1

Umm Kulthuˉm decides to continue on to the second verse, which begins with a dramatic decrease in tempo and a modulation to maˉqam bayyaˉtıˉ on G. The lyrics of this section emphasize the power of music, and Umm Kulthuˉm focuses on the first line, with its message that “music is the life of the soul, listening to it cures the ailing” (al-maghnaˉ h.ayat al-ruˉh., yasmahaˉ al-’alıˉl tishfıˉh). At 4:05 the musicians sing as a chorus responding to Umm Kulthuˉm, extending the repetition of this line of poetry and pleasing the crowd.

5:32–6:24

Second verse, line 2

Umm Kulthuˉm proceeds to the second line of the verse: wa-tdaˉwıˉ kabid magruˉh. (it [music] heals the broken heart), alternating it with repetitions of line 1. The firqa quiets down and slows down to give her space to vary her repetitions through improvisation. At 6:01, notice how Umm Kulthuˉm’s repetitions and variations, particularly on the words tishfıˉh (it cures) and wa-tdaˉwıˉ (and it heals), elicit responses of appreciation and encouragement from the audience.

6:24–8:00

ˉ SIˉQAˉ MU Music, but refers mainly to secular and instrumental musical traditions and the object of study for Middle Eastern music theorists (Persian: Muˉsıˉqaˉ). QIRAˉʾ Recitation of the Qur'an. TAJWIˉD Style of reciting the Qur'an based on principles of maqaˉm.

A return to the beginning of the second verse, followed by more repetition and variation on the words wa-tdaˉwıˉ (and it heals), followed by completion of the entire verse before the return of the qafla closes the section.

Muslim attitudes toward music. Indeed, only the Qur’an can indicate what is forbidden (h∙aram), and there is no mention of music in the Qur’an. There is a wide range of attitudes about the role of music in social and religious life, and most share the presumption that music has a power to lead individuals toward or away from the divine. To fully appreciate the complexity of the matter, we should note that the Western concept of “music” does not translate cleanly onto many traditions in the Middle East, where there are roughly four categories of sonic expression: muˉsıˉqaˉ, ghinaˉ‘, samaˉʾ, and qiraˉʾ. The term muˉsıˉqaˉ (muˉsıˉqaˉ in Persian), borrowed from the Greek, historically has a much narrower meaning in the Middle East, where it refers mainly to secular and instrumental musical traditions, as well as the object of the scholarly study of art music. Ghinaˉ‘ refers to vocal genres of music. Samaˉ‘, discussed earlier in the context of Sufism, is framed in terms of the listener’s responsibility to listen with moral acumen. Qiraˉʾ refers to recitation of the Qur’an, of which there are two kinds: tartıˉl, a plain, verbal chanting of the text mainly used in private devotion, and tajwıˉd, the highly ornamented, melodic recitation of the text that is based on the principles of maqaˉm. The Qur’an, which is understood to be the word of God (transmitted with no modification to the Prophet Muhammad), is meant to be recited orally. In fact, the root of the word Qur’an means “recite,” and even after it was first written down following the Prophet’s death, an authoritative reciter accompanied each of the texts that were delivered to every village. The tajwıˉd style of recitation requires that reciters be trained deeply in the maqaˉm system, as well as in specific rules relating to pronunciation, syllable duration, and vocal timbre, among others, and is confined to the textual structure of the text. Due to the divine nature of the text, it is prohibited to “tone-paint” or repeatedly use particular musical phrases to express certain ideas or passages;

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rather, each recitation must be improvised anew. While recitation of the Qur’an is not considered “music” per se, it does share with music a basis in maqaˉm, as well as a similar performer–audience interaction and commercial presence on recordings; moreover, talented reciters are considered artists and have dedicated “fans.” There are countless musical traditions associated with religious occasions, each with its own name, such as songs celebrating a pilgrimage to Mecca (tahlı . ˉl), songs commemorating the Prophet’s birthday (Arabic: mawlid; Turkish: mevlut), praise songs for God or his saints (Arabic madh; . Turkish ilahi), and the Shi’a community’s praise for Husayn (Persian: rowze), to name just a few. Christian liturgies include those of Coptic Christians in Egypt, whose repertoire of chants is based on principles of Arab maqaˉm, and Eastern Orthodox Christian traditions in Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria, which are also modal, but based on the Byzantine octoechos, or “eight-mode,” system. Jewish communities throughout the Middle East developed their own musical traditions and contributed significantly to the musics of their nonJewish neighbors. Pre-Biblical communities existed in Persia, Babylonia (Iraq), and Palestine; after the destruction of the Second Temple (Jerusalem, 70 ce, by the Romans), Jews dispersed from Jerusalem, forming sizable diasporic communities across the Middle East and into Europe, Africa, and Asia. The Christian Reconquista of Spain, which ended in 1492 and expelled Jews and Muslims from the Iberian Peninsula, bolstered the preexisting Jewish communities of North Africa. Thus, Jews from North Africa and the Iberian Peninsula are called Sephardic (from the Hebrew for “Spain”), while Jews from the eastern Arabic-speaking world (especially Iraq, Syria, and Yemen) are generally referred to as Mizrah∙i (“eastern”). Jewish cantors in the Ottoman Empire adopted Turkish and Arabic maqaˉm practices in their liturgical services, which combined improvised and pre-composed pieces, both metric and non-metric, grouped according to mode. Paraliturgical songs called baqqashot, which are performed after midnight around the Mediterranean, are hallmarks of Moroccan and Syrian Jewish traditions. First developed in the sixteenth century, baqqashot are based on Kabbalic ideas about the esoteric value of midnight vigils and the power of music and song. These Saturday midnight vigils included prayers, sung piyyutim (sacred poems), and a qası . ˉda (a classical Arabic genre of sung poetry— here based on a theme from the Torah). All of this singing was done a cappella, or without musical instruments. Some of the same repertoire, however, would also be performed, with instruments, at special concerts or family festivities. Many melodies for Hebrew-language piyyutim were borrowed directly from Moroccan Andalusian art music, while others were sung to melodies of popular Arab songs from the Middle East (see Web example: Moroccan Jewish song). Jewish musical activity was not limited to religious contexts. Jewish musicians and composers in prominent positions in the Ottoman court played key roles in the development of Ottoman art music. In their synagogues in North Africa, Jews are credited with preserving the ancient melodies of Arab-Andalusian music that they brought with them to North Africa after the

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EXPLORE Qur’anic Recitation

BAQQASHOT Hebrew songs sung during night vigils of Sephardic Jews.

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A synagogue in Tunisia. Source: FETHI BELAID/Getty Images.

LISTENING GUIDE 3.5

MOROCCAN JEWISH SONG

LISTEN

Egyptian Melodies with Hebrew Texts: Aneh shav’ati yah u’shema

T

HIS SONG was recorded by Paul Bowles in Meknes, Morocco in 1959. It is a Hebrew liturgical poem written by the Rabbi David Buzaglo, set to the melody of the Egyptian popular song “‘Alayk Salat Allah wa-Salaˉmuh” (May you be blessed by God’s prayer and salutation). The Egyptian song was composed by Farid al-Atrash and made famous by his sister Asmahan, who was an early musical “rival” of Umm Kulthuˉm’s before Asmahan’s early tragic death in 1944 at the age of 26. Because of its sacred nature, the Moroccan Jewish version of the song does not allow for musical instruments. Instead, the vocalists imitate the instruments, including the instrumental interjections (laˉzima) in between phrases. The song is in maqaˉm bayyaˉtˉı (scale: D E F G A B♭ C D). TIME

MUSICAL EVENT

0:00–0:08

The piece begins with a textless mawwaˉl: a brief solo vocal improvisation on the syllable “doy.”

0:08–0:47

First verse sung by soloist

0:47–1:23

First verse repeated by chorus

1:23–1:28

Soloist imitates instrumental interjection between sections

1:28–1:47

Second verse sung by soloist and fade out

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Christian Reconquista. In Morocco, prominent Jewish ensembles performed this Arab-Andalusian repertoire outside the synagogue in coffeehouses and private homes for Muslim and Jewish audiences. Jews were particularly important in developing the Iraqi maqaˉm tradition, considered one of the oldest and most venerable art music traditions in the region, and Jews were among the most notable instrument makers and performers of the dastgah in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Iran.

POPULAR MUSIC, POLITICS, AND OTHERNESS Major social transformations in the mid- to late-twentieth century, such as rapid urbanization, massive migration (especially rural–urban, but also of Mizrahi and Sephardic Jews to Israel beginning in 1948), post-colonial independence and nationalism, the emergence of consumer culture, and the spread of new technologies (especially the cassette) led to the creation of new genres of music that gave voice to the difficulties and contradictions of such rapid change. During this time, nationalism led to the formalization and canonization of national musical traditions as part of larger projects that sought to (1) establish homogeneous national identities that transcended local class, ethnic, and religious ones; and (2) define the nation against its neighbors. Several new musical genres of the twentieth century, such as Turkish arabesk, Israeli musica mizrahit, . Algerian raï, and Berber rights music, challenged such constructions of homogenous national identities. While each of these popular music traditions emerged from, and spoke to, quite different local sociopolitical contexts and concerns, they all, to some extent, made musical and cultural connections across nation-state borders and to the nation-state’s problematic “others,” both internal and external. Since these genres relied on the recorded music market for their success, you can find many of the songs discussed in the remainder of this chapter on Internet sites such as YouTube.

EXPLORE Popular Musics of the Middle East and Northern Africa

Arabesk Both Turkish arabesk and Israeli musica mizrah∙it emerged in the context of non-Arab nation-states whose cultural policies viewed Arab influences as a threat to establishing national identity. Turkish nationalist reforms of the 1930s operated under the assumption that in order for Turkey to become a successful modern nation-state, its citizens had to adopt European cultural and political ideals while embracing a rural Turkish heritage. This style of nationalism, championed by Turkey’s first president Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (1881–1938), called for deidentification with the Ottoman past as well as the country’s Arab neighbors. The Arabic script, which had previously been used to write Turkish, was replaced with a modified version of the Latin alphabet, and religious institutions such as the Mevlevi Sufi order were abolished. The makam system, as well as Ottoman art music—which was banned from state

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ARABESK A popular music form of twentieth-century Turkey that drew heavily on Arab aesthetics. Debates about the value of the genre often reflected tensions about the place of Turkey between east and west.

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radio for years—were seen by nationalist reformers as unwelcome remnants of a pan-Islamic culture that they were trying to leave behind. Instead, the state invested deeply in institutions of European art music and in the documentation, study, and performance of Turkish folk music. In the wake of the growing popularity of Egyptian cinema, Egyptian films were only allowed in Turkey if the dialogue and songs were recreated in Turkish. By the time arabesk music emerged in the late 1960s, such reforms had been relaxed, but the legacy of the official devaluation of Arab or “Eastern” culture ensured that arabesk—whose “Arabness” is announced in its very name—would be construed by some as an act of opposition to Turkish nationalism. Arabesk was one of the most influential musical genres in Turkish popular culture from the 1960s to the 1990s. The most common instrumentation for arabesk includes the bagˇlama, a long-necked Turkish lute with moveable frets (and later, the amplified elektrosaz), a forceful percussion section featuring the darbuˉka, and a large string section that fills in between vocal sections, playing with a slow vibrato technique common in Arab popular music. The most definitive characteristic of arabesk, however, is the sobbing, emotional vocal style associated with Arab vocal improvisation, with lyrics based on themes of powerlessness in the grip of fate. Indeed, as Martin Stokes (1992) put it, arabesk implores its listeners to “light another cigarette, pour another drink, and curse the world and their fate.” Socially, arabesk is most associated with rural Kurdish regions of Turkey and the squatter towns on the periphery of western Turkish cities where many migrants from these regions settled during the urban expansion in the midtwentieth century. In films, arabesk singers often played loosely autobiographical roles of poor urban migrants constantly defeated by unrequited love, betrayal, or corruption. A classic arabesk tune, Orhan Gencebay’s “Batsin bu dünya” (1975), laments: A pity, a pity

That fate should do such a thing, a pity

Everything is darkness, where is the humanity?

Shame on those who make a slave of the slave.

(Stokes 2010: 82)

These lyrics were interpreted by listeners not only as cursing fate, but also as a cry against injustice, illustrated clearly in Gencebay’s film of the same name in which his character, who faced constant humiliation and trauma at the hands of his debtors, finally decides to take revenge. MUSICA MIZRAH.IT A late twentieth-century popular music genre of Israel, associated with workingclass immigrants from Middle Eastern countries.

Musica Mizrah.it A similar situation of musical border-crossing in the context of anxiety over “Arabness”—though in a vastly different sociopolitical context with different meanings—is evident in Israeli musica mizrahit, . a popular music style associated

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with working-class Israeli immigrants from Middle Eastern countries, especially Iraq, Yemen, and Morocco. When the state of Israel was established in 1948, Ashkenazi Jews dominated the political, economic, and cultural infrastructure of the state and had adopted a “melting pot” model of cultural assimilation to create a national unity out of the disparate diasporic groups that immigrated to the country. Ashkenazis largely identified with the art and popular musics of their Russian and European homelands, and encouraged the spread of Songs of the Land of Israel (shirei erets Yisrael), a genre of newly composed folk songs created during the formative years of statehood (1920–1960). While the musical influences of Songs of the Land of Israel have developed over the years—from the Eastern European ballads in its early years to more recent fusions with globally circulating musics, especially South American—its lyrical content, full of references to love of the land, indexes collective Israeliness. Although half of the Israeli population was of Mizrahi or Sephardic origin by 1970, state media—which had a monopoly over radio and television broadcasts until 1990—would not air the Arab or Arab-influenced styles of music that these immigrants performed. The introduction of cassette technology, however, democratized the recording and dissemination of music, and would become crucial to the success of musika mizrah∙it. Musika mizrah∙it was mainly performed in nightclubs, social clubs, weddings, and parties. Many songs are covers of Greek, French, or Arab popular songs. Aesthetically, musiqa mizrah∙it combines Arab and Western pop/rock instrumentation. Cyclic Middle Eastern dance rhythms translated to the drum set were favored, as was a distinctive “shaking” vocal style and nasal timbre. Like their Arab counterparts, musica mizrah∙it songs often began with an introductory vocal improvisation (layaˉlıˉ or mawwaˉl). Haim Moshe’s classic “Linda” begins with a high-pitched electric guitar (imitating the sound of the Greek bouzouki) performing an introductory improvisatory taqsıˉm, followed by a vocal layaˉlıˉ improvisation. The drum set plays a maqs∙uˉm dance rhythm. Moshe sings the song—a cover of an Arab song—in its original Arabic. Another good example is the hit “Ha-perah∙ Be­ gani” written by Avihu Medina and sung by Zohar Argov, whose stardom was enshrined after his suicide in jail in 1987. The song begins with a layaˉlıˉ before jumping into a Yemeni dance rhythm played by the drum set. A Greek bouzouki is the main stringed instrument, along with the electric guitar. Motti Regev and Edwin Seroussi (2004) suggest that musiqa mizrah∙it played such a central role in defining and mobilizing Mizrahi identity that it began to challenge other forms of music in the quest to represent the Israeli nation. In its trajectory from exclusion to inclusion in Israeli national culture, it gave voice to a new paradigm of national belonging, one that championed hybridity and border crossing, that now coexists alongside other models of Israeliness.

Algerian Raï A succession of shifts in the social landscape also shaped the music of Algerian raï. Raï, which literally means “opinion” or “point of view,” has a long history

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RAÏ A late twentieth-century popular music form of Algeria, Morocco, and the North African diaspora in France.

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GASBA . An end-blown flute of North Africa, associated with early Algerian raï. GUELLAL Goblet-shaped drum of Algeria, associated with early Algerian raï.

of giving voice to the concerns of those situated on the peripheries of society. Its origins are found in the women’s urban songs of the early twentieth century in the Algerian port city of Oran (called Wahrane in Arabic). In the 1920s, as a port city with a continual influx of sailors, traders, and other transients, Oran had a bustling entertainment scene that included bars, hash dens, and cabarets where women singers and dancers represented and enhanced the pleasure associated with those venues. The songs featured risqué lyrics and social critique, and were performed to the accompaniment of the gasba . (flute) and guellal (goblet-shaped drum), two Bedouin instruments brought to the city by immigrants from rural Algeria. Women were both singers and dancers who used their voices and bodies to crystallize desire in their male audiences. In a social context where there was a stigma attached to professional female entertainers, these singers, according to Marie Virolle, “had much to say, much to invent, and little to lose in this new genre.” They adopted the title shaykha, the female variant of shaykh, a term used to bestow prestige on a profession, and adopted stage names to protect the honor of their families and assert their independence. Shaykha Remitti, considered the “mother of raï,” has been described as an unwilling feminist, inspired to sing about her own troubled life as an orphan, migrant, and dancer. She became well known for her poetic technique that incorporates wordplays on an inventory of terms associated with red-light districts and bars (in fact, her stage name is adopted from the French command remettez, or “give me another [drink]”). Yet her songs also address the difficulties of migration and the solace of religion; these songs speak to the complexities of life in urban Algeria, with all its contradictions. After Algeria won its independence from France in 1962, the government closed down many of the bars and cabarets where the shaykhas performed, and also limited the sale of alcohol and suppressed festivals associated with saints, another venue for the shaykhas. While women continued to sing their repertoire at weddings, men began to emerge as major voices in this genre, which became known as räi in the 1970s. They also experimented with new orchestrations, and instruments such as the trumpet and saxophone started to replace the gas∙ba, and accordions and guitars, and eventually the synthesizer, became popular melodic instruments. The watershed moment in the development of räi—as in many popular musics around the world—was the introduction of cassette technology in the 1970s. This enabled musicians to record and distribute their music cheaply, while listeners could copy and exchange recordings. While the high rate of piracy meant that musicians rarely made money from their recordings, it also meant that their music was able to spread throughout the country, creating a national listenership for some artists. While räi lyrics continued to draw on traditional texts and earlier räi songs in an intertextual manner, it was the theme of unrequited love that became particularly popular in the 1970s and 1980s, especially among the large population of young men faced with few prospects for employment or marital opportunities. Although räi is often compared to Western rock ’n’ roll, the authorship and production of räi songs differs in important ways from its

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Khaled in Concert at La Cigale. Source: David Wolff­ Patrick/Getty Images

Western counterparts. As Marc Schade-Poulsen (1996) shows, räi producers, who were usually the owners of recording studios, often hired songwriters whose lyrics were based on a common repertoire of textual references, but most importantly also a “key phrase” that would often become the title of the song. These lyrics would then be handed to the singer, who was expected to perform the song on the spot with no or minimal retakes. While some singers were able to vary the lyrics or inject their own (either intentionally or due to illegible writing), these lyrics do not represent the singer’s ideas as directly as listeners of Western popular music might expect. This situation of indirect authorship challenges the marketing of raï music in the West, which often described räi as rebellious and as providing the voice of the youth, similar to punk rock or early rock ’n’ roll in its challenges to social mores. As Ted Swedenburg (2001) has pointed out, räi may be most “resistant” in its new context of France, where it addresses issues of the pains of exile and anti-Arab racism experienced by North Africans living in France.

Music and the Berber Rights Movement Berbers (or Amazigh, meaning “free people”) are the indigenous inhabitants of North Africa. While many North Africans trace their roots to Berber communities, Arabic language and culture came to dominate the region with the westward spread of the Islamic empire that began in the late seventh century ce. While Berber communities were widely Islamicized, in some regions, such as the Atlas Mountains of Morocco and the Kabyle region of Algeria, they resisted adopting the language and culture of Arabs. Many Berbers, however,

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RWAYS Traditionally itinerant musicians of the Berber communities of Morocco. ˉS NAˉQU General term for metallic idiophones in the Middle East

felt excluded and threatened as the newly independent countries legislated Arabic as official languages and suppressed public expressions of Berber identity. In the late twentieth century, a Berber rights movement developed that fought for recognition of Berber language and culture in Morocco and Algeria. In these mostly remote areas, Berbers maintained communal musical traditions such as the Moroccan ah∙wash, a festival music that relies on full participation of the village. In fact, a good ah∙wash performance is seen as a symbol of healthy social relations in the village, while a bad performance is understood to represent discord. While the ah∙wash is grounded in the village community, another tradition relies on individual musician-poets (rways) who travel among the villages and to the cities, playing the rebaˉb, accompanied by the lotar (four-stringed lute), and the naˉquˉs (bell). Traditionally, they would serve as reporters and moral guides, reporting on current events in songs that often had moral messages. One contemporary Moroccan raysa (the feminine singular of rways), Fatima Tabaamrant, is a popular singer with a strong media presence. She sees her role as carrying on the political commentary and social critique of the rways in her music, and bases her sound on the traditional music of the village. Tabaamrant is a rare example of a political singer who actually became a politician: she was elected to the Moroccan parliament, where she made headlines in 2012 by becoming the first member of parliament to ever pose an official question in a Berber language. This act drew attention to the secondary status of Berber in Morocco just after Berber rights activists finally succeeded in getting Berber to be recognized as an official language in Morocco in 2011. In Algeria, Berber singer Lounès Matoub (1956–1998) became a martyr for the Berber rights cause after his assassination in 1998, and his songs continue to animate that movement. In his music, Matoub sang against the government, criticized religious piety and extremism, and fought for recognition of Berber language and history. He enraged both the government and the Islamists, the two forces that fought each other for control of the country during the Algerian Civil War (1991–2002). Government security forces shot and wounded Matoub in 1988 for supporting Berber rights demonstrations, while FIS (Islamic Salvation Front) militants abducted him in 1994 for being an “enemy of God.” When he was assassinated in 1998, the GIA (Armed Islamic Group) took credit for the killing but to date no trial has been held and the exact circumstances of the event remain unclear (Aïtel 2014: 186–187). The refrain to his song “Anerezz ouala nekhnou” (Better to Break than Bend) is a fixture at Berber rights demonstrations, signifying the deep commitment of activists: An-nerrez wala n knu (better to break than bend)

awal fi smaren rekku (the word on which they spilled garbage)

s tirrugza a d-yeh (will be restored with honor)

anta ttejra ur nesaa azar (is there a tree without roots?)

(Aïtel 2014: 191)

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Matoub’s final album, released posthumously, featured a provocative, irreverent version of the Algerian national anthem sung, defiantly, in Berber, with new lyrics accusing those in power of corruption, deceit, and destroying Berber identity. As a solution, the song calls for a separate Kabyle state.

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LISTEN Lounès Matoub, “Anerezz ouala nekhnou” (Better to Break than Bend)

I lasel ssamsen udem yeghma yejjunjer (They sullied the face of our ancestors, they soiled it) Jeggren s ddin t-ttarabt tamurt n Lezzayer (They repainted Algeria’s face with religion and Arabic) D ughurru! D ughurru! D ughurru! (Fraud! Fraud! Fraud!) . . .

Ddwa-s an cerreg tamurt an nebrez tura

(The solution is to divide the country and we will improve it) Amar assen ay atma at-tnaqel Lezzayer (So the day will come when Algeria stands up again). (Aïtel 2014: 194) Through the medium of music, singers such as Lounés Matoub and Fatima Tabaamrent championed Berber language, culture, and identity. The massmediated formats of records, cassettes, and compact discs enabled their activist messages to circulate throughout Berber society and across borders, subjecting them to multiple replayings, relistenings, and sharing. And they helped shape a Berber popular music culture that was contemporary and relevant, proving that Berber culture was not folklore relegated to the past but, rather, was alive and vibrant.

MUSIC AND THE ARAB SPRING In November 2010, Tunisian rapper El Général posted a homemade video of his new song, “Rayes Lebled” (Head of State), to his Facebook page. The song, which is in the form of an open letter to the president, presents a litany of injustices facing the Tunisian people, including systemic corruption, police violence, censorship, and continued widespread poverty. Some of the lines (presented here in English translation) accuse the president’s circles of stealing public funds:

EXPLORE Arab Spring

They steal in broad daylight and take the land No need for me to name them, you know who they are A lot of money was pledged for projects and construction Schools, clinics, buildings, and improvements But the sons of bitches stuffed it into their potbellies

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They stole and looted clung to their seats of power I know that in their hearts the people have much to say, but cannot If there were no injustices, I would have nothing to say Chorus: Mr. President, your people are dying Many are eating from the garbage You can see what’s happening in the country Misery and homelessness are everywhere I speak in the name of those who are trampled underfoot.

(Gana 2012)

Such a direct and public criticism against the government was virtually unthinkable in the context of an authoritarian Tunisian regime and, as a result, quickly went viral. His song was spread via social media messaging that was also bringing together unprecedented numbers of Tunisians to the streets to protest against the regime. The protests had begun after the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi, the fruit vendor from the impoverished town of Sidi Bouzid, who doused himself with gasoline and set himself on fire after being humiliated and harassed by the police as he tried to sell fruit from his cart. El Général’s song captured the widespread frustration with systemic corruption and violence that Bouazizi was protesting and, when El Général was, inevitably, arrested later that month, protestors chanted the words to his songs. Shortly after the protests in Tunisia forced President Ben ‘Ali to flee the country, mass demonstrations in Cairo’s Tahrir Square presaged the overthrow Ramy Essam, a musician and writer of “Get Out,” the song that became popular among protestors in Tahir Square. Source: Michael Robinson Chavez/Getty Images.

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of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. While El Général’s “Rayes Lebled” was reportedly played, and sung, in Tahrir Square, it was singer-songwriter Ramy Essam’s song “Irh∙aˉl!” (Get Out!) that became a veritable anthem of the Egyptian Revolution. This song, written as the protests began and performed by Essam on guitar, has a chorus that was often repeated back by the crowds in Tahrir Square. In English translation, the chorus is: We are not leaving

He will leave

As one, we demand one thing:

Leave, leave, leave!

The Arab Spring protest movements quickly spread throughout the Middle East and North Africa, leading to major civil uprisings in Libya, Syria, Yemen, and Bahrain, as well as demonstrations in numerous other countries. In each case, local musicians captured the spirit of protest and helped mobilize demonstrators. While I have only mentioned two songs, it is important to recognize that a multitude of protest songs, in a number of different styles, played roles in the Arab Spring. Not all of these were rap or rock. In Egypt, the group Tanboura, which is reviving and disseminating the simsimiyya (5-stringed lyre) tradition of the Nile Delta, played to great acclaim, and important anti-Bashar Assad protest songs of Syria, such as “Yaˉ Irh∙aˉl Yaˉ Bashar” (Leave, O Bashar), were composed in the style of dabke, the country’s national communal dance music tradition. It is also crucial to recognize that it is not necessarily useful or accurate to consider rap and rock to be “foreign” musics in the region, any more than it is useful to consider the guitar (which has European and, indeed, Middle Eastern, roots) an import in the United States. Rock music has a longstanding presence in the region, while rap has been thoroughly indigenized, evoking and furthering a millennia-long heritage of sung poetry that speaks to power.

SUMMARY Our excursions into the musics of the Middle East and North Africa have brought us from the energetic collective singing of trance rituals to the quiet contemplation of art music, and from the local specificity of village performances to the pervasive sounds of popular music spread through the mass media. We have examined songs sung in Arabic, Turkish, Persian, Hebrew, and Berber languages, and covered centuries of music history, from recreations of seventeenth-century court music to twenty-first century responses to sociopolitical conditions. Throughout our journey, we have been attuned to the remarkable diversity of musics in the region, as well as four overarching themes that provide common threads linking many traditions. Musically, we saw a widespread use of melodic and rhythmic modes, as well as many different kinds of traditions applying a sequential logic to the organization of performances. We encountered a diversity of musical instruments yet noticed

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SIMSIMIYYA Five-stringed lyre, used primarily in Egypt and Yemen. DABKE Popular folk dance of the eastern Arab region.

REVIEW CHAPTER RESOURCES

KEY TERMS Arab music Arab Spring music Arabesk Berber music Berber rights music Dastgah Improvisation (taqsıˉm, layaˉlıˉ, maˉwwaˉl, avaz) Israeli music Melodic mode (maqaˉm) Musica mizrahit . Otherness Persian music Raï Religion (Islam, Judaism) Rhythmic mode (ıˉqaˉʿ) Spirit possession Stambe ˉlıˉ . Sufism Sung poetry Tarab . Trance Turkish music

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the importance of improvisation and the primacy of the voice and sung poetry. The cultural expectation that music can provide different kinds of transcendent states of consciousness was our second theme. This ideal rests on the importance of musical sound to the religious experience in the Middle East and North Africa, which constituted our third theme. Finally, we saw how new musical genres across the region gave voice to populations in situations of social and political “otherness.” Like all excursions, ours had limited stops and therefore left many musics and themes unexplored. I encourage you to continue your journey by exploring other styles of music from the region (good starting points are the bibliography and discography at the end of this chapter) or coming up with your own themes that connect material from this chapter or other musical practices you encounter.

BIBLIOGRAPHY General Bohlman, Philip, “The Middle East.” Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online. (Oxford University Press, www. oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/19659); Danielson, Virginia, Scott Marcus, and Dwight Reynolds (Eds.), The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music Volume 6: The Middle East (New York: Routledge, 2002); Jankowsky, Richard (Ed.), The Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World Volume 10: Genres of the Middle East and North Africa (London: Bloomsbury, 2015); Jenkins, Jean, and Poul Rovsing Olsen, Music and Musical Instruments in the World of Islam (London: Horniman Museum, 1976); Marcus, Scott, “The Eastern Arab system of melodic modes in theory and practice: A case study of Maqaˉm Bayyaˉtıˉ,” in The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music, Volume 6: The Middle East, edited by Virginia Danielson, Scott Marcus and Dwight Reynolds, 33–44 (New York and London: Routledge, 2002); Nelson, Kristina, The Art of Reciting the Qur’an (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1985); Nooshin, Laudan (Ed.), Music and the Play of Power in the Middle East, North Africa, and Central Asia (Farnham, UK and Brookfield, VT: Ashgate, 2009); Reynolds, Dwight, Heroic Poets, Poetic Heroes: The Ethnography of Performance in an Arabic Oral Epic (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995); Sawa, George, “The Kitaˉb al-Aghaˉnıˉ,” in The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music Vol. 6: The Middle East, edited by Virginia Danielson, Scott Marcus, and Dwight Reynolds, 351–356 (New York and London: Routledge, 2002); Sells, Michael, Approaching the Qur’an: The Early Revelations (2nd ed., Ashland, OR: White Cloud Press, 2007); Shiloah, Amnon, The Dimension of Music in Islamic and Jewish Culture (Brookfield, VT: Variorum, 1993); Shiloah, Amnon, Music in the World of Islam: A Socio-Cultural Study (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1995); Swedenburg, Ted, “Arab ‘World Music’ in the U.S.,” Middle East Report (219) (2001), 34–40; Wright, Owen, The Modal System of Arab and Persian Music A.D. 1250–1300 (London: Oxford University Press, 1978). The Arab Middle East Abu-Lughod, Lila, Veiled Sentiments: Honor and Poetry in a Bedouin Society (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1986); al-Faruqi, Lois Ibsen, An Annotated Glossary of Arabic Musical Terms (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1981); Cohen, Dalia, and Ruth Katz, Palestinian Arab Music: A Maqaˉm Tradition in Practice (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2006); Danielson, Virginia, The Voice of Egypt: Umm Kulthuˉm, Arabic Song, and Egyptian Society in the Twentieth Century (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago

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Press, 1997); Farmer, Henry George, History of Arabian Music to the XIIIth Century (London: Luzac Press, 1996); Gana, Nouri, “Rap and Revolt in the Arab World,” Social Text 30(4) (2012), 25–53; Kanaaneh, Moslih, Stig-Magnus Thorsén, Heather Bursheh, and David A. McDonald (Eds.), Palestinian Music and Song: Expression and Resistance Since 1900 (Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press, 2013); Lohman, Laura, and Umm Kulthuˉm: Artistic Agency and the Shaping of an Arab Legend, 1967–2007 (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2010); Marcus, Scott, “Arab Music Theory in the Modern Period” (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Los Angeles, CA, 1989); Marcus, Scott, The Music of Egypt (New York and London: Oxford University Press, 2007); Racy, Ali Jihad, Making Music in the Arab World: The Culture and Artistry of Tarab (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003); Shannon, Jonathan, Among the Jasmine Trees: Music and Modernity in Contemporary Syria (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2006); Touma, Habib Hassan, The Music of the Arabs (Portland, OR: Amadeus Press, 1996); Urkevich, Lisa, Music and Traditions of the Arabian Peninsula: Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Qatar (London and New York: Routledge, 2015); Waugh, Earle H., The Munshidin of Egypt: Their World and Their Song (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1989); North Africa Aïtel, Fazia, We Are Imazighen: The Development of Algerian Berber Identity in Twentieth-Century Literature and Culture, Chapter 4 (Gainesville, FL: University of Florida Press, 2014); Ciantar, Philip, The Ma’luˉf in Contemporary Libya: An Arab Andalusian Musical Tradition (Farnham, UK and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2012); Davila, Carl, The Andalusian Music of Morocco. Al-Aˉla: History, Society, and Text (Wiesbaden: Reichert Verlag, 2013); Davis, Ruth, Ma’luˉf: Reflections on the Arab Andalusian Music of Tunisia (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2004); Jankowsky, Richard, Stambe ˉlıˉ: Music, Trance, . and Alterity in Tunisia (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2010); Joseph, Terri Brint, “Poetry as a Strategy of Power: The Case of Riffian Berber Women,” in Music and Gender: Perspectives from the Mediterranean, edited by Tullia Magrini, 233–250 (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2003); Kapchan, Deborah, Traveling Spirit Masters: Moroccan Gnawa Trance and Music in the Global Marketplace (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2007); Olsen, Miriam Rovsing, Chants et danses de l’Atlas (Maroc) (Paris: Cité de la musique/Actes sud, 1997); Schade-Poulsen, Marc, Men

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and Popular Music in Algeria: The Social Significance of Raï (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1996); Schuyler, Philip, “Rwais and Ahwash: Opposing Tendencies in Moroccan Berber Music and Society,” The World of Music 21(1) (1979), 65–80. Iran During, Jean, Zia Mirabdolbaghi, and Dariush Safvat, The Art of Persian Music (Washington, DC: Mage, 1991); Nettl, Bruno, The Radif of Persian Music: Studies in Structure and Cultural Context in the Classical Music of Iran (Champaign, IL: Elephant & Cat, 1992); Nooshin, Laudan, “Underground, Overground: Rock Music and Youth Discourses in Iran,” Iranian Studies (2005); Nooshin, Laudan, Iranian Classical Music: The Discourses of Practice and Creativity (Farnham, UK and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2015); Robertson, Bronwen, Reverberations of Dissent: Identity and Expression in Iran’s Illegal Music Scene (London: Continuum, 2012); Wright, Owen, Touraj Kiaras and Persian Classical Music: An Analytical Perspective (Farnham, UK and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2009); Youssefzaheh, Ameneh, “The Situation of Music in Iran since the Revolution: The Role of Official Organizations,” British Journal of Ethnomusicology 9(2) (2000), 35–61. Turkey Bates, Eliot, Music in Turkey: Experiencing Music, Expressing Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011); Degˇ irmenci, Koray, Creating Global Music in Turkey (Lanham, MD: Lexington

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Books, 2013); Feldman, Walter, Music of the Ottoman Court: Makam, Composition and the Early Ottoman Instrumental Repertoire (Berlin: International Institute for Traditional Music, 1996); Signell, Karl, Makam: Modal Practice in Turkish Art Music (Seattle, WA: Asian Music, 1977); Stokes, Martin, The Arabesk Debate: Music and Musicians in Modern Turkey (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992); Stokes, Martin, The Republic of Love: Cultural Intimacy in Turkish Popular Music (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2010). Israel Bohlman, Philip, “The Land Where Two Streams Flow”: Music in the German-Jewish Community of Israel (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1989); Bohlman, Philip, and Mark Slobin, Eds., “Music in the Ethnic Communities of Israel,” Special Issue of Asian Music 17(2) (1986), 1–8; Brinner, Benjamin, Playing Across a Divide: Israeli–Palestinian Musical Encounters (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009); Horowitz, Amy, Mediterranean Israeli Music and the Politics of the Aesthetic (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 2010); Regev, Motti, and Edwin Seroussi, Popular Music and National Culture in Israel (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2004); Shelleg, Assaf, “Israeli Art Music: A Reintroduction,” Israel Studies 17(3) (2012), 119–149; Werner, Eric, A Voice Still Heard: The Sacred Songs of the Ashkenazic Jews (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1976).

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MUSICS OF EAST ASIA I: CHINA AND TAIWAN Lei Ouyang

INTRODUCTION Open any recent introduction to so-called “Chinese Music” and the author will inevitably begin with a statement of how this is mission impossible. The challenge for each of us is how to frame a chapter such as this one, since the music and history of the region is far too diverse to attempt to cover comprehensively in just one introductory chapter. Historically, many overviews of so-called “Chinese Music” are based on the Han ethnicity, the largest ethnic group in the world, with four thousand years of history. Today, Han Chinese make up over 91% of the population in the People’s Republic of China (PRC, also referred to as China), over 95% in the Republic of China (ROC, also referred to as Taiwan), and over 74% of the population in Singapore. Yet, within the PRC, as just one example, the Han ethnicity is only one of 56 officially recognized ethnic groups. If we use language as one important and shared aspect of culture, then we may also refer to the so-called “Chinese speaking world.” The most common so-called “Chinese”

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4 language is Mandarin, the official language of China (PRC), Taiwan (ROC), and Singapore. If we include Cantonese, the second most prominent so-called “Chinese” language, then we can add the Special Administrative Regions of Hong Kong and Macao. According to the CIA World factbook, 12% of the world’s population speaks some version of Chinese as their first language; that equates to over 1 billion speakers worldwide. And yet, there are so many languages other than so-called “Chinese” spoken in these same regions. Take for example, Indigenous peoples in Taiwan; some of whom may not speak Mandarin or any other standard “Chinese” language. Instead, they may speak their own Indigenous language and perhaps Japanese, as the language they learned during the Japanese occupation (1895 to 1945). Thus, ethnicity and language may offer ways to categorize a sizeable population in this area of East Asia, but they also introduce limits and exceptions at the same time.

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PRC Abbreviation for the People’s Republic of China. ROC Abbreviation for the Republic of China. ORIENTALIST Tradition, practice, and perspective of (primarily) 18th- and 19th-century Western European scholars interested in studying and/or imitating people and culture outside of Western Europe. Implicated in colonialist bias and ethnocentric approaches, the result is misrepresentation of people and culture and assumed superiority of the Western European peoples and traditions. Contemporary implications include the continued exotification, misrepresentation, exploitation, and invisibility of people and culture. BIANZHONG Bronze bells from ancient China (Zhou dynasty 1046–256 bce). Outer surface of bell is struck in one of two places to produce sound, thus defined as either chime or clapperless bells.

EXPLORE Hong Kong and China—Politics and Sound

How can we attempt to understand the music of so many people that span such a wide range of histories, identities, places, and politics, to name but a few categories? And does such a music even exist? Such sweeping categorizations can be convenient at times but are inherently essentializing and imbued with oppressive power imbalances of who is and is not included and why. For example, are the sounds that come to your mind before reading this chapter accurate and informed accounts of Chinese music? Or are they Orientalist or otherwise misrepresented and often exotified stereotypical portrayals of Chinese music? In other words, who is represented and by whom? When we simplify things to a central point, what is lost in the process? What happens to the exceptions, what happens to the borders and margins? Where and when is China? Ask someone in the PRC, ROC, or Hong Kong today and you could very well get three different and contrasting responses. (Perhaps you can now better understand why I used the term “so-called” before Chinese Music and Chinese language earlier). I often tell my students something my mentors passed on to me: the process of selecting what to include inherently involves determining what to exclude. These challenges face the authors of every chapter in this volume, but the impacts of the choices carry different weight and meaning in the particular context of each geo-cultural area we aim to discuss. China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, indeed, share much as a broad geo-cultural region. Yet here, it is critical to understand the politics of each of these three regions and the relationships between them. For example, let’s take the case of Hong Kong. Put simply, at the end of the second opium war, the Qing Dynasty government (the last imperial Chinese dynasty) leased Hong Kong to the United Kingdom for a term of 99 years due to their defeat.When the lease expired in 1997, citizens of Hong Kong found themselves now under PRC rule as a “Special Administrative Region.” Bianzhong chime bells, once used in ancient Chinese courts, were just one of many musical sounds signaling the return of Hong Kong to Chinese rule. For some, it was a celebrated moment in which Hong Kong was relieved of British colonial rule and reunited with the Chinese motherland. For others, it was an uncertain and troubled transition to unwanted governance under Communist rule. Fast forward to 2014 and the pro-democracy Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong—a movement that then continued into the pro-democracy protests of 2019. After months of protest and daily engagement between police and protesters, a group of people collaborated online to compose “Glory to Hong Kong,” an anthem for the pro-democracy movement. The anthem takes inspiration from the musical Les Misérables and its musical mobilizations in the name of revolution and democracy. In 2019, some hip-hop artists in the People’s Republic of China posted their support for Hong Kong police on social media. And, also in 2019, citizens in Taiwan held demonstrations of their own to express support for the Hong Kong pro-democracy movement. Thus, although much is shared across the region, and while many will point to the shared ethnic and cultural heritage and traditions, these traditions are interrupted today by political boundaries, and these divisions nevertheless have meaning and create difference. I do not include detailed case studies from Hong Kong in this chapter, so I encourage you to conduct some additional

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A conductor leads an orchestra during a flash mob concert in a shopping mall at Kowloon Tong district of Hong Kong in 2019. PHILIP FONG/AFP/ Getty Images.

research on your own, and the few examples mentioned here may provide a starting point for you. The five case studies in this chapter are based on ethnographic fieldwork (my own or in one case I share the fieldwork of a colleague) in the regions known today as the People’s Republic of China (PRC or China) and the Republic of China (ROC or Taiwan). My goals for this chapter on Music in China and Taiwan include: (1) To take the “ears wide open approach to sameness and difference” that Rommen writes about in the introduction to five case studies across this region. Each of the case studies included here deserves more critical and nuanced examination and I share them as a foundation upon which you may then engage in conversation and conduct additional research. With this “ears wide open” approach it is useful to understand the social positioning of whose ears we are listening through to present the case studies. As such, you will see that my own and my colleague’s voice are included as we discuss the people and music of our fieldwork. (2) To provide an introduction that speaks to Merriam’s tripartite model of sound, behavior, and conceptions about music. The “sounds” range from strings to winds to drums, and from voice to the sounds of the city. The “behavior” involves how these sounds are connected to people: from a group of Asian and Asian American student musicians in the United States to an Indigenous singer in Taiwan; from a former PRC Navy orchestra erhu soloist to people gathering in the parks of contemporary Taiwan. Then the “conceptions” of music. Context is everything and can help us understand more of the meaning and significance of these snapshots of

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ETHNOGRAPHIC FIELDWORK Methodology employed by ethnomusicologists to conduct original research and analysis to describe and better understand some aspect of people making music. Applies methods and theories of Cultural Anthropology with music as its focus. SOCIAL POSITION How one is related to others in their society in relation to others, most notably social status and systems of power. An individual’s positioning is relational and will thus change in different contexts and settings.

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JINGJU (China and Taiwan). Opera theater commonly referred to in English as Beijing Opera due to the affiliation with the capital city of Beijing (formerly known in English as Peking). One of the many traditions of opera theater found across China. GUQIN Plucked seven string zither with a continued history dating back to 200 bce. Associated with Chinese scholars and literati of elite social and political status including Confucius. CULTURAL REVOLUTION (1966–1976) A ten-year period of intense political campaigns led by Mao Zedong and the CCP to rapidly transform mainland China into a Socialist society through revolution. Though many initiatives came before and after this ten-year period, the Cultural Revolution is known for the extreme attempts to rid China of Capitalism and traditional ideology and practice through sociopolitical reform. MODERN CHINESE ORCHESTRA A neo-traditional musical ensemble of traditional Chinese instruments that developed throughout the twentieth century inside and outside of mainland China. Modelled on both Chinese Jiangnan Sizhu (silk and bamboo) and Western symphony orchestra traditions.

music for the people who compose, perform, listen to, and live with these music cultures. (3) To render visible peoples, traditions, sounds, and questions that are commonly and historically invisible or left to the margins. In other words, while I contribute to ongoing discussions in the region that focus on such things as East and West, tradition and innovation, etc. I bring in additional perspectives and questions of indigeneity, women, politics, and our aural environment. (4) Finally, I aim to pique your curiosity along the way in hopes that something you read about here will inspire you to explore more on your own. There is much, much more that deserves attention in the history and the present of music in, of, and around China and Taiwan. I do not include the sounds of Jingju (also known as Beijing Opera) or guqin (seven string zither). I do not cover songs of worship or popular music. I do not include Buddhist, Confucian, or Taoist philosophies. These are all rich sounds, behaviors, and concepts deserving our attention, and I leave them for you to explore in additional studies. Instead, what I choose to include here is one way to open the door to understanding how certain people and certain groups of people engage (or have engaged) with music and why; and the meanings produced and represented in/ as/through sound. As you read through these five case studies, I encourage you to listen closely to the different musical instruments, genres, and (social/political/historical/ musical) moments. I also encourage you to move beyond the notes to understand the connection to people, time, place, and space that these sounds make possible. Moreover, how can the exploration of these particular five case studies offer new ways for you to think about music cultures already familiar to you? And how might the exploration of these particular five case studies offer new ways for you to think about new music you encounter after reading this chapter? We begin with two compositions from the People’s Republic of China: one, a recording from the politically charged era of the Cultural Revolution featuring a solo erhu musician who came of age and developed as a musician during the historic and tumultuous period in modern China. The other, an example from my own collegiate Chinese Music Ensemble in the United States, modeled after the neo-traditional musical ensemble known as the modern Chinese orchestra. Next, we move to Taiwan, or ROC, to consider three different case studies. The first is lion dance (wushi) drumming, where we can see the continued practice of tradition and the innovations that come about in maintaining cultural practices in contemporary societies. We also see the significance of studying a musical tradition and of being part of an ensemble. In the second example we turn to an Indigenous singer and a recording for a museum exhibit. In this example, we can hear how the synthesis of music and culture creates an insightful example of contemporary Indigenous culture and practice in a Puyuma (also known as Pinuyumayan) community in Taiwan. Finally, we consider an urban soundwalk curated during the summer of 2019. An aural snapshot of the sounds of a city that include the ubiquitous urban sounds of transportation, people, and hubbub

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alongside sounds of great depth and meaning; a sensorial walk through the politics, culture, and everyday sounds of Taipei.

CHINA: PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA The twentieth century was a time of great political change in mainland China. After the end of the last Chinese Dynasty (Qing Dynasty 1644–1912), the Republic of China was established, but, beginning in the 1920s, a struggle for power emerged between the Communist Party of China (also known in English as the Chinese Communist Party, CCP, also CPC) and the Nationalists (Kuomintang or KMT). In 1949, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) was established in mainland China by the Communists whereas the Nationalists fled to Taiwan, where they forcibly took control of the island as the Republic of China (ROC). Chairman Mao Zedong and the CCP sought to transform China into a socialist society, requiring radical economic and social reform. While the decades under Mao Zedong’s rule were filled with great political turmoil, the ten years of the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) saw some of the greatest devastation to people and culture. For example, one of the earliest campaigns, “Destroy the Four Olds” (1966), emboldened individuals to destroy old culture, customs, habits, and ideas. Seemingly endless cycles of political campaigns were designed and implemented in hopes of mobilizing the masses, resulting in an intensely political and chaotic ten years across China. In particular, the attempt to rid Chinese society of imperialist and capitalist ideologies and practices had a lasting effect that is still felt today in China. While the political campaigns helped advance the ideological goals of the CCP, the ways in which they were implemented also transformed Chinese society into a culture of fear, violence, and persecution. Erhu musician Jiebing Chen’s recorded performance of “Shaoshan” provides a window into the Cultural Revolution period and also helps us understand how the memory of that period remains powerful even today. “Shaoshan” and the other example in this section, “Dance of the Golden Snake,” also illuminate the dynamic and complex musical exchange between the so-called “East and West”—an exchange that is suffused with political power. Throughout China’s long history there are countless examples of the exchange of people, goods, and ideas across the country’s ethnic or political boundaries. Buddhism was introduced from India during the Han dynasty (206  bce to 220  ce) and the pipa (a 4-string plucked lute) is understood to have been introduced to Han Chinese from Central Asia, also sometime during the Han dynasty, but with significant additional developments during the Tang (618–907  ce) and Song (960–1279 ce) dynasties. The yangqin (a hammered dulcimer) is derived from the Iranian santur and was most likely introduced during the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644 ce). In other words, encounters with nonChinese cultural and musical influences are a part of the very history of Chinese life. The influence of Western European classical music on the Chinese musical landscape is another, more recent, example of this dynamic—an influence that

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WUSHI Lion dance tradition of dancers animating a lion costume with percussion accompaniment (most typically large drum, gong, and cymbals). Considered good luck and bearers of good fortune, the lion dance is traditionally performed at Lunar New Year celebrations and other festive gatherings such as weddings, rituals, business openings, etc. PUYUMA One of sixteen officially recognized indigenous groups on the island of Taiwan. CCP Commonly used English abbreviation for Communist Party of China. Alternate abbreviation is CPC. Founded in 1921 and serves as singleruling party of mainland China since 1949. MAO ZEDONG Chairman of the CCP from 1949 until his death. Involved with CCP from early days of its foundation and was the most influential Chinese politician and leader in post-1949 China. CULTURAL REVOLUTION A ten-year period of intense political campaigns led by Mao Zedong and the CCP to rapidly transform mainland China into a Socialist society through revolution. Though many initiatives came before and after this ten-year period, the Cultural Revolution is known for the extreme attempts to rid China of Capitalism and traditional ideology and practice through sociopolitical reform.

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IMPERIALIST Persons, ideas, policies that support, practice, reinforce, etc. Imperialism. Deemed anti-revolutionary within many CCP movements, especially during the Cultural Revolution. CAPITALIST Persons, ideas, policies that support, practice, reinforce, etc. a Capitalist system. Deemed anti-revolutionary within many CCP movements, especially during the Cultural Revolution. PIPA Four string plucked pear shaped lute; contemporary instrument typically has 29–31 frets. Variations of the Pipa date back to Qin Dynasty (221–207 bce) and commonly referenced in historical documents in the Tang Dynasty (618–907 ad) YANGQIN Hammered dulcimer struck with bamboo beaters. Tuned in chromatic scale allowing for versatility in cross-cultural musical exchanges. Most commonly attributed to Iranian santur. CULTURAL IMPERIALISM (China and Taiwan). A form of imperialism with an emphasis on culture (including a wide range of social norms, traditions, language, music, art, etc.) in which a politically and/or economically dominant group imposes standards of their culture upon another group in oppressive, ethnocentric ways to advance the power and influence of the dominant group.

continues into the twenty-first century.Throughout this chapter we explore how tradition necessarily involves a simultaneous negotiation of both maintenance and innovation. In both “Shaoshan” and “Dance of the Golden Snake” there are musical and cultural processes of modernization at play that cannot be separated from political processes such as cultural imperialism. Understanding “Chinese music” (compositions and practices, for example) requires careful attention to the socio-political and historical processes at play in musical exchanges and to the development of traditions over time and place. Once again, context is everything.And our consistent attention to social positioning and enculturation will offer more nuanced understanding, particularly in complex cross-cultural musical exchanges.

CHEN JIEBING AND “SHAOSHAN” “Shaoshan” is an original composition by Liu Baozhong, who wrote the piece specifically for erhu musician Chen Jiebing (throughout this chapter I follow the practice of Chinese surname before given name). The composition was never published nor publicly performed. This is an informal recording with the Navy orchestra in a Naval base cafeteria sometime around 1975, toward the end of the Cultural Revolution. I have known Chen Jiebing for over a decade now and when I asked if she had a recording that may be fitting for this chapter she immediately thought of “Shaoshan.” The composition, and its context, offer an intriguing glimpse into the intersections of music, politics, youth, and memory during 1960s and 1970s China. Chen Jiebing’s story is a unique one that I have written about in more depth in other places. In short, she was recruited into the Navy orchestra at the unusually young age of nine, and Chen reports that the experience transformed and defined her youth and young adulthood. Leading up to and during the Cultural Revolution, opportunities for musicians to join the military (Navy, Air Force, or Army) were considered by many to be a welcome path that would provide stability and security in an otherwise uncertain time. Chen initially reported her age as 12 in order to qualify for the auditions, and yet was still accepted even after her true age was discovered. She quickly developed  as  a musician, learning from some of the leading musicians, composers, and educators in the country, and rehearsing and performing at an exhaustive pace. Chen grew up during an historically tumultuous time in modern Chinese history. Before Chen joined the Navy, her family was blacklisted for their unfavorable political background. Yet Chen’s participation in the Navy orchestra turned their family from “black” (enemies of the Chinese Communist Party) to “red” (pro-Chinese Communist Party). These were important markers in revolutionary China, when one’s loyalty to the CCP needed to be displayed on a daily basis, and there were serious (political, social, and at times physical) persecutions for individuals and families who were blacklisted. Chen’s participation in the orchestra, then, transformed her, and her family

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ENCULTURATION in multiple dimensions: individually, as a young person growing up in that (China and Taiwan). The context; musically, as she faced enormous pressures and opportunities as a process of learning the developing musician; and politically, as her family’s socio-political status and culture of which you are a reality were positively impacted during a challenging time in Chinese society. member. Includes both direct Although the experience shaped her as a musician and provided an otherwise and indirect instruction, observation, and experience. unobtainable performance career at that time, this chapter in her life also came with its challenges. While her participation in the Navy was primarily about SHAOSHAN musical performance, she still had to fully participate in drills and training. This Revered birthplace of Mao proved challenging given her young age and small physical size. A primary role Zedong. Referenced in political propaganda of of the Navy orchestra was to travel to entertain troops on bases across China. CCP as the birth of Chinese Chen shared with me that they would travel near and far, sometimes to remote Communism due to its locations, even playing at stations with only two soldiers (but one at a time as affiliation with Mao Zedong one would always need to remain on watch). When she was initially recruited and as an important base at age nine, she did not see her parents until nearly one full year later, no doubt during foundational years of a difficult experience as a young child. As a musician, she explains how much CCP. she developed, and how quickly, as a result of the rigor and intensity of her experience. “Shaoshan” features Chen as erhu soloist with symphony orchestra accompaniment. Composer Liu Baozhong wrote the piece for Chen in the 1970s but did not have the opportunity to share this recording with Chen until some 40 years later during a reunion. Liu Baozhong was eager to share the recording with Chen Jiebing, who had forgotten about the recording until the composer mentioned it. Chen was surprised to discover that she remembered it almost in its entirety even though she had not performed it or heard it since the time of the recording. She was also surprised to know that she was performing as erhu soloist with a symphony orchestra much earlier than she originally remembered. Chen reports that the 1970s was quite early for solo erhu to be paired with a symphony orchestra. Finally, she was humbled to have a recording from her youth. Chen said she has very few recordings from her early days in the Navy and has to count on her own memory. On a recent phone call, she shared with me, “I knew I must have been a good musician to be selected for the Navy orchestra at age nine, but I have so few recordings from my youth to listen to.” The physical recording is thus an important and meaningful musical moment to go along with the memories of her youth. So how can we understand this piece as a musical window into 1960s and 1970s China? Let’s begin with the title, “Shaoshan,” a city in Hunan Province and the birthplace Chen Jiebing performing an erhu solo on stage during of Mao Zedong. Shaoshan frequently appears throughout her first year in the Navy. “I had to sit on a low stool CCP propaganda (in music, art, and literature) as a symbol because my feet couldn’t touch the ground.” Source: of the party and Mao Zedong. Today in Shaoshan there are provided by Chen Jiebing.

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LISTENING GUIDE 4.1

“SHAOSHAN” BY LIU BAOZHONG

LISTEN

Chen Jiebing, Erhu with PRC Navy Orchestra

T

HE ERHU IS a two-stringed bowed lute with a snakeskin covered resonator. The bow remains between the two strings and the instrument has no fingerboard. The erhu is often likened to the human voice due to its incredibly expressive timbre. The erhu is part of a larger family of two string bowed instruments known as huqin. These variations appear throughout different regions and musical traditions across China. For example, the jinghu, a higher pitched two-string bowed lute is a leading instrument in Jingju (Beijing Opera). The modern day erhu is commonly understood to have been incorporated into Han Chinese music from Northern Xi peoples during the Northern Song Dynasty (960–1127 ce). The first character of the instrument, “er,” means “two” to designate the two strings; and the second character is “hu,” or “barbarians,” to indicate the non-Han origins with a disparaging term for the Northerners. In this example, we hear the symphony orchestra open the piece (00:00) followed by the first entry of solo erhu (00:42). The orchestra returns (00:54) and an exchange between soloist and orchestra follows, often times with the orchestra completing the erhu phrases. Throughout the piece the orchestra plays dramatic gestures that provide emotional tension and release. For example, notice, at 01:30, the dramatic development that then subsides for the entry of solo erhu at 01:52. The overall style is a combination of lyrical melodies, inspired by traditional Chinese folk tunes, interspersed with the swells and dynamic gestures, inspired by the sounds of Romantic era symphonies, all heavily influenced by Socialist Realism. Notice the brass section swells at 09:44 leading to a classic song of the Cultural Revolution, “The East is Red,”* at 9:52. At 10:30 the solo erhu returns to close the piece, followed by enthusiastic applause. * “The East is Red” is a Cultural Revolution period standard, a reference to the emergence of China (the East) as a Socialist society (Red). Though some disputes remain over the precise origin and development of the song, it is generally understood to have been inspired by a Northern Shaanxi folk tune. Adopted by CCP members in the early 1940s, the song eventually became a standard within CCP revolutionary music of the 1950s and 1960s. The song served as an impromptu national anthem during the Cultural Revolution, when the official national anthem “March of the Volunteers” was temporarily banned due to the blacklisting of its lyricist, Tian Han. Most people who lived in China during the 1960s and 1970s heard this song repeatedly on a daily basis, particularly in urban centers where CCP activity, including political propaganda, was intense and pervasive.

EXPLORE Erhu

TIMBRE (China and Taiwan). The quality of sound. What gives a musical instrument its unique identity, especially as compared to other instruments.

numerous memorials and other sites of tourism that honor Mao Zedong and celebrate the early years of the Communist Party of China. Second, the way in which this piece came to fruition illustrates the context of the Cultural Revolution period. Chen shared that the composer wrote the piece specifically for her, knowing Chen to be a talented erhu musician. Chen Jiebing was already known as an accomplished Navy musician when Liu wrote “Shaoshan.” Chen Jiebing said she had the music for less than a week and then the orchestra ran through it “maybe one, two times, and then this recording was the third time.” Musicians and artists experienced a fast pace of composition and production such as this during the intense period of the Cultural Revolution.

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Third, the combination of Chinese musical instruments and traditions combined in some way with a Western European symphony orchestra is a practice found throughout twentieth century China, including during the Cultural Revolution. Yet appearances throughout the Cultural Revolution can be confusing at times, since Western European culture and politics were largely considered imperialist and counter-revolutionary. The seemingly contradictory practices can be explained in incredibly nuanced and detailed ways; put simply for the conversation here, it is useful to refer to Mao’s directive to make exceptions for including foreign things when it can benefit China and the CCP. As such, when applied for the good of the revolution and China, ensembles such as the Western European symphony orchestra (which would otherwise go against Cultural Revolution politics, policies, and ideologies), were acceptable in these moments of exception. Finally, toward the end of the piece the Cultural Revolution classic, “The East is Red,” brings the composition to a musical as well as ideological/political conclusion. These direct and indirect references to Mao and the Communist Party are common practice for a time period wherein the absence of such would be reprimanded and/or deemed unacceptable. “Shaoshan” also provides some uniqueness along with its stereotypical characteristics. As Chen mentioned, it is a very early example of erhu soloist with symphony orchestra accompaniment. Though the symphony orchestra in particular, and Western European art music in general, was certainly not new to 1960s and 1970s China, the combination of solo erhu with symphony orchestra was indeed quite an exception. Furthermore, the key of B flat Major was unusual for the modern tradition of the erhu and for Cultural Revolution music. This was the case because most compositions in this moment maintained a simplistic approach to musical key signatures in order to remain more accessible to untrained and everyday musicians. Keys such as G Major, D Major, and C Major, were thus much more common. In fact, Liu utilizes the Western European derived key signature of B flat Major to capture a related tonality that already existed in earlier musical practices in China. To my ear, the erhu, when featuring the melody as solo, is reminiscent of folk or traditional melodies found across China, whereas when the melody is realized by sections of the orchestra (winds, brass, strings, or percussion), it seems more reminiscent of a European symphony of the Romantic era. In cities across China in the early twentieth century one could expect to encounter many different musical genres that originated from outside of China, European orchestral music being just one of them. Chinese musicians were sent to Western and Eastern Europe to study in prominent conservatories of music. In addition to their interest in European art music, many early members of the CCP studied in the former Soviet Union and learned the musical styles associated with Communist revolutionary mass songs as well as other aspects of Socialist Realism. Thus the formulaic symphonic structure, coupled with the erhu’s melody, illustrates the synthesis of two musical traditions presented in “Shaosan” in a way that is indicative of the music promoted by the CCP in the 1960s and 1970s.

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HUQIN Larger family of bowed string instruments including erhu and jinghu. JINGHU Smallest and highest pitched bowed lute in the huqin family used in Jingju (Beijing Opera). ROMANTIC ERA Particular style of Western classical art music of nineteenth century Europe. Part of a larger intellectual and artistic movement. SOCIALIST REALISM A Marxist theory of utilizing literature and arts (including music) for Socialist revolution. An emphasis on positive and uplifting portrayals of Socialist society typically developed for the purpose of educating the masses. COUNTER-REVOLUTIONARY Any person or thing deemed in opposition to the revolution. Individuals not supporting the revolution in word, spirit, or deed were labelled as counter-revolutionary (fangeming), suffering serious consequences.

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The Cultural Revolution was a tumultuous time in China. For most individuals who lived through the experience there is a distinction between Cultural Revolution China and post-Cultural Revolution China. The sights and sounds of everyday life are markedly different in the two time periods. Today, Chen lives in the United States and regularly performs around the world. She maintains an active professional career as a musician performing a wide range of musical repertoire including but not limited to so-called Chinese traditional music. “Shaoshan,” and Chen Jiebing’s own story with the piece, provide insight into the sounds of the Cultural Revolution in China and the lived experience of music and politics during that time. They also offer a snapshot of 1960s and 1970s era synthesis of musical traditions. The audio recording, an historical remnant of a highly politicized and traumatic time in China’s recent history, carries a deep significance for Chen Jiebing as one of her own lived memories, as well as for generations of Chinese people impacted by the Cultural Revolution.

MODERN CHINESE ORCHESTRAS AND “DANCE OF THE GOLDEN SNAKE” “Dance of the Golden Snake” was arranged by Nie Er (1912–1935) in 1934 and continues to be performed today in a wide range of Chinese communities around the world. Despite his early death at the age of 23, Nie Er composed dozens of pieces that remain central to the national music repertoire of the Communist Party of China today. Most notably, Nie Er’s “March of the Volunteers” (also written in 1934) was in widespread use as an anthem upon the establishment of the PRC in 1949 (though the anthem was banned for nearly two decades during and after the political turmoil of the Cultural Revolution), and has served as the national anthem since 1982. Nie Er joined the Communist Party of China in 1933 and most of his well-known compositions are musical works that represent Chinese Music Ensemble at Swarthmore College, April 28, 2019, Swarthmore, Pennsylvania. Source: courtesy of the author, Lei Ouyang.

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the politics and patriotism of 1930s China with direct political influences from the Soviet Union and musical influences from Western European classical musical traditions (often through Soviet music). In the early 1900s places such as Shanghai, China, were filled with the sounds of music from many places outside of China, including the music of Western European symphony orchestras, Western European missionaries, and popular musics from many places including the United States, Europe, and across other regions of Asia. As I mentioned earlier, this certainly was not the first moment of musical exchange since music, people, goods, and ideas, have been circulating throughout history. However, in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, these musical circulations, even as China witnessed dramatic political transformations, highlight tensions such as traditional versus modern and national versus foreign. The emergence of the modern Chinese orchestra presents one example of the circulation of musical influences that are embedded within such socio-political processes. Frequently referred to as the “modern Chinese orchestra” in English, this type of ensemble emerged in the twentieth century as a new synthesis of musical instruments and practices with origins from both inside and outside of China. Today these orchestras range in size and location and include an array of ensembles from small community/amateur groups to professional orchestras of international acclaim. The instruments featured have wide-ranging backgrounds with some instruments originating in Han Chinese musical traditions (such as the guzheng), instruments introduced to the majority Han ethnicity by other ethnic groups (such as the erhu), as well as some instruments that were introduced to China from other regions (such as the yangqin). Tsui Ying-fai isolates three formative phases in the development of the modern Chinese orchestra. The first phase is set in early twentieth century China when Western European music was overwhelmingly favored over traditional and local musics in China. Because Chinese musicians were trained in Western European classical music, the early Chinese orchestras were established with Chinese instruments placed within a symphonic orchestral context. In the next phase, a synthesis of musical systems was developed and instruments were modified to accommodate merging the two different musical traditions on more equal terms. Finally, in the 1980s Tsui identifies a third phase in which more complex repertoire appears. As Tsui writes, “In the eyes of the Chinese people . . . the modern Chinese folk orchestra is [a] continuation of traditional instrumental practices, and Westernization (in a general sense) is not a goal but only a means for modernization” (2001: 265). In other words, influences from the Western European symphony orchestral tradition are present, but they represent only one aspect of how the Chinese orchestra came into existence. Furthermore, the ways in which the modern Chinese orchestra has developed into contemporary practice over the last century are not merely an imitation or an exclusive attempt at Westernization, but rather, Western European processes alongside Chinese processes have informed what we see and hear today as the modern Chinese orchestra. The development of the modern Chinese orchestra is riddled with processes of cultural imperialism to be sure, yet to focus solely on this dimension when considering the entire

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GUZHENG Plucked zither with movable bridges. Contemporary guzheng with 24 nylon wrapped steel strings.

WESTERNIZATION A sweeping term for the adoption of Western European cultures outside of Europe. Most frequently one part of processes of colonization and cultural imperialism.

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Modern Chinese Orchestra: Regional Names

Place

Name

Chinese Characters

China (PRC)

Contemporary Folk Symphonic Orchestra 现代民族管弦乐团

xiandai min zuguanxianyuetuan

China (PRC)

Folk Music Orchestra

民族音乐团

minzuyinyuetuan

Hong Kong

Chinese Music Orchestra

中樂團

zhongyuetuan

Taiwan (ROC)

National Folk Orchestra

國樂團

guoyuetuan

華樂團

huayuetuan

Malaysia and Singapore Orchestra of Ethnic Chinese

DIASPORA A group of people who have been forcibly displaced from their traditional homeland or point of origin. Within Asian Diasporas the term is currently also used to refer to concentrated communities of ethnically Asian groups living outside of their ancestral homeland, though not exclusively through forced displacement. DIZI Transverse flute, most commonly made of bamboo. Many variations of flutes exist for different regions, musical genres, and ranges. Additional mokong hole is covered by a dimo bamboo membrane providing a unique timbre. HULUSI Gourd free reed flute typically with one or two drone pipes. Played vertically and originating in variation across different ethnic minority groups in southwestern China and bordering nations. Increasing popularity and appearance across different geo-cultural, ethnic, and musical traditions in 20th and 21st century China.

Transliteration

tradition and its development risks silencing or obscuring the many ways that Chinese musicians and artists have contributed to a vibrant and visible musical ensemble in contemporary Chinese society, and this both within and beyond East Asia. What I’ve been calling the modern Chinese orchestra is called a “Contemporary Folk Symphonic Orchestra” or “Folk Music Orchestra” in the People’s Republic of China; “Chinese Music Orchestra” in Hong Kong; “National Orchestra” in Taiwan; and “Orchestra of Ethnic Chinese” in Malaysia and Singapore. How and why does one type of musical ensemble have different names in different countries? It is because the ensembles and their repertoire speak to the complex political, national, regional, and ethnic identities of Chinese communities across the globe (see Table 4.1). In the People’s Republic of China, the emphasis lies on a historically and politically charged concept of zhonghua minzu (中華民族)—a complex bundle that can reference race, ethnicity, and/or nationality—as a way to distinguish the ensemble from Western European classical musical traditions; in Hong Kong this is simply zhong (‘Chinese’) yue (music’) tuan (orchestra/group); in Taiwan, the concept of the “National” (國樂 guoyue) is a political claim of sovereignty and a claim that is directly tied to Kuomintang roots in nation building; in Malaysia and Singapore the prefix of “hua” （華）works as an important marker in these multi-ethnic sites with significant Chinese populations. Such distinctions in terminology can be seen in other domains as well, such as in regional references to the Mandarin Chinese language (see Table 4.2). The recording of “Dance of the Golden Snake” in Listening Guide 4.2 is a contemporary arrangement by Wang Guowei performed by the Swarthmore College Chinese Music Ensemble, a collegiate ensemble at my home institution in the United States. Co-directed by myself and Wang Guowei, the ensemble TABLE 4.2

Regional References to the Mandarin Chinese Language

Place

Chinese Characters

Transliteration

China (PRC) Hong Kong Taiwan (ROC) Malaysia and Singapore

普通话 中文 國語 華語

putonghua (lit.: ordinary talk”) zhongwen guoyu huayu

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performs traditional and contemporary music from different regions of China, Taiwan, and the Chinese diaspora. The orchestra is comprised of a combination of bowed instruments, wind instruments, plucked instruments, and percussion. In our ensemble, students perform on instruments including the erhu (bowed fiddle), dizi (flute), hulusi (gourd flute), yangqin (hammered dulcimer), guzheng (zither), ruan (plucked lute), and a variety of percussion. Each specific orchestra or ensemble’s instrumentation may vary depending on the mission of the group, its location, specific repertoire, members, availability of instruments, and regional/local variation, to name a few possibilities. In “Dance of the Golden Snake” Nie Er developed the fast section at the end of a well-known Jiangnan Sizhu (Silk and Bamboo) piece into a more formalized and standardized composition. Jiangnan Sizhu is a folk tradition wherein musicians play in small groups in an informal and traditionally casual setting, such as a teahouse. Musicians learn a core body of repertoire that is memorized, interpreted, and realized with flexibility, improvisation, and fluidity. The tradition relies on the aural tradition of learning music through performance and experience instead of through written notation, musical scores, or formal education. In other words, musicians learn from performing, regular participation. and engagement with more experienced musicians. In “Dance of the Golden Snake,” Nie Er took the final section of a well-known piece, called “Yang Ba Qu” or “Dao Ba Ban,” and notated it for a small chamber group, turning it into a composition with distinct beginning, middle, and end. The original piece by Nie Er was performed and recorded by a relatively smaller chamber group than modern Chinese orchestras today, but the compositional processes remain relevant for understanding modern Chinese orchestral repertoire. Jiangnan Sizhu musicians do not follow musical scores upon mastering the core repertoire whereas modern Chinese orchestra musicians could read a musical score such as “Dance of the Golden Snake” with or without prior knowledge of Jiangnan Sizhu and/or its core repertoire. Thus, Nie Er’s “Dance of the Golden Snake” is a pre-composed piece that is performed as written—in either five-line staff notation or jianpu—depending on the group and musicians. The composition has a distinct beginning and ending that is suitable for a concert or other type of presentational performance. This type of formalized and standardized compositional process can be seen in the twentieth-century development of repertoire for individual instruments (such  as erhu and guzheng to name but two) as well as in modern Chinese orchestral repertoire. In “Dance of the Golden Snake” Nie Er draws upon the upbeat and climactic material from “Yang Ba Qu”; and this contemporary arrangement by Wang Guowei also adds percussion phrases reminiscent of festivals and other joyous occasions throughout the melodic sections, making this a common piece for celebrations. As a result, the piece is frequently performed in Chinese diasporic communities at Lunar New Year and other community gatherings.

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RUAN Generic term referring to a plucked lute with fretted neck and four strings. Typically a round body, though instrument will vary in size, musical range, etc. depending on geo­ cultural region, ethnic group, and musical tradition. JIANGNAN SIZHU Folk music tradition from the Jiangnan region (southern Jiangsu and northern Zhejiang provinces) that combines silk (si) and bamboo (zhu) instruments. FIVE-LINE STAFF NOTATION Music notation system that includes five lines and four spaces to indicate scale degrees. JIANPU System of musical notation that uses Arabic numbers to represent scale degrees. Simplified version of musical notation requiring little training. Borrows many rhythmic and other articulations from five-line staff notation in modified form. Also referred to as cipher notation. LUNAR NEW YEAR The beginning of the Lunar Calendar, a system based on the cycles of the moon. A major holiday of the Lunar Calendar and observed across many communities in East and Southeast Asia and in Asian Diasporic communities. Also referred to as Spring Festival.

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LISTENING GUIDE 4.2

“DANCE OF THE GOLDEN SNAKE” BY NIE ER

LISTEN

Arrangement by Wang Guowei Performed by Swarthmore College Chinese Music Ensemble (Spring 2019) TIME

MUSICAL EVENT

0:00

Gu (drum) and luo (gong) percussion open the piece. Listen a few times and see if you can follow along with the percussion notation. X indicates a strike, 0 is a rest, underlined “notes” halve the note length (double underline once again subdivides), and a dot adds half of the previous note length. Drum Gong

0:05

| X X | X | X X | X

X XX | X X X | X 0 | X|XX· |X0 |

Ensemble enters. Erhu, dizi, and hulusi play melodic phrase #1. Plucked instruments (guzheng, ruan, and yangqin) play a type of bass line.

0:11

0:13

0:14

Percussion joins ensemble for one measure of unison. Melody and bass

|665 |

Percussion

| XX X |

Percussion plays two measures of a short percussion pattern Drum

| X XX XX | 0X X |

Gong

| X 0X | 0X X |

Erhu, dizi, and hulusi play melodic phrase #2. Plucked instruments (guzheng, ruan, and yangqin) play a type of bass line.

0:26

Percussion joins ensemble for one measure of unison (similar to 0:11).

0:27

Call and response: phrase alternates between different sections of the ensemble.

0:39

Ensemble drops to a softer dynamic level. Erhu, dizi, and hulusi play melody; plucked instruments play a simpler bass line. Ensemble crescendos (builds in dynamic level).

0:46

Ensemble reaches louder dynamic level in unison. Repeat melodic phrase (originally heard at 0:05).

0:58

Percussion interlude that moves between different time signatures (2/4 and 3/4).

1:07

Repeat back to beginning.

1:57

Second ending: second melodic phrase played at increasingly faster tempo, accelerating until end of piece.

TAIWAN: REPUBLIC OF CHINA Politics are inseparable from Taiwanese society’s historical and presentday context. Over the past 100 years people on the subtropical island have experienced a tumultuous series of events, including: Japanese occupation from 1895 to 1945; martial law under Kuomintang rule from 1949 to 1987; losing United Nations recognition in 1971; and the country’s first democratic presidential election in 1996. At times outwardly visible and at other times

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subtly imbued in a phrase or gesture, the political tensions in Taiwan are often complex and sensitive, depending on an individual’s perspective, family history, political affiliation, and overall social positioning. These overlapping senses of self, community, and nation have evolved in new ways over the past three decades even as a wave of democratic reforms reshaped Taiwanese society, HOKLO OR HOKKIEN politics, and economy. Taiwanese Hokkien make up I include case studies from Taiwan in this chapter for a number of reasons. the majority of peoples on First, for the rich array of possibilities they offer for the study of music and Taiwan today (roughly 75). Primarily families with origins culture. Second, to render visible an island nation that is often underrepresented in Southern Fujian province of in regional discussions. And third, as a site of some of my most recent fieldwork. mainland China that started to A few points of introduction may help set the stage for the remaining case studies immigrate to Taiwan as early in the chapter. Taiwan is a subtropical island largely covered by mountain ranges as the 1600s. leading to densely populated urban areas in the lower lands. Taiwan today is WAISHENGREN claimed by the PRC as a so-called renegade province; the ROC is thus not Term referring to KMT military recognized by most nations or, most significantly, the United Nations. Within personnel and their families Taiwan, another tension emerges when the connection to mainland China as a in Taiwan who left mainland motherland is weighed against the thought of being governed by the PRC. The China as a result of defeat by political divisions are real and personal. Very simply stated, certain groups are CCP in 1949. Literally, “outer eager for reunification with China, some are apolitically interested in maintaining province person.” things as is, others are anti-PRC, and still others are proudly pro-democracy and support an independent Taiwan. As ethnomusicologists Nancy Guy and Tse-Hsiung Lin write, the Indigenous peoples of Taiwan were the majority on the island until the nineteenth century, yet today make up only 2% of the island’s population. The vast majority of people in Taiwan today are Han, but with important distinctions within this grouping. Roughly 75% are Hoklo or Hokkien settlers (speaking Hokkien or “Taiwanese”) with origins in Fujian province, and roughly 10% are Hakka peoples with origins in Jiangxi, Fujian, and Guangdong provinces who came at some point in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Another 10% of the population is referred to as Waishengren (外省人“outer-province people”) representing the Kuomintang (KMT or Nationalist) officials, military personnel, refugees, and their descendants (even those later born on Taiwan) who came to Taiwan fleeing the Communist Party of China on the mainland in the late 1940s and early 1950s (or, during and just after the period of conflict referred to as the “Chinese Civil War” or “Chinese Revolution”). And while the Waishengren and KMT represent only 10% of the population, the authoritarian rule and martial law between 1949 and 1987 is an example of a minority-rule that saw the minority group (in this case the KMT and Waishengren) exert power over the majority Hoklo as well Taipei city skyline view from top of Elephant Mountain. as the Hakka and Indigenous minorities. The distinctions Source: courtesy of the author, Lei Ouyang.

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within the populations in Taiwan are thus socially, politically, and culturally significant. What does this mean in everyday life and for our discussion of music, people, and culture? Take for example the lion dance; there is a distinct lineage to the lion dance traditions of southern Canton regions in mainland China. Yet to label it simply as “Chinese” would omit the proudly local innovations that we see in the contemporary practices of lion dance drumming in Taiwan. Connected yet distinct, maintaining traditions while simultaneously innovating in new ways, and challenging pre-conceived boundaries of who can perform what and why, lion dance drumming has much to teach us.

SONG KUN TRADITIONAL ARTS AND WUSHI (LION DANCE) IN CONTEMPORARY TAIWAN Wushi (hereafter I’ll refer to it in English as lion dance) has long been a vibrant and festive celebratory tradition for Chinese communities around the world. (Not to be confused with Dragon dances during which many people hold poles to support a dragon head and long fabric body). Traditionally associated with New Year’s celebrations, lions, and the accompanying percussion music of drum, cymbals and gongs, are believed to scare away any evil spirits or bad luck and help bring good luck and fortune in its place. In contemporary practice, lion dances are often performed not only at New Year’s celebrations but at auspicious moments such as weddings, festivals, or the opening of new businesses and restaurants, and to help foster good luck and bring prosperity to an important occasion. In many Chinese communities outside of East and Southeast Asia, the lion dance and its accompanying martial arts and percussion music function as important identity markers to learn about, reclaim, and/or practice cultural traditions that may not otherwise be present (Chinatowns across North America, for instance). The most common type of lion dance performed today is rooted in the Southern lion dance tradition with origins in southern China’s Guangdong (also known as “Canton”) region, though other styles such as the Northern lion dance also exist. Lion dance troupes typically feature at least one or two lions, and at least two percussionists on drum and cymbals. Two people, traditionally men, animate the lion with one as the head and two front legs and the other as the tail and two hind legs. Taking Taiwan as an example, lion dance troupes vary widely in their membership and function, from local clubs that may occasionally perform for local festivals or Lion Costume resting on a rehearsal drum at Song Kun Traditional Arts Studio, August 7, 2019, Taipei, Taiwan. parades, to collegiate groups who compete internationally, to professional troupes with members who make their Source: courtesy of the author, Lei Ouyang.

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Song Kun Traditional Arts invited performance. Taoyuan, Taiwan, August 2019. Source: courtesy of the author, Lei Ouyang.

living performing for events. Song Kun Traditional Arts is one example of the latter—a professional troupe with a core group of members whose full-time employment is with the troupe. Song Kun Traditional Arts was established in 2003 as a lion dance troupe with a particular emphasis on drumming. Taking the traditional style of zhangu, war, or battle, drumming, the group seeks to maintain cultural traditions while innovating and making traditions relevant to contemporary audiences. The group is trained in traditional lion dance, specifically the Southern Chinese Guangdong style, as well as war or battle drumming. Contemporary innovations include LED lights on the lions, extending new movements and techniques to build upon traditional repertoire from war drumming, and incorporating contemporary music and popular dance movements into portions of their performances. Founder, Song Jiankun, began drumming as a child after hearing drumming at a local temple. Song Jiankun joined a local troupe and credits his participation with giving his young adulthood important definition and grounding. After playing with his master teacher’s troupe for some time, he eventually started his own troupe, Song Kun Traditional Arts. Song Jiankun maintains an important relationship with his master teacher and assists in regular trainings, lectures, and rituals to maintain the particular lineage of lion dance drumming across Taiwan. Song Kun Traditional Arts is now a successful lion dance troupe based in Sanchong, a district in New Taipei City (immediately west of Taipei city), and regularly performs for a wide range of occasions. Song Jiankun describes their performances as falling into one of three categories: festival, commercial, and

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ZHANGU A style of battle or war drumming. The style that informs Song Kun Traditional Arts originates from southern China’s Guangdong region.

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artistic. Festival events celebrate major holidays from the Lunar calendar (one of numerous traditional calendars based on cycles of the moon), such as the midautumn festival and the spring festival (also referred to as the Lunar new year). Commercial events are extensive in range, including: government sponsored events promoting Chinese and Taiwanese culture; events for international guests; and new business openings and corporate sponsored events. For example, when I was shadowing the group in August 2019, I accompanied them to the closing ceremonies for the Fourth World Deaf Bowling Championships, held in a hotel in Taoyuan (about 30 miles outside of Taipei). That year, the group also performed at an event celebrating the new, environmentally friendly furnace (for burning incense and offerings) at a temple in New Taipei City. Finally, the artistic performances are opportunities for the troupe to develop their own repertoire for a mainstage concert; given the time it takes to develop these concerts they happen only once every year or two.

LISTENING GUIDE 4.3

LION DANCE DRUMMING

LISTEN

Third Section of Drum Group Repertoire

S

ONG JIANKUN explains that core repertoire is shared amongst different Lion Dance troupes, yet each troupe typically develops their own specific arrangements, choreography, and style. This example from the Song Kun Lion Dance Troupe is merely one section (the third) within a larger piece. The notation is based on traditional transmission (teaching and learning) practices, which limits the written notation. Fang Yunqin taught me this section in summer 2019 and you can see the whiteboard  she  used while we covered different parts of the section in one of the accompanying photos. Song Jiankun later shared with me a printout on which this guide is based. (I simplified the sheet for the purposes of this listening guide and omitted any reference to choreography/larger physical movements.) The arrangement builds upon Song Jiankun’s teacher’s traditional notation by adding cues to help facilitate learning and memorization. The notation moves between different practices of indicating which hand to use (such as 右=right, 左=left, and 双=both hands together) and numbers to emphasize rhythm and rhythmic patterns. In this way, the notation is merely one part of the learning process and requires hands-on study with a teacher, as the notation itself is incomplete and not intended to be a score that a performer can pick up and play on first reading without instruction. Listen to the audio example multiple times while reading along in the listening guide. Can you follow along with the notation and cues? Can you make out the different types of drum strokes and resulting timbres (quality of sound) produced with the rim (答) and dampened strokes (七)? After listening multiple times with the listening guide, listen again with your eyes closed. How has your understanding of the example changed after studying the listening guide? Are you able to identify specific patterns or sections more clearly? Research lion dance drumming online and listen to a variety of clips online. Notice how the guide here is for only two minutes of music. Consider the complexity within lion dance drumming as you listen to longer examples.

continued

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Guide:

右 = Right 左= Left 双 = Both right and left together 答 = hit the rim of drum 七 = dampened hit (one hand mutes drum while other strikes drum) X4 = play four times Underline halves the note length TIME

MUSICAL EVENT

0:00

答

0:01 0:16 0:21 0:25 0:31 0:37 0:42

【右 左 右左 左 右 左 双】X4 右 左 右左 左 右 左 11234 112345 【123456 右 左】X3 12341 12342 12343 12344 12345 12346 双 (5小1 大)* *(5 small/quiet and 1 big/loud) 【1234561234】X3 1答 答 答2答 答 答3答 答 答4答 答 答5答 答 答6答 答 123456 “一 二 三 四” Chinese characters for 1 2 3 4= spoken as “yi er san si”

0:45

【右左 左 右 左】X4 repeat on rim:【右左 左 右 左】X4

0:58

【右左 左 右 左】X2 repeat on rim:【右左 左 右 左】X2

1:05

【右左 左 右 左】X2 repeat on rim:【右左 左 右 左】X2

1:11

【右左 左 右 左 on rim: 右左 左 右 左】X4

1:24

【右左 左 右 左】X2

1:28 1:36

1234567822345678右 七 右 答 【1234567七】X3

1:40

1 七 七 2 七 七 3 七七七 4 七 七 123456

1:45

1 七 七 2 七 七 3 七七七 4 七 七 1234567 123456 rest 8 “Ho” “hei” “huh”

Drums and whiteboard at Song Kun Traditional Arts Studio, August 7, 2019, Taipei, Taiwan. Source: courtesy of the author Lei Ouyang.

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Song Jiankun credits his involvement with his first lion dance troupe as a defining and shaping experience as a young child and adult. Because of this, Song Jiankun values the community building within Song Kun, as well as what lion dance and drumming can offer his local communities. Song Kun regularly participates in community events that bring drumming to underserved youth. Outside of Taiwan he has also established an exchange with a school for young  women in South Africa that emphasizes studying Chinese language and culture. Song Jiankun values what a music ensemble can provide to youth beyond musical or technical skill—instilling and developing characteristics such as self-confidence, discipline, respect, and working with others. Given his deep respect for individual cultivation and community, it is unsurprising that Song Kun is apparently one of the first lion dance troupes in Taiwan to prominently feature women, first among them, the artist Fang Yunqing. And, although other women may indeed perform in this way, Fang Yunqing is frequently profiled in popular media (inside and outside of Taiwan), reinforcing her pioneering role as a woman drummer in this traditional performing art. I sat down with Fang Yunqing in August 2019 to ask about her path to drumming and the role of women in lion dance troupes today in Taiwan. Similar to Song Jiankun, Fang speaks explicitly about the influential and defining experience of joining a performing arts troupe such as Song Kun Traditional Arts. Ouyang: Can you tell me about how you originally got involved in drumming? Fang: I think the sound of drums is so special. And I didn’t have a great relationship with family when I was younger. Through drumming, and being a member of a troupe, I learned a lot from this experience. How to respect others, how to behave, and really broadening my experiences in general. All of what I learned in the ensemble really helped my relationship with my family, too. How to respect my family members, how to make a living, and so forth. Rehearsing drumming is really hard and tiring; it isn’t like the piano where you’re just moving your fingers, but it is physical and takes a lot of physical strength. I learned so much from all of these experiences. Ouyang: So how exactly did you get started? Where did you first hear of this type of drumming? Fang: I first heard drumming on the streets when I was younger and went outside to listen. I followed the group around and was mesmerized and didn’t want to go home. It seemed like such a special tradition. I started studying with a temple group, but it wasn’t considered the most ideal place to study drumming. My family saw how interested I was in drumming and recommended I start training with Song Kun in Sanchong, a well-regarded troupe and location both considered to be really good environments for me. Ouyang: Can you tell me more about when you first started? You were the only woman, right? What was that experience like?

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Fang: I started with Song Kun when I was in High School, I believe I was around 16 years old. When I studied/learned drumming at the temple there were men and women, but in Song Kun it was more specialized and at the time it was only men. As the only woman I didn’t dare to speak at first. I spent a lot of time watching and participating and thinking about how I wanted to develop my own style. I watched the men but I wasn’t going to be exactly the same as them. Drumming as a woman is different. So over the years I worked on developing my own style of drumming as a woman. A style that combines beauty and strength [for Chinese speakers Fang’s words here are 美跟力 or mei geˉn lì]. Ouyang: How long was it before other women joined the group? Fang: About five years after I joined some other women came in. At first some women would come in for a bit and then leave. It is a lot of work and perseverance; if you want to do it isn’t enough to just be interested. You need to persevere and it is hard work. Everyone makes a lot of mistakes along the way, but you have to be willing to work through and learn from your mistakes. Ouyang: You mentioned that you were a bit shy and didn’t speak up much initially. Did you feel welcome when you began in the troupe as the only woman? Fang: At first I think the men weren’t sure if I would stay. They may have thought I was just trying it out. I didn’t really focus on that, but instead kept working hard to see how I could develop. In the first six months they  probably didn’t have much of an opinion; but after seeing me sweat, seeing me put the time and effort in, they began to see that I was committed and that I was here, was developing and they welcomed me. After all, working together in the troupe is like a family as you rehearse and perform together. Ouyang: You’ve been with the troupe now for ten years. How does your experience as the first woman to join the drumming troupe ten years ago to your prominence with the group today compare to the role of women in Taiwan over the past ten years? Fang: Of course there have been ideas about what men and women can and cannot do in society for some time. And there are important changes that are happening. For example, in the troupe: I think people had ideas about what roles men and women should have. You know how we have to move the drums a lot for rehearsals and performances, right? So I think at first people considered moving drums a job for men and not for women. But I went ahead and carried the drums. I showed them that I could do it, too. I think sometimes women have to show that they can do it too in order to start gaining some equality in society. Sometimes this means women have to work harder than men and sometimes men might critique women for being “too strong” but you have to do it and show everyone. This is something I talk about with my students and it is one of my goals to help overcome these stereotypes. (Personal interview, August 2019; English translation by author)

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The introduction to Song Kun Traditional Arts, Lion Dance, and the excerpt from my conversation with troupe member Fang Yunqing provide insight into a number of important concepts. For starters, we can see how a tradition such as lion dance drumming is simultaneously maintained and innovated. The short excerpt of one section of an example from Song Kun’s core repertoire further illustrates how tradition continues yet in new ways. Moreover, ethnographic fieldwork, including conversations such as the one highlighted here, can offer first-hand accounts of the shifting positions of women in contemporary society through the performing arts. Through Fang’s story we can better understand existing gender norms in contemporary society as well as the ways in which Fang is opening up new ways for women to participate and perform. And through the stories of both Song and Fang we see how the experience of studying, performing, and eventually leading and directing such performing arts troupes is much more than musical mastery of the sounds and movements but can be an important part of one’s development from youth into adulthood.

PUYUMA SONG, “NALUWAN”

YUANZHUMIN English transliteration of Chinese term for Indigenous peoples of Taiwan. Literally, “original-residing-people”

In the introduction to this chapter we considered Chinese language as one way to frame the geo-cultural area of East Asia around the regions of China (PRC) and Taiwan (ROC). Yet not everyone in the region speaks Chinese. We also discussed a historical hegemony of Han culture despite the fact that everyone in the region is not of Han ethnicity. In Taiwan, Indigenous peoples, also referred to  in  English as Aboriginals, make up a little over 2% of the population.  Referred  to in Chinese as Yuanzhumin (原住民Yuán zhùmín literally the characters for “original,” “reside,” and “peoples”), they are native to the land, as opposed to those who migrated from Mainland China either around 1949 or in earlier periods of migration.While there are many distinctions within Indigenous communities, the current ROC government officially recognizes 16 different Indigenous groups. The Puyuma, of Southeastern Taiwan, are one of these 16 identified groups. (Official ROC government documents began using the term Pinuyumayan in 2017 but “Puyuma” remains in common use with indigenous and non-indigenous individuals as of this writing.) Historically, many writers and scholars who were not themselves Indigenous tended to fixed Indigenous peoples and their cultures as a static and fixed Other. Applied to music, this approach often resulted in a quest for so-called “pure” or “untouched” cultural traditions. Today, however, most ethnomusicologists understand tradition to be shaped by both innovation and preservation. In other words, the idea of a culture being fixed in time, or static, no longer drives our inquiries. This perspective is essential to understanding Indigenous communities and cultures, and this is the case precisely because of the historic injustices Indigenous communities have faced and continue to face. To understand contemporary Indigenous cultures is to understand the ongoing

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Sumi playing guitar at a singa-long. Source: provided by Chen Chun-bin.

processes of change, preservation, and innovation. As the work of Taiwan based ethnomusicologist Chen Chun-bin shows, “Aboriginal culture can be malleable and adaptable while the Aborigines still stubbornly adhere to certain values” (2007: xvi). In other words, there are risks involved in arbitrarily attempting to delineate what is traditional and modern, inside and outside, of Indigenous cultures. Do the origins of musical cultures matter? Of course. But, in the post-modern era, perhaps we do more harm than good in focusing our efforts primarily on binary dichotomies like “traditional and modern,” “Indigenous and non-Indigenous,” and “East and West.” Bruno Nettl’s forward to this text helps illuminate why such queries are no longer central to the work of ethnomusicologists. The Puyuma song arranged by Sumi, with guitar accompaniment by Hilo, is an example of the fluid and simultaneous processes of combining old and new, traditional and modern, and of drawing musical material inspired by multiple influences into one composition. Ethnomusicologist Chen Chun-bin took part in recording the song for the film Home Forever. The singer begins with vocables (lyrics without specific linguistic meaning) accompanied by a guitar. Some individuals may be in search of a so-called “pure” or “traditional” sound; so can we still consider this an Indigenous musical example with the C minor arpeggiation on the guitar so clearly influenced by Western European musical sensibilities? Chen and I would argue a quick and unequivocal, yes! Throughout the history of various peoples and cultures around the world we can see how communities are constantly influencing and interacting with one another

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LISTENING GUIDE 4.4

“NALUWAN”

LISTEN

Sumi (Vocals) and Hilo (Guitar)

T

HE VOCABLES “NALUWAN” and “haiyang” (here, modified to “ho-wa-yi-ye-yang” or “ho-wa­ yi-ye-ya[ng]”) appear throughout this example. Here Puyuma singer, Sumi, employs the common practice of singing “naluwan” to open a song, a convention that often appears with ascending notes. “Haiyang” (or variations thereof) is frequently used to close a song. Follow along with the transcription by Chen Chun-bin for the first half of the song (00:00–1:26). Notice when vocables “naluwan” and “haiyang” appear and listen for the ascending or descending phrases. You may observe ascending notes when Sumi opens the song with “naluwan” but later appearances of “naluwan” also include descending phrases. Try to transcribe the second half of the song (01:27–02:48) on your own. Listen for “naluwan” and “Haiyang” and other phrases that are repeated from the first half of the song. TIME

MUSICAL EVENT

0:15

na lu wan na lu wan na yi ya na yi yo ya o

0:32

ho yi na lu wan na ha yi ya na hai yo ya o ho wa yi ye ya

0:52

hi ye ya o ai a a u wan

1:03

hi ye ya o wa i yo ya a u wa an

1:11

ho yi ye yang

1:16

hu wa i ya ho wa yi ye yang

CAMPUS FOLK SONGS Musical genre that emerged on University campuses across Taiwan throughout the 1960s. Social and musical movement directly engaged with youth responses to local and international politics. Inspired by American folk and American Rock music genres.

in new and dynamic ways. Are there some aspects that are maintained from within one cultural tradition? Absolutely. Are there certain musical traditions that continue to develop and grow through interactions with other musical traditions? Another resounding yes. I share Chen’s example here to foreground just one example of contemporary Indigenous music. When I sat down in 2019 to talk with Chen Chun-bin about the song, he explained how the guitar, and the way it accompanies the voices in Sumi’s song, is directly influenced by the folk music enjoyed in 1970s Taiwan. Deeply informed by the folk revival in the United States, the youth in Taiwan utilized music to assert their own socio-political and musical identities through a genre known as campus folk songs. The socio-political and musical movement intentionally asserted an identity unique to Taiwan, in response to Taiwan losing its seat at the United Nations, and as a means of resisting overwhelming Western cultural imperialism, among other things. Sumi’s song simultaneously carries the so-called “outside” influence of the campus folk songs and the socalled “inside” influence of Puyuma cultural practices such as vocables and the context of singing such a song with family, thereby complicating hegemonic dichotomies of “inside and outside” and “traditional and modern.” Through an informed inquiry into these origins and influences, we can understand Sumi’s song as a complex living musical practice that generates multiple meanings.

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In 2003, Chen was asked to join a project with the National Museum of Prehistory to develop a soundtrack for an animated film, Home Forever. The film presented images of a prehistorical funeral that took place at an archeological site in a Puyuma village, or Nanwang Buluo. Chen’s account describes the recording process and context, and offers important ethnomusicological observations and interpretations that provide insight into the significance of the song. In the following excerpt, Chen refers to Akibo, the project leader and a Puyuma anthropologist, and Akibo’s cousin and singer of the “Naluwan” song, Sumi. To be honest, when I took part in the recording process, I just considered

it a job. I paid attention to the musical structure of the Puyuma song we

were recording, but nothing more than this came to my mind at that time.

I found that the song was comprised of two tunes, and its song text was

set to vocables, such as “naluwan” and “ho-wa-yi-ye-yang.” It was about

three minutes in length, but we spent two nights on it. Akibo was always

critical of his cousin’s singing, so that we recorded the song again and again.

Finally, I picked up three clips from what we had recorded and burned a

CD for Akibo, who then selected one of them to dub into the film.

Later in one night, I brought a copy of the CD to Sumi at the

Baosang buluo, and she, with her family (her father, husband, and two

sisters), and I spent almost a whole night listening to it. After playing the

CD for them  two  or three times, we were suddenly missing Sumi’s late

mother . . .  Sumi’s and her sisters’ children were invited to listen to the

CD together at this moment. They even made a phone call to a child of

their family, who was out of the town, to listen to the song through the

receiver of the telephone. All the children recognized that it was their

grandmother’s  song,  because they had listened to her singing this song

innumerable times.

During a break, after playing the CD about a dozen times, Sumi’s father

began to teach them how to sing the song. This was probably the first time

he taught them how to sing it. Although Sumi and her sisters had listened

to this song sung by their parents countless times, their father and mother

never explicitly taught it to them. Sumi just learned it by listening. It seemed

to me that the father was so happy and proud of his daughters, because they

really listened to their parents’ singing. The rest of the night, we repeatedly

played the CD, as we talked and drank. When the CD stopped, someone

would request to play it again, and no one objected.

The experience of listening to music that night impressed me.

[Accustomed to listening] to music for the purpose of entertainment or

study, I had never encountered the way of listening to music engaged in by

Sumi’s family. Although they played the CD repeatedly, they did not listen

to it for fun, nor for analyzing it. Rather, it seemed that the listening was

a means of commemorating the late mother. This commemoration struck

me as a “stolen opportunity” that allowed them to consolidate the familial

intimacy through the product of a government-sponsored project. The

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Museum did not aim to promote any form of Aboriginal identity in the film, but attempt to appropriate the Puyuma song to make the film more “authentic,” by means of an implied connection between the Aborigines and the prehistorical peoples. Although the film gave the Aboriginal participants almost no space to present themselves, Sumi’s family found their own way to give the CD meaning by listening to it. (Chen Chun-bin, 2007: 124–125) This “meaning” to which Chen refers, is deeply significant in understanding the song itself as well as in cultural practice. For example, the vocables, though without linguistic meaning, participate in a cultural tradition of how and in what way they are used. In other words, though without direct linguistic meaning, one may argue that they are not actually “meaningless.” And in cultural practice, the act of singing the vocables generates meaning, through either singing and/ or listening. Finally, this meaning, Chen argues, is not fixed but “incomplete”; as a living practice, the song will continue to generate new meanings with new singers and listeners. In addition to giving meaning to the song through each performance/ hearing, I would add that the Indigenous participants also reclaim power through the process. As Chen explores throughout his research, Indigenous individuals and communities in Taiwan are doubly marginalized. Extending the work of Han-Taiwanese sociologist Fred Chiu, Chen explains how Han individuals in Taiwan have been colonized globally while also seeking to colonize domestically. In other words, ethnically Han individuals in Taiwan have been constructed as the Other by the West (globally) while simultaneously constructing Indigenous peoples in Taiwan as the Other (domestically). Therefore, a performance such as Sumi’s Puyuma song offers a new living tradition of innovation and practice. One that combines both tradition and innovation; and musical practices with origins from both inside and outside of indigenous communities. A new sound and image of the possibilities for “traditional Indigenous music” that challenge and resist limiting beliefs of past and present.

SOUNDWALK: TAIPEI

SOUNDWALK A close and intentional listening to the aural environment of a particular place. Including, but not exclusively, music.

What does a place familiar to you “sound” like? Increasingly, ethnomusicologists, along with others interested in sound and listening, are paying close attention to the sounds of specific places as well as the process of listening. I want to close this chapter by sharing my own soundwalk with you, a collection of sounds I recorded in and around Taipei, Taiwan during the summer of 2019. I’ll narrate it first, and then give you a listening guide to help you with timings. Think about a few things while you read and listen: What do you learn about Taiwan from this particular soundwalk? What would you include in a soundwalk of a city or place familiar to you? Home for me has always been at my mother’s side. As a child we lived in Minnesota and had the privilege of regularly travelling to Taiwan to visit my

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Scooters and traffic at a Taipei intersection. Source: courtesy of the author, Lei Ouyang.

mother’s family. The two places both felt like home to me. Yet one was a place I visited, was welcomed in, and was surrounded by family; whereas the other was where I lived and went to school. I was raised navigating two cultures, two languages, and two places that seemed in opposition to each other or, at the very least, required an either/or solution. Not until adulthood did I start to see how one can be both Asian and American at the same time. (By no means am I alone in this experience, but it can be a minoritized experience depending on where one lives. And though there is much more to say on this experience and what it represents, I focus here on the senses, and in particular, on sounds and the experiences of listening.) As a child and young adult, I remember not really having words to capture the sensory experience of Taiwan for my friends in the United States and vice versa. Spending most of my visits to Taiwan in Taipei or Tainan, nearly all of my senses were activated in a different way than they were back in the United States. I started to see the two places in stark contrast and was at a loss for how to describe Taiwan to my schoolmates back in Minnesota. Returning to Taiwan with my own children now, I am acutely aware of the sensorial experience that is one part of the cultural experience they are navigating, just as it was for me during my own childhood. In this soundwalk I will begin with night markets, a vibrant site of Taipei urban life. We then move across the city with sounds of transportation and nature. I take you through a prominent and contested landmark of Taipei and then through the everyday sounds of streets and alleys. Finally, we hear people and nature across two different urban and suburban parks. As you listen and read, think of a place familiar to you. What does it sound

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CHIANG KAI SHEK KMT leader of ROC (1928–1975) first on mainland China and later on the island of Taiwan.

like? What are you hearing and how are you listening as you move through a familiar place? The night markets of Taiwan have always captured my attention. Across the island, night markets serve as a vibrant and bustling site of activity. In a subtropical island with densely populated cities and a fast pace of life, night markets offer late-night opportunities for residents to come out to unwind. In many of the urban centers, professionals work long hours and students attend afternoon and evening classes in addition to their full day of school. For ablebodied individuals who are able to navigate the markets, they serve as a place to eat, shop, and socialize with friends and family, and as a destination for folks who primarily live in small apartments. In the hot summer, the humidity still lingers on at night but, once the sun has set, it can be a reprieve from the day to wander around the stalls with a friend or family member, get some food, and do some shopping, all while chatting and spending time together. Walking through the night markets can engage all of the senses: sight, smell, taste, touch, and hearing. The sounds of (my) children playing mechanical games at the night market open this soundwalk of Taipei. Taiwan is one of the more densely populated countries in the world. With a large mountain range through the central portion of the island, the majority of people are concentrated in what are designated locally as counties, special municipalities, or cities. The capital city of Taipei is one of six special municipalities, home to 2.7 million people who today primarily live in highrise apartment buildings with little to no private outside space. What does this city sound like? Listen next for the scooters that fill the streets, and the subway that (since 2005) transformed the way people can travel around the city. First, you will hear the automated turnstyle and the beeps of cards being scanned upon entering and exiting the subway. Next is the sound of a short subway trip between stations, the hum of the subway car accelerating, the announcements for the upcoming station and its eventual arrival. Here you may want to rewind and replay the subway station announcement and notice that five languages are used: Mandarin Chinese, English, Hokkien, Hakka, and—since 2018, for some stations—Japanese. The multi-lingual announcements speak to the linguistic diversity of residents (Mandarin, Hokkien, and Hakka) and also account for tourists, immigrants, and expatriates (English and Japanese). One subway station is located at a prominent and contested landmark in Taipei, the Chiang Kai Shek (CKS) Memorial Hall. On the day of this recording I traveled there with a friend I had not seen in a while. Distracted in conversation we emerged from the subway station only to hear a torrential downpour, a common occurrence during the summer months. Along with many others, we continued chatting under the cover of the subway station exit, waiting for the rain to slow down a bit before heading out into the vast open park surrounding the memorial hall. The park includes the CKS Memorial Hall, National Theater, and National Concert Hall. The well-known CKS Memorial Hall is a large white building with a blue roof. A large statue of CKS sits inside the upper level with a library, museum, and other exhibits in the levels below. Our clothes drenched with rain from the sprint across the square,

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Commuters walking through Subway station. Source: Carlina Teteris/Getty Images.

we took the elevator to the upper level and were perfectly timed to get a spot to watch the changing of the guards. Nearly every day of the year, a ceremonial changing of the guards ritual takes place in front of the CKS statue every hour between 9am and 4pm. The ritual typically attracts a crowd of tourists and locals. Chiang Kai Shek first led the KMT in mainland China and later on the island of Taiwan where he served as the President of the ROC from 1950 to 1975. The audio excerpt here begins with one guard calling out a cue followed by the sound of maneuvering the rifles for the ceremony, and the boots of the honor guards. Three guards enter with careful military precision: two guards relieve the two guards at attention while the third accompanies both the entrance and exit. (As I write this today there are many public videos of this ceremony available online). For some individuals, the CKS Hall and the changing of the guards instill a great sense of patriotism, recognition of a national hero, and one way of understanding Taiwan’s history. And for others, the CKS Hall and the changing of the guards signal violence, oppression, recognition of an authoritarian ruler, and a very different understanding of history. The complicated political history (and present) of Taiwan is, for this listener, captured in this aural moment. Its meaning, affect, emotion, and significance will vary depending on the socio­ political perspective of the listener, but it is likely an impactful sonic experience for many. Here we have yet another seemingly simple sound that carries great depth in context. After visiting the CKS Memorial Hall my friend and I walked around the Taipei Main Station area listening to Taipei. Similar to many other cities around the world, amplified and recorded announcements and advertisements are omnipresent in the urban sound world of Taipei. For example, a featured

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Changing of the honor guards at Chiang Kai Shek (CKS) Memorial Hall. Source: courtesy of the author, Lei Ouyang.

item on sale may be placed at the front of the store with its own recorded announcement, such as the clip advertising saline solution. The cadence and timbre of the voice is a popular and familiar sound that is a departure from everyday speech. My friend and I comment on the voice of the cosmetics saleswomen we pass in the Japanese department store and on this recorded advertisement that we encounter on the street. Back in the residential neighborhood where I stayed in the summer of 2019, I also heard a style of advertisement, this time for services, that dates back to pre-industrial times across China and Taiwan, as well other locations around the world. This time it was for screen repair. In earlier times folks would slowly pedal their bicycle down the streets and alleys and call out the services they were offering. Slowly, because they needed to give people time to bring down their goods to be serviced. Knives to sharpen, glass to repair, and so forth. Today the calls are recorded and played on repeat and, in my experience, most typically in the Taiwanese dialect. I include a full audio clip here so you can experience the way the sound changes as it first approaches the alley and then eventually drives away. The next clip in the soundwalk is perhaps one of the most well-known street sounds of modern Taipei. Take a listen—depending on your own frame of reference, the image that comes to mind may vary considerably: for instance, you may hear this sound and think of delicious and refreshing ice cream if you grew up in the United States with ice cream trucks. But if you are a resident of Taipei (or another city on the island) you know that it is time to bring your trash and recycling out to the street for collection. In a densely populated urban area, and one with significant heat and humidity for large stretches of the  calendar year, timely waste collection is a critically important process

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(odors  and pests being two immediate concerns). As Taiwan’s industrialization accelerated in the post WWII era, the introduction of single-use items, plastic, and other new wastes created tremendous environmental challenges for the island nation. Since the 1980s, government and community efforts, including recycling, have played an important role in urban renewal. For several decades now, residents are accustomed to hearing the trucks and bringing out their food waste, recycling, and trash. As a result of this and other efforts, Taiwan now boasts one of the highest rates of recycling participation in the world. (You will find countless videos online, predominately from tourists and other visitors to Taiwan. Why do you think people from outside Taiwan are drawn to this aural practice in Taiwan?) This soundwalk is by no means complete in terms of what one might or could hear in Taipei. It is merely one collection—my collection—of the sounds of Taipei. I’ve included two final clips at the end of the soundwalk recording; sounds that, along with the garbage truck music, I could not imagine leaving out. Do you hear footsteps? Those are mine, taking a slow jog in Da’an park one morning when the temperature, while still hot, was about 30 degrees Fahrenheit cooler than it would be later in the day. Parks are a magnificent part of Chinese culture in multiple locations, and Taiwan is no different. Da’an park was built in 1994 to be an urban oasis, a forest park in the middle of a bustling city. For all that the park brings and offers to its residents today, it is important to take a moment to consider what it took to construct and who was displaced as a result. In this case of gentrification, thousands of households were cleared out to erect the green space in the center of the city (the park is modelled after Central Park in New Screen repair truck in Taipei alley. Source: courtesy of the York City). Today the park comes alive, especially in the author, Lei Ouyang. morning and evening when different groups gather. On my morning jog, I encountered individuals out for walks or runs, maybe alone, or perhaps accompanied by a friend or caregiver. I also encountered a number of groups. In this selection you will hear a range of music and sounds: groups practicing different types of martial arts including a variety of approaches to taichichuan; other groups gathered for morning calisthenics, and even a group of older women practicing a set choreography to the Imagine Dragons hit, “Believer.” A number of the groups gather thanks to  shared spiritual practice or organized religion, whereas other groups  appear to be more community-based and informal. I certainly cannot claim to understand what brings each of them to the park, but hope to have more conversations

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Taipei residents bringing out trash and recycling to truck. Source: courtesy of the author, Lei Ouyang.

Exercising in Da’an Park in Taipei, Taiwan. Source: courtesy of the author, Lei Ouyang.

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LISTENING GUIDE 4.5

SOUNDWALK: TAIPEI (SUMMER 2019)

127

LISTEN

Recorded by Lei Ouyang

T

AKE A LOOK online to explore the rich history and practice of soundwalks. In this example, I stitch together a variety of recordings of everyday sounds across different places in and around Taipei. Some are musical while others are not. Soundwalks often aim to capture the sounds of a particular place; the unique aural experience one may encounter in a given location. Soundwalks may be guides to listen in new ways while exploring a particular sonic environment around you; soundwalks may also be recordings that aim to capture such a listening experience. Ultimately, the aim is to listen in new and intentional ways to the aural environment of a particular place. Many soundwalks are experienced/ recorded in real time and follow a particular path. The soundwalk here is a curated collection of recordings stitched together for the purpose of this chapter. TIME

MUSICAL EVENT

0:00

Nightmarket: children’s games

0:13

Scooters

0:22

Subway: automated turnstile

0:33

Subway trip

1:07

Subway announcements

1:43

Summer rain

1:53

Boots of honor guard at CKS Memorial Hall

3:01

Storefront recorded commercial advertisement

3:06

Street vendors: screen repair

5:03

Recycling truck

5:10

Da’an park

5:34

Cicadas

After listening to this soundwalk consider a place you frequently visit and/or move through. What sounds are so familiar to you, yet you take them for granted? When you hear these sounds, what emotions and memories come to your mind? How might these be particular to you? How might these emotions and memories be shared with other individuals from your community? Conduct your own soundwalk. Listen closely as you walk/move through a particular space. What new sounds do you hear that you never noticed before? What new insights do you have after completing the soundwalk?

with people in future visits to hear directly from them. To be sure, the sounds alone are fascinating, but it is the people producing, listening, and moving to the sounds that capture my attention. The sound of cicadas completes this soundwalk. I recorded these cicadas during a visit to the Taipei National University of the Arts outside of Taipei.

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REVIEW CHAPTER RESOURCES

KEY TERMS Cultural Imperialism Dizi Enculturation Erhu Gu Guzheng Jianpu Luo Modern Chinese Orchestra Orientalism Pipa Ruan Social Position Soundwalk Wushi Yangqin Yuanzhumin

During a gorgeous stroll up the hill to meet a colleague on one of my last days on that summer’s visit, I stopped to listen and recorded the cicadas chirping. A constant sound around many parts of Taipei. Music? Sound? I will let you decide.

SUMMARY What have you learned about musical sounds, behaviors, and concepts after reading this chapter? How can we connect sound with people? How can we connect sound with meaning and significance? The five case studies in this chapter offer one particular path to responding to these questions by emboldening specific individuals and musical moments. This is an opportunity to make visible the historically invisible and to center our discussions of music in the region in intentional ways. So how do these five musical moments allow you to think about music in and of China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan while attending to historical and contemporary politics of the region? How can we complicate the historic and hegemonic flattening of people and culture in the region to bring light to the diversity of peoples and traditions? What more will you explore about indigenous musicians across Taiwan? How can you explain to a friend the multiple names used in different places for the so-called “modern Chinese orchestra?” How can you introduce “Shaoshan” as a window into Cultural Revolution politics? Why is wushi (lion dance) drumming a frequent spectacle throughout Asian diasporic communities? And how will you listen to the sounds, musical and non-musical, around you as you proceed down a street or through the woods? The five case studies are designed to illuminate very specific musical moments in this geo-cultural area, yet the questions introduced should prove useful for other musical moments you may seek to better understand in informed, accurate, and intentional ways.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bryant, Lei Ouyang. 2005. “Music, Memory, and Nostalgia: Collective Memories of Cultural Revolution Songs in Contemporary China.” The China Review 5(2): 151–175; ——. 2007. “Flowers on the Battlefield are more Fragrant.” Asian Music 38(1): 88–121; ——. 2018. “‘Tiny Little Screw Cap” (“Xiao Xiao Luosimao”): Children’s Songs from the Chinese Cultural Revolution.” Music & Politics 12(1): 1–17; Chen, Chun-bin. 2007. “Voices of Double Marginality: Music, Body, and Mind of Taiwanese Aborigines in the Post-Modern Era.” Ph.D. Dissertation (Music): University of Chicago; Cheung, Joys H. Y. and King Chung Wong. 2010. Reading Chinese Music and Beyond. Hong Kong: Chinese Civilisation Centre, City University of Hong Kong; Fan, Qi. 2016. “Exploring the War Drums of Qin and Han” in Xiangyang, Shaanxi Province.” Musical Works 6: 96– 97; Fell, Dafydd and Hsin-Huang Michael Hsiao, Editors. 2019. Taiwan Studies Revisited. New York, NY: Routledge; Guy, Nancy. 2019. “Garbage Truck Music and Sustainability in Contemporary Taiwan: From Cockroaches to Beethoven and Beyond.” In Cultural

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Sustainabilities: Music, Media, Language, Advocacy, edited by Timothy J. Cooley, 63–74. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press; Guy, Nancy. 2010. “Trafficking in Taiwan Aboriginal Voices Revisited,” in Reading Chinese Music and Beyond, edited by Joys H. Y. Cheung and King Chung Wong, Chinese Civilisation Centre, City University of Hong Kong, 147–174; Guy, Nancy. 2005. Peking Opera and Politics in Taiwan. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press; Guy, Nancy. 2002. “‘Republic of China National Anthem’ on Taiwan: One Anthem, One Performance, Multiple Realities.” Ethnomusicology 46(1): 96–119; Hahn, Tomie. 2007. Sensational Knowledge: Embodying Culture through Japanese Dance. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press; Han, Kuo-Huang. 1979. “The Modern Chinese Orchestra.” Asian Music 11(1): 1–43; Hou, Yi. 2006. “Drum Bases, Drum Construction, and War Drums.” Cultural Relics of Central China 4: 48–53; Hsu, Eddie. 2017.“Traditional Music for the People: Chinese Music Departments in the PRC and Taiwan.” In College Music Curricula for a New Century, edited by Robin D. Moore, 155–168. New York, NY: Oxford

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University Press; Lau, Frederick. 2008. Music in China: Experiencing Music, Expressing Culture. New York, NY: Oxford University Press; Law, Ho Chak. 2019. “Do You Hear the People Sing?: A Summer of Protest Music in Hong Kong.” Smithsonian Magazine: Music, Social Justice, September 18; Lin, Tse-Hsiung. 2011. “Mountain Songs, Hakka Songs, Protest Songs: A Case Study of Two Hakka Singers from Taiwan.” Asian Music 42(1): 85–122, 157; Liu, Terence M. 2001. “Instruments: Erhu.” In Garland Encyclopedia of World Music Volume 7 – East Asia: China, Japan, and Korea, edited by Robert C. Provine, Yosihiko Tokumaru, and Lawrence J. Witzleben, 213–216. New York and London: Routledge; Loo, Fung Ying and Fung Chiat Loo. 2016. “Dramatizing Malaysia in Contemporary Chinese Lion Dance.” Asian Theatre Journal 33(1): 130–150; Mao Zedong. 毛泽东. 1967. Zai Yan’an Wenyi Zuo Tan Hui Shang de Jianghua 在延安文艺座谈 会 [Talks at the Yanan Forum on Art and Literature]. Beijing: Renmin Chubanshe 北京：人民出版社 [Peking: People’s Publishing House]; McGuire, Colin. 2015. “The Rhythm of Combat: Understanding the Role of Music in Performance of Traditional Chinese Martial Arts and Lion Dance.” MUSICultures (42)1: 1–23; Mittler, Barbara. 2012. A Continuous Revolution: Making Sense of Cultural Revolution Culture. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Asia Center; Ouyang, Lei X. Forthcoming. Music as Mao’s Weapon: Songs and Memories of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press; Rees, Helen. 2009. Lives in Chinese Music. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press; Tan, Shzr Ee. 2012. Beyond ‘Innocence’: Amis Aboriginal Song in Taiwan as an Ecosystem. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate; Taylor, Timothy D. 2003. “A Riddle Wrapped in a Mystery: Transnational Music Sampling and Enigma’s ‘Return to Innocence’” in Music and Technoculture edited by Leslie C. Gay and Rene T. A. Lysloff, 64–92. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University

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Press; Thrasher, Alan R., Joseph S.C. Lam, Jonathan P.J. Stock, Colin Mackerras, Francesca Rebollo-Sborgi, Frank Kouwenhoven, A. Schimmelpenninck, Stephen Jones, Han Mei, Wu Ben, Helen Rees, Sabine Trebinjac, and Joanna C. Lee. 2001. “China, People’s Republic of.” Grove Music Online. 2001; Accessed 2 Dec. 2019; Thrasher, Alan R. and Gloria N. Wong. 2011. Yueqi: Chinese Musical Instruments in Performance. Vancouver, British Columbia: British Columbia Chinese Music Association; Tsui, Ying-Fai. 2001. “Ensembles: The Modern Chinese Orchestra” in Garland Encyclopedia of World Music Volume 7 – East Asia: China, Japan, and Korea, edited by Robert C. Provine, Yosihiko Tokumaru and J. Lawrence Witzleben, 264–269. New York, NY: Routledge; Wang, Weiyi. 王为一. 2001. “Nie Er de “Jin She Kuang Wu’” “聂耳的‘金蛇狂舞’” [Nie Er’s “Golden Snake”]. Renmin Yinyue人民音乐 [People’s Music] 1(417): 20–22; Wang, Yun Emily. 2018. “Sung and Spoken Puns as Queer ‘Home-making’ in Toronto’s Chinese Diaspora.” Women and Music: A Journal of Gender and Culture 22: 50–62; Witzleben, J. Lawrence. 2002. “Music in the Hong Kong Handover Ceremonies: A Community Re-Imagines Itself.” Ethnomusicology 46(1): 120–133; Wong, Chuen-Fung. 2013. “Singing Muqam in Uyghur Pop: Minority Modernity and Popular Music in China.” Popular Music and Society 36(1): 98–118; Wong, Isabel K. F. 1984. “Geming Gequ: Songs for the Education of the Masses.” In Popular Chinese Literature and Performing Arts in the People’s Republic of China, 1949–1979, edited by B. S. McDougall, 112–143. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press; Yung, Bell. 2017. “An Audience of One: The Private Music of the Chinese Literati.” Ethnomusicology 61(3): 506–539; Yung, Bell. 1984. “Model Opera as Model: From Shajiabang to Sagabong.” In Popular Chinese Literature and Performing Arts in the People’s Republic of China 1949–1979, ed. by B. S. McDougall, 144–164. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

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MUSICS OF EAST ASIA II: KOREA Joshua D. Pilzer

WATCHING THE WORLD CUP IN SEOUL On the evening of June 17, 2010, there are around 100,000 people in Seoul  Plaza,  outside Seoul City Hall. This is the center of Seoul, Korea’s epicenter,  a  megalopolis of thirteen million inhabitants. Massive events of all sorts—protests, celebrations—have been held around here throughout modern Korean history. We are here to watch South Korea play Argentina in the 2010 World Cup, on a giant Jumbotron. There is a stage set up to the side of the screen, and an MC. As the game starts the viewers begin to sing well-known soccer chants: “Oh, victorious Korea,” “Daehan minguk” (the formal name of South Korea), and others. The chants are often initiated and led by the MC, but sometimes they begin somewhere in the crowd. At a particularly unfortunate moment for the team, the MC—looking to boost morale—leads the crowd in a rock version of Korea’s most famous song and unofficial national anthem, the “new folk song”

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CHAPTER

5 (sinminyo) “Arirang” (see below). Drums and vuvuzelas and thousands of voices echo around the plaza. The soundscape of the World Cup event is quite complex, including as it does a mixture of live and recorded sounds, which often imitate one another. Some sounds emerge from the crowd, whereas others originate on the stage or in the sound booth. The drums are in the crowd, not on the stage; but there are drum samples played over the sound system as well. The overall effect is to composite and blur the live and recorded, the staged and the spontaneous, the voices of the powerful and ordinary people. As a metonym for the social, this soundscape is an attempt to make a coherent sound picture of a heterogenous, complex social life. When the game is over and lost, people cluster round to raise their spirits through music. The chants continue; a Western-style marching band comes to

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Seoul Plaza World Cup Soundscape. Source: courtesy of the author, Joshua D. Pilzer.

the fore, as well as a pop dance group, a club from a Seoul university; and when everything else is fizzling out a group of young Korean men come forward playing Brazilian samba batucada, an instance of Korea’s assimilation of global soccer culture and of millenary South Korean multiculturalism. The World Cup soundscape seamlessly integrates the national, the foreign, and the transnational. Korean soccer culture and music are deeply transnational, yet also profoundly preoccupied with defining and presenting “Koreanness” both to Koreans themselves and to an international audience. In this way Korean soccer culture and its music are nicely representative of the quest for Korean national identity. The idea of national identity comes from abroad, and only makes sense in the context of a global system of nation-states. This paradox of the transnational and the national is a driving force in Korean musical culture. Prominent traditional percussionists claim to have created the national name chant (“Dae-han min-guk”) in the spirit of traditional rhythmic patterns; but it is an appropriation of the UK Champions league’s “We Are the Champions.” The World Cup event reveals another paradox of contemporary Korean life: the tension between heterogeneity and homogenization. On the one hand, modern Korea is a country characterized by contradiction. There are two Koreas, North and South. There is constant protest and controversy in South Korea, and growing class inequality. In both Koreas intense familialism and factionalism set people, regions, political parties, and businesses against one another in constantly shifting alliances. Yet both Koreas are also characterized by homogenizing social processes—national discourses of ethnic purity and

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homogeneity; normative genders, sexualities, and social roles; the cosmetic surgery boom in the South; mass culture and ideology in the North; and the standardizing force of the capitals Seoul and Pyeongyang and strong centralized governments. Korean culture in both places assumes—often unjustifiably— unity of purpose, and a unity in shared ethnicity and citizenship. The World Cup soundscape is a similar mass of contradictions, a vocal, musical, media display of unity and difference, order and chaos. Most importantly, the World Cup festivities and their soundscape are a dream, a work of imagining the community that is the nation-state. It is an imaginative rendering of a certain kind of Korean present and future— successful, dynamic, united if clamorous, at ease with its past and ready for a glorious future. This dream stands in stark opposition to the anxieties of modern South Korea—about economic instability, precarious international relations, the fragmentation of modern life, and the many patterns of social marginalization. Similar dreams of unity and flourishing are present in much of Korean and other musical cultures. If we sympathetically examine the dream and its music, look for its origins, peer into its shadows, and map its fault lines, then we will arrive at a sophisticated understanding of modern Korean life and its music, although one which is prone to its own kinds of dreaming.

HISTORY Given the frenetic scene we have just witnessed, and the overwhelmingly urban image that Korea and most East Asian countries present internationally nowadays, it might be surprising to learn that at the close of the last Korean dynasty in the late nineteenth century, Seoul’s population was less than 200,000. The urban population of the (then united) country accounted for less than 5  percent of the total of just over ten million people. Seoul is now a city of around thirteen million people, about a fifth of the inhabitants of South Korea. The urban population of South Korea is somewhere above 80 percent. The dynamic, urban, frenetic country is decidedly new. People have lived in the Korean peninsula since prehistory, but the modern ethnicity known as “Korean” came together throughout the first millennium bce and the first millennium ce. The Korean language reflects the Northern wave of migration through the Korean peninsula to Japan, bearing trace resemblances to Mongolian and sharing a nearly identical grammatical structure with Japanese. The predominant religion on the Korean peninsula was shamanism until the middle of the first millennium ce, when it was supplanted (but not eradicated) by Buddhism, imported from Former Qin China (351–394). The Korean peninsula was essentially a collection of rival kingdoms until the Silla Dynasty unified most of the peninsula for the first time with Chinese assistance (668–935 ce). Its rule was supplanted by the Goryeo Dynasty (936–1392), which encompassed the Mongol invasion of the peninsula (1231–1259). In 1392 the Joseon Dynasty began, and its neo-Confucian government held power until Japanese colonialism in 1910.

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AGRARIAN BUREAUCRACY A term used to describe the social structure of pre20th century Korea and China, denoting a complex hierarchy of farming classes, administrative classes, elites, and various outcastes.

There are a few points to bear in mind as we get to know Korean music that emerge from a consideration of Korean history pre-1910. First is the distinctness of topography, social life, culture, and music in each of Korea’s many regions. All of these dynasties drew the bulk of their leadership from the southeast; and from the Goryeo Dynasty onwards located their capitals in the central-western regions of Korea. The southwest and northeast, therefore, were relatively disempowered. Second is the influence of China. Since China helped the Silla Dynasty unify the peninsula in the seventh century ce, Korea long maintained formal relations of fealty to the Chinese Emperor—much longer than Japan, which has long had its own imperial tradition. Only in 1897 did the Korean king declare himself an emperor, and that only for the few years before the Japanese colonization of Korea in 1910. This ideology of fealty, called sadae, “serving the great,” meant on the one hand a long legacy of Chinese cultural influence, and on the other a relative lack of Chinese intervention in Korean government and society. One of these impacts of Chinese culture has to do with the general and deeply hierarchical organization of Korean society: Korea, like China, was not feudal— based primarily on an aristocracy and a peasantry, with their corresponding court and folk musics. It was what is often called an “agrarian bureaucracy”— with a large bureaucratic class between the aristocracy and the various lower classes. By the Joseon Dynasty (1392–1910), Korean society was divided into an aristocracy (yangban), a bureaucratic middle class, a common class (sangmin), a lower class of “vulgar commoners” (cheonmin), and a class of untouchables (baekjeong). Many of these two lower classes were slaves, although slave status was not as hereditary and permanent as in other places in the world (such as the Americas). Each class had associated genres of music, and so hierarchy and genre in Korean traditional music are wickedly complex. This means that the terms “classical” and “folk music,” so conventional in describing world musics, are wholly inadequate to the description of taxonomy in Korean music (they turn out to be inadequate almost everywhere, including in the West). The third characteristic to bear in mind is the growing isolation which cut the Korean peninsula off from the rest of East Asia and the world in the late second millennium, prior to its “opening.” The Joseon Dynasty grew suspicious of China after the onset of the Manchu-ruled Qing Dynasty in 1644. Joseon began to emulate the Chinese past and not its present, and the Korean peninsula became more and more isolated from its neighbors. Neo-Confucianism—a strict Confucian revival emphasizing hierarchy and filial piety—was in the ascendancy. This long period of relative seclusion accounts for much of the uniqueness of the Korean musical genres that we will encounter in this chapter; this radical difference among countries in East Asia is also why there is no “East Asian Musics” chapter in this textbook. Fourth, Korea was characterized by religious syncretism, a multiplicity of interrelated religions. As dynasties gave way to other religions and philosophies—shamanism, Taoism, Buddhism, and Confucianism—layered on top of one another and intermingled, never really supplanting one another.

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This religious complexity left a profound stamp on Korean music and culture in the form of a deep heterodoxy. Finally, compared to other East Asian regions, the Korean peninsula was, for much of the first and second millennia until recently, characterized by relative political and social stability, and such stability made conditions ripe for certain kinds of cultural invention. This relative stability meant that the radical upheavals of the twentieth century would cause great shock across the Korean peninsula. The mid-nineteenth century saw the major East Asian countries give way, one by one, to Western colonial pressure for international trade and exchange. China and Japan signed unequal treaties with Western powers in 1842 and 1854, respectively. After holding out for several decades longer against colonial pressure from France, the United States, Russia, and Japan (who had jumped on the bandwagon of colonialism with remarkable speed), Korea gave in to Japanese pressure and signed an unequal trade agreement in 1876. The Korean peninsula continued to be a warring ground of Russian, American, and Japanese colonial interests, however. Cultural importations of all sorts began, and military marching bands, Christian hymnody, Western popular musics, and Western music education and compositional technique came to Korea around this time. The last king, Gojeong, instigated a wide range of modernization projects. Despite this, the country was unable to rebuff the power of colonial interests, and Japan annexed Korea in 1910. Modernization continued under Japanese colonialism in a profoundly colonial way, as Korean transportation systems developed, the country was radically industrialized, and the population was mobilized for the profit of the Japanese empire. Even more than the loss of national sovereignty, the oftenforcible human displacements of the colonial era—for labor and war—would leave profound scars on Korean people and on Korean national consciousness. The mobilization of the population resulted in Korean diasporas in Japan, Soviet Central Asia, and Japanese colonial Manchuria, now Northeast China. Japanese colonialism in Korea ended in 1945, with the end of the AsiaPacific War (1931–1945), and Korea—despite having been a victim of the war—was divided into two protectorates, a Soviet-stewarded North and an American-occupied South. Both neocolonial powers laid the groundwork of respectively socialist and capitalist states; and the peninsula erupted in civil war—the Korean War—in 1950. The war never formally ended; hostilities ceased in 1953 with an armistice agreement. South Korea was governed, in the main, by authoritarian, aggressively development-oriented governments under the influence of American Cold War political pressure. The country developed an intensely export-dependent economy, which would go a long way toward explaining the state’s preoccupation with identity and image. Long-standing movements for democratization, unification, and labor rights reached critical mass in the 1980s, and the authoritarians were forced out. The first free and direct presidential election in the country was held in 1987. The South Korean economy boomed throughout the 1990s, until the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997. An International Monetary Fund bailout the following year ushered in a new era of international finance, neoliberal national flourishing, and runaway

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economic inequality. North Korea remains the South’s poor, hermetic sibling, possessed of a relative political stability that puts the lie to the prevailing Western idea that the country is irrational and on the brink of collapse. The Cold War, which was over in most places in the early 1990s, continues in the Korean peninsula to this day. Both countries and their cultures are intensely militarized. In the South, the cultural influence of Japan was replaced by that of the United States. Large Korean diasporic communities sprang up in the United States and elsewhere throughout the English-speaking world. Among the elite and the poor, Christianity grew dramatically. All of this change has produced a rather profound anxiety in South Korea about the nature of Korean tradition and modernity; we shall see below the impact this has had on musical practice. The turn of the third millennium saw the rise of a wave of interest in Korean culture in Japan, Taiwan, China, Southeast Asia, and beyond, dubbed the “Korean Wave,” which heralded a new place for South Korea, anyway, in global public culture.

THE SOUTH KOREAN ROAD TO TRADITION AND NATIONAL CULTURE

GUGAK “National music,” a neologism generally used to describe music officially sanctioned as Korean traditional music.

Until the twentieth century, the Korean peninsula was made up of people preoccupied with local concerns. Koreans more strongly identified as commoners, aristocrats, or other class- or vocationally-based identities rather than identifying as “Korean.” The onset of Korean colonial and post-colonial modernity brought with it modern notions of citizenship, national systems of education, print media, radio, and other mediums that promoted national consciousness. In the post-colonial period, the Korean states, like many other post-colonial nations, took a pronounced interest in deciding how to represent themselves nationally and internationally. This interest was fueled by the massive transformations and perceived cultural loss of Korean traditions in the twentieth century, and the South Korean nation-state in particular would prove anxious to define, preserve, and perpetuate its traditions, which had grown unfamiliar to most of its citizenry. As part of this, in South Korea various cultural institutions were established to codify and promote so-called national traditions. A courtly institution dedicated to the promotion and preservation of Korean imperial court music and dance was remade in mid-century as the Gungnip Gugagwon, literally the “National Institute for National Music.” The name—and the current English name, the National Gugak Center—include the neologism for Korean traditional music, “national music” (gugak), born in the modern era and patterned after the Japanese kokugaku, which uses the same Chinese characters. At first, the Center was dedicated exclusively to the music and dance of the court and aristocracy, as befitting a state that stressed its connection to the culture of the elite as demonstration of its natural inheritance of the long political traditions of the Korean kings. In the late 1960s the Center began to include musics from other traditional classes; this initiative toward plurality emphasized the institute’s

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connections to “the people,” and argued for the coherence of Korea as a country historically. This involved the sleight-of-hand gesture of identifying “the people,” the citizenry of the modern South Korean nation-state, with “the folk,” the commoners of traditional Korea. Such canonizing gestures also looked to folk culture as a means of claiming ownership of the profound connections to the land that agrarian commoners historically cultivate. At around the same time, in the early 1960s, the South Korean state began a campaign to create a canon of traditional music, and preserve it against the perceived deleterious effects of the colonial era and rapid modernization in the post-colonial era. A “Cultural Properties” system—also modeled on the Japanese system—was put in place to recognize, support, and manage “national traditions” and culture bearers. Designated masters of traditions, called “Human Cultural Treasures,” and their apprentices receive small monthly stipends. The credibility and status bestowed by the designation makes tradition bearers preeminent in their fields, and gives them a tremendous advantage over other practitioners in terms of attracting students, concertgoers, and so on. The Cultural Properties system and the National Center for traditional music have combined to codify what among the plethora of musics in Korea counts as tradition, and what does not. At the same time they have been instrumental in creating standardized formats for the presentation of Korean traditional music and dance for the Korean public and the international community. In this process of codifying tradition and its modes of presentation, the institutions of “national music” have designed a frozen musical image of “traditional Korea”— i.e., Korea before the tragedies of colonialism and modern war and the massive modern transformations of life. Korean traditions have been notated in Western staff notation, and reproduced by musicians as if they were masterworks of the European classical tradition. This cuts against the traditional flexibility and improvisation of Korean traditional music. These institutions and their subtle programs of national canonization and Westernization are central to the modern history of Korean traditional music. Beyond the official spheres of national culture, however, we find Korean traditional music far more open to change, which most of it historically was. Common people continue to transform music to keep pace with the changeability of modern life, to make it suit themselves, and to put it to work in the course of life. We also find traditionalists and revivalists who are attempting to bring back improvisation and flexibility to traditional music.

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CANONIZATION The selection from a broad range of musical practices of a core of sanctioned pieces. WESTERNIZATION The variously voluntary and involuntary processes by which so-called non-Western cultures and societies adopt their versions of the qualities of “The West.”

Perhaps no single piece of Korean music tells the story of Korea’s fitful modernity  more powerfully than its most well-known song, “Arirang,” sometimes referred to as “New Arirang,” and by other names, which I mentioned in connection with the World Cup event. “Arirang” is a song created in the early twentieth century but one that was inspired by a traditional song, one

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MINYO “Folk song,” a term invented in Japan as a literal translation of the German volkslied, and adopted into Korean musicological discourse in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

SINMINYO “New folk song,” an early 20th-century genre that combined quasi-traditional Korean melodies with Western instrumentation and harmonies.

of many folk songs with the word “arirang” in the title. Such groups of songs with similar titles are common throughout Korea; they came into being as traveling entertainers and other migrants brought songs to different regions, where they remained behind and were transformed into regional versions. There are traditional “Arirang” from almost every region of the peninsula, and each follows the melodic characteristics of its region, which are quite distinct and function as a series of melodic “dialects” that distinguish regional musics. The modern “Arirang” is modeled after “Jeongseon Arirang,” a free-rhythm folk song (minyo) from the mountainous Central-Eastern Korean province of Gangwon-do. It, like many Korean folk songs, has a refrain and innumerable verses, which accrue to the song over time as different singers add their own verses. The song is a good example of the flexibility that is one of the most important characteristics of Korean traditional music. It can be modified to suit particular singers, and those singers will choose verses, tempo, and so on based on the occasion and audience. Much of Korean music was historically based in this sort of resolutely social improvisation, and was remarkably changeable in the interests of commenting on the present. “Jeongseon Arirang” is typically sung in a slow, flexible tempo, and can be somber in terms of content, in contrast with other members of the tune family, which can be quite up-tempo and humorous. “Jeongseon Arirang” came to Seoul in the late nineteenth century, perhaps with migrant laborers, and the pathos of the song made it popular in Korea’s uncertain, incipient modernity. A local version arose, which rewrote the melody to suit the scale and mode of Gyeonggi Province, the province surrounding Seoul. This version was adapted by filmmaker Na Un-gyu as the theme song of his 1926 film Arirang, one of Korea’s earliest feature films. Audiences reportedly sang the song at the end of this silent film, which told the story of a Korean man who goes mad and kills a landlord and a Japanese police officer. The song became associated with the sorrows and psychoses of colonial life. It was quickly recorded by multiple singers, and became one of Korea’s first true popular songs, in the sense that popular music is distributed by mass media. The sinminyo (new folk song) genre to which “Arirang” belongs was inspired by a Japanese genre of the same name and basic composition. This genre was an attempt to find a middle ground between traditional musics and Western popular music. The Korean genre represented efforts to absorb venerated musical characteristics of the West—harmony, in particular—in the service of Korean popular music, and thus to help Korea make sense of “the West,” via Japan; it also was an effort to find a place for Korean tradition in its burgeoning colonial modernity. The song was such a hit that it was recorded by Japanese singers in Japanese-language versions, and marketed to a Japanese public hungry for exotic representations of the colonies. The new “Arirang” necessarily differs dramatically from its source tune. It was recorded from the beginning with Western band or orchestral accompaniment. Over time it was sung with progressively less of the melodic ornamentations of central Korea, and in a progressively Western style, with the same vibrato applied to each note. The intervals of the melody were nudged until they fit into a Western five-note (pentatonic) scale: in particular, the third

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scale degree of the provincial mode, just flat of a Western major third, became a regular Western major or minor third, depending on the version. It was based on relatively few verses, unlike the limitless verses of traditional songs, and thus a process of canonization and standardization was begun. In recent years in the hallowed halls of national tradition and in the vague spaces of public culture and national consciousness, “Arirang” has undergone a process that we might call Koreanization or “traditionalization,” which attempts to remove its patina of modernity through various means and make it sound more ancient and essentially Korean. In doing so, however—in demonstrating such anxiety about colonial modernity, the West, and national identity—it remains quintessentially modern. Above all, “Arirang,” like the whole sinminyo genre and so many other kinds of music in the world in the era of the nation-state, has been nationalized—brought into service of the nation, demonstrating the nation’s supposedly immutable essence that is untouched by the history of colonization and modernity.

LISTENING GUIDE 5.1

TRADITIONALIZATION The transformation of modern music to make it resemble older musical forms.

ARIRANG MEDLEY

LISTEN

1: “Jeongseon Arirang,” performed by Cha Byeong-geol. 2: Yokota Ryoichi, “Ariran no uta.” 3: “Arirang” performed by members of the National Gugak Center

T

HIS TRACK IS a medley of three pieces representative of the historical evolution of this “Arirang.”

Example 1 is a version of “Jeongseon Arirang,” the source song for the modern “Arirang.” This tune has long been used as a kind of melodic material for singers to create verses, composite and borrow verses from other songs. It is a wonderful example of the flexibility long built in to Korean traditional music. The ornamentation, the flexibility, the solo singing—these are hallmarks of traditional Korean song. This version is sung by Cha Byeong-geol, an ethnic Korean living in Northeast China after being relocated there in the colonial period. Chorus Arirang, arirang, arariyo,

Arirang, arirang, arariyo,

Arirang gogae-reul neomeoganda

Crossing over Arirang Pass.

Verse Musim-han gichaneun nal sireoda no-ko

Oh indifferent train, you load me on . . .

Hwangohyang sikiljul-ul wae molleuna?

Why don’t you know to take me home?

This verse (0:26–0:50) is found also throughout the Korean peninsula. In a seeming paradox, this most traditional of “Arirangs” concerns the modern world. This is because it is traditional for Korean musicians to modify their material to suit the world around them, themselves, and their listeners. Example 2 (1:17–2:01) is a Japanese version of the “New Arirang,” which became popular in the early decades of the 20th century. This 1933 version by the Japanese tenor Yokota Ryo-ichi retains the words continued

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arirang and goge (mountain pass) from the Korean. The chorus says, “I cross over arirang goge.” Note the Western popular orchestral instruments and the harmonization of the verse—interestingly, the melody of the chorus is not harmonized, but presented monophonically. Also, note that it is up-tempo, despite lyrics about lovers parting; and it is firmly in Western waltz time, and meant to be danced to in a ballroom setting. In short, this is a rendering of a Korean folk song in the popular musical language of the time. Example 3 (2:02 onwards), a performance from the 1990s of “Arirang” by musicians of the National Gugak Center, provides a remarkable contrast with the other two. “Arirang” is given an ultra-traditional setting, replete with Korean traditional instruments and melodic ornamentation. The traditional threebeat rhythmic pattern semachi, in 9/8, firmly replaces the 3/4 waltz time just as the traditional instruments replace the Western orchestra. The tempo is ratcheted down from the pop version, dropping from 137 beats per minute to just 79—the slowness denoting the calm of the past and grace. There is no reference made in the text to the modern world. What we get is the curse of a faithless lover, which has become absolutely canonical in the modern “Arirang,” and which we heard in the World Cup recording: Beloved who threw me away and left May you only go three miles before your feet start to hurt.

SHAMANIST MUSIC: ROOTS, AND A RESOLUTELY MODERN TRADITIONAL MUSIC SHAMANISM Typically a form of animism in which ritual specialists channel and manage complex pantheons of spirits and their place in the material world. ANIMISM A religion that holds that material things are possessed of spirits.

The vagaries and ravages of colonial and post-colonial modernity produced an anxious discourse about culture and roots. One frequent refrain in this discourse is that the indigenous religion, shamanism, is the wellspring from which Korean culture sprang. Korean shamanism, as a form of animism, holds that matter is imbued with a complex pantheon of spirits. Houses have spirits, as do mountains, bodies of water, and so on. Spirits must be managed properly in the interest of prosperity. Korean shamanism can be roughly divided into two kinds: ecstatic or spirit-descended traditions, traditional in central and northern regions of the peninsula, and hereditary ones, prevalent in the South and on the eastern seaboard. In the ecstatic tradition, shamans are possessed by spirits in shaman rituals, whereas in hereditary traditions shamans act as intermediaries with the spirit world without experiencing spirit possession. In both branches of the religion the majority of shamans are female, although in ecstatic rituals they often wear traditional men’s clothing, as they are often possessed by male spirits. There are many reasons for shamanism’s deep place in the national imaginary of Korean tradition and identity. First, shamanism is Korea’s indigenous religion, and the oldest and most deeply ingrained in Korean culture. Different shamanisms exist all along the corridor that links Korea with Mongolia and Central Asia, and Korean shamanism demonstrates this cultural affinity. Second, many of the genres of traditional music that became most famous in the twentieth century have origins in or were inspired by shamanism

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and its practices. This could be evidence that this preoccupation with roots began a long time ago. A third reason is that shamanism—especially the ecstatic variety—is a religion, which manages a complex and changing pantheon of natural, historical, ancestral, and other spirits, and is therefore always in touch with the present and its many crises, which it seeks to heal or mediate. It can respond to any crisis— from the Asian financial crisis of 1997, to the suicide of former President Roh Moo-hyun (No Mu-hyeon) in 2009, to the tragic sinking of the Sewol Ferry in 2014. Despite the efforts of some in modern Korean society, especially many of Korea’s Protestant Christians, to stamp shamanism out, its concern with spirits resonates with the precarious nature of contemporary urban, capitalist South Korea and remains very useful in modern life. As economic life becomes more and more unpredictable, the last decades in South Korea have seen a revival of the shaman tradition. In particular they have witnessed a rise in the practice of ecstatic shamanism; and shamans who practice trance have become popular in the east and south, the traditional strongholds of the non-ecstatic, hereditary tradition. This is why I call shamanist music, despite its deep traditionality, “resolutely modern.” It is thoroughly addressed to the present, and changes to accommodate it.

Ecstatic Shamanism: The Poetics of Crisis In the ecstatic shamanism popular in the central and northwestern regions of the peninsula, one becomes a shaman as the result of contracting a “spirit sickness” (shinbyeong); shaman training is a process of learning how to manage this illness, a kind of breach in one’s psychological makeup through which spirits can enter. The shaman then goes on to help others manage imbalances in the spirit world, which often manifest as illness or misfortune in the present. They are hired to contact spirits to make tribute to them and ask them for advice and blessings, and they preside over funerals. Throughout rituals, shamans are supported by instrumental accompanists, who also serve as vocal respondents and who may be shamans themselves, shamans in training, or professional male accompanists. They sing choruses, and also shout/sing a complex repertoire of vocal interjections, called chuimsae—this sort of vocal response by accompanists is present throughout most genres of Korean music beyond court and aristocratic genres. The art of chuimsae reveals that the accompanist is simultaneously a musician and a spectator, blurring the lines between performers and audience. Audience members also contribute these vocal interjections. Ecstatic shaman rituals can last for several hours or for many days, depending on how much money is spent on the ritual, how many spirits need to be involved, and how long it takes to reach them and how long they stick around. Shamans dress in the clothes of the spirit they wish to attract. Rituals often have a basic macro-structure in which (1) the shaman or shamans purify the ritual space; (2) they make a “road” for spirits to travel to the ceremony and back along; (3) they explain the reasons for the ritual; (4) they invite, receive

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Human Cultural Asset Kim Geum-hwa performing a Hwanghae province-style gut (shaman ritual). Source: provided by Dong-Won Kim.

EXPLORE Janggu

JANGDAN Rhythmic patterns that underlay Korean traditional music.

blessings and advice, entertain and send off spirits, in descending hierarchical order; (5) and they feed and ward off evil spirits. This macro-structure is by and large repeated at a smaller level in the individual sections (geori) of rituals, which are often but not always addressed to one particular spirit. First, they begin with a short performance by the instrumental accompanists. The hourglass drum janggu is requisite; other instrumentalists, whose numbers increase depending on how much money is available, play other drums and gongs, and perhaps (depending on the region) melodic instruments as well. Second, the shaman chants an invocation of the spirit, answered by a refrain from the other ritual participants (musician accompanists, other shamans, and lay people); there may be passages of unison or heterophonic singing as well. Third, she dances as the spirit descends and enters her body, to the accompaniment of the musicians. Fourth, when the spirit arrives there is a section in which people make gestures of reverence, the spirit demands various kinds of entertainment, and gives blessings and advice. Finally there is a chant to send off the spirit, capped with a short dance. The shaman performs feats associated with particular spirits: dancing on large straw cutting blades or drinking excessively without getting drunk in the case of warrior spirits, singing and dancing virtuosically in the case of entertainer spirits, and so on. The musical accompaniment of ecstatic shaman rituals is based on traditional rhythmic patterns, jangdan, like most Korean traditional music. The core shamanist patterns, often in 12/8, with four beats each divided into three, are species of the most common rhythmic patterns in Korean traditional music, which is frequently organized around triple and compound meters. Each has a conventional tempo range, although the breadth of this range varies dramatically from genre to genre. Jangdan provide the rhythmic framework for the shaman’s improvisations, and the rhythmic propulsion to allow possession

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and return to happen. They also, through accelerations of rhythmic patterns, shifts between patterns, and sudden endings, create a sense of the flexibility of ritual time, and a sense of its transformation, a key aesthetic principle in Korean traditional folk music. Much of Korean traditional music can be thought of as an art of transformation—of time, feeling, content, and so on—especially emotion, or spirit. This is one of the reasons why Korean music is so useful in everyday life—because it can be used to transform isolation into unity, and sorrow into exhilaration and joy. In ecstatic shamanism and in other genres, sequences of rhythmic patterns that create an overall arc of acceleration and emotional catharsis create this sense of transformation. The practice of changing and manipulating melodic modes in the course of performance is another means of creating this sense of transformation. Managing spirits, coping with the fickleness of life, with accidents, with failures and illness—this is one key usage of ecstatic shamanism. But it is also a means of coping with general social tension, and provides many opportunities for the release of such tensions and the loosening of social rules. The best example, perhaps, is mugam, the dance in shaman’s clothing. Mugam is performed by non-shamans, almost always older women. These women— often rather conventional elsewhere in life—put on shaman clothing, often the robes of a warrior spirit, and dance with knives, say outrageous things, yell and scream, and flail about. The dance points to the way that ecstatic shaman ceremonies, as places that exist between the present, past, and future, between the living and dead, are marked by a sense of being on the threshold, of being fluid spaces between relatively fixed modes of social being. This atmosphere allows for everyday people to set aside social strictures and express themselves; but it also allows shamans to work great acts of transformation in the fluid spaces in between relatively fixed realms of social life. Shamanist traditions and other ritual behavior the world over are marked by this threshold quality, which the eminent anthropologist Victor Turner called liminality. Shamans themselves, of course, return again and again to this threshold in the course of everyday life, and some may be said to live in these threshold spaces. Shamanist culture has become a place in South Korean society where difference can remain and thrive. Many people of alternative sexualities find a home in shamanism, as do people with marked psychological gifts and differences (although shamans can be remarkably conventional as well). So the liminality principle that is so important to ritual has created a traditional social space for alternative identities; and these people officiate in the realm of the spirit.

LIMINALITY The quality of being on the threshold between states of being, characterized by loosening of social structure and the possibility of transformations such as healing and initiation.

Hereditary Traditions, Professional Music, and Spirit Management The hereditary tradition has an independent history and has suffered a quite different fate. The Southwest of the Korean peninsula is, like the American

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SSIKKIM GUT A ritual dedicated to assisting a recently deceased spirit in moving on to its next life.

GWANGDAE Professional male entertainers omnipresent in the musical landscape of 19th-century Korea.

South, a fertile agrarian region. As this part of the country was traditionally exploited by the centers of power for profit, it developed a rich and complex hierarchical social structure based on farm life, agrarian abundance, slavery, and a large agrarian bureaucratic class and aristocracy. Again like the American South, its peculiar combination of suffering and wealth marked its cultural productivity. Like so many other things in this intensely hierarchical society, the spiritual needs of the wealthy were seen to by a professional hereditary class of specialists, in this case hereditary shamans. They belonged to the outcaste classes (as did the professional musicians who accompanied them, and professional musicians as a class), and combined great social power with low social status. The shaman ceremonies, which developed under the hereditary shamans, were not based on possession, but on the priestly work of mediating between the spirit world and the living through elaborately structured ceremonies. Much of the rich legacy of Southwestern shamanism has been eclipsed by the turbulent transformations of twentieth-century Korea. But several rituals remain. Perhaps the preeminent surviving example of this is the cleansing funeral ritual (ssikkim gut) of Jindo Island in the far Southwest. The ritual begins in the early evening and lasts until morning, proceeding through myriad formalized steps that facilitate the deceased’s passage to the next world and help the living say goodbye. The shaman dresses in white, in contrast to the colorful costumes of ecstatic shamans. The many sections of the rite are elaborate and interlaced. After a number of beginning and cleansing sections, the rite properly begins. In the first section the body of the deceased is washed and purified for its passage. In the next, the shaman dances and unties knots in a long white cloth: these knots symbolize the resentments and attachments that bind the spirit to this world. Eventually this cloth is revealed as the road that the spirit travels from here to the afterlife. The ceremony culminates with the shaman and her assistants guiding a small, multicolored palanquin carrying the spirit along this road; the ceremony ends with a short closing section. Throughout, the shaman chants and dances are accompanied by a varying ensemble of musicians, depending on how much money is available to hire accompanists. Instrumentalists divide into two groups: players of percussion instruments and of melodic instruments. The janggu hourglass drum, the most prevalent instrument in Korean traditional music, the barrel drum buk, and the large gong called jing make up the percussion instruments. Ajaeng (bowed zither), piri (double reed oboe), haegeum (bowed two-string spike fiddle), and daegeum (large, transverse bamboo flute) are the melodic instruments in current use. They play in a rich, polyphonic texture by which they interact with and support the shaman, and respond musically to one another. Most instrumentalists are also singers, and they switch, at need, between playing and singing. Melodic accompanists are generally professional male musicians, the descendants of the class of hereditary professional musicians and entertainers known as gwangdae. These men were also of the “vulgar commoner” class, and often related to shaman families by marriage or otherwise; they fulfilled a great number of ritual and entertainment roles throughout traditional Korean life, to

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the extent that there are gwangdae-shin, entertainer spirits, among the shamanist pantheon. The structured Jindo funeral rite, although much more predictable than those of the ecstatic tradition, does not have a predictable script or scripted music. Rather the regular structural elements provide spaces of time for improvisation. The basic rhythmic patterns provide the rhythmic framework; and the instrumentalists ebb and flow in response to the improvisations of the shaman, who varies her routine to suit the particular occasion. Thus the musical texture continues to reflect the changeability and complexity of the spirit world and its interaction with our own. This forum for improvisation is one reason why Southwest shamanism inspired so many other traditional genres (see below). The whole process of Korean modernity, in some sense, if it has created favorable conditions for ecstatic shamanism, has done the reverse for the hereditary tradition by radically undermining and questioning the legitimacy and viability of social class in traditional Korean life. In the midnineteenth century the slave registers were burned, and over the course of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, many people worked assiduously to improve their social standing and shake off the stigmas of low class status. This included many descendants of shaman and shamanist musicians. Throughout  the  twentieth century the number of hereditary shamans practicing throughout the Southwest has steadily decreased, and they have often been replaced by  ecstatic shamans. Ecstatic shamans have their own kind of intensely practical, spirit-focused musical and improvisational abilities, which contrast with the more aestheticized chanting and music of the hereditary traditions; and so the tradition is slowly changing into something more akin to its Northern cousins. Due to the somewhat marginal and suspect status of shamanism in Korean life throughout the twentieth century, the government was slow to seek the preservation of shaman traditions through the “Intangible Cultural Properties” system. But in the 1980s it began to designate shaman ceremonies as Cultural Properties; the Jindo ritual was one of the first to be awarded this status. In the Cultural Properties system, one or several individuals or groups are chosen to be culture bearers. Because of the social status conferred by the system, this small sample rises to the top in terms of ability to impact the tradition and disseminate their version of it. Another axis of change in Southwestern shamanism is the transformation of the ritual into a stage performance—urged to a degree by the Cultural Properties system, which wants its beneficiaries to present their art to the nation. Performers of the Jindo rite, in making the transition to the stage, have created abbreviated versions; some have even added more performers, transforming the shaman’s solo dancing into a choreographed group performance. Improvisation becomes difficult if not impossible if a group of dancers is expected to move in consort.

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Yang Yong-eun and others performing a staged version of Jindo ssikkim gut (Jindo Island funeral ritual). Source: provided by Pak Jeong-gyu.

SHAMANISM’S DERIVATIVE GENRES: FROM RITUAL TO CLASSICAL Sinawi and the Fate of Group Improvisation

SINAWI A genre of simultaneous improvisation modeled after the music of shamanist ritual, particularly of Southwestern Korea. GISAENG A class of female professionals, many of whom were professional entertainers who were foundational in the history of Korean traditional music.

Shamanism, particularly the hereditary tradition of the Southwest, has inspired many genres of music, dance, and other performing arts. In the late nineteenth–early twentieth centuries, this music inspired an independent genre of polyphonic, improvisational chamber music called sinawi. This genre came about when two very fundamental groups of professional musicians— the gisaeng (female) and gwangdae (male)—members of the lowly cheonmin class, and often related to shaman families, began to play shamanist music in chamber settings for rural bureaucrats, aristocrats, and literati. The literati and bureaucratic classes in Seoul regarded the Southwest with a mixture of contempt and romanticism, much as American northerners have long thought about that country’s South, and how the “Global North” generally thinks about the “Global South.” So Southwestern genres and their musicians became popular throughout the country; members of shaman musician families had positions even in the Korean court. They performed for the Confucian literati and aristocratic patrons in general, and in this way came to influence and be influenced by elite culture. The whole creation of sinawi as a chamber genre is an example of this—music that had once occupied only rural, ritual contexts was transformed into a genre of instrumental music divorced from ritual, available

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for leisurely contemplation by the elite—the principal context in which elites listened to and played music. In the early twentieth century, sinawi began to be presented on stages for public audiences. One of these performances would include about five to ten musicians, all improvising simultaneously—a phenomenon unheard of elsewhere in East Asian instrumental music. Contemporary performances may last from about ten minutes to almost an hour. In general the performances are suites of rhythmic patterns of increasing tempo. The rhythmic patterns are drawn from the shamanist tradition, and range from the quite long and slow, such as the very slow twenty-four-beat pattern jinyangjo, to the brisk and short, such as the quick three-beat semachi rhythm. The rhythmic transformation reflects the genre’s origins in funeral and ritual contexts, which begin with spirits in stasis and isolation, and carries them to a place of movement toward an ultimate unity with the spirit world. In the context of instrumental music, it is often described as a transformation from sorrow to joy, paralysis to motion. This mechanism of transformation in sinawi and Korean traditional music generally is one of the reasons why traditional music retains such expressive power in the midst of the struggles and tragedies of modern Korea. Yet while this structure recalls the shamanist tradition, it also bears the imprint of the solo improvised genre sanjo, which we will learn about below. Sinawi provides an excellent example of many of the key characteristics of Korean traditional music across genres in addition to the key facet of transformation. As a genre of simultaneous improvisation, it is a rather pronounced example of the many opportunities, large and small, for improvisation in Korean musical culture, which contrasts with the relative fixity of other East Asian musical cultures, especially Japan. This improvisation is one of many techniques by which musicians have latitude to develop and express their personal styles, and to make music relevant to the present and the audience. Also, the music demonstrates a key principle of the melodic organization of Korean traditional music: it is based in what virtuoso Jin Hi Kim calls “living tones”—pitches that rise and fall in pitch and transform timbrally and dynamically (in terms of volume) as well, thus making pitch and ornamentation (limitless different kinds of vibrato, sliding, timbral, and dynamic shifting, etc.) inseparable. Perhaps the most striking feature of sinawi and Southwestern music is its use of dramatic, raspy, and rough timbres. These timbres are part of a continuum of timbral contrast in Southwestern music; performers employ them in contrast with clear and bell-like timbres to dramatic expressive effect. This makes the genre an excellent example of what educator and master percussionist Kim Dong-Won calls “rough beauty”—a kind of stylized naturalness and grittiness that pervades many genres of Korean music, traditional and modern. The Korean national effort to preserve tradition has meant making sinawi an “Intangible Cultural Property” and making transcriptions in Western staff notation of sinawi performances. Sinawi is now generally played according to memorized scores, either transcriptions of historical performances or newly composed pieces, or composites of transcribed solo performances from the solo

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LIVING TONES Experimentalist Kim Jin-I’s term for describing how pitches in Korean music are not fixed, but alive—moving up and down, undergoing dynamic and timbral transformations. ROUGH BEAUTY Percussionist and improviser Kim Dong-Won’s term for the stylized roughness—raspy timbres, irregular instrument construction, and so on— intentional gestures toward nature and materiality that pervade much of Korean traditional music.

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sanjo genre, which exercises a profound influence on sinawi (see below). Like many other improvisational musics in South Korea, much of the improvisation in sinawi has disappeared in the interest of canonizing tradition, sharing in the high social status of Western-style composed musics, and pursuing rather problematic notions of authenticity. The irony of this is that while the musical surface remains the same, the performing manner, the experience of making music, and the course of music history are entirely transformed. In recent decades, however, we see signs of a return to improvisational practice. This return has been encouraged by Korean traditional musicians’ interactions with jazz music and musicians, who demonstrate that music can be changeable and yet still hold high status as elite and manifestly modern culture, and also still be perceived to be authentic.

Sanjo’s Scattered Melodies SANJO Originally suites of improvisations for solo instrument with hourglass drum (janggo) accompaniment based on rhythmic patterns of generally accelerating tempo; now generally notated and played rote.

In the nineteenth century, a solo form of shamanist-inspired improvisation developed, called sanjo, “scattered melodies.” The genre, performed by one melodic instrumentalist with accompaniment of the hourglass drum, follows the same basic structure of suites of rhythmic patterns of increasing tempo as sinawi, and seems to have provided the blueprint for the development of that genre. It is characterized by intensive melodic exploration, often moving between different regional melodic modes. The sanjo form developed as traditional professional folk musicians experimented with solo playing, gathering experience and melodic material from multiple masters and collaborative experimentations. But as sanjo entered the twentieth century, schools began to form around particular master performers, who passed on their style to their juniors. This pedagogical structure based on schools of playing was imported to Korean traditional music pedagogy from Japan, where it is prevalent. In the post-colonial period, when the genre was canonized as national culture, this school mentality persisted. Sanjo was written down, in the same manner that sinawi was, and people attempt to preserve it unchanged. The master performer whose name is given to a particular school of playing has attained a status akin to that of a Western classical composer. As Korean traditional music began its revival in the 1980s, gayageum (twelvestring plucked zither) studios sprang up all over the country, patterned very much on the model of the piano studio. These are institutions where (mostly) young girls cultivate a love of music and pick up artistic abilities that increase their attractiveness on the marriage market. In the gagyageum studios and in schools of “national music” the country over, sanjo is taught as the ultimate accomplishment of a zither player, the ultimate demonstration that the student has grasped the essence of Korean aesthetics. The shift from shaman ritual music to staged performance in sinawi and sanjo is reminiscent of the many other kinds of art music worldwide, including sacred music in the West, which have gradually become independent of sacred contexts. This is a process by which musical sound became gradually more

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abstract, more conceived of as independent of not only ritual but dance and gesture—in other words, these processes are key in the historical evolution of the whole modern idea of music as exclusively sound-based. They are also important aspects of the process by which culture has been transformed to allow for its “presentation”—the display of music, as opposed to the use of music in the process of ritual or the course of life. The two genres also bear the imprint of the rise of radio and sound recording as, increasingly, the primary means of experiencing music. The ritual and social origins of the art forms, however, remain imprinted in the transformative structure of performances.

Pansori and the Poetics of Suffering Another genre that is routinely claimed to have originated in shaman culture is pansori, musical epic story-singing performed by a singer and an accompanist playing the buk (barrel drum). With the aid of nothing but a hand-held paper fan and the accompanist, the pansori singer, through a mixture of song (sort), narration (aniri), and dramatic gesture (pallim, including gestures with the paper fan), relates a long tale from Korean folklore. By the twentieth century the many tales of pansori had dwindled to five, all concerned with the crisis and restoration of one of the five key Confucian relationships of filial piety: the relations between king and subject, husband and wife, parent and child, siblings, and friends. The singer may tell the epic tale in its entirety, or in part. The reciting of an entire story generally takes around two to four hours, but it can take up to eight, an enormous strain on both singer and drummer. There are several regional styles of pansori, but the style is generally thought to originate in the Southwest, and the genre is characterized, like Southwestern shamanism and its other derivatives, by timbral contrast, raspiness, and the alternately plaintive and vigorous melodic modes common to the region. Many-hour solo performance is exhausting on any instrument, but particularly taxing on the voice, and singers undergo rigorous training regimens to prepare themselves. There are famous stories of singers trying to out-sing waterfalls, or rehearsing until they spat blood. The point is to develop the vocal scarring that gives a singer a raspy voice, to be contrasted with relatively smooth timbres. Pansori is thought to have originated in the seventeenth century or so among wandering gwangdae (male professional musicians) who had strong links to shaman culture and were often shamans or shaman accompanists. The genre originated as performances by “vulgar commoner” musicians for ordinary commoners, but as it developed it became patronized by the wealthy middle classes, the literati, and even royalty.This solo form with drum accompaniment— an ensemble which shows up elsewhere in Korean traditional music—became the predominant form of musical storytelling/acting in the Korean peninsula, in contrast to the group music-theatrical traditions of Japan and China: Japanese noh drama and kabuki, and the many varieties of Chinese music theater, such as jingju (Beijing opera) and yueju (Cantonese opera). UNESCO has declared pansori a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity.

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PANSORI Solo epic story-singing with barrel drum (buk) accompaniment.

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HAN A complex emotional cluster often translated as “resentful sorrow.” Thought by many to be essentially Korean, and by many others to be the product of modern, postcolonial efforts to create a “Korean” essence.

Pansori suffered the same fate in Korean modernity as the hereditary shaman tradition, as singers were eager to escape their low social status. In the nineteenth century gisaeng, female professional entertainers, began to perform in the genre. The early twentieth century also saw the rise of changgeuk, an ensemble cast musical theater based on pansori, and the middle of the century saw the advent of yeoseong gukgeuk, its all-female counterpart, inspired also by Japanese takarazuka all-female theater. But as orthodox notions of tradition came to dominate Korean traditional performance in the latter half of the twentieth century, these genres would gradually wane, along with all the other genres that made public their efforts to mediate between Korean tradition and modernity. In late-twentieth century Korea, pansori flourished as a kind of consolidating medium for expressing the sorrows of post-colonial modernity. The sorrowful “Western style” (Seopyeongje) of pansori rose in popularity, at the expense of the more vigorous Eastern style (Dongpyeonje). Pansori began to be described as the “sound of han,” the emotional cluster concept often translated as “resentful sorrow,” which many hold to be a core feature of what it means to be Korean. Like the blues, Portuguese/Brazilian saudade, and other emotional concepts held to be keys to identity, it is a complex concept, and there are almost as many definitions of han as there are Korean people. The idea of han as a national characteristic is a recent one, part of the modern search for national essences in the wake of colonialism, and in the midst of authoritarian capitalist development and national division. It may seem surprising that pansori is called on to represent this emotion, as all of the surviving pansori epics end happily. But the characters travel through great hardship on the way to the happy endings, and this provides

Bae Il-Dong singing before the waterfall where he lived and trained, with buk (barrel drum) accompaniment by Lee Myeong-shik. Source: provided by of Bae Il-Dong.

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ample opportunity for the expression of han. This is especially true nowadays when excerpt performances are more common than complete ones, and one can focus on sorrow without reaching the happy ending. The 1993 film Seopyeonje (“Western style”) provides an example of the recent canonization of pansori as the sound of han. The main character, a blind female pansori singer, ends the  film with a recital of the penultimate scene in the Song of Shimcheong.  In the  song, the faithful daughter, who has literally sacrificed herself to restore her father’s sight, is reunited with him and discovers that he is still blind. Soon he will open his eyes in his joy at her return, but the scene in the film ends before this happens and thus secures the unresolved, perpetual nature of han. The late-twentieth-century history of pansori—with its canonization under the influence of the Intangible Cultural Heritage system and the han idea—has provoked waves of concern within the genre. Singers on the margins of the pansori world have responded to the codification of the genre by creating new stories about superheroes, political figures, and others. Others have responded by attempting to revive practices of improvisation and audience interaction, traditional pedagogy, and styles that have waned—in particular the vigorous styles of singing that fell out of favor as the softer and more melancholic rose to dominance. Bae Il-dong (see the listening inset) is one such singer. He has revived the defunct practice of training by waterfalls (see photo), and crossed the drawn lines of styles and schools in his training. Most importantly, he sings in a more than typically vigorous style for a younger singer (his 2014 North American tour was called “If Volcanoes Could Sing”). Some musicologists consider the rise of the softer and more melancholic Western style of pansori to have been the result of the influx of the gisaeng (female professional entertainers) to the genre; and so the concern with reviving more vigorous styles is also a concern about “remasculinizing” the genre. Put most polemically, this is a concern about the so-called feminization of tradition during the colonial period. This anxiousness to make the genre more “manly” is just one of many instances of the attempt to masculinize Korean culture in the post-colonial, hypercapitalist era and its endless cold war.

COURT MUSIC AND OTHER “ELEGANT MUSIC”: MUSIC, THE STATE, AND SOCIAL ORDER The elite musics to which so many other genres have aspired are many and varied. The category of jeongak, “proper music,” embraces a wide number of genres from a broad range of traditional settings—everything from court ritual and entertainment music to the contemplative and pastoral musics of the literati and the bureaucratic middle class. Two times a year, in the spring and fall, on the grounds of the Munmyo shrine in Seoul, a ceremony is performed in which highly formalized court dances are

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JEONGAK “Proper music,” a broad category which encompasses the music of the traditional upper classes.

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LISTENING GUIDE 5.2

PANSORI

LISTEN

Pansori from “Simcheong-ga.” Performed by Bae Il-Dong (vocals) and Kim Dong-Won (buk)

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HIS IS AN EXCERPT from the pansori epic The Story of Simcheong, sung by Bae Il-dong, with buk (barrel drum) accompaniment by Kim Dong-Won. This is “rough beauty” in one of its most extreme formulations. It also gives you some sense of the kind of stamina, power, and subtlety one needs to perform pansori. We hear throughout examples of onomatopoeia and mimetic speech, quotation, word painting, and all manner of musical devices for bringing the story to life. Importantly, Bae Il-dong holds to a basic outline of the story but varies it each time, based on his mood, the occasion, and the audience. The story, in brief, describes how Simcheong, the only daughter of a blind man, sold herself to sailors as a sacrifice to the god of the sea in exchange for rice, which she wanted in order to make an offering at a Buddhist temple in the hopes of restoring her father’s eyesight. She throws herself into the ocean and drowns, but the god of the sea is moved by her filial piety, and sends her back to land and life. The emperor falls in love with her, and she becomes an empress. She invites all of the blind men in the area to the palace in an effort to find her father. When she finally finds him he is still sightless; but joy at being reunited with his daughter, whom he knew positively to have died, causes him to open his eyes. This excerpt is from almost the very end, and describes the reunion of the father and daughter. Bae Il-dong opens singing to the slow 12/4 jungmori rhythmic pattern in the voice of the old man singing to an official at the palace. He describes how his daughter sold herself for 300 bags of rice, and how she died three years ago. He castigates himself for allowing her to do it, and begs the official for death. At 1:13 a quicker 12/8 pattern, jajinmori, begins. The narrator describes Empress Sim’s surprise at meeting her father. She runs to him without taking the time to put on shoes. He describes the sound using the onomatopoeia “lulululululululu” (1:20). She reaches him at 1:24 and cries, “Aigo abeoji”: “Oh my god, father!” Her father responds in tears: “Who is that calling me father?” He explains that his only daughter has died. The Empress mourns the fact that he is still sightless despite her sacrifice. He wonders if he too has died and gone to the palace in the sea, and is seeing his daughter there. He wonders also if he is dreaming. At 2:28 you can hear a long downward glissando and a florid passage on the word sugung (the sea palace), whose downward movement imitates a human body sinking in the ocean. The blind Mr. Sim expresses his desperate wish to see her; this desperation reaches a peak at 3:23, when he cries, “Let’s have a look at my daughter!” elongating the last words of the sentence as if using up his last remaining energy. At last, overcome by emotion, he blinks and opens his eyes (3:40). After a long section of sori (song), the narrator now slips into spoken-voiced narration (aniri) and Sim looks around, gazing on his daughter for the first time. This is the longest section in the sample thus far of spoken narration, because the singer has stopped speaking as the various characters, who are voiced in song. Sinawi, sanjo, and pansori can be considered “folk art music”—music made by low-status but intensely professional performers with some connection to elite culture. The category of “folk art music” is just one of many in Korean music that casts doubt on the contemporary tendency to reduce all genres of traditional music to “folk” and “art” genres. But ironically it is precisely these genres that embody the twentieth-century transformation of Korean music from its fluidity and changeability to a scripted stasis, as they seek a kind of art music status. This might be thought of as a continuation of what we might call the “aristocraticization” of this music, the process by which low-commoner professional musicians have gestured toward elite musics in order to (variously) consolidate elite audiences and shore up social position. But revivals of improvisatory practice are underway as well, as we have seen and heard.

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performed and sacrificial gifts are presented to the great Chinese Confucians. Between the dances, with measured stateliness, various offerings are set upon a shrine; the final gift is several cups of strong wine. These ceremonial events are accompanied by “proper music’s” most elite genre, a-ak (“elegant music”). This is a two-piece repertoire based on melodies and instruments imported from China in the early second millennium ce. It is generally thought to be the most accurately preserved Chinese court music in the world. Chinese imperial court instruments were first donated by the Chinese emperor during the Song Dynasty in two envoys in 1114 and 1116; much of these collections was destroyed over the years, and other Chinese dynasties made supplemental gifts. The genre went through several rigorous processes of revival in the constant effort to make it more Chinese and more properly Confucian—by emulating historical documents, and squaring musical practice with contemporary interpretations of Confucianism. So despite its aura of eternal, unchanging stability, it has actually undergone profound transformations over the centuries, right up to the present. The musical organization of a-ak may seem quite unusual. A number of percussive signals succeed one another as a kind of prelude; after this, the pieces consist of the orderly presentation of pitches in the original Yuan Chinese melodies, each of which bends up slightly at the end; this is followed by a coda similar to the prelude. The pitch-bending is thought to be a recent addition. The music is characterized by a remarkable lack of rhythmic precision—sounds in the prelude often seem to stumble one after the other, and the playing of the An elaborate performance of Korean ancient court music (with accompanying dance) known as Jongmyo jeryeak. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

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EXPLORE The Royal Ancestry Ritual and its Music

EXPLORE Gagok

ordered pitches varies slightly in terms of time among the musicians. This is true for dance as well. This is because this music is about demonstrating ordered relations—of precedence and hierarchy among instruments and musicians, for example, or the relations between human beings, the earth, and heaven. It also has rhythmic flexibility because it is meant to accompany the ceremonial activities, which themselves vary in duration. This is a lovely example of a kind of music that is not about emotional expression, one of those things that people often assume is a universal feature of music. Nor is it about the intense transformations we have seen in many of the genres we have encountered thus far. It is about reflecting and attempting to create societal and natural harmony, about creating a sound image of a world in which things are in the proper hierarchical and geomantic (spatial) alignment, in which rule governs the passions and no dramatic change is required or desirable. The next-most elite subsection of the a-ak genre, tellingly, is that for rituals to Korean royal ancestors at the Jongmyo shrine in Seoul. The fact that music for the deceased Korean royalty is less prestigious than music that honors the Chinese Confucians is evidence of the intensity with which the last Korean dynasty venerated China. This music is unusual in the landscape of Korean music because it combines instruments from the Chinese court ensembles with instruments that are considered indigenous (although the prototypes of many of them are originally from China), and makes use of the repertoire of Korean composition. Much of the usage of indigenous music and instruments in royal ceremonies was introduced in the era of King Sejong (1418–1450), a firm supporter of music, literature, scientific invention, and indigenous culture whose reign saw the reform of the calendar away from the Chinese model, the creation of the Korean alphabet, and much more. He in particular was instrumental in changing the music for royal ancestral rites from Chinese ritual music to Korean royal banquet music, objecting to the use of Chinese music to honor the Korean royalty. The remainder of the elite music repertoire can be divided into a few categories. There is music that accompanied other royal ceremonies and banquets, performed by the same professionals who accompanied Confucian and royal ancestral rites. This repertoire is generally divided between music of Chinese origin and music composed in Korea. And there is also a vast world of classical vocal and instrumental genres that the literati and middle classes practiced as amateurs for entertainment and as a kind of work of self-cultivation. Pungnyu (“wind and stream”) was the instrumental music played in so-called pungnyu-bang, salons where the literati gathered to appreciate music, song, poetry, calligraphy, and art. The crowning jewel of the pungnyu repertoire is the massive suite “Yeongsan hoesang,” which is organized in order from slow to fast, another gradual acceleration across large forms in Korean music like those we have seen already. Sijo, gasa, and gagok are genres of sung poetry that were also appreciated and performed in the pungnyu-bang. They were composed in both Chinese and Korean. The song genres addressed all sorts of political, natural, and moral themes. Like related practices of poetry writing, songs were also an important part of the amorous back-and-forth with gisaeng, professional

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LISTENING GUIDE 5.3

ROYAL ANCESTRAL SHRINE MUSIC

LISTEN

“Chonpyehuimun”: Royal Ancestral Shrine Music. Performed by members of the National Gugak Center

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HIS IS A SHORT EXCERPT from one of the main pieces of the music for the sacrifice to the royal ancestors. At 00:00, various percussion instruments, mostly of Chinese origin, play a percussive prelude, as in the music for the Confucians. The percussive introduction starts and ends (00:11) with a single clap from the bak wooden clapper, played by the most senior performer. At 00:12, the melodic instruments enter—including Chinese instruments, like the tuned bells (pyeongjong) and chimes (pyeongyeong), and also the melodic instruments indigenous to Korean court music. These include the piri (double reed oboe), daegeum (transverse flute), haegeum (two-stringed spike fiddle) and others. The piece is an orderly presentation of notes, each played a bit differently by the different musicians, making the melodic texture heterophonic. Note the contrast between the instruments of fixed pitch such as the bells and chimes and those that can bend—the aerophones all noticeably begin to vibrate pitches at the end, and the singer, in particular, demonstrates the most freedom to elaborate on the pitch being presented. The fact that even in this staid, courtly genre the instruments have some latitude to improvise in the idioms of particular instruments and personal styles, and in response to the situation of performance, shows the importance of improvisation in Korean traditional music. It is also evidence of the flexibility of this music, and a window through which the music could transform gradually over time. The meter is slow and the melody is through-composed, structured around melodic phrases of varying lengths. If you have trouble counting time, that is because the measures from the beginning are of six, four, five, five, seven, four, four, five, four . . . and so on. There is no regular repeating pattern. All of this corresponds with different aspects of Korean courtly numerology and geomancy: the number five is a particularly important one, as it corresponds to the five directions (north, south, east, west, and center).

female entertainers, which went on in some salons. Gagok pieces are generally sung by a male or female soloist with instrumental accompaniment; there is one duet. Performances are given in the form of song cycles, which like “Yeongsan hoesang” are arranged from slow to fast. In the South Korean present, these musics channel a Korea with an ancient civilizational tradition with close ties to China and a profound, contemplative sense of the relations between nature and humanity. The stately, slow elegance of the various elite genres projects a version of the Korean state before the turmoil of the colonial era, which undermined courtly and aristocratic traditions dramatically. It harkens back to a time before the hustle-and-bustle of the modern world set in. Judging from the not-quite 100 years of sound recording in the Korean peninsula, as modern Koreans have dreamed of an unruffled past this music has become even more ponderous and slow, as slowness is roundly associated with not just peace and the past but also with elite culture.

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PERCUSSION TRADITIONS AND THE MODERN TRANSFORMATION OF TIME Pungmul

PUNGMUL Farmers’ percussion and dance bands ubiquitous throughout traditional Korea, and adopted by postcolonial protest movements. EXPLORE Nongak

So far, we have considered the music of the court, the literati, the middle classes, and the professional musician classes. What of the common people? In contemporary Korea the one tradition that is regularly called upon to represent the rural past and the common folk is the ubiquitous percussion and dance genre called pungmul (literally “wind objects”). The genre served four main purposes: first, it was performed as part of rural ceremonies to bless houses, crops, villages, and events. Second, it was used to accompany and encourage rural work, such as the planting of rice sprouts in paddies. Third, it was used in fundraising for village projects, temples, and other institutions. Lastly, it was one of the principal forms of rural entertainment until the mid-twentieth century. Like folk songs, there are numerous styles of percussion/dance band performance across the Korean peninsula, but they are unified by numerous facets. Pungmul processions—such as those that travel from place to place in a village bestowing blessings, scaring demons, and/or raising money—are led by a flag-bearer, who carries a tall rectangular flag with the name of the group on it, or more often a Sino-Korean inscription, which means “Farmers are the foundation of the Earth.” In a typical procession the first musician is the player of the lead instrument ggwaengwari (small gong), a high-pitched and remarkably loud instrument that signals changes between rhythmic patterns and sets tempo, which gradually increases over the course of performance toward a climactic ending. Like many other genres in Korean music, pungmul is a means of transformation, and is characterized by the terraced acceleration we saw also in sanjo. The lead player may be followed by several other small gong players. The instrument is followed by the large gong jing. The jing typically marks metric divisions—playing only on the first beat of a rhythmic cycle, or only on accented beats. Next come a varying number of players of the lead drum, the ubiquitous hourglass-shaped janggu, with the hourglass tied around their waists. This drum plays a detailed version of each rhythmic pattern, articulating high and low accents with its high and low-tuned sides. It is followed by the barrel drum buk, a variant of the same drum used for pansori accompaniment. The buk plays a skeletal outline of the rhythmic pattern. The different instruments sometimes overlap and sometimes interlock, maintaining a complex balance of sameness and difference. These four core instruments are typically followed in procession by danceracrobats who carry small drums called sogo. These drums are more important as ornaments for dance than they are as part of the sound of the music; but they highlight the inseparability of music and dance here—the visual effect of striking these drums is no less a part of the rhythmic life of music than is the rhythmic movements of the dancers. In processional performance, each rhythmic pattern has one or more designated walking or dance patterns that

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accompany it. In madang-nori, outdoor entertainments, performers move in complex, coordinated, patterned movements, twining together and apart. In procession the pungmul group may be capped off by a troupe of actordancers, who portray various stereotypical figures such as Buddhist monks, aristocrats, scholars, hunters, and maidens. This group, known as japsaek (various colors), was one medium through which common people could parody the rich and the powerful. Buddhist monks—forbidden from sexual relations and alcohol—were portrayed drunk and chasing after young women. Aristocrats were shown exploiting commoners, or as oversexed wastrels with ruined complexions. In later years, this collection of characters would often change to admit stereotypical figures of Korean modernity—Korean and American generals, politicians, and so on. The emptying of the countryside in the era of Korea’s industrialization dramatically lessened percussion band culture, and in response several regional styles were designated Intangible Cultural Properties. In the twentieth century many of the same effects of canonization we have seen elsewhere have been wrought upon percussion music—the diminution of improvisational practices, the centralization of authority in each tradition and the ossification of “schools,” the evolution of pieces for presentation on stages, and so on. Also, in the late twentieth century, percussion and dance bands experienced a revival. In the 1960s a complex social movement for democratization, labor rights, and reunification began to grow, and reached its peak in the so-called minjung (mass) movement Yang Jin-Seong, playing ggwaengwari, and the Pilbong Nongak group at the full moon festival. Source: provided by Yang Jin-Sung.

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of the 1980s, which eventually toppled South Korean authoritarianism and substantially improved the fate of workers in South Korea. During the long social movement era, pungmul became a tool of protest. Pungmul came to represent, among the intellectuals and college students at the heart of the movement, a notion of the traditional Korean people that was powerful, durable, populist, and festive. In protest, drumming and dance encouraged protestors in their conflicts with riot police; it was a useful signaling medium, a way of communicating amidst the chaos of violent conflict. Pungmul performers who participated in movement events were jailed and even tortured along with other participants. In the subsequent decades of South Korean democratization, percussion and dance bands have continued to proliferate with continued interest in cities and colleges, including many abroad.

Samulnori

SAMULNORI A new genre of percussion music for stage performance derived from the farmers’ band traditions and the traditions of namsadang travelling entertainers.

In the nineteenth century, bands of professional percussion and dance musicians roamed the countryside, playing at village entertainments, ceremonies, and so on. These troupes, the namsadang, emphasized technical virtuosity and spectacle, and included tight-rope walkers, plate spinners, puppet theater, and other entertainments. These traveling troupes, like the wandering pansori performers, were an important means by which news and also cultural exchange took place around the Korean peninsula until their effective demise in the twentieth century. In the late 1970s, in the early days of the resurgence of progressive interest in Korean traditional folk culture, a group of musicians formed who were the sons of these professional itinerant performers. They called themselves Samulnori (“four things play”) and developed a form of Korean percussion and dance music for stage performance. In the following decades this group became a national and international sensation. The timing of the emergence of samulnori—which went on to become a genre of the same name—followed the creation of a stage presentational form of Japanese taiko and the beginnings of its international export. Samulnori, like the new taiko tradition, is made up of pieces that are precomposed sequences of rhythmic patterns in a relatively fixed overall time. Compared with pungmul, which varies in content, tempo, length, and so on based on circumstance, samulnori is much more like a Western composition, varying only minimally based on the occasion of performance. We can sense here the global influence of Western notions of composition—the idea of using traditional music as “materials” for new composition. This is a similar attitude taken by the proponents of so-called changjak gugak, newly composed traditional music. For this reason, among others, the debate rages as to whether or not samulnori is “traditional,” whether it is authentically Korean, and so on. We might call it “traditionesque”—referencing tradition but not bound to it; or we could call the genre traditional, as it was created by the direct descendants of the namsadang tradition, which has long been known for its creativity. In any

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Samulnori founder Kim DeokSoo (third from the left) and ensemble. Source: provided by Lee Gyeong-pil.

case, the genre provides a great opportunity to contemplate the meaning and the nature of tradition. Another point of contention between the two genres lies in their different degrees of “swing” in the articulation of rhythmic patterns. Swing here refers to the sense of time being flexible—not made up of equivalent units, like seconds or eighth notes, but capable of being stretched and compressed, seeming to the uninitiated slightly early or (much more often) slightly late. Such practices are common the world over in percussion traditions; one such example is the practice, in musics of African American origin, of playing “in the pocket”— typically right behind the beat, if beats were measured as equal units. Farmers’ bands famously include many such displacements; we find relatively more machine-like precision in samulnori. Some of this has to do with the speed at which performers play, which makes microrhythmic displacement difficult. But there may be other reasons as well. The rhythmic life of music is one of its most pronouncedly social aspects. Gilbert Rouget, in his classic Music and Trance, called music an “architecture of time.” Music helps to create and circulate the senses of time that hold sway in a culture. So in seeking an explanation for the differences in rhythmic feel and compositional/performance practice between pungmul and samulnori, we may look at the ways that music is transformed in its move from country to city, from agrarian to capitalist economies. Karl Marx famously found the abstract nature of money to be the key to capitalism—money places an abstract, rather than a concrete, value on human labor. In order for this economic transformation to take place, abstract values must correspond to equally abstract units of time. An instance of concrete time is the amount of time it takes to boil a pot of water, a length of time that may vary depending on all sorts of conditions. Abstract time is clock time, in which minutes and seconds

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TRADITIONESQUE Describes cultural practices that reference tradition but maintain a flexible relationship to the past and its forms.

are all identical to one another. In the emergence of the samulnori genre, with its compositions of relatively fixed durations and its performance manner that edges, virtuosically, toward abstract conceptions of time—in which one beat is absolutely identical in duration to others—we might suspect traces of the rise of this urban, capitalist time-sense.  The rise of samulnori has even inspired some in the pungmul world to actually make their music swing even more, in a gesture—if our speculation is right—an authenticity which survives on the margins of capitalism and abstract time. At the same time, samulnori is perhaps Korea’s most popular “traditionesque” musical genre both domestically and abroad. The music is dramatic and transformative, starting slow and ending in blistering climaxes of speed. It represents Korean tradition and the Korean nation as this sort of powerful entity, possessed of tremendous energy. It is perhaps for this reason that samulnori was one of the iconic sounds and sights of “Dynamic Korea”— South Korea’s first national slogan, launched in the first years of the twentyfirst century. The drum and dance traditions, whether onstage or in the village, are rather more congenial to contemporary South Korean capitalism than, for instance, the ponderous court music traditions. Samulnori is also, I believe, popular for the virtuosic way it stands between tradition and modernity—in terms of its blend of concrete and abstract time, its blend of Korean tradition and modern compositional practices influenced by the West, and its blend of ritual and staged performance. Finally, samulnori is popular because it seamlessly composites rhythmic materials from across the peninsula—something much easier to do than blending different regional melodic modes, for instance (which is done in sanjo and pansori, but these genres retain their origins in the Southwest). So the genre is a powerful tool of national unification in a time in which the Korean peninsula is fractured by political divisions, growing regionalism, and income disparity. The story of samulnori internationally is similar. If someone from outside of Korea has ever heard Korean traditional music before, it will most likely have been samulnori. The complex melodic and timbral effects of Korean traditional musical genres such as pansori, sanjo, and others have been markedly  difficult  for people elsewhere in the world to digest—as they have  been in  Korea. But  samulnori caught the attention of the EuroAmerican “world music” scene during its heyday of the 1980s and 1990s; its practitioners have undertaken collaborative projects with North American and European jazz musicians; and the genre has inspired community and university Korean drum-and-dance groups in Japan, the United States, Canada, the UK, Switzerland, and many other countries. In North America, Korean percussion—again like Japanese taiko—can be a forum for a dynamic and powerful solidarity that cuts against many disempowering racist stereotypes of Asian Americans.

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“Uttari Pungmul (excerpt).” Performed by Nam Gi-mun (janggo), Yi Hong-gu (ggwaengwari), Pak Eun-ha (jing) and Choe Byeong-sam (buk)

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TTARI PUNGMUL” is a blend of rhythmic patterns from Korea’s Central-Western provinces, a piece by the four original members of the group Samulnori, which exemplifies their virtuosity and compositional practice and is one of the canonical pieces of the genre. The piece typically begins with an introduction, omitted from this textbook example. The track begins with the ggwaengwari (small gong) playing one cycle of the chilchae (seven strokes) rhythmic pattern. The pattern is derived from farmer’s band music, and is a long, lilting pattern used for parading. The name derives from the number of times in the pattern the jing (large gong) is struck in one repetition. The rest of the instruments enter, playing quietly, and the pattern is repeated. It can be counted in the following manner: 3 + 2, 3 + 2, 3 + 3 + 3 + 2, 3 + 2, 2 + 3 + 3 + 2 The pattern, not being a simple repetition of one number, is what is typically called an additive meter. If we were to count it all up and express it as a Western time signature, we might call it 36/8. There are many such subtle and sophisticated rhythmic patterns throughout Korean music in general, but there are especially a lot among farmer’s bands for parading. Watch out for the beginning of the last phrase, 2 + 3 + 3 + 2—that’s where people often get lost, as the first 2 is unexpected after all the other phrases begin with three beats. The pattern grows faster and faster, played in many variations, until at 3:30 it changes to another jangdan, the yukchae (six strokes) pattern, which slows down, but does not return to the starting tempo. Each of the sections, based on rhythmic patterns, does this—slowing down from the end of the last but maintaining an overall arc of increase of tempo. This terraced acceleration allows for the transformation that the music accomplishes to happen gradually rather than all of a sudden. The next transition is rather remarkable—around 5:10 the yukchae pattern begins slowly to transform, seeming to melt into the next pattern, madang samchae. At around 5:25, with a signal from the small gong player, the fast 4/4 pattern hwimori takes over. At 6:16 the large gong player trades her instrument for a small gong, and the two small gongs play back and forth at one another in complex, interlocking rhythmic response. The terraced acceleration continues throughout; by the end, the lilting, irregular beat of the beginning has become a blistering 4/4, measuring 283 beats per minute.

MORE RECENT GENRES The world of traditional music is only a very small part of the landscape of Korean music. The influence of Western art music runs through the traditional music world, from the notions of composition that informed the museumization of sanjo and other genres and the compositional practices of samulnori, to educational reform along the lines of Western conservatories and piano studios, to the revision of traditional melody to suit the Western scale and harmony that

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EXPLORE Popular Music

we witnessed in the birth of “Arirang.” This is only the case because Western art music has long flourished in the Korean peninsula. The story of the coming of and the development of Western art music in Korea is one key to understanding Korean modernity and music’s place in it. Western art music came to Korea in fits and starts at first, starting with the late-nineteenth-century introduction of Western military bands to the peninsula, the concurrent rise of Protestant missionary musical activism, and later the introduction of Western music pedagogy in school curricula. The first college music department, devoted exclusively to Western art music, was established in 1925; by the end of the twentieth century, the number of colleges offering specializations in Western art music had risen to more than ninety. Conservatories flourished as well, as did private studios. The number of Korean students studying Western art music performance and composition abroad is by now truly staggering; and the world stage is dotted with Korean singers and instrumentalists of Western art music, many of whom have achieved considerable fame. Western art music was at least until some years ago the third most popular genre of music in South Korea, after domestic and foreign popular music. What explains the allure of this music, and its rapid proliferation? East Asian countries, who generally understand themselves to have joined the modern world later than “the West,” emulated Western technological developments and economic systems throughout their incipient modernities; but they also emulated cultural forms as well. The development of Western art music in the Korean peninsula was a part of this modernizing mission; but at the same time it was, and continues to be, a dramatic romance by which individual Korean people fall in love with a fantasy of Europeanness and Westernness when encountering this music in churches, schools, concert halls, or recordings. While many attempt to explain the dramatic success of so many Koreans in the Western art music world as the result of some sort of cultural proclivity for music, it is more likely that this flourishing is due to the allure of the West in the context of Korea’s modernity, and the urge to join that fantasy of a global, essentially Western modernity. As in many other places in the world, skill in or knowledge of Western art music proffers elite status and the social standing and security that goes with it. So one fascinating use of Western art music in contemporary South Korea is as a means for raising one’s social standing; hence we find many middle-class households spending small fortunes on their children’s Western music education. Popular music is another crucial key to understanding the texture of Korean modernity. The origins of Korean popular music, like those of Korean modernity in general, are bound up in the cultural productions and importations of Western and Japanese colonialism. They are also bound up in the history of technology in the Korean peninsula. One definition of popular music holds that it consists of music that is widely appreciated, created, and perpetuated in circuits of technologically mediated circulation. In other words, popular music is that in which sound recording, broadcast, and/or print media play a central role. It is a forum for mediating between the past and the present with its new

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and forward-looking technologies. Popular music is also a medium which brings large numbers of people into more intimate (if not more immediate) contact than before, and helps them to imagine themselves members of a national community. In Korea, sound recordings and playback technology began to circulate in the 1920s; the first recordings of what would become the colonial Korean pop music industry were made in the mid-1920s. Radio, controlled by the colonial state, came on in 1927. The fact that all of these technologies came from elsewhere meant that popular music provided a forum for mediating not just between past, present, and future, but also between Korea and the countries which, rightly or wrongly, were held to be more “technologically advanced” and more modern.

Early Pop: Mediating Here and There, Now and Then This effort at mediation is one crucial feature of early Korean pop music, which arises at the moment of so many encounters of Koreans with others and with each other. The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries saw the emergence of two genres that exemplify these processes of mediation and translation. The first is the genre sinminyo, “new folk song,” which we have encountered in Korea’s most popular song and unofficial national anthem, “Arirang.” New folk song attempted to find the space between Korea and the West, tradition and modernity in its combination of quasi-traditional melodies with Western instruments, harmonization, and song structures under the conditions of Japanese colonial modernity. The narrow, nasal voices of early-twentieth­ century Japanese popular music became popular in the Korean peninsula and Korean new folk song. This Japanized Korean voice presented “traditionesque” melodies in the context of Western instruments and harmony. The second is changga, songs typically based on popular Western folk songs and Christian hymns. These songs are the legacy of Christian missionary work in Korea in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and of the earlytwentieth-century Japanese and Korean fascination with the United States and Britain. “Huimangga,” “Song of Hope” was one of the most popular of the genre, and is a representative example of this dizzying colonial process—based on a Japanese popular song that was modeled after an American hymn, which in turn was drawn from an English folk tune. The song was first released in 1925 in a version by two gisaeng under the title “These Troubled Times.” The melodic material used for most changga was pentatonic and similar to the melodic modes of central and southeastern Korea. This similarity is an effect of Christian missionary efforts in Korea, which used such music because of its melodic familiarity and appeal, and its clarity as a medium for text. In this respect the changga genre, like “new folk songs,” was a means to create a music that mediated some part of the world to Korean people, and that explained Korean experience in the terms of that wider world. The first line of the “Song of Hope:” “In the face of these troubled times, where might hope lie?”

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CHANGGA A turn-of-the-20th-century genre with origins in Western folk songs and Christian hymns, modally similar to the music of central and southeastern Korea.

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Trot: Post-colonial Soul

TEUROTEU Korean pop balladry which originated in colonial-era Japanese popular music, but changed to express the struggles of colonial and post­ colonial Korean life.

The next genre that arose in the late colonial era and held sway throughout much of the twentieth century is a genre based originally on the Japanese popular balladry called enka, a genre that itself was an attempt to find the space between Japan and Western popular music. The genre is now commonly called teuroteu (a Koreanization of the “trot” from “foxtrot”), emphasizing the transnational nature of the music, veiling its Japanese origins, and foregrounding the importance of rhythm and danceability. Trot was, in its origins, based on the Japanese yonanuki scale, a melodic mode that omits the fourth and seventh pitches of a seven-note minor scale, a modern scale inspired by Japanese folk music. Trot imitated the common themes of the enka genre as well, focusing on heartbreak, urbanization, displacement, life abroad, and other aspects of modern life. But each of these themes was remodeled to suit Korean colonial modernity, reflecting the colonial exploitation and experiences of Korean people, and the genre became an important expressive resource for people victimized in the colonial period. All of this was generally veiled in metaphor and obscurity to avoid punishment or censorship by the colonial authorities. In the post-colonial period the trot genre become Korea’s most popular music. So tragically, the music most capable of expressing the sorrows and triumphs of modern Korean history was in its origins modern Japanese, translated to suit the terms of Korean colonial and post-colonial modernity. Songs ruminating on colonial experience, became canonical. In addition to

Korean survivor of the bombing of Hiroshima, Shim Jin-Tae, singing teuroteu on a tour bus: post-colonial soul. Source: courtesy of the author, Joshua D. Pilzer.

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“A Person Like the Wind.” Performed by Yi Yongsu

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OPULAR MUSIC circulates on recordings and through radio broadcast, and so the recorded medium seems like a hard, fixed object—THE song—which moves through society leaving a wake of influence behind it, and which molds people to it, resisting efforts by the rest of us to make it part of our lives on our terms. But in daily life around the world, “THE song” is susceptible to remarkable variation. Traditions of flexibility in Korean music have long made it possible for popular songs, even canonical ones, to change. The many occasions of group social singing in Korea allow for broad participation, challenging the boundaries between professionals and amateurs in the genre, and ensure a high average level of singing ability throughout both Koreas—we might call this Korea’s “participatory culture.” Noraebang, “song room,” Korea’s assimilation of Japanese karaoke technology and culture, is one such example of this, as are the innumerable “song parties” where older generations of Koreans sing by way of self-introduction or for mutual entertainment. Many such parties take place on tour buses. The following track, a version of male trot singer Kim Gukhwan’s 1998 “A Person Like the Wind,” was recorded on a 2002 bus tour of Jeju Island, Korea’s premier vacation spot. 0:00: The song begins with rhythmic mnemonic vocalization supporting the singer, and clapping. These rhythmic vocalizations provide an easy means by which listeners participate in performance. The singer participates in her own accompaniment by singing some of these prior to her first line of text, at 0:05. 0:21–24: Note the breaks in the singer’s voice, a kind of ornamentation that references crying—common to sentimental balladry the world over, and important techniques of connecting music with everyday vocalization. 0:39: Other women in the audience begin to sing along to this well-known line—“Love, this thing called love—you can’t trust it, you can’t trust it, you can’t trust it.” 0:49: The singer modifies the text of this last line from “A person like the wind” to “That idiotic man,” an example of textual versioning in the trot genre, common across the landscape of amateur folk song as well. The bus tour was, in many respects, a typical bus song party, but the participants were not. They were survivors of the “comfort women”—the system by which the Japanese military coerced tens of thousands of girls and women into sexual labor for its troops during the Asia-Pacific War (1931–45). They were mostly in their seventies and eighties at the time of the trip. They were accompanied by activists and volunteers, who sang in their turns as well. The singer was Yi Yongsu, a well-known survivor and activist from Daegu in Southeastern Korea. Because of the advanced age of the singers, many of whom are not used to singing with recorded background music, the built-in karaoke machine, which provides musical accompaniment and a screen with lyrics, was not employed. So the accompaniment had to be provided by those listening; and tempo, text, and other parameters were not guided by the machine. As such, this is a wonderful example of the traditional principles of flexibility at work in Korean music—ironically here in a medium that is thought to be partly responsible for the near-death of Korean traditional music.

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NORAEBANG Korean karaoke, private rooms where people gather to sing songs to the accompaniment of a song machine.

content and language, the addition of Korean vocal signatures—timbres, kinds of vibrato, and other ornamentation—helped transform the genre into “Korean music.” But at the same time, the genre still retained close connections to other popular musics—especially American and Japanese pop—throughout its post­ colonial life. As a music industry, trot has continued to absorb domestic and international trends and styles in popular music all throughout its life as a genre, encountering and making sense of the wider world.

After Trot: Neocolonial Influences and the Dawn of Contemporary Korean Pop When the Korean peninsula was divided in 1945, the South was ruled by a US military government for four years; the US military presence in South Korea has remained until this day (by contrast, the Soviet military left North Korea soon after the division). Simply put, after 1945, South Korea fell under the neocolonial cultural influence of the United States. American military radio, Armed Forces Network Korea, provided one main avenue for cultural importation, as did the availability of sound recordings and contact between Americans and Koreans in the neighborhoods surrounding the central US military base in Seoul. The Korean blues, rock and roll, and other popular music scenes had their origins in this area. The protest movements of the 1980s—much of which was hostile to the American military presence and the US in general—centered around a genre of music called tong gita (acoustic guitar), inspired by the American folk movement of the 1960s.At the same time, also in the manner of the folk movement, tong gita also was often radically opposed to war and American imperialism. This music, along with the protest song genre (undong gayo, ironically deeply influenced by military music stretching back to the Japanese period), was instrumental in bringing about the end of South Korean authoritarianism in the late 1980s. The K-pop and Korean rap, which began to emerge in the 1980s and which have now reached near-global saturation thanks to Psy and “Gangnam Style” and other cultural exports, both originate and find sustenance in a healthy connection with American popular music. Indeed, the genre is characterized by its ability to blend aspects of prior Korean popular genres—timbres, melodic styles, lyrical themes, and so on—with the wide range of stylistic features of myriad established and emergent genres of Western popular music. Often this blend involves the mixing of Korean and English languages. K-pop is often said to have begun when Seo Taiji and Boys (Seo Tae-ji gwa ai-deul), the now canonical boy band, made use of elements of rap in their 1992 debut. In our era of globalization the lines of cultural influence have broadened considerably, and influences from across Asia, Europe, and elsewhere have begun to make themselves felt in Korean music with new intensity. The remarkable production values of Korean music video, pop dance, and K-pop music have begun to leave their traces in the wider world of popular music, as a consequence of the “Korean Wave,” which began in the 1990s in film and

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television drama and encompassed K-pop starting in the early 2000s. Indeed, these production values—backed by a sophisticated and regimented system of training for singer/dancers, and the whole advanced technological apparatus of South Korean society—are one of the hallmarks of the genre. Throughout Asia and elsewhere, K-pop fans respond to the patina of modernity, its spoils, and possibilities that the genre projects. The study of Korean popular music requires one to pay attention to the ways that transnational musical movements are embedded within Korean popular music; at the same time, it is important not to forget that this music is a facet of people’s everyday lives, and useful to them in different contexts in ways that are often but not always framed by this transnationality. Popular songs, as media artifacts, travel through and beyond lives, through media circuits, and in so doing bind people, nations, transnational communities, scenes, and identities together. And in this process, these artifacts accrue meaning, like layers of sediment. To take one example of the uses and the meanings that accrue to popular song: In 2007, Insooni, perhaps Korea’s premiere soul singer, recorded a version of the 1997 pop ballad “Geowi-ui kkum” (A Goose’s Dream), a song about rising above obstacles. Insooni, the child of a South Korean mother and an African American father, is one of the most prominent multi-ethnic personalities in South Korea, where interethnic couples and their children are still largely stigmatized. Growing up with this discrimination, she says, she overcame her difficulties through singing, and “A Goose’s Dream” resonates with her experience: Before that cold standing wall called fate I can face up to it Someday I’ll be able to rise above that wall and fly high up into the sky . . . The song borrows freely from African American vocal styles, but also harkens back to older Korean genres—the folk genres of the 1980s in particular. In 2014 rock ballad singer Kim Jang-hoon released a rather unusual version of the song on YouTube. It was a duet with a high school girl named Yi Bo-mi, one of the victims of the 2014 Sewol Ferry disaster, in which 297 people died, mostly high school students on a school trip to the southern Jeju Island. Yi Bo-mi was an aspiring singer, and had filmed herself singing the song; the rock star, discovering this recording after her death, recorded the duet. The Sewol disaster—brought about by overloading an aged ferry—was a signpost in South Korean history: it exposed the raw fact that narratives of national progress can and do veil corrupt and questionable practices of contemporary transnational and South Korean neoliberalism. These practices victimize the citizenry, and worse, its children—the very people whom national progress is supposed to benefit. In Yi Bo-mi’s version, the song was an effort to demonstrate the quality of her voice, and took part in that process by which she pursued her dreams. In the duet, the dream stands as a vicious indictment of greed and

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WATCH Kim Jang-Hoon

corruption in contemporary South Korean society, and a remarkable contrast to the spectacular dream of the World Cup celebration and contemporary South Korea nationalist and neoliberal triumphalism. The layered meanings and uses of “A Goose’s Dream” encompass the transnational history of the pop ballad, the politics of race in South Korea, and the glories and travesties of the South Korean present. The present life of popular music in South Korea is radically diverse, segmented into small scenes, nostalgias, and visions of the future. The remarkable centralization of Korean popular culture—which perhaps mirrored the centralization of authority in the authoritarian South Korea of the 1960s–1990s—witnessed dramatic diversification in the 1990s and onward— punk, extreme metal, EDM; if it’s a genre, you’ll find it in Seoul and beyond. South Korea, with the dawn of its relative economic prosperity and its new membership in the “first world,” has more and more become interested in the rest of the world—in politics beyond East Asia and the United States, in philanthropy and missionary work in other countries, and in the food culture, and music of places beyond Korea, and the vaguely defined, mostly white entity called “the West.” The nascent multiculturalism movement in Korea, which began in the late 1990s, has left a small mark on music curricula in schools; curricula began to include non-Korean/non-Western instruments about a decade or so after it began to include Korean traditional instruments.

BEYOND “KOREAN MUSIC” South Korea’s multicultural trend is in part a decision by the public to pay attention to the rest of the world in terms of politics, travel, culture, music, and so on. But it also is the result of the transformation of life through the internationalization of the country through labor migration and international marriage. For a long time in the twentieth century, the Koreas put a tremendous amount of energy into the myth of national homogeneity, although the peninsula did host small Chinese communities. At the same time, for years in the post­ colonial period, South Korea was a source country for labor migrants, who traveled to Europe, North America, and the Middle East—some as immigrants, many as circular migrants with labor contracts abroad. But since the 1990s, South Korean prosperity has generated a lack of cheap labor, and the country began to recruit foreign workers from abroad for industrial work, domestic labor, and other jobs. Workers come from China, Vietnam, the Philippines, Pakistan, North Korea, and elsewhere throughout Asia; there also are a great many foreign workers from Russia, parts of West Africa, and the United States. Since the 1990s as well, the number of international marriages—mostly of South Korean men to foreign women, often from China and Southeast Asia— has skyrocketed, particularly in the countryside. On August 21, 2015, a friend and I attended Friday prayers at the Seoul Central Mosque, in the Itaewon district of Seoul, a neighborhood that serves as a hub of community for many of these workers, spouses, and other migrants.

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Friday prayer at the Seoul Central Mosque, August 2015. Source: provided by David Novak.

The mosque slowly filled up with around a thousand people, mostly men, who were from the Middle East, South and Southeast Asia, Africa, and elsewhere; there even were a few Koreans. A little after one o’clock a muezzin chanter sang the azan call to prayer. Typically azan are called from the top of a minaret, which crowns a mosque; but here the call is sung inside the mosque, and the amplified sound is not audible in the wider neighborhood—evidence of the combination of censorship and self-censorship that characterized the expressive lives of most non-ethnic Koreans in South Korea. Yet prayers are chanted, and music is nonetheless made. The shops in the Itaewon neighborhood for different migrant communities all had their sections of DVDs and CDs. The Filipino market that takes place every Sunday near Seoul’s Hyehwa Cathedral, where the resident Filipino/a community gathers to worship every week, is evidence that some communities feel progressively more comfortable demonstrating aspects of their difference, ethnicity, and heritage in public.

MUSIC IN NORTH KOREA There are many difficulties facing someone who wishes to learn about music in North Korea. It is often impossible to visit the country at all for most foreigners; the state wields a heavy hand in controlling what is known about the country, and it is quite rare to have opportunities to speak with ordinary people in North Korea. However, despite all of this, quite a bit is known about its musical culture. Three years after the Korean Peninsula was divided into two protectorates in 1945, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea was established in the

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North. It was led until 1994 by Great Leader Kim Il Sung (1912–1994), who had been an anti-colonial guerrilla fighter during the Japanese period and who cleansed the state of its colonial bureaucracy, unlike the South, where it remained largely intact. For this reason, the North Korean state enjoyed from the start a tremendous sense of legitimacy, and was able to command a considerable amount of energy from its populace. In the Korean War, the Allies carpet-bombed and basically destroyed the entire industrial infrastructure of the country. But the country bounced back quickly with help from China and the Soviet Union, and was able to take part in the general prosperity enjoyed by the socialist world in the early decades following WWII; and it held this over the head of the struggling South as proof of its righteousness.

Revolutionizing Music Culture Throughout its history, the North Korean state has taken a heavy hand in the cultural transformation of the country, as it does in most things. Under the influence primarily of China and Maoist thought about traditional culture, and following the dictates of Kim Il Sung, North Korea went about a program of cultural transformation meant to overcome the remnants of pre-modern, classbased society, and to cleanse culture of the influence of Japanese colonialism and capitalism and replace them with a vigorous Korean patriotism. In the music sphere and the sphere of the traditional arts, this happened in several ways. First, music was created by state composers and lyricists, and content was and remains rigorously controlled and censored to keep it in line with state doctrine. This doctrine is a changeable, complex blend of nationalism, socialist ideology, militarism, and neo-Confucian thought. Contemporarily, North Koreans are basically limited to watching domestic television stations, and the state has set up an independent internet and made it practically impossible to access the World Wide Web. This limitation resonates with the state doctrine of juche, self-reliance. Second, the program of cultural transformation involved an aggressive Westernization of musical culture under the influence of China, as Western music was thought to be more “scientific” and rational. Kim Il Sung actively opposed many aspects of Korean traditional musics, such as complex vibrato techniques, the predominance of soloists, and so on, as decadent remnants of feudalism or bourgeois ideology. These “barriers to progress” were removed by adopting aspects of Western musical culture. Ironically, while the state attempted to demonstrate its independence from the West, North Korean musical culture was revolutionized through the adoption of Western vocal production techniques (bel canto, for example), Western-style melodic ornamentation, and instruments. The Western treatment of pitch, for instance, was deemed more rational because it relied on stable pitches arranged in fixed, equidistant intervals, and because the relative lack of ornamentation when compared to Korean traditional music allowed, presumably, for the clearer presentation of text. Western harmony was thought more rational because it focused on

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Dancers and mass card display at the Arirang Mass Games. Source: Gilad Rom/CC/ Wikimedia Commons.

combination rather than difference, order rather than the controlled chaos of many Korean traditional musics. So traditional instruments were transformed to make them timbrally more like Western instruments—less distinct from one another and capable of harmonic playing. The haegeum, a two-stringed spike fiddle, for instance, became four instruments of four sizes, capable of playing as a quartet. The other important revolutionary transformation of North Korean music was what might be called the “massification” of musical culture. At the same time as state musical culture—song and musicals especially—emphasizes the importance of mass obedience to authority and glorifies labor, the musical ensembles reflect this importance of the masses: enormous choirs, monophonic textures that emphasize sameness and unity, and giant orchestras, often of people playing the same instrument—huge accordion ensembles, and others. Perhaps the most spectacular realization of the mass cultural ideal is the “Arirang Festival,” which has been held off and on since 2002. It is held in the massive Rungrado First of May Stadium in Pyeongyang (the capital), which can seat 150,000 people, making it the largest stadium in the world by capacity for seating. The festival includes music, parades, acrobatics, and, most famously, mass games, including the mass mosaic displays by around 30,000 trained performers in the seated areas who use cards to collectively create slogans and pictures. Most of the things described above are based on material available online, or on the reports of scholars who have visited North Korea. These visits and this online content are vigorously monitored by the North Korean state; and so the picture we get of North Korea through these resources is extremely onesided. Yet visitors report seeing all sorts of other musical activities on the street and in

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REVIEW CHAPTER RESOURCES

KEY TERMS Canonization Colonialism and music Improvisation and its social significance Music and ideology Music and social order Music and religion Music and revolution Musical and social time Music as transformation Participatory culture Ritual and liminality Suffering in music Tradition and modernity Transnationalism and nationalism in music

private. Traditional musicians continue with their art, although it has no place in public, and no state support, so it is rapidly disappearing. North Koreans of older generations and middle-aged people gather in public parks to sit around and sing old trot songs, mixed with contemporary North Korean popular songs. Some of these songs have become popular in South Korea, especially during the “Sunshine Policy” of South Korean President Kim Daejung in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

SUMMARY We have only begun to scratch the surface of Korea as a musical place and a musical culture. But we know enough, anyway, to say that Korean music is one of the forums where the two Korean states and the many people who live in or identify with Korea struggle with the meaning of tradition, the vagaries of “cultural preservation,” the quest for identity, and the relation of Korea to the rest of the world. Can music be fixed in amber? Does not the fixing itself constitute change, and if so, what kind? Should music be allowed to remain dynamic and flexible, yet suffer the fate handed to it by colonialism, war, the economy, and so on? Korea and its musics are swept up in powerful processes of economic, social, political, and cultural change, and musical lives have changed dramatically in a very short time. Popular musical culture in both Koreas has almost no sounding relation to “tradition”; yet those who try to dismiss it are confronted with people like Yi Bo-mi, for whom popular music is profoundly meaningful and useful in the basic process of being a person, having a future, and relating to others. Both traditional and popular musics are profoundly imprinted with the transformation of time in modern Korea, with the wounds of colonialism, war, authoritarianism, and rapid development, and with the dreams of the complex Korean present. All of the genres we have considered are to differing degrees the outcome of processes of transnational influence and cultural circulation. Most of all, they have all, in different ways, endeavored to be relevant to Korea’s frantic present and to the ongoing projects of Korean identity.

BIBLIOGRAPHY General Cumings, Bruce, Korea’s Place in the Sun: A Modern History (New York: W.W. Norton, 2005); Harkness, Nicholas, Songs of Seoul: An Ethnography of Voice and Voicing in Christian South Korea (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2013); Hesselink, Nathan, Contemporary Directions: Korean Folk Music Engaging the Twentieth Century and Beyond (Berkeley, CA: University of California Berkeley Center for Korean Studies, 2001); Howard, Keith, Korean Musical Instruments (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995); Howard, Keith, Korean Music: A Listening Guide (Seoul: National Center for Korean Traditional Performing Arts, 1999); Howard, Keith, Perspectives on Korean Music vol. 1: Preserving Korean Music: Intangible Cultural Properties as Icons of Identity and vol. 2: Creating Korean Music: Tradition, Innovation and the Discourse

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of Identity (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2006); Kim, Kyung Hyun, and Youngmin Choe, Eds., The Korean Popular Culture Reader (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014); Lee, Byong Won, Style and Esthetics in Korean Traditional Music (Seoul: National Center for Korean Traditional Performing Arts, 1997); Lee, Byong Won, and Yong-Shik Lee, Eds., Music of Korea (Seoul: National Center for Korean Traditional Performing Arts, 2007); Provine, Robert, Yosihiko Tokumaru, and J. Lawrence Witzleben, Eds., The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music, vol. 7: East Asia: China, Japan and Korea (New York: Routledge, 2002); Schmid, Andre, Korea Between Empires: 1895–1919 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002); Shin, Gi-Wook, and Michael Robinson,  Eds., Colonial Modernity in Korea (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 1999);

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Song, Bang-Song, Ed., Source Readings in Korean Music (Seoul: Korean National Commission for UNESCO, 1980); Van Zile, Judy, Perspectives on Korean Dance (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2001). Monographs and Articles Dilling, Margaret Walker, Stories inside Stories: Music in the Making of the Korean Olympic Ceremonies (Berkeley, CA: University of California Berkeley Center for Korean Studies, 2007); Hesselink, Nathan, P’ungmul: South Korean Drumming and Dance (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2006); Hesselink, Nathan, SamulNori: Contemporary Korean Drumming and the Rebirth of Itinerant Performance Culture (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2012); Howard, Keith, Bands, Songs, and Shamanistic Rituals: Folk Music in Korean Society (Seoul: Royal Asiatic Society Branch, 1990); Howard, Keith, Ed., Korean Pop Music: Riding the Wave (Folkestone, UK: Global Oriental, 2006); Howard Keith, and Laurel Kendall, Shamans, Nostalgia, and the IMF: South Korean Popular Religion in Motion (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2009); Jung, Eun-Young, “The place of sentimental song in contemporary Korean musical life,” Korean Studies 35(1) (2011), 71–92; Killick, Andrew, “Ch’angguk Opera and the category of the traditionesque,” Korean Studies 25(1) (2001), 51–71; Killick, Andrew, In Search of Korean Traditional Opera: Discourses of Ch’angguk (Honolulu, HA:

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University of Hawaii Press, 2010); Kuwahara, Yasue, Ed., The Korean Wave: Korean Popular Culture in Global Context (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014); Lee, Yong-Shik, Shaman Ritual Music in Korea (Seoul, Jinmoodang, 2004); Lee, Yong-Shik, Ed., Pansori (Seoul: National Center for Korean Traditional Performing Arts, 2008); Lee, Yong-Shik, Ed., Sanjo (Seoul: National Center for Korean Traditional Performing Arts, 2009); Lie, John, K-Pop: Popular Music, Cultural Amnesia, and Economic Innovation in South Korea (Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2015); Maliangkay, Roald, “Their masters’ voice: Korean traditional music SPs (Standard Play Records) under Japanese Colonial Rule,” The World of Music 49(3) (2007), 53–74; Mills, Simon, Healing Rhythms: The World of South Korea’s East Coast Hereditary Shamans (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2007); Park, Mikyung, “Korean Shaman rituals revisited: The case of Chindo Ssikkim Kut (Cleansing Rituals),” Ethnomusicology 47(3) (2003) 355–375; Pihl, Marshall, The Korean Singer of Tales (Cambridge, MA: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University, 1994); Pilzer, Joshua D., Hearts of Pine: Songs in the Lives of Three Korean Survivors of the Japanese “Comfort Women” (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012); Um, Haekyung, Korean Music Drama: P’ansori and the Making of Tradition in Modernity (Farnham, UK: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2013); Willoughby, Heather, “The Sound of Han: P’ansori, Timbre, and a Korean Ethos,” Yearbook for Traditional Music 32 (2000).

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MUSICS OF EAST ASIA III: JAPAN Marié Abe

INTRODUCTION: SOUNDS ON THE STREETS On an unusually warm winter day in 2018, I was out on a walk while visiting my parents in Kawasaki, Japan. My childhood neighborhood in greater Tokyo has recently undergone extensive development. From the courtyard of the 1200-year­ old Hie Jinja, a Shinto¯ shrine, I could see several forty-something-story apartment buildings soaring into the sky. Suddenly, I heard a piercing metallic sound from a distance: gong chimes and Japanese percussion, accompanying a single melodic instrument playing a familiar J-pop song from the 1990s. Turning a few corners in search of the sound, I saw a group of four outlandishly costumed musicians strolling through the small street. The saxophone player, in a multicolored tall hat, was playing the melody. He chose a wide variety of tunes— from “takesu,” a traditional tune often heard at kabuki theater; to “Omatsuri

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CHAPTER

6 Mambo” by Misora Hibari, the beloved queen of enka, the melodramatic popular music style from the 1950s; to “Anpanman March,” the theme song from a popular children’s TV program.Two others, wearing vividly colorful kimonos and traditional theatrical wigs, rhythmically complemented the melody on an assortment of traditional Japanese percussion instruments. One played the gong chime and two small drums mounted on wooden frames, while the other played the larger bass drum, hung sideways from the shoulder. A fourth smiling performer zigzagged down the street with a deliberate, humorous gait, handing out flyers announcing the opening of a new franchise izakaya bar in the neighborhood. The four musicians were chindon-ya, a type of distinctly Japanese street advertisement band that originated in the late 1800s. Hired by a local business

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EXPLORE Watch Chindon-Ya ¯ SHINTO Japanese indigenous faith that reveres gods that are believed to inhabit all things in the natural world. KABUKI A form of Japanese classical theater that features highly stylized song, dance, music, elaborate costume, and makeup, which developed in the Edo period (1603–1868). ENKA Japanese popular music genre, known for melodramatic songs often about love, loss, and yearning, which took root in the 1960s and 1970s. CHINDON-YA (Japan). Japanese sonic proxy advertisement practice, consisting of colorfully dressed musicians who roam through the neighborhoods to publicize a client’s business.

for the day, chindon-ya performers circulate through the neighborhood streets and attract attention by playing popular tunes to draw listeners into social interactions. They don’t sing jingles; instead, they deliver the sales pitch in conversations with passersby drawn out onto the streets by chindon-ya’s instrumental music. Before newspaper ads, ad balloons, TV commercials, or the Internet also came into use for this purpose, chindon-ya was Japan’s first proxy advertisement medium. During their heyday in the 1950s and 1960s, they were ubiquitous in the everyday soundscape. These were simply sounds to be overheard from afar, not “music” to be listened to, recorded, or performed on stage. Although chindon-ya have faced some social stigma—becoming a children’s taunt, for example—they are also friendly and popular street characters, enlivening neighborhoods through their performances. On the surface, chindon-ya seems like an innocuous street music. But considered carefully, this uniquely Japanese “roots music” embodies layers of ambiguities essential to understanding musical cultures in Japan. Several of these paradoxes and tensions will reappear in the coming sections, weaving together the musical examples you will encounter in this chapter. (1) Japanese “Traditions” and Western “Modernity” Despite chindon-ya’s reputation as a uniquely Japanese practice, a closer listen reveals that it has always been a product of both Japanese and Western influences. Take the instrumentation: while the smaller percussion instruments are derived from traditional theater ensembles, the larger drum and saxophone have Western roots. Chindon-ya, since its inception, has always been a transnational hybrid practice. An “island country” that was under an isolationist policy from 1639 to 1854, Japan’s geographical and historical seclusion has lent itself to various national narratives about its cultural uniqueness and rich traditions, which are contrasted against the encounter with the West. The year 1853, when an American military vessel intimidated the Edo government into opening its borders, is often depicted as a turning point or historical rupture. This is the  moment, these narratives allege, when Japan shifted from “premodern” to “modern,” from influences of the “East” to the “West.” In turn, this opposition between the East and West implicitly undergirds the categories “tradition” and “modern.” But just like the streets through which these performers walk, where skyscrapers coexist with millennium-old shrines, chindon-ya highlights how the old and the new, the traditional and the modern, the “Japanese” and the “Western” and the “foreign” are in fact deeply entangled in many Japanese musical cultures, at times with great complexities and in paradoxical tension. (2) Military, War, and Peace Chindon-ya’s ostentatious costuming and humorous gestures seem far from military discipline, but military brass bands from Europe played a significant role at chindon-ya’s inception. Its Western instrumentation influences came from these bands, introduced at the end of the 1800s as Japan opened its borders to

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Americans and Europeans. These brass instruments were quickly incorporated into local practices like chindon-ya. Another trace of the military in chindon-ya can be found in its repertoire, which includes old gunka, popular military march songs, such as “Gunkan March (Battleship March)” from the 1940s. Although not immediately apparent, these musical footprints are a reminder of Japan’s complex relationship to war in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In the U.S., the bold aggression of Pearl Harbor may spring to mind. In Japan, the trauma of the 1945 atomic bombings looms large. As the only victim of nuclear atrocity in history, Japan took on a pacifist identity after World War II. The postwar constitution disavowed war and renounced militarization, which sometimes creates a certain level of historical amnesia around the country’s military aggression into East Asia and the Pacific Theater during the first half of the twentieth century. In this chapter, we will listen to musical practices that, in sometimes unexpected ways, reflect this historical tension between Japan’s colonial past and its present as a pacifist nuclear victim. (3) Homogeneity and heterogeneity Japan’s official messaging frequently asserts that it has always been a monoethnic, all-middle-class nation. Prime ministers, government officials, and textbooks reiterate these points, and Japan is known for its strict immigration policies and exclusionary civil rights laws. As the country faces a dwindling population, labor shortages, and widening socioeconomic gaps today, it is slowly opening up to the reality of ethnic diversity and economic disparity. Yet long-held assumptions about ethnic homogeneity and social cohesion persist. Chindon-ya offers a path towards rethinking this historical narrative. The social stigma attached to chindon-ya that lent itself to derogatory phrases—“stupid, fool, chindon-ya!” or “you look like chindon-ya!”—is rooted in the system of hereditary social hierarchy of the Edo period (1603–1868). During this time, itinerant musicians, along with others relegated to occupations deemed vulgar or low, were considered Other, outside the “human” category. Racialized practices, leading to the subjugation of certain social and ethnic groups, were part and parcel of colonial expansion into the northern and southern territories of Hokkaido and Okinawa during the Edo period, and into the Asian continent and the Pacific during the early twentieth century as well. We will listen to musical examples that inform these paradoxical narratives: a belief in racial homogeneity under the Shinto religion and imperial lineage on the one hand, and the existence of both indigenous peoples and immigrant groups who have faced discrimination and exploitation, both domestically and in Japanese colonies. (4) Beyond “Music” In its heyday from the 1950s to the 1970s, chindon-ya was simply overheard in people’s everyday lives, not an official musical practice subject to preservation, canonization, or museumization. Whether to call chindon-ya “music” is, in fact, a contested issue. When trying to categorize chindon-ya, the line between

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ONGAKU Japanese word referring to the concept “music” today. Historically, the word denoted music from China, and later was readopted to refer to Western music.

NOH A form of Japanese classical drama with music and dance, which originally developed in the early fourteenth century. BUNRAKU (Japan). A classical form of puppet theater in Japan, founded in Osaka in the early seventeenth century.

music, sound, noise, or simply background soundscape is blurry. People don’t “listen to” chindon-ya in concert venues, nightclubs, or on earbuds, but usually  “overhear” it amidst many other everyday sounds. And yet, listeners who grew up in Japan pick up on these sounds and understand or feel particular things—the knowledge that these sounds mean “advertising”; the association of musical references to certain seasons; and inexplicable feelings of nostalgia, for example. This kind of culturally-attuned listening to non-musical sounds goes hand in hand with long-cultivated sensibilities appreciating seasonal changes through sound. I will highlight these distinct aural sensibilities as important aspects of Japanese cultural life, and discuss sound-making practices that exist in a tense relationship with the category “music.” Further complicating this question is the fact that the concept of “music” in Japanese thought has gone through considerable changes over time. The Japanese word “music” today, “ongaku,” was first used in the eighth century to refer to music from abroad, mainly China and Korea. There was no single term or concept to encompass all musical expressions; for example, children’s songs, folk songs, courtly music from China, and popular songs each had their own descriptive words, and were never considered to belong to a mutual category. “Ongaku” was radically reconfigured in the 1870s when the word was chosen to translate the Western concept “music.” At first still designating foreignness, the word “ongaku” was gradually dissociated from its roots in China, and came to imply music of the West. It was not until the novelty of this all-encompassing idea of “music”—an idea that cuts across genres, sacred and profane, courtly and popular, and domestic and foreign—wore off and became normalized in Japanese thought that “ongaku” came to mean “music” as we use it in English today. Heard this way, chindon-ya is a musical reminder that, in Japan today, multiple modes of thought, historical narratives, economic systems, and aesthetic principles coexist simultaneously without raising eyebrows. Underneath the performers’ unassuming, circus-like appearance, we can hear tensions between East and West, traces of military violence, histories of status-based discrimination, and questions about what counts as “music” and why. Today, some of these layers get more attention than others, and some may be suppressed or forgotten. This chapter will particularly emphasize aspects of Japanese music that have received less attention in previously available English language resources. I have often found that representations of Japanese music in English can sometimes feel like going to Japanese restaurants abroad; it’s easy to find “traditional” cuisine like sushi, but it’s rare to find places to eat homestyle dishes that most Japanese people eat every day. So, this chapter’s excursions give you a taste of a variety of musical forms, including regional differences and social contexts that span from the everyday, to underground scenes, and to exclusive sacred ceremonies—just like the wide-ranging repertoire of the chindon-ya saxophone player. And I will deliberately steer away from the nationally canonized art forms often presented as quintessentially “traditionally Japanese,” such as noh, bunraku, and kabuki. This is not to diminish their cultural and social significance. Precisely because everyone agrees on their importance, there are many resources you can seek

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out to explore those traditions. Rather, this chapter takes you on a journey that introduces you to aspects of Japanese music that you may not easily encounter elsewhere. It is my hope that you will come away with an understanding of Japan’s musical cultures that deepens your appreciation of their distinct aesthetics while also equipping you with knowledge of the country’s complex histories and the social and political issues it faces today.

THE AINU The Ainu People, Hokkaido¯, and Cosmology Let’s begin our exploration of musical cultures in Japan with the geographical extremes—the northernmost island of Hokkaido, and, in the next section, Map of Japan. Source: Peter Hermes Furian/Alamy Stock Photo.

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KAMUY Ainu deities; Ainu epic tales are called kamuy yukar.

the southernmost archipelago, Okinawa. These two regions had distinct histories and ethnolinguistic heritages long before the modern nation of Japan was established; Hokkaido was home to the indigenous Ainu, and Okinawa was a sovereign kingdom. Listening to their musical cultures allows us to gain a nuanced historical understanding of Japan and its ethnolinguistic diversities. Japan, an archipelago located 800 kilometers to the east of China and 3,000 kilometers north of the Philippines, is about the same size as the state of California. Its largest prefecture, Hokkaido, is a vast island just 42 kilometers south of the Russian territory Sakhalin. Winters in Hokkaido are harsh, with average temperature of –4 degrees Celsius (25 degrees Fahrenheit), significant snowfall, and frozen seas. Known for its magnificent natural landscapes, Hokkaido hosts expansive reserves of untouched wilderness and diverse ecosystems, from volcanoes to old-growth forests to marshfield. The Ainu, a word that means “human” in their language, have long subsisted on the island through sustainable lifeways such as fishing, hunting, plant-gathering, and trading with neighboring areas. Coexistence with nature is central to Ainu lifeways, as is evident in their cosmology; flora and fauna, objects like tools and houses, and natural phenomena like tsunami and earthquakes all are believed to have a spirit. The good spirits are deities, kamuy, and some visit the villages taking the form of animals like bears and owls. One well-known Ainu religious ceremony is the Iyomante, “sending off the bear.” In this sacred ceremony, a cub, honored as a kamuy visiting the village, is raised for a few years before being sacrificed, ritually sent back to the world of kamuy with songs (upopo) and dances (rimse). Other songs and dances, primarily in the domain of women, reflect this animist cosmology. Much of the repertoire involves imitations of animal and bird

Ainu ceremony at the Marimo Festival, at Lake Akan. Source: robertharding/Alamy Stock Photo.

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cries and dance movements. Although there are wide regional variations of the dance in both performance and meanings, these animal imitations often have a didactic purpose, especially the epic tales, called kamuy yukar, which are stories told from the perspective of gods and interspersed with non-lexical imitations of animals or other non-humans. Both kamuy yukar and dances convey something about an animal’s place in relation to the environment and even their relationship with humans—the inherent interconnectedness of the human and nonhuman, and the environment. As an example, I encourage you to watch a video performance of Sarorun-rimse, the famous women’s crane dance. In the video linked here, women flap their jackets with their arms extended as if they are cranes in flight. As is customary, singing by both dancers and bystanders accompanies the dancing, the pulse provided by hand-clapping. The sung phrases are interspersed with extemporaneous imitation of crane calls.

Indigeneity, Heritage, and Contemporary Ainu Pop As a result of discrimination at the level of policy as well as everyday life among settlers, Ainu cultural practices were banned under Japanese rule when Hokkaido became a colonized Japanese territory in 1869. The Japanese not only considered the Ainu racially inferior, but also denied their indigenous status by designating them as “former aborigines” in the notoriously exploitive Hokkaido Former Aborigines Protection Act of 1899. Under this law, the Ainu faced severe discrimination and forced cultural assimilation; their land and resources were confiscated and made national property, and their lifestyle and language banned. Consequently, Ainu culture was rapidly extinguished both through forced assimilation and self-censorship, to the point where the language is considered “critically endangered” by UNESCO, with only a handful of fluent native speakers remaining. This abusive law was not repealed until 1997, and it was not until 2008 that the government passed a resolution to recognize the Ainu as indigenous peoples of Japan according to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Most recently, in 2019 the government passed a new law, which pledges financial support for Ainu cultural activities. Today, Ainu ceremonial songs and dances can be heard at staged performances for tourists or at cultural festivals as part of efforts to “restore” and preserve precolonial culture, while a small but determined group of Ainu people  practice traditional ceremonies for the benefit of their own communities. A new generation of Ainu musicians have also made efforts to transform precolonial Ainu musical practices to assert their indigenous rights, heritage, and pride. Dub Ainu Band, for example, is led by Ainu-Japanese musician, producer, and composer Oki Kano, who learned an Ainu traditional instrument called the tonkori from old recordings. Weaving the sound of tonkori—a long and flat three-to five-stringed zither played vertically—with bass, drums, keyboard, and computer, Dub Ainu Band mixes Ainu folk songs with the heavy bass and laid-back beats of Jamaican reggae and dub.

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KAMUY YUKAR Epic tales which are stories told from the perspective of gods and interspersed with non-lexical imitations of animals or other non-humans

EXPLORE Watch the Ainu Women’s Crane Dance

WATCH Oki Demonstrating Tonkori WATCH Oki Demonstrating Mukkuri

TONKORI Traditional Ainu instrument; three- or five-stringed zither that is held vertically and plucked with fingers.

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Ainu musician OKI playing tonkori. Source: Jun Sat/ WireImage/Getty Images.

LISTENING GUIDE 6.1

KONKON

LISTEN

Oki Dub Ainu Band

T

HIS SONG, FROM Oki Dub Ainu Band’s album Sakhalin Rock (2010), features a traditional oddmeter rhythmic phrase from Sakhalin, a Russian territory from which the majority of the Ainu were displaced along with the Japanese in 1949. While doing his own research, Oki found an old field recording of the Ainu musician Nishihira Ume (1901–1977), who demonstrated syllabically a rhythmic melody to be played on the prominent Ainu instrument mukkuri, a type of mouth harp that generates buzzing sounds with shifting overtones. This rhythmically complex phrase she sang, consisting of combinations of short and long beats, gave Oki the inspiration to arrange it into the new track “Konkon.” The main rhythmic phrase is repeated throughout the entirety of the song, performed by female Ainu singer Rekpo, as well as on the aforementioned instrument tonkori, and on the mukkuri. The Ainu rhythmic material is augmented by dub aesthetics—such as stripped-down drums, heavy bass, and spacious studio effects, which characterize the popular electronic genre related to Jamaican reggae. True to the dub approach, Oki manipulates the Ainu melody from the Sakhalin Island through arrangement, which layers the melody with a sparse and tasteful dub groove played on the electric bass and drums, and studio effects, such as echo and reverb. Although the song is primarily built on only one rhythmic theme, these pop arrangements add a chill and hypnotic feel and a sense of development to the otherwise repetitive structure of this tune. Try speaking the rhythm first. The short note, which lasts two subdivided beats, is spoken with the syllable “kon” or “koko.” The long note, which lasts three subdivided beats, is spoken with “kokon.”

continued

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Kon Kon Kokon

Kon Kon Kokon Kon Kon

Kokon

Kokon

Kokon

Kon Koko Kon Koko

2

2

3

3

3

2

2

3

2

3

2

2

2

2

2

Once you say this enough in rhythm, first on your own and then repeatedly along with the recording, you will start to feel familiar with the pattern. (This whole rhythmic theme lasts about seven to eight seconds on the recording.) The band considers this theme to be constituted out of seven sub-phrases that are made up of these short and long beats, as shown below the lines: 7 beats (kon kon kokon), 7 beats, 4 beats (kon kon), 3 beats (kokon), 3 beats, 3 beats, and 8 beats (kon koko kon koko). Now, it’s time to follow the time stamp to appreciate the way that musical layers are added and subtracted to make each repetition slightly different and unique from the others. TIME

MUSICAL EVENT

0:00

Field recording of crickets and drum fill-in.

0:03

Tonkori enters with the rhythmic theme and the theme repeats at 0:11. Let’s call this the “A” theme.

0:19

Electric bass enters.

0:25

Repeat, with a drum fill at the end.

0:33

Tonkori drops out, and mukkuri enters on rhythmic theme, with bass and drums. The rhythmic theme is repeated (starting at 0:40).

0:47

Bass drops out briefly, female voice enters on the rhythmic theme.

0:54

Tonkori enters in snippets, bass reenters; mukkuri stays in. The rhythmic theme is repeated (starting at 1:01).

1:08

Vocal part is dubbed, with snippets of tonkori accentuating the theme.

1:15

Single voice and mukkuri on the theme, with snippets of tonkori.

1:22

Female voice (dubbed) and mukkuri on the theme, drum fill at the end.

1:29

Break section: stripped down to sparse texture of drums and bass, with scatterings of mukkuri, tonkori, and vocal snippets (repetitions of the rhythmic theme occur at 1:37 and 1:44).

1:51

Mukkuri on the theme, drum fill at the end of the phrase.

1:59

Female voice reenters, drum drops out for dramatic reentry.

2:06

Tonkori and voice on the rhythmic motif.

2:12

Repeat, but the last “kon koko kon koko” is not sung.

2:18

A new vocal rhythmic theme “B” enters, while the drums and bass continue the original (“A”) rhythmic pattern throughout. This new rhythmic melody, beginning with “lui lui luhe,” also comes from the old field recording of Nishihara Ume. If you want to challenge yourself by keeping the main theme (“A”) going (played here by the drums and bass) while the new “B” vocal pattern is sung, the beginning of each iteration of the “A” theme is at 2:20, 2:27, and 2:34.

2:41

Voice and tonkori on the “A” theme.

2:49

Voice (dubbed) and mukkuri on the theme, with snippets of tonkori.

2:56

Voice (dubbed) and snippets of tonkori.

3:03

Break section: Voice and instruments drop out, stripped down bass with drums.

3:11

Break section: Vocal snippets, with dramatic drum break at the end.

3:17

“A” theme reenters with all instruments and voices.

3:24

Fade out.

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Ainu musician playing mukkuri (mouth harp). Source: RODOLFO CONTRERAS/ Alamy Stock Photo.

MUKKURI Traditional Ainu instrument; a mouth harp made of bamboo. POLYPHONY A musical texture in which two or more independent melodic lines are played simultaneously to create a coherent whole. EXPLORE Marewrew’s Polyphonic Singing

Another noteworthy contemporary Ainu ensemble is Marewrew, a group of all-female singers whose voices can be heard on collaborative projects with Oki (Rekpo who sings on Kon Kon is a member of the group). Marewrew’s performances highlight the polyphonic texture that often characterizes Ainu vocal music. Ainu polyphony is not based on harmonic theory, but is grounded instead in the complicated practice of overlapping multiple melodic parts— often in a kind of a round, in which individuals sing the same melody but with staggered entrances. Sometimes these overlapping parts emerge as multiple distinct melodies. I recommend that you listen to Marewrew’s “Funekogi Asobi (Boat-rowing Play)” to explore this style of polyphonic singing. Informed by a global indigenous rights discourse, these contemporary Ainu musicians perform not only for Japanese audiences but also on international stages, forging musical alliances with other indigenous groups to draw attention to the urgent issues facing them all, including socioeconomic equity, indigenous rights, and environmental racism.

OKINAWA Okinawa: Brief History ¯KYU ¯ KINGDOM RYU An independent kingdom that ruled Ryu¯kyu¯ islands (some of which comprise present day Okinawa Prefecture) from the 15th to 19th century.

Okinawa is the southernmost prefecture of Japan, located 500 kilometers south of Tokyo. Its multiple islands are part of the cluster belonging to the Ryu¯kyu¯ archipelago arching across the East China Sea. Some might describe Okinawa as Japan’s Hawai’i—tropical islands known for white-sand beaches, turquoise water, hibiscus flowers, and lively and distinct local musical cultures that attract visitors from mainland Japan throughout the year. And just like Hawai’i, Okinawa was once independent: it was called the Ryu¯kyu¯ Kingdom, and had

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Shuri Castle. Symbol of the Ryu¯kyu¯ Kingdom past and UNESCO World Heritage Site. Estimated to have been initially established in the 13th to 14th century. Source: Fotosearch/Getty Images.

its own distinct heritage and sovereignty. But its independence has been fragile throughout recent history. A line in the famous folk song “Jidai no Nagare” (“Flow of Time”) captures the serial invasion, colonization, and occupation of Okinawa: “From the Chinese era to the Japanese era / From the Japanese era to the American era / This Okinawa sure does change a lot.” Under a tributary relationship with China since the fourteenth century, Ryu¯kyu¯ thrived as a maritime trading post between East and Southeast Asia. Okinawa’s most quintessential musical instrument, sanshin, was initially brought from China during this time. After the Japanese invasion in the seventeenth century, Ryu¯kyu¯ remained sovereign for a time, though paying significant tribute to both Japan and China. But in 1879, the Japanese government annexed the islands in an act known as the “Ryu¯kyu¯ dispensation,” establishing Okinawa as a Japanese territory just as the nation was launching a course of imperial expansion into Taiwan, Korea, Manchuria, Northern China, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific. Under Japanese rule, Okinawans faced racialized discrimination due to their ethnolinguistic differences. They—along with people from Ainu, Taiwan, China, Java, India, Turkey, etc.—were displayed at the controversial “Human Pavilion” at the 1903 Osaka Exposition, as exotic specimens supposedly different from the mainland Japanese, and local students were banned from speaking their own dialect under intense assimilation policies in schools. These Japanese colonial projects paved the way for further violence and tragedy on the island. During the last stages of World War II, when the Allied forces were closing in on the Japanese empire, Okinawa Island became the site of the only ground battle fought on Japanese territory. The Battle of Okinawa, dubbed a “typhoon of steel” because of the ferocious and ravaging combat, was the bloodiest battle fought in the Pacific Theater. Nearly one-third of the island’s prewar civilian population was killed, by the U.S. army and Japanese soldiers alike. After the war ended, the island remained under U.S. military

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SANSHIN Okinawan three-stringed lute instrument, with its roots in China.

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occupation for two decades, rendering Okinawans a stateless people, neither Japanese nor American citizens. Even after its “reversion” to Japan in 1972, a massive U.S. military presence has remained in Okinawa on an indefinite basis. The fact that Okinawa Island, which comprises a mere 1 percent of the Japanese landmass, hosts 75 percent of the country’s U.S. military presence highlights the uneven power dynamics and ongoing conflict between Okinawa and the central government. This history of relentless exploitation, war, and social discrimination gives depth and shadows to Okinawa’s two-dimensional image as a timeless tropical paradise. Memories of the past are highly contested, with their repercussions continuing to inform the everyday lives of Okinawan people. Music is one of the cultural platforms where a distinct sense of Okinawan identity is expressed, questioned, and transformed.

Sanshin: Symbol of Okinawan Identity

¯ MINYO “Folk songs,” referring to vernacular folk songs with no known individual composer. Closely related to regional (and particularly rural) origins.

Central to the sound of Okinawan music is a three-stringed long-necked lute called sanshin (literally, “three strings”). Upon arriving in Okinawa, you will immediately hear its sound at the airport, at gift shops, and while strolling down the famous shopping street Kokusai Dori. Both in its material body and in its sound, sanshin is the most important Okinawan musical instrument, a symbolic emblem of identity for Okinawan people—or, in their dialect, uchinanchu. The instrument embodies the long historical relationship between China and the Ryu¯kyu¯ Kingdom. Its predecessor the sanxian, was first brought from China in the late fourteenth century, and became popular among high-ranking male court officials. Over time, the sanxian became adapted to Okinawan materials and culture, and eventually became a distinctly Okinawan instrument—sanshin. Early sanshin used precious materials like silk thread (for the strings), snake skin stretched across a body made of ebony, and turtle shell, whale beard, and ivory for decoration; they were a court instrument played by warrior noblemen. Eventually, during the nineteenth century, sanshin became available to and popular among ordinary people, and the repertoire changed from formal courtly compositions to minyo¯, folk songs with no known author. Sanshin is rarely played on its own; typically it accompanies singers. By the twentieth century, sanshin was well established as a symbolic pillar of Okinawan identity. There are many stories of Okinawa civilians evacuating during the war with only to¯to¯me (an ancestral altarpiece) and sanshin; such tales illustrate how valuable these symbolic objects, believed to host souls or spirits, are to the Okinawan people. In the war’s aftermath, when resources were scarce, Okinawan people made do, using empty coffee cans and parachute materials to keep making and playing sanshin. Today, sanshin is ubiquitous not only in Okinawa but also throughout mainland Japan; it is played by men and women, young and old. According to recent statistics, every 0.79 person in Okinawa owns a sanshin. Chances are that every household you visit will have one, and when some local liquor (awamori)

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Daiku Tetsuhiro, singer from Ishigaki Island of Okinawa Prefecture, with his sanshin. Source: courtesy of the author, Marié Abe.

is poured, singing and dancing to the sound of sanshin will commence. Today’s sanshin makers take pride in their craft, passed on over centuries. When making or repairing an instrument, artisans treat it with respect and care, since souls reside in it. They take care not to step over a sanshin on the floor, and a newlyfinished instrument is met with a phrase in Okinawan dialect, “yu¯n mariton,” signaling that the instrument has been born, just like a human baby. Contributing to this ubiquity is the accessibility of learning sanshin. Sanshin lessons are given in homes or town halls in every neighborhood in Okinawa, and with the rising popularity of Okinawan music and minyo, sanshin schools are now abundant in mainland Japan as well. Sanshin is also relatively easy to learn and play. One of Okinawan music’s most distinguishing features is the tonal system, called the “Ryu¯kyu¯ scale.” Most music in this region uses this scale—popular, minyo, and classical. Although there are a few other pentatonic variations used in Okinawa and on other Ryu¯kyu¯ islands, the pitches do, mi, fa, so, and ti make up the predominant scale. Repertoire is learned through a combination of notation and rote. A distinct notational system, kunkunshı¯, is easily decipherable; each Chinese character corresponds to a finger position on the neck of the lute. But sanshin’s rhythmic delivery and singing must be learned in person, either by listening to performances or by studying at sanshin schools. Sanshin’s popularity extends not only beyond Okinawa but also beyond Japan. At least five thousand instruments traveled abroad to Hawai’i and Brazil during the early nineteenth-century Okinawan emigration. Now, March 4th has been designated “Sanshin Day,” when people in Okinawa and its diaspora—from Brazil to Hawai’i, Paris, and Senegal—synchronically perform the standard tune “Kajadifu¯” at noon, 3 p.m., and 6 p.m. Okinawa time. But the

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KUNKUNSHIˉ Notational system used for sanshin in Okinawa.

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diaspora is not the only transnational reality affecting sanshin. Environmental politics now play a large role in its production. The international Washington Convention prevents Okinawan sanshin makers from using the wild python native to Okinawa. Other once-common materials have become so scarce domestically that most have to be imported: wood from the Philippines, lacquer from China, thread (now nylon) and snakeskin from Vietnam. Vietnam has in fact become the largest producer of sanshin because of its access to cheaper materials and labor. Okinawan sanshin makers, however, are making efforts toward reforestation of the native ebony trees, working to distinguish their artistry, and fostering a new generation of sanshin makers not only from Okinawa but also from abroad.

Hiyami Kachibushi: Okinawa beyond Okinawa Now, let’s explore one of the most popular Okinawan songs: Hiyami Kachi Bushi. In Okinawan, the title and its refrain, “Hiyamikachi,” evokes a spirit of determination and the message “Let’s rise up! Let’s go for it!” Although it is widely considered a minyo (a folk song with no known composer), this song was, in fact, written by Taira Shinsuke and Yamanouchi Seihin to raise the morale of Okinawans amidst the devastation following the ferocious battle of World War II. Hiyami Kachibushi and Yamanouchi Seihin Monument. Melody and lyrics are engraved, along with the original lyrics in Yamonouchi’s handwriting (left). Source: courtesy of the author, Marié Abe.

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The song commemorates not only the tragedies of the war, but also the extensive history of Okinawan emigration. Both authors emigrated from Okinawa, to the U.S. and Brazil respectively, as part of the large waves of Okinawan migration that began in the late 1800s and continued throughout the twentieth century. The island’s chronic poverty, due to the Japanese government’s heavy taxation and agricultural policies, compounded by periods of famine, propelled Okinawans to destinations such as Hawai’i, the Philippines, Peru, Bolivia, Argentina, and Brazil. Between 1899 and 1935, almost 15 percent of islanders emigrated either to mainland Japan or overseas, mostly to perform agricultural labor in sugarcane and coffee fields. It is estimated that today 400,000 people with Okinawan heritage live around the world. Taira Shinsuke, an activist who fought for the rights of Okinawans in the late 1800s, emigrated to Hawai’i, then California, in 1901; he was eventually detained in an internment camp during World War II. Upon returning to Okinawa in 1953 and finding his motherland in ruins, Taira wrote a ryu¯ka (an

LISTENING GUIDE 6.2

HIYAMI KACHI BUSHI

LISTEN

by Daiku Tetsuhiro

I

N YOUR LISTENING example, you will hear a rendition of Hiyamikachi Bushi by the renowned Okinawan folk singer Daiku Tetsuhiro. Born in 1948 on Ishigaki Island at the periphery of the Ryu¯kyu¯ archipelago, Daiku is a chief voice of the local traditional music. Having won numerous competitions, Daiku holds licenses to teach traditional songs from both Okinawa and Yaeyama islands, and has been awarded the intangible cultural heritage award by Okinawa prefecture. 1. Naa ni tachuru 'uchinaa takarajima demunu kukuru 'uchi'awachi 'utachimishoori Famed Okinawa / It’s an island of treasure / gather your hearts into one and stand up. Refrain: Hiya! Hiya! Hiya hiya hiya! Hiyamikachiukiri Hiyamikachiukiri Yes! Go for it! Rise up, rise up! 2. ‘ini'awa nu nauri mirukuyuu nu shirushi kukuru 'uchi'aachi chibai mishoori Rice and millet harvest / sign of great prosperity / gather your hearts into one and give it your best. 3. gaku ya nai shuuraasa hana ya sachijurasa washita kunu 'uchinaa sikee ni shirasa Beautiful is endearing / beautiful flowers are blossoming / let our Okinawa be known to the world. 4. cchu nu tuyuru tushi nu NpaNpa nu nayumi 'ubiraji ni tutasa rukujuu banja People get old / it’s an undeniable destiny / I’ve aged / I am already sixty years old before I knew it. 5. wan ya tura demunu hanichikithi tabori namji pasificcu watathi nabira I am a tiger / please give me wings / I shall fly across the Pacific Ocean. 6. nanakurubi kurubi hiyamikachi 'ukiri washita kunu 'uchinaa sikee ni sirasa Falling seven times / but get up with determination / let our Okinawa be known to the world.

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LISTEN Daiku Performs a Song from Yaeyama Island

WATCH A fast-tempo kachaˉshıˉ rendition of Hiyamikachi Bushi by the all-female group Nenezu.

Okinawan poetic form with the syllabic pattern 8 + 8 + 8 + 6) to express hope for fast reconstruction and to encourage Okinawans. Yamanouchi Seihin, a musicologist and musician who had himself been part of an earlier wave of emigration (in his case, to Brazil), then wrote additional verses and set them to a melody he composed. Lyrics such as “I shall fly across the Pacific Ocean” and “let our Okinawa be known to the world” reflect a cosmopolitan view of the island, informed by the writers’ emigration experiences and strong connection to Okinawa, despite the traumas of displacement and internment Taira endured. The song’s introduction is a technically challenging, syncopated melodic passage traversing a wide range of more than two octaves, reflecting Yamanouchi’s desire to elevate and expand sanshin’s musical potential. The melody features unusually big leaps  between pitches and a wide range from high to low, reflecting Yamanouchi’s experimental ethos and incorporating non-traditional musical influences into a new Okinawan folk song. Both melodically and lyrically, then, this “standard folk” song exhibits uniquely Okinawan histories and sensibilities—a distinct Okinawan identity grounded in a cosmopolitan outlook and in a sense of pride in surviving the violence and struggles they have endured. And, perhaps because of its international orientation, Hiyamikachi Bushi has been played and sung by many groups, both Okinawan and international. Typically, when performing this song, the singer starts at a medium tempo, but as the crowd warms up, the singer increases the tempo to encourage the audience to get up and dance, with finger-whistling in between. This dance is called kachashıˉ (“stirring around”), and involves raising one’s arms above the head and rotating hands and wrists in circular motions. I encourage you to explore various performances of the song online to get a sense of how performers create an upbeat party atmosphere.

BON-ODORI: DANCES FOR THE DEAD Rural Labor Songs: Bon-odori and Tanko¯ Bushi BON-ODORI A style of communal dance, often held at festivals during the obon season. OBON Japanese annual custom of honoring the spirits of the dead, based on syncretic amalgamation of indigenous ancestral worship and Buddhism.

Summertime in Japan is hot, humid, and lively, and the season is filled with many festivals. From fireworks to music to the communal folk-dance festivals called bon-odori, various signature summer events attract large crowds all across Japan. Bon-odori is a popular folk dance, held annually during the high-summer obon season, when the living honor ancestral spirits, who are believed to revisit the household for several days. Although the precise historical and religious origins of obon are contested, the consensus is that it emerged as part of the urabon-e, a period of memorializing spirits that syncretizes ancient indigenous ancestral worship and Buddhism. This calendrical cycle of honoring the dead was established by the eighth century. Broadly speaking, religion does not play a significant role in Japanese social life today, and most music is similarly outside the realm of the sacred. Polls

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show that 29 percent of Japanese are agnostic, though many subscribe to Buddhist and Shinto beliefs to a certain extent and there is a small Christian population. But Buddhist and Shinto practices—such as New Year’s Day visits to a Shinto shrine or a summertime visit to the family graveyard at a Buddhist temple—are often perceived as ordinary and customary cultural practices without necessarily suggesting a religious intention. Most families have a designated temple, and many households have a Shinto altar or Buddhist ancestral altar, sometimes both. And during obon, as with Thanksgiving or the Christmas holidays in the U.S., people travel to visit their hometowns, gathering with extended families and honoring their deceased family members and distant ancestors. While obon rituals of welcoming and sending off the ancestral spirits are practiced at the household level, bon-odori is a communal dance event that usually takes place at the end of the obon period, memorializing the dead through socializing and revelry. Although bon-odori was traditionally held on Buddhist temple grounds, today it is typically hosted by local associations in district schoolyards, parks, or town plazas, near train stations catering to specific neighborhoods. Bon-odori therefore also serves as a chance for those who have left their hometowns to reconnect with old friends and relatives. A yagura (a wooden tower with a raised stage at the top) is built at the center of the festival ground, and food, Bon-odori: Taiko drummers are on the top tier and some drink, and game vendors line up along the periphery. dancers dance in a circle on the lower tier of the yagura tower, while other festival goers join multiple concentric The tower is colorfully decorated with traditional red­ circles surrounding the tower. Source: winhorse/Getty and-white drapes and paper lanterns. Many festival­ Images. goers, young and old, dress up for the occasion in yukata (summer-weight cotton kimonos). Musicians set up atop the tower; some festivals feature pre-recorded tracks with live taiko drumming TAIKO General term to refer to only, while others incorporate singers and other instrumentalists. Concentric traditional drums in Japan. circles of dancers surround the yagura, and festivalgoers join the circle of dancers whenever they feel like dancing to a tune or two. The choreography is quite simple, and even if you don’t know it, it’s easy to jump in. The dancers repeat a sequence of patterned movements, so within a couple of minutes of observing those in the know, you can follow along quite smoothly. Bon-odori within Japan is also hugely varied from region to region, and certain areas are better known than others for their distinct tunes and choreography, including Awa Odori in Tokushima, Kawachi Ondo in Osaka, and Eisa¯ in Okinawa. These are a source of local pride as well as a touristindustry draw. Amongst the rich variety of regional styles, a few tunes have also

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become widely popular as quintessential bon-odori tunes throughout Japan. Perhaps the most well-known is “Tanko Bushi (Coalmine Song),” originating in the Chikuho region in northern Kyu¯shu¯, the largest center of coal production in Japan, which supported the Japanese industrial economy in the first half of the twentieth century. True to the title, the choreography accompanying the song includes gestures imitating digging up coal with a pickaxe, throwing it backwards into a backpack with a scoop, and pushing a minecart. As is evident from its choreography, Tanko Bushi was originally a coal miners’ labor song, even though its ubiquity today as a bon-odori song often

LISTENING GUIDE 6.3

¯ BUSHI (COALMINE SONG) TANKO

LISTEN

Kanazawa Akiko TIME

MUSICAL EVENT/LYRICS

0:00

Introduction

0:10

First verse:

0:48

1:25

2:04

TRANSLATION

Tsuki ga deta deta tsuki ga deta (yoi yoi)

The moon is out, the moon is out (yoi yoi)

Uchi no oyama no ue ni deta

It rose above our mountains

Amari entotsuga takai node

The coal mine chimney is so tall

Sazo ya otsuki san kemutakaro (sano yoi yoi)

The moon must be smokey (sano yoi yoi)

Second Verse: Hitoyama Hutayama Miyama koe (yoi yoi)

Going over one mountain, two mountains, three mountains (yoi yoi)

Oku ni saitaru yaetsubaki

A camellia is blossoming in the far back

Nanbo iroyoku saita tote

But even if the blossom is beautifully colorful

Samachan ga kayowanya adano hana (sano yoi yoi)

It’s a waste if sama-chan (a male lover) doesn’t come by (sano yoi yoi)

Third Verse: Anata wa Ittaizentai Doko no hito

Where on earth are you from?

Kao wa Fukuoka Me wa Kurume

Face from Fukuoka, Eyes of Kurume

Ashi wa Nagasaki Te wa Bizen

Legs of Nagasaki, hands of Bizen

Kokoro Moji Moji Ki wa Sasebo

Heart is of Moji, Ki wa Sasebo

Fourth Verse: Anata ga sonoki de iuno nara (yoi yoi)

If you are seriously saying so (yoi yoi)

Omoikiri masu wakare masu

I will be bold, I will leave

Motono musumeno ju¯hachi ni

If you could return me to the eighteen-year old maid that I was

Kaeshite kuretara wakaremasu (sano yoi yoi)

Then I will leave you (sano yoi yoi)

continued

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TIME

MUSICAL EVENT/LYRICS

2:43

Fifth Verse:

TRANSLATION

Omae no sakiyama shigoto nara

If your job is a coalminer

Watasha sentan ondo tori

I am singing the coal-selecting song

Kuro suru ki to saseru ki o

Will sing the hardship of

Uta de norokete tomo kaseg

Working together

Try to clap to the beat and count the number of beats per line. Each verse in this song consists of four lines, each seven-beat long, with nine-beat interludes between the verses. Added to this playful phrasing is the choreography, which consists of six types of gestures: 1. clapping, over two beats; 2. digging with a shovel, for four beats; 3. throwing the imaginary coal backwards into a backpack with a scoop, for two beats; 4. gazing afar while stepping backward, for two beats; 5. pushing a mine cart with both hands, for two beats; and 6. a horizontal hand gesture to mark the ending, one beat. This adds up to thirteen beats. When repeating this choreography to the tune, the beginning of the sequence of movements lines up with different parts of the verse, allowing dancers to take pleasure in the unexpected variations in the relationship between the movement and melody during the otherwise long and repetitive performance. You can check out the choreography instruction video online; it’s quite easy to follow.

overshadows its fascinating history. Understanding how this song has traveled through time and space gives us insight into how the heavy-industry economy transformed Japan, women’s role in creating and transmitting culture, and the unexpected role of the U.S. military in the postwar popular music industry. Coal mining was the driving force behind the industrial capitalist economy that propelled Japan’s modernization process between the early 1900s and World War II. In its earlier days, before the introduction of machinery, the labor was dangerous and brutal. Various work songs emerged as the miners dug underground, including Tanko Bushi’s precursor “Sentan Uta (Coal-selecting Song).” While diggers were primarily male, women often accompanied men to carry out the coal, or to sift good-quality coal from the rest. Women sang as they worked, complaining about the harsh work conditions, exploitative bosses, and disappointing love interests. The miner women adopted the tune for what would become Tanko Bushi from “Rappa Bushi,” a popular song circulating through songbooks and records. Borrowing the Tokyo-born melody, the women improvised lyrics as they engaged in their demanding work. Their song was picked up by geisha— female entertainers at drinking establishments who performed music, sang, and danced as men partied—near the coal mine. This explains the veiled sexual innuendos and references to love in the coalmine in the lyrics. The tune was recorded in 1932, with a name change to Tanko Bushi to describe the  general coalmine environment, instead of specifically describing part of the labor. During this process of transformation, the record company’s interest was less in capturing a faithful version of the original song, which included some vulgarities and local gossip. Instead, they wanted to produce a sanitized

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EXPLORE Choreography for Tanko¯ Bushi

GEISHA Female entertainers versed in traditional art of music, dance, and singing.

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Life of “Sentanfu” – women selecting high calorie coal from spoiled rocks work at Mitsui Mining Tagawa Mine in Fukuoka in 1956. Source: Yasuo Tomishige/The Asahi Shimbun/Getty Images.

version that would appeal to an audience beyond Kyu¯shu¯. Japan’s prewar coal industry was peaking, and as the Chikuho region’s coal-driven economy boomed, Tanko Bushi also flourished. It was adopted as a bon-odori tune by the mid-1930s, and villagers danced to the song on temple grounds to honor their ancestors, particularly the recently deceased who had met fatal accidents in the mines. The circuitous way in which a popular melody and a women’s labor song intertwined and traveled across the country is interesting enough, but it is not how this song achieved national fame as the country’s most beloved bon-odori tune. Surprisingly, the key element in popularizing this tune nationally was the continued presence of the U.S. military after World War II. During the war, the coalmines suffered from a labor shortage as Japanese men were conscripted. They turned to the Chinese and Koreans then under Japanese rule, as well as prisoners of war from the U.S., Great Britain, Australia, and Canada. Half the area’s coal miners during the war were non-Japanese forced labor, which led to postwar chaos. To control this unstable and yet strategically crucial area and promote rapid redevelopment of the Japanese economy, the United Nations and U.S. forces stationed soldiers in the Chikuho mines to restore order and redevelop the coal industry as part of a strategy aimed at spurring rapid economic recovery in war-torn Japan. As part of this redevelopment effort, in 1946 the Japanese national radio station (NHK) started a program dedicated to the coalmines. Local geishas were hired to record Tanko Bushi, which was played on the airwaves to promote and encourage coal miners. American soldiers who had learned Tanko Bushi

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during nightlife revelry also performed it on air in pidgin Japanese, and it was this radio performance that sparked the tune’s rapid spread throughout Japan. The song caught on among U.S. soldiers too, and in 1951 it was released as “Tankoh-Bushi” on Nippon Columbia. Tanko Bushi, then, was promoted as a PR theme song—to highlight the significance of the coal industry in the postwar reconstruction efforts, to attract more laborers, and to instill a sense of regional pride in the Chikuho area as the center of a postwar economic boom—but it quickly became something more. To summarize, the social life of the most beloved bon-odori song has taken us on a grand tour: a popular Tokyo tune migrated into a labor song sung by coal-miner women, became locally popular, was performed by U.S. soldiers on postwar radio as a public relations stunt, created a sensation across the country, and is now the heart of bon-odori festivals throughout Japan. Today, most festival-goers would not be aware of this hidden history, and yet, as they dance the stylized mining gestures, they embody complex histories of the wartime economy, gendered labor, Japan’s imperialist advance, and the postwar U.S. occupation. Bon-odori has become a backbone of summertime Japanese social life, but it has also traveled abroad. Especially in California and Hawai’i, where there is a sizable Japanese-American diaspora, Buddhist temples host annual bon-odori festivals for those with Japanese heritage and other community members. The tunes and choreography continue to change as bon-odori travels abroad; in Hawai’i, for example, I have seen the dancers dancing with typical bon-odori gestures to Michael Jackson or Usher tracks, in addition to the popular bon-odori tunes heard in Japan. It has also become a platform for citizens organizing in a small number of cases. As part of the attempt to undo the stigma of street demonstrations from the 1960s, some citizen groups have taken to organizing bon-odori festivals promoting the anti-nuclear power movement, or advocating for multicultural coexistence with immigrant communities. So we see that bon-odori continues its transpositions even now: from a popular urban song, to rural labor tune, to ancestral ritual dance, and to social movement.

GAGAKU Gagaku: Nationalizing Court Music While other musics we’ve encountered in this chapter have developed primarily among ordinary people, gagaku is a court music and dance that has been transmitted, protected, developed, and preserved through official institutions since the eighth century. Listening to the sound of gagaku is, in itself, a great exercise for attuning oneself to the traces of unique aesthetic principles from over thirteen centuries ago. Understanding this historical background will shed light on a larger theme: the paradoxical quest for an “authentic” musical identity in modern Japan, caught between the pursuit of an intrinsically distinct Japanese

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GAGAKU Japanese court orchestral music.

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TO¯GAKU Music and dance of Chinese origin in the gagaku repertoire KOMAGAKU Music and dance of Korean origin in the gagaku repertoire SHOGUNATE SYSTEM Japanese system of feudal governance under a military leader (shogun), which lasted from 1600 to 1868.

essence and the desire to locate “Japaneseness” in an ability to synthesize and transform outside influences. Gagaku means “proper” or “elegant” music, implicitly positioning this genre against “vulgar” or “common” music. The term, variations of which spread to Korea and Vietnam, originated in China in the fifth century bce, as a Confucian term referring to virtuous music that appropriately fosters the regal power of the state. This concept, along with musical styles and instruments from continental Asia, traveled to Japan through active cultural exchanges, and gradually took hold as part of courtly and Buddhist ceremonies. In 701, the government established the gagaku-ryo¯ (Gagaku Institute) to train court musicians and dancers, marking the formal institutionalization of gagaku. Since its inception in Japan, gagaku was a rather inclusive term, referring to music and dance from China (to¯gaku) and the Korean peninsula (komagaku), as well as songs and dances from various parts of Japan (kuniburi no utamai), as long as they were performed for court events and ceremonies. Generally, the Japanese repertoire was oriented around the voice; a small instrumental ensemble accompanied the vocal delivery in heterophonic style. Chinese-origin togaku and Korean-origin komagaku involved larger ensembles without a vocal part, and often accompanied dancing. Gagaku flourished during the Heian Period (794–1185 ce) at official court events and rituals, as well as for aristocratic entertainment. Throughout the following eight hundred years, while it waxed and waned, gagaku continued to remain primarily within the institutional framework of the imperial court. Even during the Edo period (1603–1868), when the political power of the emperor was limited under the shogunate system, efforts were made to restore and develop gagaku traditions which had declined during the  long unstable

Gagaku musicians and a dancer. From left to right: kakko (double headed drum), taiko (suspended drum), ryuteki (flute), and dancer. Source: John S Lander/ LightRocket/Getty Images.

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period between the twelfth and seventeenth centuries. In the process, some gagaku traditions extended beyond court institutions, while being influenced by popular genres outside the court. For instance, particular genres became an exclusive specialty of hereditary lineages of male musicians, while some gagaku repertoire came to be performed at Buddhist and Shinto rituals. The social life of gagaku took a sharp turn after 1868, when the shogunate system was dismantled and its long-standing isolationist policy came to an end under international military pressure. The new Meiji government restored the emperor as the central embodiment of sovereign power and head of modern nation-building efforts, and gagaku became an essential tool for cementing this new imperial system. The government institution gagaku-kyoku, much like the gagaku-ryo¯ of the eighth century, was established in 1870. Specific repertoire was canonized and sets of notations for each instrument were produced for imperial court functions. As a form of music that had accompanied the imperial family for well over a millennium, gagaku held an increased symbolic significance in the new political arrangement by legitimizing a narrative positioning of the imperial lineage as direct descendants of the Shinto deities, dating back to the mythological origin of the country. The Meiji period (1868–1912) also marked the beginning of Japan’s modern quest to define its own musical identity vis-à-vis Western music. As I discussed in the introduction, the word “music” in Japanese today, “ongaku,” initially referred to music from abroad—essentially, gagaku, with its Chinese origins. When the English concept “music” was imported into Meiji Japan, the definition of the term suddenly expanded to include all the “vulgar” musics and music from the West. To distinguish its “proper” place from the rest of the newly-defined “ongaku,” gagaku further relied on institutionalization, elevating itself above the rest of “music” as the exclusive and sacred music of the imperial court. As European and American influences flooded in, the ardent quest for a legitimate and superior “Japanese” music became a central project for historians and music scholars. Reinterpreting the provenance of gagaku by tracing its roots in continental instruments provided one avenue. In 1872, Japan opened the Shosoin repository of ancient treasures, sealed since 756. It was essentially a time capsule, with miraculously well-preserved artifacts from Iran, the Middle East, India, Southeast China, and Korea. Among this remarkable evidence of extensive artistic exchanges between ancient Japan and the Eurasian continent were musical instruments. In 1920 Tanabe Hisao, a prominent musicologist who greatly contributed to elevating and validating gagaku in modern Japan, was assigned to conduct research on these instruments. He developed a grandiose theory to justify the “uniquely Japanese” characteristic of gagaku despite its clear cosmopolitanism, positing that music from Egyptian, Jewish, Greek, Babylonian, Syrian, Persian, Indian, Burmese, Thai, Chinese, Mongolian, Vietnamese, Tibetan, and Korean cultures had amalgamated into “Japanese” music. This theory essentially posited Japan as the superb synthesizer of these influences, a distillatory paragon at the pinnacle of world civilization. Implicit in this theory was Tanabe’s view of the dynamic between Western and Japanese music in his own

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day. Instead of perceiving the West as a superior civilization subsuming that of Japan, Tanabe saw yet another historical moment in which Japanese music successfully integrates outside influences into its own unique practice of the highest caliber.

LISTENING GUIDE 6.4

ETENRAKU

LISTEN

Nippon Gagaku Kai

G

AGAKU, WITH ITS distinct sense of time, pitch selection, and timbral combination of ancient instruments, might sound esoteric to the ears of first-time listeners. The sense of otherworldliness may be somewhat warranted, considering that it has belonged to the domain of the sacred and the royal, removed from the worldly lives of ordinary people for well over a millennium, until as recently as one hundred years ago. This listening example provides a window into thinking about at least two unique aesthetic features of pre-Meiji Japanese music, broadly speaking. One is the sense of time. While gagaku has a distinct sense of time dictated by its slow tempo and complex metric structures, its instrumental texture and the lack, at times, of obviously detectable recurring beats creates a flexible and elastic quality of time. In this temporal sensibility, the focus is more on the space created between sonic or embodied events, and less on the events themselves. The dance movement of gagaku, and other older theatrical forms in Japan such as noh and kabuki, is dictated by a much more liberal and flexible sense of time than dances that place significance on precise synchronization and coordination of movements to the beats. The second principle of traditional Japanese musical aesthetics that you will hear in this example is the lack of harmony. Premodern Japanese music was primarily heterophonic, with the same melodic  idea  performed by multiple parts with individual variations intact. The concept of harmonization was another Western musical influence that Japanese music educators integrated in the early Meiji period. “Etenraku” is gagaku’s most widely known composition, Performed by a large ensemble of 16 instruments, the piece is representative of the purely instrumental repertoire within gagaku called kangen (“pipes and strings”), distinct from the music that accompanies dance, called bugaku (“music and dance”). I recommend that you listen to this track at least three times, paying attention to a different musical aspect each time. First, listen for instrumentation and texture; the second time through, listen for melodic themes, and form; and during your third time, listen for time and rhythm. 1. Instrumentation and Texture One aspect of gagaku’s elegance is its translucent and stratified sonic texture. Because the accents distributed among the percussions are organized into broad metric structures that don’t always correspond to the accents of the melodic wind instruments, it is easy to appreciate the individual timbre of each instrument. The ensemble is divided into three instrumental sections: winds, percussion, and strings, and these groups, each with distinct sound colors, create an overall musical texture that is remarkably stratified. Following the chart below for the first couple of minutes, try to listen for the distinct sound of some of the instruments in each instrumental group, and how they relate to each other.

continued

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TIME

MUSICAL EVENT

0:00

Among the wind instruments, you will first hear the ryu¯teki, a transverse flute with seven finger-holes. All kangen pieces start with a flute solo.

0:06

Percussion group is comprised of two drums and a gong. At this point in the piece, you can hear the kakko, which is a small barrel drum placed on a stand and struck with an elongated drumstick, and the metallic sound of shoko. Shoko is made from brass and is suspended on a wooden stand, and is struck with two wooden (or, more rarely, stone) mallets.

0:11

A soft stroke of the taiko punctuates the accelerating roll played by the kakko, The taiko is a suspended frame drum with heads made of oxhide, played with two padded wooden drumsticks.

0:15

A stronger taiko stroke can be heard.

0:46

The whole ensemble joins. The prominent melody line is played on another wind instrument, hichiriki, a small double-reed pipe similar to an oboe but much shorter and with a bigger reed. This instrument produces the most volume in the gagaku ensemble, and can play characteristic gliding pitches, produced by moving the reed back and forth in the mouth. Although historically gagaku can be considered a heterophonic music, in today’s performance practice the ryu¯teki and hichiriki are regarded as carrying the melody, while other instruments provide structural and “complementary” elements. Behind the melody, you hear high-pitched clusters of pitches that are sustained; this is the effect of the shoˉ, a “mouth organ” with seventeen pipes inserted into a wind chamber.The sho plays five- or six-note clusters, called aitake, which envelop the melody and fluctuate rhythmically throughout the entire piece. The instrument can produce sounds while exhaling as well as inhaling.

1:06

Listen for the sharp accentuating notes on the string instruments. In the string group, the koto (a thirteen­ silk-stringed, long zither) and the biwa (a pear-shaped lute with four strings and four frets) play a rhythmic role, sparsely accentuating the melody. Both plucked string instruments, their delicate sounds have a similar timbre and can be difficult to distinguish.

1:25

Here, the koto plays several ascending notes.

1:30

Just before the gong, you can hear the distinctive sound of the biwa emerging.

Now that you are familiar with the instrument groups and some of the individual instruments, listen to the ensemble between 6:10 and 6:32 and see if you can recognize each group, which are now all performing in parallel while maintaining their distinct timbral layers. 2. Melodic Themes and Form The slowness of the melody may make it difficult to recognize the repeated melodic themes the first time around. Now, follow the time stamps below and listen for how the melody on hichiriki and ryu¯teki follows the thematic form AABBCCAABB. 0:01 (A); 1:06 (A); 2:09 (B); 3:03 (B); 3:52 (C); 4:39 (C); 5:26 (A); 6:10 (A); 6:54 (B); 7:36 (B) Looking at the timestamps, you can also appreciate the subtle but marked increase in tempo from the beginning of the piece, when a single performance of the A melody lasts a whole minute, to the central section around 5:26, in which the same melodic material lasts almost half that time. This brings us to the third aspect of gagaku to listen for: time. 3. Time and Rhythm Gagaku is characterized by a unique aesthetic of musical time, dictated by breath and movement. This aesthetic is grounded in the interplay between the rhythmic grid produced by the percussion continued

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instruments, the generally slow tempo, and the seemingly static (but in fact constantly changing) “sonic shell” provided by the mouth organ sho ¯ . As the speed of the piece increases, the volume of the sho¯ increases and decreases, as if it were breathing. Notice, for example, the sho¯ ’s different volumes between 2:09 and 2:43. This sense that the music is breathing is reinforced by a progressive acceleration of the melody, in accordance with jo-ha-kyuˉ, the musico-aesthetic principle governing the structure of an individual piece or a suite: a slow beginning with an almost imperceptible beat leads to a long, central section with a more steady pulse, which in turn morphs into a short, faster conclusion. It is not a rigid succession of parts, but rather a dynamic principle informing the flow of the music, both within each piece and extending to the structure of a multiple-piece suite. Now, listen again, using the timestamps of the form above, paying close attention to the volume changes and the accelerations of tempo, and see if you can map out the jo-ha-kyu¯ progression. When would you say each transition occurs, from jo to ha, and from ha to kyu¯? The elongation of the final beats accentuates the unique pace of gagaku compositions: to fully appreciate this, listen to the way the notes are “stretched” at the end of the musical phrase that starts at 3:15 and ends at 3:40. The “space” thus created between the notes is often referred to as ma, an elusive aesthetic principle that rests upon the delicate balance between the quality and duration of each repeated note and the simultaneous awareness of the ever so slightly accelerating tempo of the entire composition. In a good gagaku performance, the combination of the two principles of ma and jo-ha-kyu¯ generate the feeling that musical time flows at once solemnly and dynamically. (Listening Guide written in consultation with Andrea Giolai)

KANGEN Purely instrumental repertoire within gagaku. BUGAKU Gagaku repertoire accompanying dance. KAKKO A small barrel drum placed on a stand and struck with an elongated drumstick; featured in gagaku. HICHIRIKI A double-reed gagaku instrument similar to an oboe but much shorter and with a bigger reed. ¯ SHO A mouth organ. BIWA A pear-shaped lute with four strings and four frets.

As Japan gained militaristic momentum, advancing into the Pacific and East and Southeast Asia in the 1920s and 1930s, gagaku became embroiled in nationalist rhetoric. Although Tanabe first proposed his expansively global theory  of gagaku’s continental roots in the 1920s, as discussed above, by the height of Japanese colonial expansion in the 1930s his search for the roots of Japanese music became increasingly aligned with imperialist ideology. Tanabe traveled extensively to then-Japanese colonies—Taiwan, Korea, Sakhlin, and China—in search of gagaku’s origins. Narrowing his scope from the Eurasian continent to the selected Japanese colonies in Asia,Tanabe asserted their common musical ancestry to justify the official imperialist concept of the “Greater East Asian Coprosperity Sphere.” If gagaku was the supreme culmination of various Asian influences, it would bolster Japanese legitimacy as the benevolent leader of the colonized regions in the name of the divine imperial lineage that has been symbolically celebrated through the supreme sound of gagaku. After World War II, as the occupying forces scrubbed away the imperialist ideologies and practices of Japan’s prewar aggression, new institutional efforts were made to salvage gagaku ensembles’ social and symbolic status. Although the emperor’s role was constitutionally redefined to an exclusively symbolic one, void of political power in 1947, the state, in 1955, recognized gagaku as Important Intangible Cultural Heritage—an official court music belonging to the Imperial Household Agency. Beyond the walls of the court, gagaku music and dance are gradually becoming more familiar, reaching an ever-growing

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Sho¯ . Source: Jack Vartoogian/ Getty Images.

JO-HA-KYU¯ A musico-aesthetic principle of gagaku that governs the structural progression of a piece, or a complex suite.

public. Today, gagaku is performed at ceremonies at Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines, including Tennoji in Osaka and Kasuga Taisha in Nara. Amateur groups and university courses and ensembles have been formed, and the National Theatre has been programming gagaku to popularize the art among ordinary citizens since the 1970s, both as traditional practice and as a musical resource for creative compositions in contemporary music.

NOISE/JAPANOISE In 2008, I was in a small dark underground venue in Shinsaibashi, Osaka, for a show by an artist called Merzbow. The performer on stage, with long disheveled hair and calm but slightly contorted facial expressions, was manipulating amplifiers and multiple objects on a table full of equipment—various analog pedals, close-miked homemade instruments, a soundboard, and multiple laptops all connected with dangling bundles of cables—that were unleashing at times crackling, or rumbling, and at others piercingly high sounds, all at an extremely loud volume at the limit of what the loudspeakers could handle. It was so abrasively loud that my body buzzed with the sound emanating from the sound system; it was almost painful. It felt as though my body was tensing up and bursting open at the same time. The performance pushed the limits of the threshold of “listening,” and of what “music” is. Merzbow is one of the artists considered to be part of the experimental subcultural category known as “Japanoise.” Japanoise is perhaps not unlike gagaku in its relative cultural obscurity and seemingly esoteric sound for uninitiated ears. But in stark contrast to the staid and decorous aesthetics of

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JAPANOISE Experimental underground phenomenon from Japan with extreme aesthetics, which gained international recognition in the 1990s through transnational circulation of recordings.

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BOX 6.1 LISTENING EXERCISE I encourage you to look up at least three of the artists mentioned in this section to explore the wide variety of styles that fall under “Japanoise”— although, of course, it’s best experienced live. True to the metaphor of cultural feedback, these artists never remain in one aesthetic position, but keep evolving, a dynamism reflected in the ever-changing names of their bands or stage names. Boredoms can be spelled as “V∞redoms” or “Boadrum,” and their members’ solo projects flourished, from Yoshimi’s all-female group OOIOO to Saicobab, Hanatarashi, and DJ Pika Pika Pika. Watch carefully for the types of equipment they use to achieve certain sounds and aesthetics and pay attention to audience reactions as well. Use your headphones or speakers, and turn up the volume while listening.

gagaku, Japanoise blasts open your ears and mind with its unapologetically loud, distorted, radical, violent expression that challenges the conception of “music” altogether. Understanding just how this phenomenon came to be known as Japanoise, and exactly how “Japanese” it might be, provides us with yet another way to think about one of the main themes in this chapter: the complex dynamic between native and foreign influences in defining Japanese music, this time in the twentieth century. It was not until much later, when I encountered a book on Japanoise by ethnomusicologist David Novak, that I gained a grasp of how to better understand my intense and puzzling experience at the Merzbow show, and I glean insights from his research in this section. Japanoise is not a clearly delineated genre, style, or scene that is attached to a particular place or time. Rather, it describes a cultural phenomenon in which a small number of independent and experimental artists in Japan became intertwined with listeners, record collectors, and record shop owners in North America through the circulation of cassette tapes sent through international mail. The global imagination created by this loose transnational network of listeners and performers who shared aesthetic sensibilities, in turn, provided a platform for these Japanese artists to gain popularity abroad. Subsequently, and influenced by their transnational experiences, these artists were able to create a scene back in Japan. This series of accidental chain reactions is “Japanoise.” The seed of what would later become Japanoise was planted in small DIY subcultural venues in late-1970s Kyoto and Osaka, where young people, mostly men, gathered to listen to foreign recordings of experimental music, from progressive rock to psychedelic rock and free jazz. Thirsty for and not satisfied with simply listening to new and “strange” sounds from abroad, some started to listen experimentally by playing records backwards, at different speeds, in loops—and so the boundary between listening and performing started to blur. The cultural climate of 1970s Kyoto also fostered such cutting-edge

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explorations; since the late 1960s, the city has become a home base for avant­ garde, anti-establishment university student cultures, which were positioned against the centralized political and economic power and cultural dominance of Tokyo. By the 1980s, the word “noizu,” a transliteration of the English word noise, came to be used to broadly refer to the extreme, “strange” sounds, both of foreign records and of their own performances, that defied categorization, canonization, and codification. Boosted by the countercultural and non-conformist spirit pervading the university campuses and cultural scenes around them, early Noise shows pushed various boundaries. Aesthetically, these performances required the audience to have visceral, embodied ways of engaging with sound, pushing the limits of sensorial perception. For example, when using amplifiers, effects pedals, and speakers, performers intentionally created intense feedback. Feeding excess acoustic signal into analog equipment overloads it, producing out-of­ control sounds that in turn feed back into the system, creating an infinitely intensifying loop of cacophonous, extreme loudness. Beyond the sonic realm, these Noise artists—Hijo Kaidan, Boredoms, Keiji Haino, and Masonna being a few prominent examples from the 1980s—also performed boundarybreaking, convention-crashing radical acts on stage. Tales of such expressions of violence became legendary: urinating on stage, cutting into one’s own leg with a chain saw, and even driving a backhoe into the wall of a small venue. These acts alienated them from most performance spaces, who banned these artists, further marginalizing them in the process. This, in combination with the fact that they operate firmly outside of the Tokyo-centric music industry, means that Noise artists remained obscure in Japan. While Noise was practically unknown domestically beyond its small scenes, in the 1990s it started to gain a dedicated following in North America. This

203

WATCH Hijo¯ Kaidan performing at Do¯shisha University in Kyoto in 1981

WATCH Boredoms Perform at Lollapalooza

(From left to right) Yojiro Tatekawa, Yamantaka Eye, and Yoshimi P-We of Boredoms perform live in London, England, 2016. Source: Marc Broussely/Redferns/Getty Images.

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was when Japanese popular culture—from anime to video games to film—was starting to gain global popularity, which later led to the government’s Cool Japan campaign to assert its “soft power”—leveraging diplomatic power through cultural attractiveness—in foreign relations. Noise artists’ recordings and tales of their extreme expressions reached the eager and curious ears of North American listeners via mail-order cassette tapes. But without the internet and with the linguistic barrier, the flow of recordings and information was far from smooth. Without intercultural dialogue and linguistic or cultural translation, North American listeners were left to their imaginations as they tried to make sense of these radical, fragmented, “strange” noises coming from Japan—which gave rise to the designation “Japanoise.” Japanoise artists’ fan base grew abroad, which provided an unprecedented outlet. Boredoms was invited to open for successful major acts like Sonic Youth on their 1988 Japan tour, and to perform on the main stage at the 1994 Lollapalooza festival. Contrary to the uneven dynamic of popular music circulation between the U.S. and Japan, in which the former predominantly influences the latter, Japanoise asserted its cultural status as an inimitable, uniquely Japanese cultural phenomenon, attracting a solid audience in the U.S as well as a roster of eager big-name U.S. collaborators in experimental, improvisational, and alternative musics, from John Zorn to Nirvana, Sonic Youth, and the Flaming Lips. The enthusiastic reception of Japanoise abroad changed things on the ground in Japan. Now a truly transnational project of radical aesthetics, Japanoise artists were met with more recognition and success at home. Novak has aptly described this process as “cultural feedback.” Cultural feedback “generates its social and aesthetic force through a transnational exchange of media, which redefines Japanese culture in the context of its noisy global circulation” (Novak 2018, 170). Just like feedback, an acoustic phenomenon that exceeds the original input and spins out of control, the circulation of an extremely localized noisy avant-garde experimentation became “Japanese” via its North American and European fans. In this way, we can see that sound circulation is not simply a movement or process in which a medium goes from point A to point B; rather it’s an inherently creative component of cultural formation. Japanoise was created through the circulation of recordings, received imaginatively, with mistranslation and untranslation as key parts of the process. Japanoise, then, wasn’t necessarily born as such in Kyoto or Osaka, or Japan; it was formed in the movement, through transnational circulation, of recordings, discourses, cultural imaginaries and creative agents, including listeners, cassette tape collectors, record shop owners, and performers. The story of Japanoise thus turns two classic approaches to Japanese music—the myth of monocultural origin and the idea that Japan imitates and hybridizes all foreign influences— on their heads. Instead, Japanoise demonstrates the unexpected ways in which “Japaneseness” can emerge through global cultural feedback reinforced by moments of productive cultural confusion. While we allow the sounds of Japanoise to challenge our ears, this practice of sound-making reveals not only the limits of origin stories, but also the limits of the concept of “ongaku,” both in its assumptions and values and also in its inherent indebtedness to the

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West. The experimental subcultural sound of Japanoise defies the music-sound­ noise  continuum, as well, and Japanoise’s roots in creative listening practice speak to the generative possibilities of everyday listening. We will now turn to several uniquely Japanese-cultivated ways of listening and engaging with everyday sounds.

LISTENING TO SILENCE Listening to Silence: Insects, War, and Peace The Japanese language is known for its extensive onomatopoeia, said to contain anywhere from twice to even four times as many such words as English. From mimetic words (for example, potsu-potsu, shito-shito, and zaza to describe different types of rain—sprinkle, drizzle, and downpour, respectively) to descriptors of a soundless state of being (waku-waku for excitement, tsuru-tsuru for smooth texture, and kira-kira for “twinkly shininess”), onomatopoeia plays a significant sonic role in communicating sensory experiences. This penchant for onomatopoeia highlights the cultural importance of aural sensibilities, extending beyond musical practice and linguistic communication into everyday life. Take fu¯rin, for example. A fu¯rin (literally, “wind-bell”) is a wind chime, usually glass or metal. It is hung under the eaves of a home during hot summers, as the sound of fu¯rin provides a cooling effect for listeners. This kind of conditioned listening is a cultivated aesthetic practice that is part of the experience of living in Japan’s seasons. Savoring the distinct characters of the four seasons has been a big deal in Japan throughout recorded history. Admiring the cherry blossoms in the spring, tasting the first appearance of watermelon on the market in the summer, hearing the roasted-sweet-potato street vendor’s call in autumn, and feeling the first crisp northern wind blowing through your hair—Japan cherishes the distinct markers of the four seasons in the everyday. The first experience of such seasonal signs, from tasting fresh fish to hearing particular insects, is celebrated every year, intensifying the sense of the cyclicality and fleeting nature of time. The sounds of insects, and their associated sentiments and seasons, have been a subject of linked aesthetic and philosophical contemplation in Japan dating all the way back to its oldest novel, the eleventh-century Genji Monogatari (The Tale of Genji). During the Heian period and onwards, literature evoked loss, transience, and longing through the tropes of crickets and cicadas. During the Edo period, crickets were sold and kept as pets so people could enjoy their chin chiro rin calls at home. In haiku, where each poem must contain one “seasonal word,” cicadas indicate summer, and crickets autumn. One of the most famous haiku, by the poet Matsuo Basho (1644–94), exemplifies the synthesis of insect sounds, seasonality, and Buddhist philosophy: Shizukasa ya / iwa ni shimiiru / semi no koe Quietude / seeping through the rocks / cicadas’ voices

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Cenotaph at Hiroshima Peace Memorial, Hiroshima. Source: Patricia Hamilton/Getty Images.

Here, the stillness at the Risshakuji Temple where Basho wrote this haiku is paradoxically heightened by the sound of cicadas. Cicadas, which develop underground for two to seventeen years, then live above ground for a matter of days, call to mind the Buddhist doctrine of impermanence. Their cries—which in Japanese are onomatopetically used to describe different kinds of the insect: kanakana, tsuku-tsuku-ho¯shi, min-min—simultaneously evoke the midsummer heat and signify the exertion of life during our short time on earth. The last listening track of this chapter encompasses the sound of the Hiroshima Peace Bell and a moment of silence, filled with cicada calls.This sound composition, by anthropologist Steven Feld, is based on field recordings made at the annual Hiroshima Peace Memorial Ceremony, which commemorates the victims of the U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Every year on August 6 at 8:15 am, exactly when the nuclear attack took place, about 50,000 people, including Japanese and foreign dignitaries, gather in the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park to pray for peace and the end of wartime atrocities. The bell is struck nine times, followed by a minute of silence. On the track, you will hear the dense phasing in and out of the cicada calls thickly filling the silence, marked by the Peace Bell’s ringing. It so happens that this date falls around the obon period (see the bon-odori section above), when the dead come to visit the living. During this festival, we are reminded of the interrelation of life and death, making all the more relevant this commemoration of the 140,000 direct and indirect victims of the nuclear attack in Hiroshima, who included not only the Japanese residents of the city but some Allied Forces and many Chinese and Koreans from Japaneseoccupied countries. The attendees remind themselves not to make the same mistake again, a sentiment memorialized in a phrase carved into the cenotaph

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LISTENING GUIDE 6.5

HIROSHIMA: THE LAST SOUND

207

LISTEN

Recorded by Steven Feld

S

TEVEN FELD’S “Hiroshima: The Last Sound” is a radiophonic installation commissioned by the International Community Foundation and made with the support of the office of the mayor of Hiroshima, the Hiroshima Peace Museum, and Professor Yamada Yoichi. It originally appeared in the 2007 CD The Time of Bells, 4 (VoxLox). The sound mix is built from three layers. First is an ambient sonic cicada texture, constructed from 815 sound samples, mostly aburazemi and kumasemi, recorded over a week each morning at the Hiroshima Peace Park in early August 2005. Second is the peace bell, recorded 8:15 am on August 6, 2005 at the Peace Park ceremony. Third is a processed version of the original bell recording, played back through two 1940s home radios—one each from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, donated by survivor families to the Hiroshima Peace Museum—and re-recorded. These layerings of field recordings set the contemporary and historical resonances of the bell sound in the dense layers of the cicada texture to evoke the last sound heard by those who perished in the atomic atrocity.

where the Hiroshima Peace Bell is hung: “Let all the souls here rest in peace; let us never repeat the same evil.” Although this listening example may not be considered “musical” by most standards, I have included it here for a few reasons. First, as I’ve outlined above, this track illuminates the genealogy of seasonal and aural sensibilities running through Japanese language, literature, poetry, and everyday life. Ringing the Hiroshima Peace Bell. Source: The Asahi Shimbun/Getty Images.

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SHAMISEN A three-stringed plucked chordophone.

REVIEW CHAPTER RESOURCES

KEY TERMS

Tradition and modernity Homogeneity and heterogeneity Ongaku Chindon-ya Colonialism and music Music and war, military, and peace Ainu Sanshin Bon-odori Buddhism Gendered labor and music Communal dance and ancestral worship Gagaku Shinto¯ jo-ha-kyu¯ Japanoise Music and global circulation Aural sensibility and seasonality Listening to insects Silence

Second, it highlights the potency of silence. “Silence” in Japan is not empty but dense with social meanings, sensibilities, metaphysical associations, and emotions, collective as well as individual. As in Basho’s haiku, silence is never vacuous; it seeps through the environment, memories, and the mind. Third, the recording’s implications and ambiguity reveal the paradox created by Japan’s violent imperialist past and its current status as a pacifist nation that has constitutionally renounced war and is the world’s only nuclear victim. This delicate and controversial tension can perhaps be felt if you listen with an imaginative mind. As you listen, close your eyes, and imagine hearing this silence, these sounds, in the exact location where the atomic bomb—the most disastrous war weapon so far used in human history—fell. Think about the Buddhist metaphysics that link cicadas not only to the fleeting nature of the summer season, but to life’s brevity. Understanding these layers will hopefully allow you to tune into the layers of social meaning: emotions evoked by poetic references and historical associations. Might the bomb’s victims have heard cicadas’ cries, just like this, moments before they died? Will war atrocities ever cease to exist? How can we respectfully learn from these losses to build a foundation for a peaceful future? Are we taking the relative calm of the present day for granted? The track invites you to imaginatively inhabit the past, the death of unknown others that is nonetheless integral to the present moment, violence that might be occurring elsewhere in the world today, and the unknown future.

SUMMARY Starting with the lively sound of chindon-ya on the street, in this chapter we have listened to a wide array of sounds from Japan, both musical and otherwise—from the buzzing timbre of the Ainu instrument tonkori to a chorus of cicadas and Hiroshima peace bells. Contemporary narratives about Japan often evoke the nation’s cultural homogeneity and inherent uniqueness. But carefully listening to these sounds, with the four key themes outlined in the introduction as guides, conjures a picture of Japan that is anything but internally coherent or static. Instead, the understanding of Japan that emerges from these sounds is necessarily partial, especially because this chapter deliberately featured Japanese auditory cultures that are less commonly known or available in English—at the expense of musical practices that are stereotypically considered “significant.” I encourage you to keep exploring other sounds from Japan. You might look up musical cultures of anime and video games, kabuki, noh, bunraku, Tsugaru shamisen, or enka, just to name a few. Japan as seen and heard through the sounds you encountered in this chapter is also kaleidoscopic, just like the multiple and shifting meanings of the word ongaku (music). What is considered distinctly Japanese often emerges from the deep entanglements of the “Japanese” and the foreign, embracing the paradox of heterogeneity and homogeneity as well as the traditional and modern. And if

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you listen closely, some of these flows carry traces of colonial histories, forced assimilation of indigenous peoples, unspeakable violence and tragedies during war, and the U.S. occupation. If all of this feels a bit overwhelming and hard to grasp, then you might actually be experiencing what it feels like to live in Japan today, where many contradictory modes of thinking, being, and sensing the world from multiple historical periods and parts

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of the world coalesce. But perhaps cultivating flexible and curious ears might be one small step towards navigating this maze, which will allow us to appreciate not only the vibrant Japanese musical practices that are readily available, but also auditory cultures that are not captured by commonly assumed categories of what is Japanese or what is musical—while finding small joy in the everyday sounds and silences.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Abe, Marié, Resonances of Chindon-ya: Sounding Space and Sociality in Contemporary Japan (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2018); Abe, Marié, “Sounding Against Nuclear Power in Post-3.11 Japan: Resonances of Silence and Chindon-ya.” Ethnomusicology 60(2) (2016), 233–262; Atkins, E. Taylor, Blue Nippon: Authenticating Jazz in Japan. (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001); Bender, Shawn Morgan, Taiko Boom: Japanese Drumming in Place and Motion. (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2012); Bourdaghs, Michael K., Sayonara Amerika, Sayonara Nippon: A Geopolitical Prehistory of J-pop (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012); Condry, Ian, Hip-hop Japan: Rap and the paths of cultural globalization (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006); Ernst, Earle, The Kabuki Theatre. Evergreen Encyclopedia; No. 3, E-155. (New York: Grove Press, 1956); Eppstein, Uru, The Beginnings of Western Music in Meiji Era Japan (Lewiston, NY: E. Mellen Press, 1994); Foreman, Kelly M., The Gei of Geisha: Music, Identity and Meaning (London: Taylor & Francis, 2017); Franti, Hugh de and Alison Tokita, Eds., Music, Modernity and Locality in Prewar Japan: Osaka and Beyond (London: Taylor & Francis, 2016); Fritsch, Ingrid. “Chindonya today: Japanese street performers in commercial advertising,” Asian Folklore Studies 60(1) (2001), 49; Gillan, Matt, “Dancing fingers”: Embodied lineages in the performance of Okinawan classical music,” Ethnomusicology 57(3) (2013), 367–395; Gillan, Matt, Songs from the Edge of Japan: Music-making in Yaeyama and Okinawa (London: Taylor & Francis, 2016); Giolai, Andrea, “Passion attendance: Becoming a ‘sensitized practitioner’ in Japanese court music,” Antropologia E Teatro 7(7) (2016), 244–266; Groemer, Gerald, “The rise of ‘Japanese music,’” The World of Music 46(2), Japanese Musical Traditions (2004), 9–33; Hahn, Tomie, Sensational Knowledge: Embodying Culture through Japanese Dance. (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2007); Hosokawa, Shuhei, “In search of the sound of empire: Tanabe Hisao and the foundation of Japanese ethnomusicology,” Japanese Studies 18(1) (1998), 5–19; Hosokawa, Shuhei, “Ongaku, Onkyo¯/Music, Sound,” in Working Words: New Approaches to Japanese Studies (Web. 2012) http://escholarship.org/uc/item/9451p047; Hughes, David, Traditional Folk Song in Modern Japan: Sources, Sentiment and Society (Folkestone, UK: Global Oriental, 2008); Keister, Jay, “Okeikoba: Lesson places as sites for negotiating tradition in Japanese music,” Ethnomusicology, 52(2) (Spring/Summer, 2008), 239–269; Keister, Jay, Shaped by Japanese Music: Kikuoka Hiroaki and Nagauta Shamisen in Tokyo (New York and London: Routledge, 2004); Lancashire,

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Terence, “World music or Japanese The Gagaku of Tôgi Hideki,” Popular Music 22(1) (January 2003), 21–39; Malm, William P., and Donald H. Shively, Studies in Kabuki: Its Acting, Music, and Historical Context (Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii, 1978); Malm, William P., Japanese Music and Musical Instruments (Tokyo and Rutland, VT: C. E. Tuttle, 1959); Malm, William P., Six Hidden Views of Japanese Music (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1986); Manabe, Noriko, “Globalization and Japanese creativity: Adaptations of  Japanese language to rap,” Ethnomusicology 50(1) (Winter, 2006), 1–36; Matsue, Jennifer Milioto, Making Music in Japan’s Underground: The Tokyo Hardcore Scene (London: Taylor & Francis, 2008); Matsue, Jennifer Milioto, Focus: Music in Contemporary Japan (London: Taylor & Francis, 2015); Mitsui, Toru, Ed., Made in Japan: Studies in Popular Music (London: Taylor & Francis, 2014); Nagahara, Hiromu, Tokyo Boogie-Woogie (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017); Nelson, Christopher T., Dancing with the Dead: Memory, Performance, and Everyday Life in Postwar Okinawa (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008); Novak, David, Japanoise: Music at the Edge of Circulation (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2013); Novak, David, “In search of Japanoise: Globalizing underground music,” in Introducing Japanese Popular Culture, edited by Alisa Freedman and Toby Slade (London: Taylor & Francis, 2018), pp.168–179; Ogawa, Takashi, “Traditional Music of the Ainu,” Journal of the International Folk Music Council 13 (1961), 75; Patterson, Patrick M., Music and Words: Producing Popular Songs in Modern Japan, 1887–1952 (Lexington Books, 2018); Peluse, Michael S., “Not your grandfather’s music: Tsugaru Shamisen blurs the lines between ‘folk,’ ‘traditional,’ and ‘pop,’” Asian Music 36(2) (Summer Autumn, 2005), 57–80; Plourde, Lorraine, Tokyo Listening: Sound and Sense in a Contemporary City (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2019); Provine, Robert, Yosihiko Tokumaru, and J. Lawrence Witzleben, Eds., The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music, vol. 7: East Asia: China, Japan and Korea (New York: Routledge, 2002); Renner, Nate, “Ainu ceremonial music and dance ‘restored’ and recontextualized,” MUSICultures 39(1) (2012), 208–230; Richards, E. Michael, and Kazuko Tanosaki, Eds., Music of Japan today (Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars, 2008); Roberson, James E., “Memory and music in Okinawa: The cultural politics of war and peace,” Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique 17(3) (2009), 683–711; Roberson, James E., “Uchinaa pop: Place and identity in contemporary Okinawan popular music,” Critical Asian Studies 33(2) (2001), 211–242; Seyama,

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Toru, “The re-contextualization of the Shakuhachi (Syakuhati) and its music from traditional/classical into modern/popular,” The World of Music 52(1/3) (2010), 104–117; Sterling, Marvin, Babylon East: Performing Dancehall, Roots Reggae, and Rastafari in Japan (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010); Stevens, Carolyn, Japanese Popular Music: Culture, Authenticity, and Power (London: Routledge, 2008); Tokita, Alison, and David Hughes, The Ashgate Research Companion to Japanese Music (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2008); Wade, Bonnie C., Music in Japan (New York and Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2005); Wade, Bonnie C., Composing Japanese Modernity (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2013); Wade, Bonnie C.,

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Togotomono: Music for the Japanese Koto (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1975); Wajima, Yusuke, Creating Enka: The “soul of Japan” in the Postwar Era Japan (Nara Prefecture, Japan: Public Bath Press, 2018); Wong, Deborah, Louder and Faster: Pain, Joy, and the Body Politic in Asian American Taiko (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2019); Yano, Christian Reiko, Tears of Longing: Nostalgia and the Nation in Japanese Popular Song (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002); Yoneyama, Lisa, Hiroshima Traces: Time, Space, and the Dialectics of Memory (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1999).

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Taylor & Francis Taylor & Francis Group http://taylorandfrancis.com

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MUSIC OF MARITIME SOUTHEAST ASIA Jim Sykes

A HEAVY METAL FAN IN INDONESIA In July, 2014, Indonesia elected its seventh president, Joko Widodo (1961–). Known locally as “Jokowi,” he comes from rather humble roots—the son of a carpenter, he was a furniture dealer before going into politics. Jokowi rose to fame in 2009 as mayor of Surakarta (or Solo), a city on the island of Java; he then became governor of Jakarta, the administrative area that includes Indonesia’s famous city of the same name (also on Java). Jokowi’s rise was due in equal parts to his charisma, his stature as a clean politician fighting corruption and committed to infrastructure, and his background as a “man of the people.” In Jakarta, he began construction on the city’s first subway system and regularly visited slum areas. A core component of Jokowi’s public image is his love of heavy metal music. He says he became infatuated with the genre during his student days, when he would crank up the volume while studying. Heavy metal is known for its fast tempos and complex, distorted guitar riffs; the genre often involves growling or shrieking vocals

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CHAPTER

7 with lyrical themes ranging from fantastic imagery about otherworldly creatures to sex, death, and the struggles of everyday life. Metal emerged in Britain in the late-1960s and early 1970s but spread globally quite rapidly. The music became especially loud and fast during the 1980s with bands like Metallica and Megadeth. For a long time, the genre was associated with polluted, declining, post-industrial cities, but today it is popular seemingly everywhere. It was not widely accepted in Indonesia in its early days. In 1993, an infamous riot occurred at a Metallica show in Jakarta when fans who couldn’t afford tickets tried to crash the concert in the midst of 6,000 police officers. The Indonesian press at the time described metal as “provoking anti-social behavior” and its youthful fans as “disturbed” (this attitude, it is worth noting, was widespread globally about metal at that time). Nowadays, Jokowi’s love of metal comes across as more playful than threatening. It connotes an anti-authoritarian, anti-elitist streak that can seem

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President Joko Widodo of Indonesia playing a bass gifted to him by Robert Trujillo of Metallica. Source: STR/AFP/ Getty Images. 

loveably transgressive for a politician. Photos of him circulate wearing metal t-shirts and making the “devil horns” sign associated with metalheads. In 2013, while still governor of Jakarta, he surrendered a bass guitar gifted to him by Robert Trujillo of Metallica to anticorruption officials. Jokowi’s love of metal has even played a role in diplomacy. In 2017, for example, the Danish Prime minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen gave him a vinyl box set of Metallica’s classic album Master of Puppets signed by the band’s drummer, Lars Ulrich ( Jokowi reportedly paid US$800 out of his personal funds for the album to avoid conflict of interest accusations). Articles in the foreign press have referred to Jokowi as Indonesia’s “metalhead of state.” For some readers, it might seem a contradiction that a politician with a love of heavy metal—a genre often accused, wrongly, of consisting solely of atheists or even Satanists—could be in charge of Indonesia, the country with the world’s largest Muslim population. (At the time of writing, the population of Indonesia is 264 million; the country’s Muslim population is estimated to be 225 million. Muslim-majority Java has a population of 141 million and is the world’s most populated island.) Islam was spread to Southeast Asia by Arab and Indian Muslim traders and migrants. Aceh, the northernmost province of Sumatra (the largest island by square mileage in Indonesia), was an early center for Islam in Southeast Asia. Some of the evidence we have for this are old tombstones, including that of the first Muslim ruler of Samudra (a now-defunct regional polity) dating to 696 on the Muslim lunar calendar (that’s 1297 ce). Moroccan Muslim traveler Ibn Battuta visited in 1345–6 ce and noted that Samudra’s king followed the Shafi’i legal school of Sunni Islam. The religion

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spread through Java in part because of the proselytizing efforts of the Wali Sanga, nine revered Sufi saints (“Wali” is an Arabic word for “trusted one”, “guardian” or “saint”; sanga is Javanese for “nine”). Their tombs can be found along Java’s northern coast from Surabaya in East Java to Cirebon in West Java, drawing many pilgrims each year. If you only know about Islam through media reports, you might assume the religion is anti-music since stories have circulated of the Taliban’s banning of music in Afghanistan in the 1990s and of attempts by the extremist group ISIS to ban music in territories they control. But as Rich Jankowsky states in his chapter on the Middle East and North Africa in this textbook, “there is no mention of music in the Qur’an. There is a wide range of attitudes [among Muslims] about the role of music in social and religious life, and most share the presumption that music has a power to lead individuals toward or away from the divine.” We will see throughout this chapter that Islam has often been a positive channel for musical creation in maritime Southeast Asia. For example, several of the Wali Sanga wrote pieces for gamelan (gong-chime orchestra) and wayang kulit (shadow puppetry). To be clear, though, some conservative Indonesian Muslims have expressed concern about Jokowi’s perceived secular leanings. While running for election in 2014, he went on a trip to Mecca in Saudi Arabia days before the election, which many saw as a move to gain support from religious voters. In the year before his reelection in late 2019, Jokowi found himself increasingly caught between religious hardliners and secularists on numerous issues. Music was caught in the crossfire. In early 2019, a draft bill was proposed in Indonesia’s House of Representatives that would ban “foreign negative influences” on music and thus open musicians up to charges of blasphemy, potentially leading to fines or imprisonment. (Musicians protested and the bill was dropped.) Then, towards the end of 2019, Jokowi pushed back on a bill he had originally  supported that  would have criminalized extramarital sex, which many observers felt was aimed largely at the LGBTQ community. (An Indonesian researcher at Humans Rights Watch described these events as “the slow-moving Islamization of Indonesia”.) The most widely publicized controversy was the jailing of the Indonesian-Chinese Christian politician Ahok (who had succeeded Jokowi as governor of Jakarta) under blasphemy laws for a misleadingly-edited viral video in which his criticism of Indonesian Muslim clerics was cast as criticism of the Qur’an. Jokowi might not have started these controversies, but to some observers, he refused to take a strong stance due to his need to appeal to religious voters. Shortly before the 2019 presidential election, he chose a Muslim cleric, Ma’ruf Amin, as his running mate, which was widely viewed as another case of Jokowi shoring up his Islamic credentials. (This gamble appears to have worked, for Jokowi was reelected.) Regardless of how you feel about the above controversies, Indonesia’s turn towards religious conservativism in recent years needs to be considered part of a global trend, comparable to certain Indian politicians’ embracing Hindu nationalism or some Republicans in the United States tying Christianity to American identity and pursuing policy on these grounds. You will notice throughout this textbook

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WALI SANGA Nine Sufi saints, revered for their role in spreading Islam throughout Java.

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that it is often impossible to discuss music without considering politics and communal belonging. For now, let’s turn back to where we started—Jokowi’s love of metal. It seems rather obvious to me that his initial love of the music had little to do with any overt moral claim. I suspect his fascination had more to do with its sounds, with the genre’s ability to appeal to his urban, middle-class sensibility, and with the broader processes through which musics with transnational or global appeal find a home in the villages, towns, and metropolises of maritime Southeast Asia. This latter issue features as a core theme of this chapter.

A MALAY DRUMMER IN SINGAPORE Singapore is a city-state located on an island of the same name lying off the southern tip of the Malay peninsula. The island was unpopulated save for a few scattered Malay settlements before the British made it a trading post in 1819 and an official colony in 1824. The British opened Singapore up to global trade, taking advantage of its location on the Strait of Malacca—the waterway that ships have always passed through to bring goods to and from China. The ethnic majority of Singapore are the Singaporean Chinese (about 74% of the population), a diasporic community of largely southern Chinese descent whose ancestors came to work on the island during the British colonial period. Singapore’s other major ethnic groups are Indians (9%), largely Tamils of South Indian or Sri Lankan descent, and Malays (13%), considered indigenous to Singapore and the ethnic majority in neighboring Malaysia. After the Japanese Occupation during World War II (which lasted almost four years) and a brief stint as part of postcolonial Malaysia (1963–1965), Singapore was forced out of Malaysia in 1965 out of fears that its Chinese-majority would render the Malays a numeric minority in their own country. As an independent nation, the tiny island nation of Singapore (with a population today of roughly 5.6 million) doubled-down on its status as a global trading hub and is today one of the richest countries in the world. In 2017, I was conducting fieldwork in Singapore and found myself in the music studio of a Malay drummer named Riduan Zalani. A young, charismatic artist whose drive, intelligence, and liberal outlook would not be out of place with his millennial cohort across the globe, Riduan’s musical experiences demonstrate Singapore’s status as a multicultural hub for diverse forms of art and culture. One of his earliest musical experiences was playing in a batucada, a Brazilian-style percussion ensemble modeled on groups that play at Carnival celebrations in Rio de Janeiro. The group eventually coalesced into the band Wicked Aura, which combines samba, punk, and metal. This was in the 2000s, but the band continues to play shows, including large rock festivals like Summer Sonic in Japan in 2017. According to their website, Wicked Aura has shared bills with famous acts such as the Beastie Boys, Led Zeppelin’s Robert Plant, Femi Kuti (son of Afrobeat legend Fela Kuti), and The Black Eyed Peas. Riduan still plays with Wicked Aura occasionally, but after touring globally for several

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Riduan Zalani. Source: Provided by Fadly Salleh.

years he decided to focus on building his own thing: “If I can do it with that band, using foreign instruments,” he told me, “why can’t I do that with my own instruments?” Riduan was referring to the Malay percussion instruments he grew up playing, particularly the kompang. Riduan enrolled at LaSalle College of the Arts, a well-known school in Singapore. He received a diploma in music and founded an ensemble, Nadi  Singapura, which writes and commissions new music for Malay percussion. At the time I interviewed him in 2017, Nadi Singapura had become his full-time job (the group receives funding from the Singapore government). They combine traditional Malay percussion with modern electronics, Malay poetry, singing, theater, dance, and martial arts. Some concerts feature what

KOMPANG A type of a circular, singlesided, frame drum widely used in Malay music.

Nadi Singapura in performance. Source: Nadi Singapura LTD.

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REBANA In Malaysia, refers to the instruments (of varying sizes) that make up a family of frame drums including the kompang.

Riduan calls a “simple chamber ensemble” backing a dancer; others involve musicians who “know [the computer program] Ableton, play synthesizers, and make noise.” Nadi Singapura has released two albums, including the excellent Bumi Tak Diam (2018), which you can find on Spotify. Much like an ethnomusicologist, Riduan did fieldwork when putting together Nadi Singapura: he traveled around the Malay world to study the kompang with its masters. The origins of the kompang are in the Middle East, but the instrument is believed to have emerged on the Malay Peninsula through the efforts of Indian Muslim traders during the Malacca Sultanate (1400–1511) and elsewhere in the Malay world through Arab missionaries from about the thirteenth century. The kompang is a kind of rebana, a term of Arabic origin that refers in Malaysia to a family of frame drums of varying sizes; “kompang” is a Malay term that means “hit or beat.” Over the centuries, the kompang developed a special relationship with Malay identity. It is used to accompany zikr (“remembrance”) ceremonies—Muslim devotional chanting that glorifies god—and is found in many other religious and cultural contexts throughout Malaysia. It is used at Malay weddings, for instance, as well as at state ceremonies such as National Day parades. Riduan explained to me why he feels it is okay for him to gather kompang knowledge from across the Malay world and innovate with it: If you look at the kompang as an instrument and where it’s been played, across 200+ islands, [each] island plays it differently, so why shouldn’t we play it differently? The vision of Nadi Singapura is to give birth to the next generation of performers who are thinkers and not just followers. We have to learn from [for example] the Kelantanese [from the Kelantan region of

Malay drummers playing the kompang frame drum. Source: Tengku Mohd Yusof / Alamy Stock Photo.

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Malaysia] because they play and make the drums well. But after learning

that, you have to start creating . . . In Nadi, I give different platforms.

Riduan’s innovations have not gone unnoticed: he received a Singapore Youth Award in 2013 and Young Artist Award in 2015, both from the Singapore government.

LISTENING GUIDE 7.1

“NAZAM PRIBUMI”

LISTEN

By Nadi Singapura

T

HIS EXCITING SONG features a wide array of Malay percussion: kompang, rebana, jidur (bass drum), and gendang. Suspended gongs also play a prominent role, and a serunai (small double reed instrument) also makes an appearance. A synthesizer is also part of the arrangement, imitating strings and horns to fill out certain sections. The music might sound a bit shrill to your ears in the opening section, but I encourage you to listen to the loud chorus and the exciting, interlocking percussion that starts at 1:20. At the time of writing, I was able to find footage on YouTube of Nadi Singapura playing this song live. TIME

MUSICAL EVENT

0:00–0:37

Section A. The music begins with numerous pitched gongs, a loud serunai (double reed instrument), chanting, and fast drums, entering in sequence.

0:37–1:15

Section B. The music pauses for more chanting and alternation between the lead vocalist (Riduan) and chorus.

1:13–1:17

The first section concludes with a cadence.

1:18–1:47

Section C1. An exciting, fast groove emerges with loud drums, featuring the loud bass drum jidur, kompang, rebana, and suspended gongs.

1:48–2:03

Section C2. After a cymbal swell, the entire ensemble enters and plays a loud, fast groove. Listen to how the higher pitched gongs keep a melody while the lower gongs play a bassline.

2:03–2:20

Section C3 (variation). This ends (2:17–2:20) in a cadence that is developed into a full-fledged section later on, at 3:22.

2:20–2:50

Section D1. A gong keeps a steady beat while various drums solo over it.

2:50–3:05

Section C4. A after a cymbal swell, the full ensemble groove comes back in with another variation, ending with another cymbal swell.

3:05–3:22

Section C5. The section repeats again with another variation, culminating in a crescendo.

3:22–3:48

Section D2. An elaboration of the concluding passage that first emerged around 2:17. This section also features a steady gong set against the chorus of drums. High-pitched percussion starts soloing against it.

3:48–4:15

Section C6. The fast groove featuring melodic gongs and interlocking percussion repeats.

4:15–4:41

Section C7. An exciting change is introduced: the interlocking pattern suddenly slows down, culminating in a cadence and cymbal swell.

4:41–5:26

Section E1. A new section featuring singing, flute, and synthesizers imitating strings and horns. The flute solos around the melody provided by the chorus. continued

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TIME

MUSICAL EVENT

5:26–5:40

Section E2. A conclusion to the section.

5:41–5:52

Section F1. A new, rhythmic singing and chanting emerges set against a steady gong pulse.

5:52–6:20

Section F2. This section adds the rest of the ensemble: singing, loud drums, gongs, synthesizers.

6:21–6:46

Section A and C1 combined. The music transitions back into the introduction to the song with the loud oboe, placing it on top of the loud groove with the melodic gongs.

6:46–7:00

Section B2. The song ends with the same break featuring alternation between the lead singer and chorus that occurred earlier in the song (0:37–1:15).

COMPARING JOKOWI AND RIDUAN In both of these opening anecdotes, music transcends national boundaries but is deeply rooted in maritime Southeast Asian cultural and aural sensibilities, places, and kinds of people. Jokowi and Riduan have clearly marked ethnic identities—Javanese and Malay, respectively—but each lives in a multiethnic, multicultural environment (the global cities of Jakarta and Singapore). Both have used music to fashion personal identity. (And both are men: as we will see in this chapter, women have also long been avid creators and consumers of music in maritime Southeast Asia.) For each, their promotion of the self through music was driven by globalization, including long-term and recent histories of trade, religion, media, and musicians’ touring circuits. Despite this, Jokowi and Riduan engage with music for local reasons. For example, surely one reason Jokowi has taken many photos displaying his love of metal is to appeal to what some might define as an “average” (male, Javanese, middleor working-class) Indonesian voter who he hopes to represent as a politician. Riduan, for his part, traveled around Malaysia and Indonesia studying the kompang in pursuit of a core goal of Nadi Singapura; to better represent Malay musics in multiethnic Singapore. We might assume that traditional musics cater to rural, poor, elderly people and are dying out, while global popular musics are consumed by a small number of Westernized, well-off youth in capital cities. But Jokowi was fifty-three when he was elected, a middle-class politician from Surakarta—the thirtieth mostpopulous city in Indonesia. By contrast, Riduan is a young man specializing in a traditional music genre in a global city with one of the highest GDPs in the world. I want you to take two things from these two contrasting anecdotes. First, globally-circulating popular musics have a long history in maritime Southeast Asia. From big band jazz and Latin American dance crazes in the mid-twentieth century, to protest songs on acoustic guitar sung in the 1960s, to metal, punk, hip-hop, and electronic music today, musicians in maritime Southeast Asia have engaged with global pop music cultures as long as they’ve circulated through the recording industry and media. And this not only in capital cities, but also in small cities and even rural areas. (In this chapter we will also encounter popular music genres that, even when influenced by Western pop music, are

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firmly distinct from it and take on myriad other influences.) My second point is that Riduan demonstrates that some traditional musics remain viable for youth today. While the popularity of traditional music varies by genre, some of maritime Southeast Asia’s most esteemed, older genres—such as the gamelan traditions of Indonesia we will learn about below—continue to thrive.

NAVIGATING THIS CHAPTER Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore are just three of the wildly diverse countries that make up the broader Southeast Asian region. In fact, Southeast Asia is so diverse that any attempt to sum up its musics in a short textbook chapter is impossible. The region is typically divided into the mainland (Myanmar/ Burma, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam) and island or maritime Southeast Asia (Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines, Brunei, and Timor-Leste). Due to limited space here, I focus in this chapter on just a few important places in the maritime region—Peninsular Malaysia, Singapore, and the Indonesian islands of Java and Bali—only making the most cursory references to other places in the region, such as Sumatra in Indonesia, the Philippines, and the small independent countries of Brunei and Timor-Leste. I encourage you to use this chapter as a springboard from which to explore the Map of Southeast Asia. Source: Rainer Lesniewski/Alamy Stock Vector.

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musics of maritime Southeast Asia more broadly. My choices of coverage here are due to my personal experiences studying music in Singapore and Malaysia, and to the historic tendency to teach Javanese and Balinese gamelan traditions in university music classrooms. I proceed as follows. Having briefly introduced Malay musics through my discussion of Riduan, in the next section I provide a focused discussion of Malay identity and music history. My aim is to use the Malays as a case study through which you can grasp some key patterns of communal connection and differentiation in maritime Southeast Asian history, and I focus not just on the modern country of Malaysia but also on the broader oceanic space in which Malay musics have always circulated. After this, the chapter zooms out to discuss the demographics of Southeast Asia’s maritime region more broadly, including historical and political factors that have shaped national borders and certain ethnic and religious identities. I also query the historical emergence and viability of the term “Southeast Asia,” which was not coined locally. Then, the chapter turns to the most famous traditional musics of the region: the gamelan (gong-chime orchestra) traditions of Java and Bali (the latter is a small island just east of Java). In doing so, I consider the geographic and symbolic importance of gongs in maritime Southeast Asian history as well as the influence of gamelan on Western musicians.

MALAY HISTORIES OF MUSICAL EXCHANGE MALAYS Ethnic group that emerged along the coasts and rivers of what are today known as Sumatra (Indonesia), the Malay Peninsula (Malaysia), the Riau islands (Indonesia), Singapore, and Borneo (an island now divided between the countries of Malaysia, Indonesia, and Brunei). ALAM MELAYU Meaning “the Malay World,” and the term for the traditional homeland of the Malay people, which straddles the nation-states of Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, and Brunei.

The ethnic group called the Malays emerged along the coasts and rivers of what are today known as Sumatra (Indonesia), the Malay Peninsula (Malaysia), the Riau islands (Indonesia), Singapore, and Borneo (an island now divided between the countries of Malaysia, Indonesia, and Brunei). Malays refer to this oceanic space as alam Melayu or the Malay world. It is currently divided between four sovereign nations: Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, and Brunei. Malays currently make up about half of Malaysia’s total population of roughly thirty-two million. On the Peninsula (West Malaysia), they constitute around 65% of a population of twenty-five million, with the Chinese (25%) and Indians (9%) being prominent minorities. By contrast, East Malaysia, located across the sea in the north of the island of Borneo, is home to many indigenous groups, and the Malays constitute just 15% of the population there. “Malay” itself is a term denoting several distinct Malay groups who speak different Malay dialects and are spread throughout the alam Melayu.  Interestingly, one such version of Malay was adopted as Indonesia’s national language (and renamed Bahasa Indonesia) despite the fact that Malays make up just 3.7% of Indonesia’s total population. The reason for this is that in premodern times, Malay traders roamed widely throughout Indonesia’s many islands, trading with locals, and a number of Malay creoles developed—thus creating some sense of unity in Indonesia through the Malay language. There are currently about two million Malays in Sumatra (Indonesia’s largest island  by area), where they form just a minority of that island’s population of 50 million. Malays number around

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700,000 in Indonesia’s Riau islands, where they are the dominant group (35%). The small country of Brunei is Malay-majority, where they make up about twothirds of a country with a population under 500,000. Early Malay communities practiced variations of Hinduism and Buddhism adopted through encounters with South Indian merchants and similarlyinfluenced local populations. But around the time Sunni Islam gained a foothold in Sumatra (described above), the religion was being adopted by Malays elsewhere in the alam Melayu. It became the state religion of the Malacca Sultanate (1400–1511; today the city of Melaka in Peninsular Malaysia) at least by the time of Muzaffar Shah (ruled 1445–1459). Today, Islam continues to form a core component of Malay identity. Cultural influences from the Middle East—the birthplace of Islam—are highly valued, and this is reflected strongly in Malay musics. For example, a core instrument used in Malay musics is the oud, the Middle Eastern lute. Malays commonly call it “gambus,” a term derived from the Arabic term qanbu¯s, referring to short-necked lutes that probably came to Southeast Asia in earlier times from Yemen—all the way on the other side of the Indian Ocean. The modern oud is actually just one of a few types of gambus found in the alam Melayu. Malays also use a variety of frame drums (rebana) of Middle Eastern origin, such as the hadrah (hand-held tambourine) and kompang (mentioned above). According to ethnomusicologist Tan Sooi Beng, the Malaysian Islamic devotional singing called nasyid (from the Arabic term nashid) “was first performed informally by Islamic teachers and students as interludes during Qur’an reading sessions prior to World War II.” Sung a cappella or with rebana or kompang—and technically not defined as “music”—this genre became big business in Malaysia in the 1990s when a number of Islamic boy bands

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GAMBUS A type of Islamic song having Arabic influence; the name of the plucked lute used to accompany this song.

Malay musician playing the oud (gambus). Source: Victor As/Shutterstock.com.

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GENDANG Barrel-shaped Malay drums. HARMONIUM Portable reed organ, with a single keyboard and a handoperated bellows; of European origin, but used widely in parts of Maritime Southeast Asia and in the sacred and semiclassical musics of Pakistan and North India.

burst onto the scene, modeled after groups like the Backstreet Boys. The most popular of these was Raihan, whose 1996 album Puji-Pujian is still the best­ selling Malaysian album of all time. The Middle East is far from the only outside influence on Malay musics, however. Malay traditional musics sometimes use knobbed gongs and gendang (barrel-shaped drums)—instruments associated with the neighboring Javanese and other Indonesian populations. Other gongs found their way into Malay musics in the north of the Peninsula due to the region’s sharing a border with Thailand. While Indian traders and migrants have visited Southeast Asia since at least the first century ce, they have a documented presence on the Peninsula since the founding of Malacca in the fifteenth century; Malays have long adopted many musical genres and instruments from Indians. One example is the tabla, the famous drums from North India that emerged probably in the first  half of the eighteenth century. The Malays also play harmonium, a free-reed organ (similar to the accordion but played sitting down, with a small vertical keyboard) that was invented in Europe in the nineteenth century but moved to India and (probably from there) to the Malay world. Two other European musical instruments commonly played by Malays are the violin and accordion. These European instruments stem from the long history of European colonialism in the alam Melayu. The Portuguese ruled the Malacca Sultanate from 1511–1641, followed by the Dutch from 1641–1795 (and again from 1818– 1825). Following the fall of Malacca, Malay power was diffused to a number of independent kingdoms on the Peninsula like the Johor Sultanate (1528–1855) and Perak Sultanate (formed early sixteenth century). British colonial expansion in the Malay world began in the early eighteenth century, developing at the end of that century into British-run protectorates (on the Peninsula) and the Straits Settlements (including Malacca and the islands of Penang and Singapore), and coalescing eventually into the colony of British Malaya. Today’s boundary between Malaysia and Indonesia dates largely from the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1824, when the British and Dutch—who by that point had been exploiting the region’s resources for centuries—swapped some colonial settlements to create two distinct spheres of control. The British-ruled territories eventually coalesced into the boundaries of modern Malaysia, while the Dutch ruled what is now known as Indonesia from their colonial capital Batavia (now called Jakarta). This created a line down the Strait of Malacca (the waterway between the Malay Peninsula and Sumatra), placing Malays in those regions in different countries (Indonesia obtained independence in 1945; Malaysia in 1957).

Some Traditional Genres and Ensembles JOGET A lively dance form associated with old Malacca that is performed at weddings and social functions.

All of the above-mentioned foreign influences on Malay musics—from the Middle East, India, Europe, and non-Malay Indonesian populations—can be felt simultaneously in many Malay traditional music genres. For example, the Portuguese-influenced joget is a lively dance form associated with old Malacca that is performed at weddings and social functions. The genre traditionally used

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a violin, knobbed gong, flute, and rebana or gendang, though it now commonly uses accordion and violin; it is played to a fast 6/8 rhythm and was quite popular as a flirtatious couple’s dance well into the mid-twentieth century. The Arab-influenced zapin dance, popular throughout the Malay World, is traced by many observers to Arab missionaries in the fourteenth century; the genre uses a similarly flexible ensemble of gambus, accordion, and rebana, as well as marwas (a drum from the Gulf region of the Middle East) and synthesizer. The Malay musical genre ghazal is named after the type of Persian poetry that is prominent throughout South Asia and still used there for singing Qawwali (see the “South Asia” chapter in this textbook). The Malay ghazal emerged in Malaysia’s southern Johore area in the late nineteenth century; today’s groups commonly use gambus (oud), violin, guitar, electric bass, tabla, maracas, and harmonium. Though the Malay ghazal is sometimes assumed to have come to Malaysia straight from the Middle East, the evidence points towards it having come from India.

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ZAPIN An Arab-influenced dance popular throughout the Malay World. GHAZAL A form of poetry associated with Perso-Arabic Muslim culture enthusiastically taken up by Urdu speakers in North India and Pakistan, where it is often sung. In Maritime Southeast Asia, a Malay musical genre named after this South Asian poetic tradition.

Musical Modernity in the Alam Melayu This rampant cross-cultural fertilization in Malay musics remained prominent throughout the twentieth century. In the alam Melayu of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a musical theater genre emerged called bangsawan— this is a Malay word meaning “nobleman,” referring to the fact that many of

LISTENING GUIDE 7.2

BANGSAWAN Late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century musical theater genre popular throughout the Malay World.

GAMBUS “CARI HIBURAN”

LISTEN

Performed by Orkès Gambus Al-Hidayah TIME

MUSICAL EVENTS

0:00–0:21

Improvised prelude on gambus (oud) and violins. One violin plays sustained bass notes while the other elaborates the melody.

0:22–1:23

Free rhythm rendition of first verses.

1:24–1:50

Voice concludes, and instruments continue melody with cadential accompaniment of interlocking drums (marwas [pl. marawis]) At this point, the violin responsible for the bass notes becomes more actively involved in elaborating the melody as well.

1:50–2:48

Previously heard verses sung in free rhythm, now sung in 4/4 meter.

2:48–3:44

Instrumental interlude: focus here on the melodic role of the violins and oud (gambus).

3:44–4:41

Vocalist reenters for another verse.

4:41–5:31

Instrumental interlude: focus here on the energy the marwas provides.

5:31–6:39

Vocalist reenters for another verse.

6:39–7:00

Conclusion.

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Singapore, Royal Theatre: bangsawan musical theater performance (probably in the 1910s). Source: Haeckel collection/ullstein bild/Getty Images.

the plays were about elites living in the Malay courts. Bangsawan involved a syncretic mixture of musicians and actors of Malay, Javanese, Indian, European, Middle Eastern, and Chinese descent (among others). Ethnomusicologist Andrew Weintraub states that “In these ensembles, which were highly variable in instrumentation, [the term] Melayu [“Malay”] was a flexible and constantly evolving framework” in which interactions between these musicians and musical styles “was normative” (2010: 59). By the 1930s in Sumatra and Java, orkès Melayu [“Malay orchestra”] had become a generic term for Malay songs “harmonized by European instruments” (ibid.). Sometimes these included jazz musicians playing Latin American rhythms; Hindustani (North Indian) and modern Arab music influences were also felt. The music was popularized through the early recording industry and, in the late 1940s/50s, was further transformed by the Malaysian actor and heart­ throb P. Ramlee (1929–1973) in films that are now regarded as classics. Born to an Acehnese (northern tip of Sumatra) father and raised in his mother’s home of Penang (a Malaysian island off the northwest coast of the Peninsula), Ramlee starred in twenty-seven films from 1948 to 1955. In some of these, his characters embody a village (kampung) way of life that was by then already disappearing. In other films, he embodies the generic Western cosmopolitanism of the era (white suit, dark sunglasses, jazz music). Many of his characters are charming, and the films are often humorous. They were typically made by South Indian film directors with Malay actors funded by  Chinese businessmen, filmed in Singapore. Ramlee’s films fell out of fashion in the 1960s; tragically, he died of a heart attack in 1973 at the young age of forty-four. Subsequent years witnessed a huge revival: now known as Tan Sri P. Ramlee (an honorific), a major street was named after him in Kuala Lumpur in 1982, and a museum devoted to his life and work opened in the city in 1986.

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LISTENING GUIDE 7.3

P. RAMLEE, “JERITAN BATINKU”

227

LISTEN

(“My Inner Scream”)

P

. RAMLEE’S “JERITAN BATINKU” (“My Inner Scream”) is from one of his most iconic films: Ibu Mertuaku (“My Mother-In-Law”), released in 1962. Set in Singapore, the film revolves around a love affair between a poor saxophonist, Kassim (played by P. Ramlee), and Sabariah, the daughter of a wealthy woman (played by the actress Sarimah). The film is also about the bewitching power of music. Sabariah’s mother refuses to let her daughter marry Kassim, stating that she will be cast out of the family if she does so. The couple marries anyway and is forced out of Singapore, settling on the Malaysian island of Penang. Sabariah pressures Kassim who decides to give up music, feeling it will earn him little money, and he becomes a laborer. Her mother had wanted Sabariah to marry the wealthy eye doctor, Dr. Ismadi, who lives in Singapore; while pregnant with Kassim’s baby, Sabariah returns to Singapore to visit her mother and takes up with Dr. Ismadi. She divorces Kassim for the doctor, deciding to have the baby but not reveal who the father is. Kassim, heartbroken, cries so much that he becomes blind. He then picks up his saxophone again,  wows audiences, and becomes a big star. Returning to Singapore for a concert, Sabariah sits in  the audience, watching him play, as Kassim, blind and wearing dark sunglasses, pours his heart out  through his music. This song, “Jeritan Batinku,” is played while Sabariah watches Kassim in sadness  from the audience. (The opening lyrics go, “Listen oh my inner scream calling, calling your name always.”) This is just a part of the story—you’ll have to watch the film to see its dramatic ending. Listen for the Western instrumentation here, like saxophone, piano, and violin, as well as P. Ramlee’s crooning style of vocals.

By the 1970s, Bollywood tunes from India and Western rock music were added to the orkès Melayu, coalescing into a new genre called dangdut. The group Orkes Melayu Soneta (from the English term sonnet) formed in 1970 and featured the artist who would become the genre’s biggest star, Oma Irama (later Rhoma Irama). “Dangdut” is an onomatopoeic term that refers to drum sounds (“dang” and “dut”) accented on beats 4 and 1. Rhoma Irama has said he chose the name dangdut to differentiate the genre from the orkès Melayu. The new style caught on and spread throughout Indonesia. (Thus despite having some Malay roots, dangdut is not associated with Malays in particular.) Rhoma Irama became a veritable rock star, performing in stadiums with the requisite pyrotechnics. By the late 1970s, following his pilgrimage to Mecca (the Hajj), his music became more religious in tone and strived to teach listeners about the ills of alcohol, drugs, and extra-marital sex. He also dabbled in politics, and performed with his band Soneta at campaign rallies (Weintraub 2010: 6). Since the 1990s, dangdut has persisted as a malleable Indonesian pop genre, taking on myriad local and global influences. In the 2000s, controversy swirled around several female singers, such as Inul Daratista and Dewi Persik, who were accused of dressing and dancing in a vulgar fashion. Many dangdut performers

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DANGDUT Popular Indonesian musical style that combines Western rock and Indian film music influences.

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act in films, and there have been numerous dangdut­ themed television shows, such as the competition show Dangdut Mania.

Malay Musical Ingenuity I hope you can recognize that all this Malay borrowing of foreign musical elements is a sign of ingenuity, not a lack of it. (And as we see with dangdut, Malay musics have also influenced non-Malays.) Riduan has a view about this: he says what makes music “Malay” is the process of putting a “Malay accent on what you play.” For him, there is a “Malay” way of playing instruments, shaping melodies, and grooving with other musicians. Consider it a remix culture— performed acoustically (and today also electronically by the likes of Riduan) since at least the early 1400s. If you recoil from this sort of complexity, though, I completely understand—it can make your head swim. I want to stress here that I’m more interested in exposing you to these processes of musical interaction than I am in having you memorize foreign vocabulary terms. I should also stress that Malays have developed unique musical genres that are found nowhere else in the world. One example is the Malay dance-drama form Mak Yong, which is performed rarely today. It is associated with the northern state of Kelantan (it Dangdut singer Yan Vellia at Pesta Kesenian Rakyat in may have originated in the Pattani region of southern Pacitan, East Java, Indonesia. Source: Doni Ismanto/CC/ Thailand), considered indigenous to the region, and Wikimedia Commons. has pre-Muslim, Hindu-Buddhist and animist roots (“Hindu-Buddhist” is a generic term for mixtures of those religions found in maritime Southeast Asia in the pre-Muslim period). MAK YONG Malay dance-drama form The music of Mak Yong tends to be slow, with female dancers using graceful associated with the northern hand gestures, and dancers traditionally went into trance. The instrumentation state of Kelantan. includes two gendang (drums), two knobbed gongs, and rebab (a bowed instrument). In 2008, UNESCO declared the genre one of its “Masterpieces of PANTUN A kind of improvised sung the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity.” poetry performed as couplets Perhaps the most famous Malay performative genre is the pantun, a kind or quatrains, which can be of improvised sung poetry performed as couplets or quatrains, which can be sung on its own or within sung on its own or within certain musical genres. Singing pantuns is a highly certain musical genres. regarded artform and a key component of Malay traditional customs (adat). The genre is associated with the old Malacca Sultanate and was performed routinely in Malay villages (kampung) at lifecycle events and other social gatherings. A related term is asli, a generic word for Malay heritage that, in

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a musical context, refers to both a highly melismatic Malay traditional song featuring pantuns and a traditional Malay ensemble using variations of the instruments mentioned above. Even in the case of the pantun, though, maritime Southeast Asia’s multicultural world emerges from within—not just from outside—its borders. For example, let me introduce a non-Malay population here to show you how they’ve interacted with the Malay pantun. The genre dondang sayang (“Love Song”) is a genre that is often associated with the Straits Chinese (also known as the Baba-Nonya), descendants of early Chinese settlers who adopted Malay customs and traditionally spoke several Malay creoles referred to as Baba Malay. Today the Baba-Nonya number around eight million and are spread across Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand. The genre, though, is generally thought to have originated with Malays in fifteenth-century Malacca, where it was performed as entertainment for royalty, accompanied by dancing. It is a witty, flirtatious love ballad genre in which men and women improvise pantuns to one another. The music is heavily influenced by Portuguese and Malay musics, utilizing violins, rebanas (frame drums), and gong. It underwent a surprising transformation following World War II: the orchestras became larger, incorporating standup bass, accordion, tabla, and/or drum set, with musicians dressing in snappy jazz-age attire (e.g., white suits). There was even a version of the genre that mixed in mambo, a Latin American dance craze that swept the world during that era. At least until the 1960s, Straits Chinese families were known to hold dondang sayang sessions in their private homes for families and friends; and pantuns by that point were sung not only in the Baba Malay creole but also sometimes in Hokkien, the language from southern China.

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ASLI Generic word for Malay heritage that, in a musical context, refers to both a highly melismatic Malay traditional song featuring pantuns and a traditional Malay ensemble. DONDANG SAYANG Meaning “Love Song,” this genre is often associated with the Straits Chinese (also known as the Baba-Nonya).

Malaysian Hip-Hop It feels right to conclude this section with a recent entry into the long history of Malay musical exchange and ingenuity: hip-hop. Joe Siva (1956–2016) was a pioneering Malaysian DJ and club promoter when he began mentoring the group Krash Krozz. Their 1990 debut album Pump It! reached the Asian Billboard charts, featuring New Jack Swing- and Run DMC-influenced hiphop. They released a few more albums with Siva serving as the DJ for the group. The large hip-hop collective Naughtius Maximus released a legendary album in 1995 that wound up having many tracks banned from Malaysian radio and TV for being “too Westernized.” The group Poetic Ammo (1996–2004) featured Yogeswaran Veerasingam (Yogi B), Nicholas Ong (Point Blanc), and siblings Chandrakumar (Land Slyde) and Sashi Kumar (C. Loco). They rapped in English, Malay, Tamil, and Cantonese. While I have been focusing on ethnic Malays in this section, this contribution of Indian and Chinese Malaysians to Malaysian hip-hop is noteworthy. Yogi B is still active and quite famous in the South Indian Tamil film industry, where he produces remixes, raps on other peoples tracks, and still puts out solo albums. The single “Surviva” from the 2017 film Vivegam (composed by the Tamil superstar film music composer

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Anirudh) features rapping in Tamil by Yogi B; when I watched the video on YouTube it had been viewed over 21 million times. Perhaps the most recognized group in the 2000s was the duo Too Phat (1998–2007), whose 2001 album Plan B went double platinum. The group opened for Kanye West in 2007, after which members Joe Flizzow and Malique started solo careers. Both remain active, with Flizzow running record label Kartel Records. One current popular artist Altimet (signed at one point to Kartel) released the album O in 2018. The 19-year old female rapper Noor Ayu Fatini, better known as Bunga (“Flower”), went viral in 2018 when footage of her rapping at a local competition in a hijab and baju kurung (traditional Malay dress) circulated. Signed to Warner Music, she released a popular single in September 2019.

FRAMING MARITIME SOUTHEAST ASIA: ETHNICITIES, RELIGIONS, POLITICS AUSTRONESIAN A large group of various peoples spread across Taiwan, the Malay Peninsula, Island Southeast Asia, Micronesia, coastal New Guinea, Island Melanesia, Polynesia, and Madagascar, and who speak Austronesian languages.

The Malays are just one of the many peoples of Austronesian descent living in maritime Southeast Asia. The proto-Austronesians may have originated in ancient Taiwan (in East Asia) and migrated to Southeast Asia by about 2000 bce, moving east over the next few millennia through Oceania (including New Zealand and Hawaii) and west to Madagascar (the island off the west coast of Africa). Today, the Austronesian language family has about 386 million speakers, making it the fifth-largest language family in the world. Some widely spoken Austronesian languages in maritime Southeast Asia are Malay/Bahasa Indonesian, Javanese, and Sundanese (in Indonesia). The national motto of Indonesia is Bhinekka Tunggal Ika (Unity in Diversity). Besides the aforementioned Javanese (40% of Indonesia’s population) and Malays (3.7%), other major ethnic groups in Indonesia include the Sundanese (15.5%), who live mainly in West Java; the Batak (3.6%), from North Sumatra; the Minangkabau (2.7%), who hail from West Sumatra but have long settled widely; the Buginese (2.7%), from the island of Sulawesi but also famous for migrating throughout the region; the Balinese (1.7%), associated with the island of Bali; and the Acehnese (1.4%), from Aceh at the northern tip of Sumatra. This astonishing diversity continues right across Indonesia to its easternmost province, Papua (also called West Papua, and before 2002, Irian Jaya), which forms half the island of New Guinea (shared with the independent nation Papua New Guinea), and is home to many indigenous groups (Papuans). The majority Javanese form the focus of much of the second half of this chapter; here I want to briefly consider one group from the above list, the Bataks. The term Batak refers to groups speaking Batak languages (also from the Austronesian language family) whose homeland is on the “mountainous backbone” of the interior of North Sumatra (Byl 2014: 10) around the giant lake Toba. Living away from the coastal Malays, they were traditionally engaged in farming and hunting rather than seafaring. Despite this seemingly isolated location, Batak cultures display an array of connections to outside groups from India, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia. Ethnomusicologist Julia Byl studies

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231

the music of the largest Batak group, the Tobas, who now number around two million; she says Toba cosmology is “populated by Shaivite Hindu deities, the Toba language . . . written in an Indic script, and ahobar, a mutation of the first phrase of the Arabic call to prayer . . . featured in Toba mantras” (ibid. 10). (“Shaivite” here refers to Shiva, the Hindu deity; mantras are combinations of sound and words, often in Sanskrit and associated with Vedic Hinduism, believed to have efficacious powers—see the South Asia chapter.) After the Dutch took control of coastal Sumatra, they paid scholars and Christian missionaries to travel inland to make contact with Batak groups. These relationships were often commercially exploitative; missionaries pressured Bataks to abandon traditional lifeways by banning certain practices. Despite these hardships, many Bataks proved open to conversion. Today, some 90% of Tobas follow Christianity, making them one of the largest religious minorities in Muslim-dominated Indonesia. If you’re interested in Batak music, you can consult Byl’s (2014) book, which highlights the cornucopia of traditions that constitute Toba musics: the gondang sabangunan and gondang hasapi ensembles that played ritual

music in the precolonial Toba world; the polyphonic choral hymn tradition

brought by Lutheran missionaries in the nineteenth century; the brass

band repertoire imported from Europe to replace banned ceremonial

genres; the folk theater troupes that toured the Batak lands in the early

twentieth century; the songwriting and recording traditions pioneered

by musicians who listened to global radio broadcasts; and contemporary

popular Toba performance influenced by the regional musics of neighbors

and mainstream Indonesian popular culture

(2014: 13) Moving away from Indonesia, the Tagalog are a group native to the Philippines who also speak an Austronesian language (also called Tagalog), which forms the basis for the national language, Filipino. The Philippines is an island nation northeast of Borneo consisting of about 7,600 islands, of which roughly 2,000 are inhabited (many of these are very small). The largest and most populated island is Luzon, which includes maritime Southeast Asia’s largest urban area—metro Manila. Luzon is home to almost 50 million people, with about 13 million living in metro Manila, an area that includes the city of Manila and the country’s capital, Quezon City. Many Tagalog live in this area. The Philippines is predominantly Catholic and was a Spanish colony (1521–1898). Filipinos are avid producers and consumers of global pop culture forms, but many old Christian musical traditions persist in the Philippines. One example is the pabasa (“reading”), the public chanting of the narrative of the Passion of Christ, which is read during Holy Week from a text called the pasyon (passion; Bautista 2019: 341). Typically, a dozen or so people gather at the organizer’s home, where they alternate singing lamentasyon (lamentation); according to the anthropologist Julius Bautista (whose work I draw on here), this singing incorporates melodies drawn from local folk music, sung in a

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PABASA In the Philippines, the public chanting of the narrative of the Passion of Christ, which is read during Holy Week.

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highly ornate, melismatic style (ibid. 342). The genre “projects Roman Catholic religious values in and through a public vocalization of grief and bereavement” (ibid.), which he dubs a form of “sonic piety” (ibid. 345). Bautista describes an early sixteenth-century Jesuit priest as hearing a similar performance, which was “sanctioned by clerical authorities” for a time during the colonial period (ibid. 347). Today, the singing may accompany acts of self-flagellation. (Another country with a predominantly Roman Catholic population (90%)—sadly outside the scope of this chapter—is the small nation of Timor-Leste or East Timor; colonized by the Portuguese in the sixteenth century, the population revolted against Indonesian postcolonial rule to become an independent country in 2002.)

Indigenous Groups Several indigenous groups live in maritime Southeast Asia. These include isolated hunter-gatherers in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands (governed by India, just northwest of Sumatra), some two hundred ethnic Dayak groups on the island of Borneo, and semi-nomadic orang asli (“native people”) groups in Peninsular Malaysia. Here I’ll briefly discuss the music of one of the orang asli, the Temiar. I only know of Temiar music because of an excellent book by ethnomusicologist Marina Roseman called Healing Sounds of the Malaysian Rainforest: Temiar Music and Medicine (1993). The Temiar have doubled in population since Roseman studied with them, but they still only number a little above 30,000. (In total, orang asli number about 180,000.) Two thirds of orang asli speak a subset of the Austronesian language family (called Austroasiatic) associated with Mon-Khmer and related languages; a third are speakers of Malay dialects (sometimes called “aboriginal Malay”). The Temiar homeland is the states of Perak, Pahang, and Kelantan in Peninsular Malaysia. They are semi-nomadic, sharing communal longhouses with open slats that ensure sight of the jungle. According to Roseman, the Temiar believe people have two souls—a head and a heart soul. In dreams, one’s head soul becomes detached and wanders, where it meets with the detached head souls of other beings, including nonhuman animals, trees, rivers, fruit, and so on. These beings may give songs to the Temiar dreamer. Stories circulate about how certain spirit guides, including seemingly inanimate objects like fruit, gave a shaman a particular song. When a Temiar person falls ill, it is believed that their head soul lost its way and needs to be recovered from the spirit world. A healing ritual is held in which a ritualist’s singing is conceptualized as a path that leads the ritualist to the detached head soul of the sick individual, which is then led back to the person’s body. Temiar music uses long bamboo stompers—tubes that are hit on the ground to make sound in interlocking patterns. They are pitched high and low, gendered female and male (respectively), conceptualized as small and big (respectively), and intended to mimic the sounds of the rainforest (e.g., birds and insects). Such sounds, Roseman states, “move [Temiar] people to feel longing” (1993: 15).

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Bear in mind that the Temiar perform other music besides this; for instance, sometimes they perform songs or genres they learned from neighboring orang asli groups or the Malays.

The Term “Southeast Asia” and the Birth of Area Studies The term “Southeast Asia” emerged after World War II, in the wake of the Cold War between the United States and Soviet Union. The U.S. government noted a lack of local scholars studying the non-Western world and with the help of the Carnegie Corporation, Ford Foundation, and Rockefeller Foundation, “area studies” departments were founded at U.S. universities. (One of the oldest Southeast Asia programs was founded at Cornell University in 1950 and is today perhaps the dominant one in the country.) The focus of such programs changed significantly following the American government’s failed military incursions in Southeast Asia in the 1960s and 1970s, particularly the Vietnam War (1955–1975; Vietnamese call it the American War) and the devastation of Laos with horrific bombing raids. Today, scholars working in Southeast Asian Studies departments at U.S. universities tend to distance themselves from these U.S. governmental policies and strive to work in the interests of the people they study, through learning local languages and spending years in the places they engage with. The borders of Southeast Asia, as drawn in the Cold War milieu, now appear somewhat problematic. Perhaps most egregiously, the line between South and Southeast Asia was drawn through the middle of the Bay of Bengal, placing Bangladesh in “South Asia” and Myanmar in “Southeast Asia”, dividing a region where populations have long traded and migrated for millennia. In a celebrated book by the historian Sunil Amrith, he notes that between 1840 and 1940, when India and Malaya were British colonies, some 28 million people crossed the Bay of Bengal in both directions—one of the world’s largest (and least-known) migrations. This included migrants moving for work in urban centers, but also indentured Indian laborers who toiled in brutal conditions building railway lines (including in jungles in Myanmar/Burma and Malaya) and on rubber plantations (which became widespread in Malaya following the advent of the car). Today, the South Indian Tamil language is one of the national languages of Malaysia and Singapore, where Indians make up 7% and 9% of the populations, respectively. In this textbook, the conclusion of the South Asia chapter discusses a diasporic Tamil Hindu percussion genre called urumi melam, which is associated with Hindu festivals in Malaysia and Singapore.

Querying Ethnicity and Religion On one level, ethnic identities in maritime Southeast Asia are so important and stable that people retain a sense of their ethnic identity even when their

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family has been settled away from their ancestral homeland for generations. For instance, consider the Bugis, a small group whose homeland is the Indonesian island of Sulawesi. They speak a distinct language, Buginese. They are well-traveled and there is a unique history of Buginese being close to centers of  power far from Sulawesi. The sixth Prime Minister of Malaysia, Najib Razak (in power 2009 to 2018) is Buginese, as is Jusuf Kalla, Indonesia’s vice president during Jokowi’s first term. In 2017, prime minister Mahathir Mohammed (in office from 1981 to 2003 and again from 2018) was asked by Kalla to apologize when he described Razak, following a series of corruption scandals, as a “Bugis pirate”—a longstanding trope about the traditionally seafaring Bugis. On the other hand, ethnic distinctions have always been remarkably fluid. Consider, for instance, the long tradition of non-Malays marrying into a Malay family and “becoming” Malay. The stereotype is of a migrant man from a non-Malay background who comes to a Malay-dominated region, marries a local Malay woman, adopts Islam (if he is not already Muslim), and settles down. In his 2004 book Other Malays, anthropologist Joel Kahn explores this phenomenon in Singapore: “As a Malay journalist in Singapore informed me,” Kahn says, “you do not have to scratch the surface of a Singapore Malay very deeply to find that he/she is ‘actually’ of Arab, Indian, Sumatran or even Chinese descent” (Kahn, 2006: xxii). The very category “Malay” in Singapore tends to include Bugis, Javanese, and those of other Indonesian ancestry. I suggest this kind of ethnic “transformation” is more common around the world than we typically realize: race and ethnicity are cultural constructs, not biological. To a certain extent, the same poles of stability and fluidity can be found in religion. While doing fieldwork in Singapore and Malaysia, I found it common for Chinese in the region to go to Hindu temples and perform penance in Hindu festivals, while the Singaporean Indian (Hindu) drummers with whom I studied sometimes play in Chinese (Taoist) temples. Muslims throughout Malaysia and Indonesia are known to have unique adat (traditions) that belong to their specific community, which they perform alongside practices associated with global Islam. For some Indonesians, adat is more than just tradition and may refer to a whole body of standards and rules [people use] to guide their lives, to structure social groups and social relations, to determine the rights and obligations of individuals and of groups, to select meaningful words to be used in speaking, and to face foreign ideologies. (Manan 1984: 4; cited in Fraser 2015: 19) As with ethnicity, I suggest we think of religion as a space for both identity formation (and the creation of difference) and a space for cultural interaction and melding.

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The Complexity of Borders in the Wake of Colonialism Much of the European colonial infrastructure was dismantled when the Japanese occupied Southeast Asian nations during World War II. Though some welcomed the Japanese presence at first—for they displaced the exploitative and transformative European colonial rule—the sentiments changed quickly. The period is viewed as one of immense hardship. For instance, in Indonesia, thousands were taken as forced laborers and subjected to sexual slavery and even execution. In Singapore, the Japanese acted with cruelty towards the Singaporean Chinese, leading to several massacres. The Singaporean educational system was briefly transformed during this period, with schools forced to teach students only in Japanese and Malay. Songbooks circulated to teach students the Japanese national anthem and other patriotic Japanese songs circulated, intended to develop attachment to Japan. The Japanese Occupation ended with World War II, and after a brief return to European colonial rule, independence came for the Philippines in 1946; Indonesia in 1949; Malaysia (which at first included Singapore) in 1957; Singapore in 1965; and Brunei in 1984. As mentioned, Timor-Leste, a former Portuguese colony that had become a part of postcolonial Indonesia, fought a war for independence against Indonesia that was successful in 2002. The early postcolonial periods in these nations saw the rise of several long-running political regimes, like that of President Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines (in power 1965–1986), President Suharto in Indonesia (1968–1998), and Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammad of Malaysia (1981–2003 and again since 2018). I encourage you to use this chapter as a springboard for investigating the interactions between musicians and politicians during those regimes, for lively protest musics circulated—such as hippie-style protest anthems sung on acoustic guitar in the 1960s and 1970s. A good place to start is Craig Lockard’s book Dance of Life: Popular Music and Politics in Southeast Asia (Hawaii Press, 1998).

GONG CULTURES OF MARITIME SOUTHEAST ASIA I turn now to a section devoted to introducing you to the gong cultures of maritime Southeast Asia, focusing especially on Java and Bali. The word gong is of Javanese origin. It typically describes a hammered bronze cymbal, suspended, and hit with a mallet. Suspended gongs may be flat (as is typical in China) or curved at the edges (common in Java) with a raised dome called a “nipple” (such gongs are called “nipple gongs”). The term gong chime is used to describe “pot gongs” (they look like an upside-down pot) of different shapes, sizes, and pitches, with a raised knob in the middle struck with a beater. Also common in maritime Southeast Asia are instruments involving a number of tuned bronzed slabs hit with hammers. Confusingly, the term “gong chime orchestra” is sometimes used to refer to orchestras containing combinations of all these instruments.

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GONG Typically a hammered bronze cymbal, suspended, and hit with a mallet. GONG CHIME Term used to describe “pot gongs” of different shapes, sizes, and pitches with a raised knob in the middle, and struck with a beater.

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GAMELAN An ensemble of instruments such as those found in Indonesia.

Scholars demarcate two regional gong chime traditions in maritime Southeast Asia. (This does not mean each region contains just one type of gong chime orchestra; rather, each contains numerous types of gong chime ensembles and genres that nevertheless can be conceptualized as falling into two distinct areas). The most famous is the gamelan traditions of Indonesia. This culture area is based mainly on Java and Bali (a small island to the east of Java) but also includes the easternmost section of Sumatra, a small part of the southern section of Borneo, part of the southern tip of Sulawesi, and a few islands east of Bali. (Gongs are commonly found in West Malaysia, but gamelan orchestras only made their appearance there in the early twentieth century, when one was gifted through a royal marriage.) Some gamelans are enormous orchestras with dozens of performers; others are comparatively small. Gamelans may be brash and loud but also soft and soothing, incorporating instruments like bamboo flute. Gamelans may play instrumental music or involve a solo singer or chorus. The major instruments in gamelans are some combination of suspended gongs, pot gongs, and tuned bronze bars, but there are also gamelans made of bamboo. The local legend in Java is that the first gamelan was constructed by Sang Hyang Guru, a god who ruled from Mount Lawu (between Central and East Java) in Saka era 167 (circa 230 ce) when he needed to invent an instrument loud enough to summon other gods. Gamelan musicians are depicted on sculptural reliefs at the ninth century Buddhist temple complex Borobudur (in Central Java; abandoned in the fourteenth century). The oldest known gamelans are the circa twelfth century gamelans Munggang and Kodokngorek, associated with old royal palace courts (kratons). The current shape of gamelan

Gamelan orchestra in the Sultan’s Palace, Yogyakarta. Source: Stefan Lippmann/ Oneworld Picture/Universal Images Group/Getty Images.

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orchestras in Central Java dates from the Majapahit era (1293–1527). I return to this topic in a moment. The second maritime gong chime tradition is the kulintang of the Philippines, associated with the island of Mindanao (also found in northern Borneo and some islands in eastern Indonesia). Kulintang refers to a set of five to nine pot gongs, placed in a rack and struck with wooden beaters. These ensembles tend to be smaller than Indonesian gamelans, and the performance techniques are less codified. Historically, the music has been used for festive gatherings, parades, weddings, state functions, and the like. In some Filipino communities, the instrument is associated predominantly with women. The term kulintang in some contexts refers to an entire ensemble, but the specific gong called kulintang may have come from the kolenang (pot-gong) associated with the Sunda region of West Java. The kulintang in the Philippines appears in historical records starting with European travelers in the sixteenth century. (A third gong chime area, outside the bounds of this chapter, is located on mainland Southeast Asia and stretches from Myanmar through Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia.)

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KULINTANG Gong chime tradition of the Philippines and associated with the island of Mondanao.

Kulintang performance, Sarangani Province, Philippines. Source: Eli Ritchie Tongo/Alamy Live News.

Javanese Gamelan The term “gamelan” comes from the old Javanese word “gamel” (“to strike” or “to hammer”). Traditionally in Java, blacksmiths were assumed to have supernatural power and underwent acts of purification, such as fasting, before they built a gamelan. Even today, the instruments of a gamelan are constructed as a unique set, given a name, and may be considered to have a spirit in them.

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KRATON Javanese royal court.

SLENDRO The pentatonic tuning system of Javanese music. PELOG The heptatonic tuning system of Javanese music.

One must be respectful of the instruments: performers take off their shoes before entering the space where gamelan instruments are housed, and one must walk around the instruments rather than step over them. While Western musical instruments are tuned to a fixed pitch (i.e., the middle ‘C’ on one piano should be identical in pitch to that on another), the instruments of a gamelan are constructed to sound in tune with one another but not with those from other gamelans. This makes the sound of each gamelan unique, and the forging of gamelan instruments remains a complex skill. The Sultanate of Cirebon on the northern coast of Java became powerful in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as a center for trade, commerce, and Islam. It is believed to have been founded by Sunan Gunung Jati, one of the Wali Sanga (the saints associated with the spread of Islam in Indonesia). The sultanate eventually split into three royal houses in the seventeenth century and a fourth in 1807; royal palaces (kraton) associated with these kingdoms still exist and are home to descendants of the old ruling families. According to legend, gamelan instruments were taken from the Hindu Majapahit kingdom when it fell in 1520 and used to legitimize the Muslim rulers of Cirebon. According to ethnomusicologist Henry Spiller, whose work I draw on here, the king of the Demak Sultanate (founded at the end of the fifteenth century on the northern coast of Java) “began the tradition of having the heirloom gamelan played during a festival honoring the birthday of the Prophet Muhammad as a means for attracting his Javanese subjects to Islam by conflating the trappings of Hindu-Javanese authority and legitimacy—gamelan music—and the attractive power of a festival with the Islamic personages and ideals” (Spiller 2008: 48; see also Pemberton 1994). These “heirloom gamelan,” as Spiller calls them, are called gamelan sekaten. Other historically significant gamelans include those associated with the four Central Javanese kraton, traced to the Mataram Sultanate (1587–1755)—the last independent kingdom in Java before it fell to the Dutch in the late eighteenth century. According to Spiller, one way to think about the difference between the Cirebon and Central Javanese court gamelans is that the former included just bronze percussion instruments while the latter added softer instruments, such as bamboo flute (suling), wooden xylophone (gambang), the bowed stringed instrument rebab, and the plucked stringed instrument celempung. This form of gamelan developed through years of intermarriage and sharing of knowledge between kraton; from about the 1920s, their musical techniques became more widely shared outside nonaristocratic Javanese circles, including to foreigners (Spiller 2008: 72). Gamelans modeled on the Central Javanese court style come with two sets of instruments, each made for a different tuning system: slendro and pelog. Slendro is a five-tone scale of evenly-spaced pitches, labeled (confusingly) 1-2­ 3-5-6. Pelog has seven notes of unevenly-spaced pitches (numbered 1-2-3-4-5­ 6-7), and typically five of them are played in any given piece played on pelog­ tuned instruments. In traditional gamelan performances, a piece will never be in slendro and pelog; each performance requires all performers to face in one direction and play the instruments tuned in (say) slendro, then to turn and play the other instruments if the next piece is composed in pelog.

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The tuning systems are written in Western notation in Box 7.1. For those who can’t read Western notation, the important point is that the plus sign signifies that the pitch is a bit higher than would be found on the piano, while the minus sign signifies it is a bit lower. Bear in mind, though, that each gamelan maker can choose to expand or contract these intervals slightly according to taste. The term pathet (“to restrain”) is often translated into English as “mode”; it refers to the emphasizing of certain pitches in a gamelan piece, sometimes at specific points in melodies, within one of the two tuning systems. In pelog, for example, pathet nem and pathet lima use pitches 1, 2, 3, 5, and 6, while pathet barang uses 2, 3, 5, 6, and 7. A core concept for Javanese gamelan is the notion of colotomic structure. The term was coined by Dutch ethnomusicologist Jaap Kunst (1891–1960) utilizing a Greek word for “unit of rhythm” (colon). It refers to when, as in Javanese gamelan, musical instruments mark off recurring points of time in relation to one another. For example, if a person claps once every 32 beats, another every 16 beats, another every 4 beats, and one every other beat, they are clapping a colotomic structure (the Javanese term for these structures is gendhing). In Central Javanese gamelan music, a core set of gongs and gong chimes provide the colotomic foundation. The music has three other layers: a

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PATHET Particular ways of emphasizing certain pitches within slendro and pelog in Javanese music. COLOTOMIC STRUCTURE The marking of fixed beats within the metric structure of a musical piece by particular instruments; in gamelan music these include gong, kenong, kempul, and ketuk.

BOX 7.1 APPROXIMATIONS OF SLENDRO AND PELOG IN WESTERN NOTATION

Slendro

Pelog

Source files: Slendro: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slendro#/media/File:Slendro_on_ C.png Pelog: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pelog#/media/File:Pelog_on_D.png Source: Hyacinth/CC/Wikimedia Commons.

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GONG AGENG Large hanging gong; the most important instrument in a Javanese gamelan and core of the colotomic foundation. BALUNGAN Skeletal melody in Javanese music. SARON A type of Indonesian instrument having thick bronze slab keys lying over a trough resonator.

GONGAN The time between gong ageng strikes; can be thought of as a section of music that is typically repeated.

simplified or abstract version of the melody; elaborations on the melody; and drums (Spiller 2004: 72). A standard piece of Javanese gamelan music might begin with an unaccompanied vocal introduction or short introduction on an instrument (called a buka, or “opening” in Javanese). The drummer, playing the doubleheaded drum kendhang, typically plays a drum fill towards the end of the buka that leads to a strike by all of the musicians in coordination with the large hanging gong (gong ageng)—the most important instrument in the gamelan and core of the colotomic foundation—and the piece is underway. The skeleton (balungan) of a gamelan piece is the melodic core and may be written as sheet music (this will look like sets of Arabic numerals signifying different pitches), but not every musician plays the balungan as written. Rather, because of the colotomic structure, they know what to play around it or on top of it. The saron is a family of instruments of six or seven bronze bars, each assigned to a different pitch range, that plays the balungan. It is common for beginning gamelan students to play saron, since they will perform the music as written and this is easier than playing the elaborating instruments. In pelog tuning, the bars on a saron are numbered 1-2-3-4-5-6-7. On slendro-tuned sarons, they are generally numbered 6-1-2-3-5-6-1, with the 6 and 1 on the left of the instrument being lower-octave versions of the 6 and 1 on the right. The saron barung is mid-range in pitch; the saron demung is an octave lower; the saron panerus (also called peking) is an octave higher. Crucially, the peking tends to double the balungan. For example, if a four-note grouping in a piece of gamelan music consists of the notes numbered 1-5-6-1, the peking might play 11556611 (sounding like eighth notes if 1-5-6-1 is conceived as quarter notes). A Javanese gamelan often has two or four of each of these instruments. Each section of a piece of Javanese gamelan music is a cycle, repeated several times until moving to the next section. While the saron plays the skeleton, other instruments fill out the colotomic structure. The gong ageng plays just the last note of a cycle—the music is conceived as a circle, so the last note of a cycle is also considered the first note of the cycle when it repeats. The term gongan refers to the time between gong ageng strikes and can be thought of as a section of music that is typically repeated. The music is often end-weighted, with colotomic instruments punctuating the end of phrases, such as the fourth note of a four-note grouping. Another colotomic instrument is the kenong, a set of pot-gongs that marks off smaller intervals of time within the gongan. In Box 7.2, we can see the kenong creating a back-and-forth pattern with the kempul (a set of tuned, hanging gongs placed on the same rack as the gong ageng), as each instrument—after resting during the first four-beat grouping of each of the two sections shown in Box 7.2—alternates marking off the last note of each subsequent four-beat grouping. You may have guessed that the names of these instruments are onomatopoeic (i.e., they sound like their name). The circled numbers in Box 7.2 are for the gong ageng, and signify that the first block of numbers may be repeated before going on to the next, which also can be repeated. The dots beneath a number signal the lower octave, above a higher octave, and a larger dot in between numbers is a rest. This piece is in

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BOX 7.2 EXAMPLE OF GAMELAN NOTATION

Source: Sumarsam 2002: 4.

slendro tuning, as written at the top. Ladrang (also written at the top) is a 32-beat form in Javanese gamelan music that is quite common. Bear in mind that this sheet music doesn’t have notation for all the instruments. Once a musician gets good at the advanced instruments, it becomes possible to know what to play just by looking at the balungan, which is what the sheet music provides. Another gamelan instrument is the kethuk, a single pot-gong that is dullsounding and plays the role of a timekeeper. Rounding out the colotomic foundation is the kempyang, a higher-pitched gong chime also played by the kethuk player. Those two instruments create their own back-and-forth and are marked in sheet music by a + (for kethuk) and – (for kempyang; not shown above). The bonang are pot-gongs placed into a frame and hit with padded sticks. It is an important elaborating instrument and comes in lower- and higher-pitched versions (bonang barung and bonang panerus, respectively). The bonang tend to elaborate two notes at a time, anticipating the balungan played by the sarons. The gendèr (the ‘g’ is a ‘hard g’) is a family of instruments consisting of metal bars suspended over a bamboo or metal resonator, played with soft mallets. The

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BONANG Multi-octave bronze instrument responsible for elaboration in Javanese gamelan.

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LISTENING GUIDE 7.4

KETAWANG “PUSPAWARNA”

LISTEN

Paku Alaman Court Gamelan in Jogyakarta

T

HIS RECORDING ILLUSTRATES the main characteristics of a soft-style piece. Included here are a solo female vocalist (pesindhen) and a male chorus (gerongan). The structure of ketawan pieces revolves around sixteen-beat gongan, and these are subdivided into two eight-beat kenongan. In addition to the introductory buka, this particular kenongan also incorporates two common structural components: an ompak (“bridge”) which is repeated and precedes a contrasting ngelik section. A ngelik is usually longer than one gongan and, usually, also where the gerongan (the male chorus) sings the main melody of the ketawan composition. Thus, the formal structure of the piece unfolds over the course of five gongan as follows: gongan A (ompak); gongan A repeated (ompak); gongan B, C, and A (ngelik). This entire structure is then repeated. TIME

SECTION

MUSICAL EVENTS

0:00–0:07 Introduction (buka): The rebab (string instrument), Introduction (buka) on rebab, joined by kendang and joined by the kendang (drum), open this leading to first gong at [0:07]. (The gong accents beat 16 performance and lead up to the first gong. in the colotomic cycle. It is tempting to hear that gong stroke as the first beat, but it’s actually the last in the cycle, so count 16, 1, 2, 3, 4, etc. from the gong stroke.) 0:07–0:22 Ompak section (Gongan A): Notice the entrance of the pesindhen (female vocalist) and also the dramatic slowing of tempo.

Gongan A is introduced at a brisk tempo but the tempo begins to slow almost immediately. At [0:18] the female vocalist (pesindhen) enters.

0:22–0:46

Gongan A is repeated with a continuing decelerando and reaches a settled tempo at the end of this gongan. Notice the continued presence of the female vocalist as well as the stylized male vocal cries that enter at colotomic points. During the repeat of Gongan A, you can find your bearings within the colotomic cycle by counting one beat for every four strokes on the drum, starting with 16 at the sound of the low gong at [0:22]. At beat eight, you will hear a particularly rich, sustained note in medium register (usually played just slightly after the beat), played on the kenong. This note cuts through the texture of the other instruments, and when you hear it once or twice, you’ll be able to hear it every time. On beat 16, the lowest gong sounds out.

0:46–1:13 Ngelik section (Gongan B, C, and A): Listen for the Gongan B is introduced and the gerongan enter between beats 5 and 6 of the colotomic cycle (the entrance of the gerongan (male chorus) and the second syllable they sing is on beat six). melody that stretches across the three gongan (B, C, and A).

continued

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TIME

SECTION

MUSICAL EVENTS

1:13–1:41

Gongan C is introduced and the gerongan enter here on beat 3. Notice the continuation of the melody. Notice also the continued presence of the pesindhen in the texture.

1:41–2:09

Gongan A returns, but as a vehicle to complete the gerongan melody. The chorus again enters at beat 3.

Gongan A. 2:09–2:36 Ompak section repeated: By now you should be familiar with the overall structure of the piece. See if you can hear the contrasts between the opak and ngelik sections. Also try to hear the gerongan melody as a whole statement across multiple gongan. 2:36–3:04

Gongan A repeated.

3:04–3:32 Ngelik section repeated:

Gongan B.

3:32–3:59

Gongan C.

3:59–4:44

Gongan A. Notice the brief accelerando at [3:55] followed by a dramatic decelerando, initiated at beat 1 of the concluding gongan [3:59], but put to especially dramatic use after beat 8 [4:12], such that the last half of the gongan unfolds ever more slowly until the last gong stroke serves as a powerful concluding gesture.

musician often plays relatively fixed, short, improvised patterns that can vary significantly depending on the mode or tempo of the piece. The largest gendèr is the slenthem, which has six or seven keys and often plays the balungan. There are also lower- and higher-pitched gendèrs that have many more bars, covering three octaves. One of the more difficult instruments to play in a gamelan is the gambang, a wooden xylophone in which more elaboration and improvisation is allowed. Besides the above instruments, Javanese gamelans may include a rebab (a bowed instrument derived from similar instruments found in the Middle East) and a celempung (a stringed instrument plucked with the thumbnails). Traditionally, men and women would perform in separate groups, except for a solo female singer (pesindhèn) who could perform with each. These days, this rule has been softened. If this list of instruments sounds overwhelming, I recommend memorizing at least the terms saron and gong ageng, for the former plays the skeleton (balungan) of the music that others follow, while the latter has spiritual significance and is considered the most important instrument—though it plays only the beginning and end of a section. Javanese gamelan also traditionally accompanies theater and dance. For example, wayang kulit is a highly revered form of shadow puppetry that dates to the pre-Islamic period and traditionally involves telling the Ramayana and Mahabharata, Hindu epics from India. The performance is led by a

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WAYANG KULIT Indonesian shadow play accompanied with gamelan music.

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DHALANG Master puppeteer of the Javanese shadow-puppet play (wayang kulit).

BEDHAYA Sacred court dance of Java.

dhalang (puppet master) who voices the characters and plays cymbals with his feet. Performances typically include humorous jokes and fight scenes. The dhalang cues the gamelan and sings “mood songs” (pathetan). Musicians artfully foreshadow where the story is going by changing the pathet (mode), and knowledgeable audience members notice this. The puppets wielded by the dhalang are projected as shadows up on a screen, and the audience is free to watch either the “front” of the performance (with the shadows) or the “backstage” area where the dhalang controls the puppets. Gamelans also accompany a type of sacred dance performed by women, called bedhaya, that emerged at the royal palaces of Surakarta and Yogyakarta during the Mataram era (1587–1755). Today the bedhaya dance is commonly performed on stages as entertainment and tells stories from wayang.Traditionally, there was even a musical mode associated with it called pathetan bedhaya and a specific version of the gamelan used for it (without the saron). Today, Javanese students can study gamelan at local conservatories and academies dedicated to the performing arts. There are also gamelan associations that attract interested amateurs. One famous twentieth-century performer was K.P.H. Notoprojo (1909–2007). Early on, he taught at Konservatori Tari Indonesia and Akademi Seni Tari Indonesia, and founded a school for vocalists; he directed gamelan broadcasting at radio stations (from 1934), and became leader of the palace gamelan of Paku Alaman (a former princely state within the Sultanate of Yogyakarta) in 1962. He then taught for decades at the California Institute for the Arts and other U.S. and Canadian universities. Javanese gamelan musicians are often composers as well as performers, and this was the case for Notoprojo, who composed numerous pieces for gamelan and dance music in collaboration with choreographers.

A director performing a wayang kulit in Selatpanjang, Indonesia. Source: Riau Images/Barcroft Media/Getty Images.

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Bedhaya dance, Solo (Surakarta), Java, Indonesia. Source: Trevor Thompson/ Alamy Stock Photo.

Bear in mind that there are other gamelan traditions on Java besides the famous court gamelan tradition described above. One is gamelan degung, associated with the Sundanese people of West Java. This style uses a different assortment of instruments and is softer sounding, with the suling (flute) playing a prominent role. Today, Javanese gamelan can be performed by men or women, but traditionally the musicians were men with the singing and dancing being the only opportunity for women to participate. Even today, the majority of performers in amateur gamelan associations in Java are men. One known exception to this gender division in the past is when female relatives of wayang puppeteers accompanied them on gendèr (Weiss 2006). Today, there are female-only gamelan groups and competitions. In a 2015 dissertation, Jonathan Roberts notes that gamelans associated with workplaces are more commonly mixed-gender than those found at other gamelan associations, perhaps because women in work places are already in a relatively higher position of authority. Gamelan associations provide an opportunity to socialize with friends and co-workers. Consider Roberts’ description of a mixed-gender gamelan group (called Karawitan Pasar Gedhé) founded by women vendors in the main market in Solo, which plays both traditional gamelan pieces and pop music on gamelan instruments: The gamelan group here has been running since 2010. It meets in the main market office which is above the front entrance. The gamelan is usually scrunched up against two walls of this space and is set up for rehearsals. Rehearsals take place three times a week from two until four in the afternoon. The office staff finish work at two, and most of the buying and selling has

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been done by now, so the members play before leaving to go home. The group is made up of a mix of women who sell in the market and men from the cleaning and portering services. The existence of the group is supported by the Head of the market who allows it to take place in the office, and Pak J. who owns a large proportion of the fruit selling businesses and was appointed by the Head as the official intermediary between himself and the group. The group was established by a core of three of the women, who asked some of the cleaners and porters who were known to play gamelan to act as rehearsal leaders. The group does not usually have food or drink, but if Pak J. is attending to talk to the group he provides trays of fruit as refreshments, and when public events occur the women’s connections with other market vendors who sell snacks and prepared foods mean that there is a great deal to eat. (Roberts 2015: 66) From this example we gather both the persistence and social importance of gamelan in contemporary Java.

Balinese Gamelan Traditions The island of Bali comprises a little over 2,000 square miles and is home to 4.2 million people. By contrast, Java (just to the west of Bali) is 49,536 square miles and home to 141 million people. But what Bali lacks in size it makes up for with its vibrant cultural traditions. Bali is now a hub for tourism, perhaps too much so—the island attracted 5.7 million tourists in 2017. The Balinese never converted to Islam, nor to Christianity with the onset of Dutch colonialism from the late nineteenth century. Rather, they retained their own Hindu tradition, elements of which are surely ancient and brought from India in waves starting before the late first millennium ce. Indonesian law states that each citizen must adhere to a monotheistic religion. This is part of the state’s platform of pancasila (“five principles”): Belief in the One and Only God; Just and Civilized Humanity; Unity of Indonesia; Democracy Guided by the Inner Wisdom in the Unanimity Arising out of Deliberations Amongst Representatives; and Social Justice for the Whole of the People of Indonesia. For this reason, Balinese Hindus officially recognize one supreme being called Acintya (“the inconceivable”), likened to the concept of Brahman (the “universal principle”) in Indian Hinduism. In practice, though, many deities are worshipped. Balinese Hinduism mixes aspects of the religion found in India, such as reverence for the sacred texts the Vedas and worship of the gods Brahma, Vishnu (Balinese: Wisnu) and Shiva (Balinese: Siwa), with deities not found in India. Two prominent characters in Balinese mythology are Barong and Rangda, the former a lion-like good king of spirits and the latter an evil

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demon queen. They are associated with the sacred sanghyang dances and today are often depicted in shows for tourists. The Hindu Majapahit Empire (1293–1520) in Java included a colony on Bali. When it fell, some of the Hindu Majapahit population, including elites, escaped the Islamization of Java by moving to Bali. Bali by that time was a collection of different Hindu kingdoms. While the Portuguese knew about the island, the Dutch were the first European power to gain control there, over the north coast in the 1840s. In 1906, the Dutch waged a brutal battle for Bali’s southern kingdoms that devastated the region. Numerous palaces were burned, and the elimination of the courts significantly altered Bali’s gamelan tradition. Balinese gamelan is divided into three historical periods. The oldest is characterized by gamelan luang, which may have been brought over from Majapahit in Java. Only a few of these remain in Bali, and they closely resemble gamelans from Cirebon in Java (Spiller 2004: 92). The middle period is associated with the gamelans found at the fifteenth- and sixteenthcentury Balinese courts. They are called gamelan gong gede (“gamelan with the large gongs”). The style is slow and stately, involving forty or more players. In Bali, however, gamelan has always been interwoven into the daily routines and ceremonies of village life and thus was never firmly reliant on the royal courts. After the devastation of the courts, ownership of the court ensembles was transferred to neighborhood associations in villages, which organize cultural activities and perform necessary tasks like maintaining and performing at temples. These associations, called banjars, are a key site for the development and performance of Balinese gamelan. The organizations house the instruments and provide a practice space. In the period of early Dutch rule, gamelan activities moved to the colonial center in North Bali, Singaraja, and new banjars were created. Out of this milieu came a culture of gamelan competitions and a gamelan revival starting in the 1910s that established a new kind of ensemble, called gamelan gong kebyar (“to flare up” or “burst open like a flower”), now the most famous style of Balinese gamelan. The first public performance of the genre is said to have been in December, 1915. Compared to the older Balinese and Javanese court gamelan styles, gamelan gong kebyar is fast, brash, complex music that in the early twentieth century was believed to capture the loudness and speed of modernity. I encourage you to compare listening guide 7.4 with listening guide 7.5, which is an example of gamelan gong kebyar; the point is not that one is better than the other but that you should immediately hear the difference. Balinese gamelan uses a large gong ageng to mark the end of formal units of music; smaller divisions of time are marked by hanging gongs called kempur and kemong. The kempli keeps a steady pulse. The ceng-ceng are small but loud cymbals. Gendèr instruments play the main melody, called pokok. The lowest-pitched gendèr-type instrument is jegogan, which has five keys. Another low-pitched instrument, slightly above it, is the calung, which has five keys and is played with a soft mallet. The gangsa are gendèr-type instruments of which there are typically nine of three different types, the ugal (lower-pitched), pemade (middle), and kantilan (highest-pitched).

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BANJARS Balinese neighborhood associations that organize cultural activities, house instruments, and provide practice space. GAMELAN GONG KEBYAR A modern type of Balinese music and the dance it accompanies, which is noted for its virtuosic and unpredictable playing style.

GANGSA Gendèr-type instruments used in gamelan gong-kebyar.

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LISTENING GUIDE 7.5

GAMELAN GONG KEBYAR “KEBYAR TERUNA”

LISTEN

Performed by Gamelan Gong Kebyar of Pliatan

T

HIS RECORDING IS characteristic of Balinese gamelan gong kebyar performances. It incorporates many passages of kotekan, brilliant changes in tempo, dynamics, and texture that distinguish it from the older, more stately gamelan gong gede style, and produces the shimmering quality associated with the slightly different tunings achieved between the male and female counterparts of the various pairs of instruments in the gamelan. TIME

SECTION

MUSICAL EVENTS

0:00–0:38

Introduction: Listen for the intense character of this introduction. Notice especially the sound of the ceng-ceng cymbals.

Introduction featuring almost the entire gamelan playing in unison. Typical of kebyar style, the introduction incorporates varied dynamics and tempi and irregular rhythms and syncopations.

0:38–0:42

Passages featuring reyong and gangsa: Take note of the different sounds produced by these two instruments.

Passage for reyong with kotekan (interlocking patterns). This passage introduces the reyong theme that will reappear in the next section.

0:42–0:48

Passage for gangsa with kotekan, introducing the patterns that will return in the calung-jegogan section.

0:48–1:24

Section for reyong: Listen for the way that the reyong plays kotekan within the structure provided by the gamelan. Notice also the dynamic shifts (changes in volume [loud-softer­ loud]) in this section. Finally, notice that the kotekan being performed on the reyong are drawn from the patterns established during the reyong passage at [0:38–42].

The reyong is featured in this section. Notice that the lowest gong sounds consistently throughout this section. The kempli, which is struck but dampened with the other hand, and therefore sounds a bit dry and percussive, plays eight strokes per gong stroke. This underlying structure will help keep you oriented given the speed at which the kotekan moves.

1:24–2:00

Section for calung/jegogan: Notice the slower, lower-pitched melody emerge in the calung­ jegogan. These instruments are in the same family group as the high-pitched gangsa, heard at [0:42–0:48]. Notice also that the kotekan played on the gangsa during that earlier passage reappear in this section.

The lower-pitched calung and jegogan are featured, but they are accompanied by kotekan in the higherpitched gangsa. It is hard not to focus only on the dazzling figurations of the gangsa, but see if you can attend to the musical activity simultaneously unfolding in the other instruments. Again, you can orient yourself by listening for the 8/1 ratio of kempli to gong.

2:00–2:06

Cadential pattern: Listen for the way a syncopated, repeated figure brings the section to a close.

The cadential pattern, driven by the kendang (drums) and ceng-ceng (cymbals), is repeated once and then extended with a sustained stroke (not dampened, that is) on the reyong.

2:06–2:22

Increased tempo and intensity: Notice the dramatic and sudden increase in tempo here. Listen for the increasingly syncopated strokes on the reyong.

This section of increased tempo and intensity affords the most virtuosic drumming and ceng-ceng playing in the performance.

continued

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TIME

SECTION

MUSICAL EVENTS

2:22–3:01

Return of calung/jegogan section: Listen for the return of the material used earlier at [0:48–1:24].

The material presented in the earlier calung-jegogan section returns here at a faster tempo and with more intensity. This section, because it is faster, provides for the most virtuosic kotekan passages. The performance continues as the recording fades out, beginning at [2:56].

The ugal overlaps in pitch with the calung but is much brasher and louder. Some other instruments used are reyong (a set of pot-gongs) and kendhang (drums). As compared to the rather stable-sounding Javanese gamelan, Balinese gamelan gong kebyar involves lots of stops and starts—moments when one musician or a group of musicians perform as a unit before the rest of the gamelan jumps back in. The genre is most famously associated with kotekan, the  interlocking of two musical lines performed on two different sets of instruments that combine to form a very fast composite melody. Kotekan is played by the higher-pitched gangsas or reyong while the ugal and calung play the pokok. The instruments tend to come in pairs, so that two of an instrument interlock with two of another. Not only do the interlocking instruments have a similar timbral quality, but each pair of instruments is intentionally tuned slightly off from one another, resulting in a vibrant, shimmering quality that the Balinese call ombak (“waves”). The two independent parts of a kotekan are called polos and sangih. Their style of interaction, and their sheer speed, constitutes much of the artistry and pleasure of gamelan gong kebyar. Unlike Javanese

KOTEKAN Often virtuosic and rapid interlocking rhythms important within gamelan kebyar performances and consisting of two parts (a lower part and a higher part) played on two separate instruments. Generally, multiple pairs of instruments are simultaneously involved in performing kotekan. Women’s gamelan orchestra, Puri Taman Saraswati or Water Palace, Ubud, Bali, Indonesia. Source: dbimages/Alamy Stock Photo.

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ANGKLUNG A kind of pitched bamboo rattle used in gamelan angklung.

gamelan, gong kebyar is only played in the pelog selisir (1-2-3-5-6) tuning and the ensembles do not use an extra set of instruments for slendro. While Balinese gamelan began as a male activity, since the mid-1980s there has been a surge of all-female gamelan groups (gamelan wanita), which have increasingly performed Balinese genres previously reserved just for men. There are other types of gamelan in Bali besides gong kebyar. One ensemble from the middle period that is still vibrant today is gamelan belaganjur, a processional genre that accompanies a range of Balinese rituals. The melody of the ensemble is performed on four small reyong (pot-gongs) that are each carried and played by a single musician, who together interlock to form the composite melody. Complicated drumming and loud ceng-ceng drive the music. Taking a cue from gong kebyar, the ensembles have developed a competition style in which belaganjur groups square off with one another, dancing with the instruments in elaborate choreographed movements, a development that emerged in the 1980s and called kreasi belaganjur. Another genre of Balinese gamelan is angklung, which is played on a single-octave, five-tone slendro scale, and is associated with Balinese temples and funerals. The instruments are portable and played in processions when the body of the deceased is brought to the cremation site.

MUSICIANS AT THE INTERSECTION OF SOUTHEAST ASIA AND THE WEST Today, Bali is a common beach destination for Australian tourists, a wellknown site for honeymooners, and has recently started attracting many Kecak dance performance in Uluwatu, Bali, Indonesia. Source: Marka/Universal Images Group/Getty Images.

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Chinese tourists. But it was not always so. The tiny island was little-known internationally until the 1920s, when a steamship service started from Java to Bali and international hotels were built. By the 1930s, a small group of Western intellectuals and artists settled there, staying for varying periods of time. Some exoticized Bali, producing paintings and films depicting the island as a romantic paradise. At worst, this work was exploitative and degrading, like the infamous 1932 film Virgins of Bali that captivated Western audiences by showing topless Balinese women. But a stream of respected anthropologists were also there, notably Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson, who conducted influential work on Balinese culture. The German painter Walter Spies (1895–1942) lived in Yogyakarta (Java) for a few years starting in 1923, and then moved to Bali for nine years. He produced lush paintings of Indonesian life and took an interest in Balinese music. Perhaps too much credit has been given to Spies for this, but it appears he suggested to the Indonesian dancer Wayan Limbak (d. 2003) that elements of a trance ritual be combined with the telling of stories from the Ramayana in a shortened performance for tourists. The result was kecak, a genre in which men (nowadays there are also female ensembles) sit in a circle, producing interlocking sounds with their voices while dancers stream into the performance area depicting Ramayana characters. Limbak popularized the genre globally by leading several international tours, and the genre is still performed routinely in Bali for Western tourists. While Spies was in Bali, the Canadian composer Colin McPhee visited with his wife, the anthropologist Jane Belo. McPhee became fascinated by the music of Bali. In 1947 he published a book about his experiences called A House in Bali (1947) and composed Balinese-influenced orchestral and piano pieces (some of which included or were direct transcriptions of Balinese music). A recording exists of McPhee performing transcriptions of Balinese ceremonial music for two pianos with the well-known British composer Benjamin Britten. McPhee eventually became a professor of ethnomusicology at UCLA. There is now a long tradition of Western composers faithfully performing or writing compositions influenced by Balinese gamelan, such as Michael Tenzer (also known for his scholarly work on gamelan gong kebyar) and the avant-garde musician and composer Evan Ziporyn. In 2009–10, Ziporyn collaborated with the Balinese group Gamelan Salukat (led by renowned musician Dewa Alit) to produce an opera, A House in Bali, based on McPhee’s life. José Maceda (1917–2004) was a well-known experimental composer from Manila in the Philippines who wrote compositions for Southeast Asian and European instruments. His work Pagsamba is a setting of a Christian mass (in Tagalog) for over a hundred voices, including gongs and a number of bamboo percussion instruments. More recently, the Asian-American drummer Susie Ibarra (1970–) has taken to composing and improvising on the kulintang while performing free jazz and avant-garde compositions, including with the group Electric Kulintang that she formed with Cuban-born musician Roberto Rodriguez.

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KECAK A type of dance drama accompanied by a large male chorus that chants rhythmically, while dancers stream into the performance area depicting Ramayana characters; usually performed for tourists.

REVIEW CHAPTER RESOURCES

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KEY TERMS

Alam Melayu Bangsawan Colotomic structure Dangdut Gambus Gamelan Gamelan Gong Kebyar Gong ageng Kecak Kompang Kotekan Kulintang Pathet Pelog Saron Slendro Wali Sanga Wayang kulit

SUMMARY In this chapter, I have had space only to scratch the surface of music and music history in maritime Southeast Asia. I have been aware while writing just how complex this region is, with its myriad ethnic groups and complex histories of encounters and entanglements. If you need help conceptualizing it as a whole, I recommend focusing first on the Javanese and Balinese gamelan traditions, and then on the kinds of musical and communal connections that emerged in the section on Malay musics. I hope you have found some of what I wrote here intriguing. If so, I encourage you to choose one topic mentioned in brief in the chapter and explore it further by choosing a source from the bibliography. For example, if you’re interested in popular music, you might read Andrew Weintraub’s book on dangdut, Indonesia’s longstanding popular music genre; if you want to learn about religion, you could read Anne Rasmussen’s Women, the Recited Qu’ran, and Islamic Music in Indonesia. Alternatively, you might explore the regional traditions of distinct islands through Margaret Kartomi’s books on Sumatra and the Riau islands; or you could learn more about the impact of European colonialism through D.R.M. Irving’s Colonial Counterpoint: Music in Early Modern Manila. If you are sick of reading, why not travel to the region and study music there yourself? Many places in maritime Southeast Asia are under-researched in ethnomusicology: some examples include Sarawak in East Malaysia and Papua in Indonesia.

BIBLIOGRAPHY General Surveys and Transregional Barendregt, Bart, Peter Keppy, and Henk Schulte Nordholt, Popular Music in Southeast Asia: Banal Beats, Muted Histories (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2017); Barendregt, Bart, Sonic Modernities in the Malay World: A History of Popular Music, Social Distinction and Novel Lifestyles (1930s–2000s) (Verhandelingen Van Het Koninklijk Instituut Voor Taal-, Land, 2014); Barendregt, Bart, and E. Bogaerts, Recollecting Resonances: Indonesian-Dutch Musical Encounters (Verhandelingen Van Het Koninklijk Instituut Voor Taal-, Land- En Volkenkunde, 2013); Harnish, David, and Anne Rasmussen, Divine Inspirations: Music and Islam in Indonesia (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011); Keppy, Peter, Tales of the Southeast Asian Jazz Age: Filipinos, Indonesians and Popular Culture, 1920–1936 (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2019); Lockard, Craig, Dance of Life: Popular Music and Politics in Southeast Asia (Hawai’i: University of Hawai’i Press, 1998); Miller, Terry E., and Sean Williams, The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music: Southeast Asia (New York: Routledge, 2017); Nor, Mohd Anis Md, and Kendra Stepputat, Sounding the Dance, Moving the Music: Choreomusicological Perspectives on Maritime Southeast Asian Performing Arts (London: Routledge, 2016); Porath, Nathan, and Henry Spiller, Gamelan: The Traditional Sounds of Indonesia (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2004); Rasmussen, Anne, Women, the Recited Qu’ran, and Islamic Music in Indonesia (Berkeley, CA: University of California

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Press, 2010); Wallach, Jeremy, Modern Noise, Fluid Genres: Popular Music in Indonesia, 1997–2001 (Middleton, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2008); Weintraub, Andrew, Dangdut Stories: A Social and Musical History of Indonesia’s Most Popular Music (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010). Indonesia: Java Becker, Judith, Traditional Music in Modern Java: Gamelan in a Changing Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980); Benamou, Marc, Rasa: Affect and Intuition in Javanese Musical Aesthetics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016); Brinner, Benjamin, Knowing Music, Making Music: Javanese Gamelan and the Theory of Musical Competence and Interaction (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1995); Brinner, Benjamin, Music in Central Java: Experiencing Music, Expressing Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007); Pemberton, John, On the Subject of “Java” (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994); Perlman, Marc, Unplayed Melodies: Javanese Gamelan and the Genesis of Music Theory (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2004); Roberts, Jonathan, “The politics of participation: An ethnography of gamelan associations in Surakarta, Central Java,” Doctoral thesis (University of Oxford, 2015); Spiller, Henry, Gamelan: The Traditional Sounds of Indonesia (New York: ABC-CLIO, 2004); Spiller, Henry, Focus: Gamelan Music of Indonesia (New York: Routledge, 2008); Spiller, Henry, and

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Frederick Lau, Javaphilia: American Love Affairs with Javanese Music and Dance (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2015); Sumarsam, Gamelan: Cultural Interaction and Musical Development in Central Java (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1995); Sumarsam, “Introduction to Javanese Gamelan.” Unpublished manuscript, 2002; Sumarsam, Javanese Gamelan and the West (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2013); Sunardi, Christina, Stunning Males and Powerful Females: Gender and Tradition in East Javanese Dance (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2015); Weiss, Sarah, Listening to an Earlier Java: Aesthetics, Gender and the Music of Wayang in Central Java (Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land-, en Volkenkunde monograph series, vol. 237. Leiden: KITLV Press, 2006). Indonesia: Bali Bakan, Michael, Music of Death and New Creation: Experiences in the World of Balinese Gamelan (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press 1999); Gold, Lisa, Music in Bali: Experiencing Music, Expressing Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004); Hood, Made Mantle, Triguna: A Hindu-Balinese Philosophy for Gamelan Gong Gede Music (Berlin: LIT Verlag, 2010); McGraw, Andrew, Radical Traditions: Reimagining Culture in Balinese Contemporary Music (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013); McPhee, Colin, Music in Bali (New York: Da Capo, 1976); McPhee, Colin, A House in Bali (Hong Kong: Periplus Editions, 2000); Tenzer, Michael, and I Made Moja, Balinese Gamelan Music (Tokyo: Tuttle, 2011); Tenzer, Michael, Gamelan Gong Kebyar: The Art of Twentieth-Century Balinese Music (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2000); Tilley, Leslie A., Making It Up Together: The Art of Collective Improvisation in Balinese Music and Beyond (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2019). Indonesia: Other Regions and Topics Byl, Julia, Antiphonal Histories: Resonant Pasts in the Toba Batak Musical Present (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan, 2014); Fraser, Jennifer A., Gongs and Pop Songs: Sounding Minangkabau in Indonesia (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2015); Kartomi, Margaret, Musical Journeys in Sumatra (Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2012); Kartomi, Margaret, Performing the Arts of Indonesia: Malay Identity and Politics in the Music, Dance and Theatre of the Riau Islands (Copenhagen: NIAS, 2019); Stenberg, Josh, Minority Stages: Sino-Indonesian Performance and Public Display

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(Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2019); Sutton, R. Anderson, Calling Back the Spirit: Music, Dance, and Cultural Politics in Lowland South Sulawesi (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002). Malaysia and Singapore Beng, Tan Sooi, Bengsawan: A Social and Stylistic History of Popular Malay Opera (Singapore: Oxford University Press, 1993); Ferzacca, Steve, Sonic City: Making Rock Music and Urban Life in Singapore (Singapore: NUS Press, 2020); Hilarian, Larry, “The Gambus Lutes of the Malay World and their Music in Peninsular Malaysia.” Ph.D. Diss., Goldsmiths College, University of London, 2004; Johan, Adil, Cosmopolitan Intimacies: Malay Film Music of the Independence Era (Singapore: NUS Press, 2018); Kahn, Joel. Other Malays: Nationalism and Cosmopolitanism in the Modern Malay World (Singapore: NUS Press, 2006); Lee, Tong Soon, Chinese Street Opera in Singapore (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2009); Lizeray, Juliette Yu-Ming, and Chee-Hoo Lum, Semionauts of Tradition: Music, Culture and Identity in Contemporary Singapore (Singapore: Springer, 2018); Marina, Roseman, Healing Sounds from the Malaysian Rainforest: Temiar Music and Medicine (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1993); Matusky, Patricia and Tan Sooi Beng, The Music of Malaysia: The Classical, Folk and Syncretic Traditions (London and New York: Routledge, 2017); Matusky, Patricia, Malaysian Shadow Play and Music: Continuity of an Oral Tradition (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1994); Sarkissian, Margaret, D’Albuquerque’s Children: Performing Tradition in Malaysia’s Portuguese Settlement (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2000). Philippines Bautista, Julius, “Sonic piety: The aural environment of Roman Catholic passion rituals in the Philippines,” in Hearing Southeast Asia, 341–366 (Copenhagen: NIAS Press, 2019); Castro, Christi-Anne, Musical Renderings of the Philippine Nation (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011); Irving, D. R. M., Colonial Counterpoint: Music in Early Modern Manila (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010); Yamomo, MeLê, Theatre and Music in Manila and the Asia Pacific, 1869–1946: Sounding Modernities (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018).

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MUSIC OF SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA Chérie Rivers Ndaliko

Let’s set one thing straight from the outset: there is no such thing as “The Music of Sub-Saharan Africa.” There are, of course, many musics (plural) in the many Africas (also plural) that exist south of the Sahara desert. But they do not cohere into any kind of comprehensive or even representative repertoire that fits well—or ethically—into a single textbook chapter. This poses a problem for books on world music. Obviously Africa cannot be omitted—it is a massive territory, rife with histories and customs. But equally impossible is the prospect of including detailed descriptions of Africa’s (roughly) 2,000 distinct cultural-linguistic groups, many of which have intricate musical practices that have evolved over millennia. So how, then, to structure a chapter on “African music”? If the point is to memorize names, dates, instruments, and genres, associated with music making on the continent, one strategy is to offer examples from various regions accompanied by

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CHAPTER

8 notes on context and, ideally, reflections on the politics involved in selecting some groups and not others. But if the point is to understand how and why music from and about Africa matters, it is important to first investigate what “Africa” even means. Thought exercise: What do you know about Africa and how did you come to know it?

THE IDEA OF “AFRICA” Though tempting, it is dangerous to presuppose we know what anyone means with the term “Africa,” much less “African music.” Some people reference “Africa” to cite historically, politically, geographically, or culturally specific facts, events, or

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practices, but at least as many use it to conjure fantasies about the continent. And few are equipped to recognize the difference. Indeed, for many, “Africa” represents vague—often conflicting—ideas about exotic nature, scary diseases, extreme poverty, and “traditional” (probably mostly naked) people cut off from the modern world, except the rebels and child soldiers with automatic weapons, who kill, rape, and maim but somehow do not prevent “Africa” from being a tourist destination for anyone interested in animals or charity work. The prevalence of such vague and conflicting notions is a direct result of what is and is not taught about Africa. Historically, Africa has been a place about which “educated” people in the West should know just enough to believe they can and should help the needy, pity the poor, educate the ignorant, heal the ill, fear the violent, and despise the corrupt (while celebrating the nature and “culture”). The fact that it is considered reasonable to collapse Africa— even if “only” the sub-Saharan part—into this chapter reflects the habit of approaching the continent as a generalizable, homogenous place that should be touched upon but not in too much detail. This is not an accident. It is part of a much larger pattern driven by global economic interest in Africa’s natural resources. And music plays a significant role in this. Music fuels fantasies about “Africa” and music also can communicate critical information and perspectives. It depends entirely on what one listens to. It also depends on what counts as “African music” and merits inclusion in a textbook. There are many valid answers, each of which is political in its way. This chapter approaches “African music” as a source of critical knowledge about historical, political, economic, and cultural factors that shape the continent’s past, present, and future. It neither assesses the continent’s soundscape nor summarizes any of the excellent studies of its genres, instruments, and artists. Instead it scrutinizes assumptions about “Africa” and offers context and counternarratives through a handful of songs and albums produced by a handful of artists fighting to tell their version of Africa’s story.

What is “Africa”? The question “what is Africa?” might seem ridiculous. Anyone who has studied basic geography knows it is the world’s second largest continent. Those who study Africa in any depth recognize its diverse urban and rural environments and equally diverse people, technologies, wildlife, and resources, which play important roles in global manufacturing and geopolitics. But in addition to being a physical place inhabited by actual people and material goods, Africa has also been transformed into an idea. More accurately, it has been transformed into a number of ideas, each of which distorts the continent in different ways. In one version, Africa is a vast expanse of unclaimed land populated by exotic animals and beautiful nature. This “Africa” features magnificent sunsets, waterfalls, and savannahs (sometimes also singing lions and dancing wildebeests).

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Notably, this “Africa” lacks any trace of human beings not to mention history, culture, architecture, or technology. Another version of “Africa” does include people, but they are primitive people lost in time. Clad in traditional garments, the inhabitants of this “Africa” do not participate in—much less contribute to—modern life. Instead, like the animals with which they live, they are presented as part of the natural landscape, incapable of governing their lives or influencing their environment. There is another version in which “Africans” do exert influence over their surroundings, but it is through violence and war. This “Africa” is overridden with savage warlords, brutal rebels, ruthless mercenaries, child soldiers, and corrupt despots, who spread terror, destruction, and suffering through an endless chaos of militia armies and civil wars. These “Africans” are morally corrupt—devoid of integrity, intellect, and empathy. And their victims desperately need to be saved. And indeed, yet another version of “Africa” provides the backdrop for precisely such a hero’s tale. In this “Africa,” brave and compassionate foreigners—humanitarian and charity workers, conservationists, missionaries, volunteers—endure risk and sacrifice to aid the suffering masses and transform a wild continent into civilized, modern states. These are among the many ideas of “Africa” that circulate in the Western world. And, each in their own way, they fuel the perception that Africa is wild, beautiful, primitive, dangerous, poor, disease-ridden, and perpetually in need of help. But are these accurate or objective depictions of the continent? Is this how entrepreneurs, architects, engineers, surgeons, artists, scholars, or business people in Africa describe their home? Or are these “Africas” fabricated through politically constructed stereotypes that disguise a long and twisted story about exploitation, greed, and power? Thought exercise: Briefly describe/reflect on three stories of “Africa”

you have recently encountered

Whose “Africa”? Millions of people first encounter “Africa” through content produced in the West. Sometimes it is through fiction, whether children’s stories about Tarzan, Tintin, or The Lion King, novels such as Heart of Darkness, or films like Black Hawk Down, Blood Diamond, etc.; sometimes it is through “scientific” outlets like National Geographic or the Nature Channel; sometimes it is through advertisements soliciting charitable donations, humanitarian reports about corruption, poverty, and disease, or Western media stories (also about corruption, poverty, and disease). Often it is a combination of these, including, perhaps, a safari, missionary trip, or “voluntourist” experience. The point is many people form clear beliefs about Africa without ever hearing the perspectives and expertise of the people who inhabit the continent.

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Thought exercise: List three books on US American history that you have read that have US American authors; list three books on African history that you have read that have African authors So whose “Africa” do such sources represent? According to Senegalese rapper and activist Didier Awadi, not his. Indeed, in his 2010 song, “Oser inventer

LISTENING GUIDE 8.1

DIDIER AWADI “OSER INVENTER L’AVENIR” (“DARE TO INVENT THE FUTURE”) 2010

LISTEN

L

ISTEN TO THIS TRACK several times, focusing first on the content of the lyrics (starting around 1:04), then on the musical material (what instruments, sounds, and genres do you hear?), and then working to “read” the song as a political statement as much as a musical one. Allow this powerful statement by Awadi to inflect the way you read the rest of this section and the chapter as a whole. Starting around 1:04:

TIME

MUSICAL EVENT

Mon Afrique, c’est pas rien que des cases, Elle est loin des images qu’on peut voir dans tes films nazes. Mon Afrique, elle est à l’aise dans ce millénaire Ici, on parle web, on parle net, on parle cellulaire.

My Africa, it’s not just huts, She is far from the images we can see in your ignorant movies. My Africa is at ease in this millennium, Here we speak web, we speak net, and we speak with cellular.

Mon Afrique, elle a des bases plus que séculaires, Mais l’avenir se conjugue en révolutionnaire. C’est pas que j’idéalise, Je suis un missionnaire, fils de Sankara, mon mon regard l’oeil du visionnaire.

My Africa’s foundations are more than secular But the future is becoming revolutionary. It’s not that I’m idealizing, I’m on a mission, son of Sankara, I have the eyes of a visionary.

Mon Afrique, c’est pas la guerre, c’est pas la famine, De l’or et du diamant, de l’uranium, j’en ai plein dans les mines. Mon Afrique, c’est pas la mort, c’est pas la misère, Regarde autour de toi, c’est le soleil et puis la mer.

My Africa, it’s not war, it’s not famine, It’s gold, diamonds and uranium in her mines. My Africa, it’s not death, it’s not misery, Look around you, it’s the sun and the sea.

Mon Afrique, tu peux la voir, elle est dans les rues. Elle roule en Cadillac et en ville, elle prend le scooter.

My Africa, you can see her, she drives in the streets She cruises in a Cadillac, and in the city, she takes the scooter. Mon Afrique, tu peux la voir, elle est dans ma rue, My Africa, you can see her on my street, Elle vit à 100 à l’heure, à la campagne elle prend le Hummer She lives at 100%, and in the country, she takes the Hummer. Mon Afrique, elle raffole du KFC, Mais à midi, elle veut du mafé Mon Afrique, après le tiep, nous on prend le thé, Guerté kemb, café Touba, je peux t’y inviter Prends ça dans la face!

My Africa, she adores KFC, But at lunch, she wants mafé. My Africa, after tiep, we have tea, Guerté kemb, Touba coffee, I can invite you. Take that in your face!

(Lyrics used by permission of Didier Awadi)

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Didier Awadi. Source: ISSOUF SANOGO/AFP/Getty Images.

l’avenir” (“Dare to Invent the Future”), he offers “his” version of “Africa,” insisting on a very different way of conceptualizing and interacting with the continent. By describing “his Africa” as he does—with cell phones, Internet, popular automobiles and fast food chains—Awadi rejects stereotypes of Africa as a place of poverty, war, and disease that is divorced from technologies and global culture. But these lyrics do more than challenge stereotypes. They also introduce critical historic facts that expose a different “Africa.” This Africa is not poor, but rather impoverished by foreign interests—it is full of gold, diamonds, and uranium and has been exploited for centuries. This Africa is not corrupt or inept, but striving to revive the legacies of revolutionary leaders like Thomas Sankara and others who were assassinated—many at the behest of Western governments—for seeking economic autonomy, political transparency, and equal treatment for African people. Yet, even though Awadi’s Africa is factually accurate, it may well be unfamiliar. His reference to Sankara, for instance, assumes listeners know of the politician who transformed Burkina Faso’s economy and advanced women’s rights. But how many students learn about Thomas Sankara in school? Or, to put the question more pointedly, whose version of African history gets told? Thought exercise—without the internet: List six important people (political figures, artists, social justice leaders, etc.) from any time period who are celebrated as s/heroes in your native country. Excluding Nelson Mandela, list six important people from any time period who are celebrated as s/heroes on the entire African continent. For activists like Awadi, this question is urgent because what the world believes about Africa—and thus how the world interacts with Africa—depends on which “Africa” they know. Thus, producing songs, like “Oser inventer

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l’avenir,” that counter misinformation with clear ideas and facts, is a political project. This is not only a historic project but also a musical one. Indeed the sounds—the melodies, harmonies, rhythms, instruments, voices, genres, timbres, textures, etc.—people do or do not associate with “African music” are deeply entwined with ideas of Africa. By integrating digital beats with kora melodies, Financial center of Dakar, Senegal. Source: Xaume Olleros/Bloomberg/Getty Images.

Lagos, Nigeria. Source: George Osodi/Bloomberg/ Getty Images.

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rap, and choral singing, songs like “Oser inventer l’avenir” challenge listeners to question sonic stereotypes including the practice of dividing “African music” into categories such as “traditional” or “popular” (about which more below). Instead, like the historical facts his lyrics convey, the sounds of Awadi’s Africa offer a potent reminder that music is a powerful means of communication that has played an integral role both in promoting destructive ideas about “Africa” and in combatting them.

Why was “Africa” invented? Before delving further into music, it is important to investigate the origins of stereotypes about “Africa.” Why is it, for example, that so many people believe Africa is poor despite the fact that it contains the richest concentration of natural resources on the planet? Of course this is in part because African nations rank poorly when measured by gross domestic product (GDP) and because unequal distribution of wealth leaves many living below the poverty line. But it is also because of a deceptive story that has circulated since European nations realized the potential of Africa’s wealth and sought to capitalize on it. But how could the “enlightened world,” the epicenter of Christian virtue and morality, justify such theft and slaughter? What story would people need to believe to support invading the continent, stealing its wealth, exploiting its people, land, and resources? What “Africa” would need to be invented to justify this quest for wealth? An “Africa” incapable of reason or organization, inhabited by despicable, subhuman beings: the “Africa” of ignorance, savagery, and disease! And, ever since Europeans “discovered” “Africa,” precisely such a story has been under construction. Since the fourteenth century, fantastical tales of unconquered nature, primitive peoples, and unfathomable wealth on the “dark continent” have captivated the West, enticing missionaries, scientists, scholars, and political actors to the continent. They, in turn, generated more stories: missionaries condemned indigenous people’s heathen practices; scholars developed scientific racism to “prove” Africans were intellectually inferior and thus required European oversight; politicians emphasized the need to introduce “civilized” ways of life. Descriptions of “Africans” as barbarian, inept, and uncivilized were—and still are—used to make the imposition of Western governance and aid appear to be a selfless, charitable, and morally imperative project. For an example of the Western mentality towards Africa as “charitable cause,” consider the speech given by French author Victor Hugo at a banquet celebrating the end of slavery: Men’s destiny lies in the South. . . . The moment has come to make Europe

realize that it has Africa alongside it. . . . In the nineteenth century, the

White made a man of the Black; in the twentieth century, Europe will make

a world of Africa. To fashion a new Africa, to make the old Africa amenable

to civilization – that is the problem. And Europe will solve it.

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Go forward, the nations! Grasp this land! Take it! From whom? From no one. Take this land from God! God gives the earth to men. God offers Africa to Europe. Take it! Where the kings brought war, bring concord! Take it, not for the cannon but for the plough! Not for the sabre but for commerce! Not for battle but for industry! Not for conquest but for fraternity! Pour out everything you have in this Africa, and at the same stroke solve your own social questions! Change your proletarians into property-owners! Go on, do it! Make roads, make ports, make towns! Grow, cultivate, colonize, multiply! And on this land, ever clearer of priests and princes, may the divine spirit assert itself through peace and the human spirit through liberty! (Victor Hugo quoted in Rist, Gilbert. The History of

Development: From Western Origins to Global Faith.

Translated by Patrick Camiller (London &

New York: Zed Books, 2014, 51))

But were the Africans that Europeans encountered actually barbaric ignorant savages? How does that explain their advanced mathematical systems, medicinal practices, governmental structures, architecture, art, and agricultural techniques, all of which predate contact with Europe? How does it explain the  fact that African empires thrived while Europe languished in the “dark ages”? And is present-day Africa really overwrought with poverty, war, corruption, and disease (except for the part with the nature and animals)? Or might that “Africa” be an illusion as so many African scholars, artists, and experts contend? There is ample evidence to support their claims and all of it hinges on money: through the slave trade, colonization, and neocolonial policies, European and US American governments and industries took control of African people, land, and resources to build their economies. Indeed, for centuries Africa’s wealth has been fueling the development and industrialization of the Western world. In other words, Africa is not poor, Africa has been—and continues to be—actively impoverished. And though the results may look similar for African people, impoverishment is very different from poverty. Indeed, beneath the label “poor” is the history of African people and land being stolen, murdered, and polluted and the fact that African nations are expected to “repay” crippling “debts” accrued during colonization (which they never sought in the first place). Beneath the label “corrupt” is the fact that many African governments are still controlled by former colonial powers and lack autonomy or authority over the multinational corporations that steal their resources. Looking beneath labels raises questions: Is it really the people who were enslaved, colonized, and victims of human experimentation who are the “savages?,” or is the “Africa” of poverty, corruption, and war rather an invention—and an outrageous legacy—of the global desire for wealth and power?

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COMPOSING “AFRICA” Unfortunately, even though stereotypes about “Africa” are built on greed and deception, they are often mistaken for truth. For many people, the “Africa” of poverty, war, corruption, and disease, and/or the “Africa” of nature and animals is more readily imaginable than the complex realities that actually exist on the continent. As Kenyan writer Binyavanga Wainaina points out in “How To Write About Africa,” Remember, any work you submit in which people look filthy and miserable

will be referred to as the ‘real Africa’ . . . [so] describe, in detail, naked

breasts (young, old, conservative, recently raped, big, small) or mutilated

genitals, or enhanced genitals. Or any kind of genitals. And dead bodies.

Or, better, naked dead bodies. And especially rotting naked dead bodies . . .

Animals, on the other hand, must be treated as well rounded, complex

characters. They speak (or grunt while tossing their manes proudly) and

have names, ambitions and desires. They also have family values: see how

lions teach their children? Elephants are caring, and are good feminists

or dignified patriarchs. So are gorillas. Never, ever say anything negative

about an elephant or a gorilla.

This is a humorous and wrathful reminder of the distortions that have been repeated so frequently as to become more “real” than the truth for many peoples. And music is complicit in creating and sustaining these illusions. To wit, Wainaina also advises “Make sure you show how Africans have music and rhythm deep in their souls, and eat things no other humans eat.” Make sure, in other words, to continue the legacy of savage exoticism that has been constructed through engagement with “African music.” Indeed, from Europeans’ first encounters with Africans to the current popularity of “world music,” sound has been a critical mode of representing and interacting with “Africa.” It has also been a strategic means of promoting stereotypes and imposing political power.

Musical Racism, Musical Power The role of music in promoting distorted ideas of Africa has a long and intricate history. To corroborate their vivid accounts of savagery, early explorers and missionaries portrayed “African” instruments as primitive and their music as cacophonous, simplistic, raucous, and out of tune—the antithesis, that is, of European values and ideals. Scholars also perpetuated the idea of “Africa” through music. As researchers sought a scientific basis of racism, anthropologists and comparative musicologists (and later ethnomusicologists) investigated African music. In this context, “African music” was all too often interpreted as a cultural form of evidence of European superiority in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This was

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premised, in part, on the false notion that “African music” is predominantly rhythmic and lacks harmonic or melodic sophistication, a stereotype that continues to circulate to this day. Another stereotype of scientific racism is that Africans are innately musical. This idea gained traction because of the ease with which African populations learned (and often embellished) the songs imposed by missionaries and colonial governments. Scholars cited this as evidence that Africans—and “Negros” more generally—are a race with innate creative and athletic abilities but that lacks the capacity for advanced intellectual activity. Entwined with stereotypes about “African music” and African musicality, is also a history of music’s use to exert power and control over African populations. Missionaries used songs not only to indoctrinate Africans into the protocols of Western life, but also to demean—in some cases outlaw—indigenous cultural practices. Colonial governments also imposed patriotic songs and anthems to enforce allegiance to European states, further linking music to projects of social control.

Musical Africas Perceptions of Africa’s musical landscape were—and still are—also fueled by popular outlets including films, cartoons, video games, audio recordings, and books. Many of these promote warped versions of the actual people, places, and practices on the continent. A few of the influential “Africas” invented through Western popular culture include:

OOGA BOOGA AFRICA Since “Africa” was “discovered,” writing and performing stories about the continent was a common pastime in Europe and the United States. When technological advances enabled sound to be embedded in film, movies about “Africa” took a leading role in shaping how people imagine “African music” and even “Africa” sounds. Through music, early Hollywood films fueled racism (of course they fueled racism through image and plot too). At times, “menacing” Africans were shown beating drums, at other times “cooperative” Africans were depicted singing simplistic songs while accompanying or serving their white masters or mistresses in the jungle. The immensely popular Tarzan the Ape Man (1932) and Tarzan Meets His Mate (1934) provide good examples. In them, “African music” is limited to thunderous drumming (accompanying “savage” dancing) or unaccompanied singing, which is deemed unpleasant, indeed almost inhuman by the “civilized” European characters (who, incidentally, are committing theft and coercion). Armed with stereotypes about “African music” and racist ideas, by the mid­ 1930s Hollywood film composers developed sounds to represent the continent and its people. Their objectives were not to replicate any actual African musical

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traditions or understand the significance of music in cultural contexts, rather they sought to evoke fear, disgust, pity, and astonishment in response to African characters. This same objective applied to other groups of non-white people around the world including indigenous people of the Americas, who were, for Hollywood’s purposes, effectively the same as Africans—savage, ignorant, and in need of “civilizing” by white people. (Remember film was used by European and US American governments to generate support for colonial projects and justify the slaughter and imprisonment of indigenous populations around the world.) The sounds film composers developed to signify “Africa” (or any place with brown- or black-skinned “natives”) were nicknamed “ooga booga music.” Unfortunately, this racist caricature of chaotic, vicious, simplistic noise conditioned generations of Western viewers’ ideas about “African music.” Indeed, despite the tremendous diversity of musical instruments and styles on the continent, popular culture in the West reduced the entirety of “African music” to drums and “out of tune” singing. Worse, the drumming and singing lacked any of the harmonic, melodic, rhythmic, timbral, and stylistic nuances of any actual African musical traditions.

LION KING AFRICA Though no longer called “ooga booga” music, soundtracks of popular films continue to promote stereotypes about Africa. Many of the most successful blockbusters still depict cruel, corrupt, or pitiful “Africans,” or erase human beings entirely and focus instead on the “good” parts of “Africa,” meaning exotic animals and nature. One prominent example is Disney’s 1994 animation of The Lion King. The film does not include any human characters yet it appropriates sonic elements of “African music.” This effectively conveys the contradictory message that Africa is uninhabited by human beings and that the music (which somehow exists without people) can be used by Western composers to make an otherwise traditional Hollywood film score more titillating. The result is that many fans of The Lion King and other films of its ilk, equate such soundtracks with “African music.” To be clear, it was written by German composer Hans Zimmer, with songs by British musician Elton John and British lyricist Tim Rice. Zimmer did include South African producer Lebohang “Lebo M.” Morake in arranging some songs and performing the opening “chant,” but does his participation qualify the soundtrack as “African music”? Or is it tokenizing to cherry pick then modify excerpts of “traditional” sounding songs and Zulu words to fit Western musical conventions? Notably, the “Africa” created in The Lion King is widely celebrated for its music. The soundtrack won Academy Awards, Grammy Awards, and Golden Globe Awards and, with over 7 million copies sold, was the best-selling soundtrack to an animated film in the United States. Thus millions of people are familiar with its music, and with the “Africa” it pedals—where animals sing in Zulu (a language spoken by people in Southern Africa), use Kiswahili names and

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EXPLORE Languages of Africa

words (an entirely different language spoken by people in Eastern and Central Africa), and speak English (for the convenience of anglophone audiences), all while blissfully navigating the unpopulated expanse of wild nature.

BAND AID AFRICA A third stereotype promoted through music is that “Africa” is a land of endless suffering. And, more importantly, that the West can, indeed should, help. The current explosive popularity of music projects to “aid” “Africa” traces back to the 1984 Band Aid project in which a group of European musicians released “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” as a fundraiser for anti-famine efforts in Ethiopia. Band Aid exposes a number of critical issues about musical humanitarianism. First, the lyrics describe “Africa”—not Ethiopia, or better yet, specific provinces of Ethiopia that supported the Tigray People’s Liberation Front—as a pitiful wasteland: There’s a world outside your window and it’s a world of dread and fear. Where the only water flowing is the bitter sting of tears. Where the Christmas bells that are ringing are the clanging chimes of doom. Well, tonight thank God it’s them instead of you. And later: And there won’t be snow in Africa this Christmas time.

The greatest gift they’ll get this year is life.

Where nothing ever grows, no rains nor rivers flow.

Do they know it’s Christmastime at all?

(Lyrics cited in Hall, Bruce S., Ami V. Shah, and Edward R. Carr.

“Bono, Band-Aid, and Before: Celebrity Humanitarianism,

Music and the Objects of its Action,” in Andrews, G. J.,

Kingsbury, P. and Kearns, R. A. Soundscapes of

Wellbeing in Popular Music (Burlington, VT:

Ashgate, 2014))

Despite the fact that Band Aid’s “Africa” is geographically inaccurate (there are many abundant agricultural epicenters, flowing rivers, and tropical rainforests on the continent) and wildly offensive (clanging chimes of doom?! Ignorance of Christmas after five centuries of Christianization?!), millions of Western consumers accept this description because it affirms the longestablished narrative of poverty, suffering, helplessness, and need. And they are prepared to help. Indeed, through album sales and related Live Aid concert events, this project raised $174 million and brought significant awareness to “starving Ethiopians” on the world stage.

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But what are the impacts of such projects? For its part Band Aid promoted false and damaging stereotypes about “Africa” and “Africans” and reinforced the notion of Western superiority and charity. Worse, because the project was driven by pity for “helpless” Africans rather than by factual understanding of the famine, it actually did real harm. Specifically, the 1983–85 famine in Ethiopia was linked to a conflict between the Tigray People’s Liberation Front and Ethiopia’s dictatorial government. By increasing food aid to Ethiopia without understanding this, Band Aid and the Western governments it pressured into humanitarian action supported a dictatorial regime and extended the conflict (scholars estimate by roughly two years, which significantly impeded and delayed what was eventually one of the only successful transitions from dictatorship to self-governance on the continent). Unfortunately actual facts, history, politics, geography, language, or cultural practices continue to be overlooked when superstars or celebrities present simplified accounts of suffering, poverty, and war in “Africa.” Thus projects like Band Aid—which was revived in 2004 to benefit Sudan and again in 2014 to fight Ebola in Sierra Leone—continue to influence what people believe about the continent and the actions they take to “help.”

“African Music” Of course not all engagement with music on the continent promotes stereotypes. There are scholars and musicians who study African musical traditions with rigor and respect. By the mid twentieth century, critical cultural anthropologists, folklorists, and ethnomusicologists began challenging ideas of scientific racism, even helping debunk some of them. Many took interest in learning specific African musical traditions, with focus on aesthetic elements and the significance of music in culture and social organizing and have published studies that reveal the complexities of African musical practices. Popular audiences likewise continue to gain increased appreciation for “African music” through the promotion of “world music.” And yet, studying or even talking about “African music” is still riddled with problems: What should music from the continent be called? How should it be labeled? Which music counts? Which does not? And who gets to decide? For that matter, what actually makes music “African”? Or “African enough”? Such questions are the source of heated debate among scholars, musicians, and producers. Some find the term “African music” accurately describes aesthetic and performance practices that link musical traditions across the continent. Others argue it lumps distinct traditions together and perpetuates the notion that Africa is a homogenous rather than diverse place. Some refer to the national origin (e.g. Ghanaian or Namibian) of a genre, artist, or group. Others insist this prioritizes political boundaries violently imposed by colonial governments and diminishes other aspects of identity, such as ethnicity or language, that are often more important within African communities. Many scholars do refer to specific ethnic groups (e.g. Kpele or Kinande). But even this

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raises the criticism that certain groups get disproportionate attention (often for arbitrary reasons of a scholar’s linguistic competence or institutional priorities) and are thus viewed as more important than others. Then there is the issue of sound. What makes something sound “African”? Why is American singer-songwriter Paul Simon’s Graceland considered “African” when albums like Tout partout, Greenlight, or Les voix Bulgaires by Kongo composer and pianist Ray Lema are frequently described as not really “African”? Paul Simon did include South African musicians on the album, but Ray Lema is a Congolese national trained in many forms of music including indigenous central and west African traditions, Western classical music, and jazz. Yet his music somehow does not sound “African” enough for audiences in Europe and the United States whose expectations are conditioned by “world music” (or other musical “Africas”). At the same time, many African audiences reject “world music” productions that manipulate instruments to eliminate “buzzing” sounds or “correct” pitch to make them sound “cleaner” and more relatable to global audiences. To them such recordings compromise key aesthetic elements and do not accurately represent their music. So what, then, does “African music” sound like? And who gets to decide? If such questions are vexing even in forums with ample space for debate they are exponentially so when constrained to a textbook chapter. With such limited space what information about “African music” can and should be included? What can and should be excluded? Who has the authority to write it? What, exactly, are you expected to learn? And why?

THE LION’S GRIOT Whereas it is clearly unreasonable—and arguably unethical—to try to represent “African music” in a short chapter, it is plausible to learn a bit about Africa through music. As indicated previously, music can be a powerful source of information and perspectives that contradict dominant narratives about the continent. It simply depends on what we listen to, for as the proverb says, history will glorify the hunter until the lion has his own griot. That is to say dominant groups will control what is accepted as “truth” until someone tells another side of the story. Notably, according to the proverb, that someone is a griot—an oral historian or memory keeper who, in many African cultures, is also a musician. The role of the griot in this proverb is both literal and symbolic. There are ethnic groups on the continent with griot traditions that date back centuries and include complex musical and political practices passed from generation to generation. Musicians who are not born into griot families sometimes assume the role of griot more symbolically, for example by serving as musical ambassadors, becoming the voice of a movement, or pioneering creative ways to transmit historical information through song. For many such artists, assuming these roles is a way of raising awareness about issues, influencing politics, and combatting stereotypes about the continent.

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“Mama Africa” and the “Black President” Despite not seeing herself as a “political musician,” South African singer Miriam Makeba is a prime example of a musical figure who assumes the role of the proverbial lion’s griot. With the success of songs such as “Pata Pata” and “Qongqothwane” (known as “The Click Song” by those who struggle with its Xhosa title), she played a key role in popularizing South African music in the United States and Europe. She was the first African recording artist to win a Grammy Award (for her 1965 album with Harry Belafonte, An Evening with Belafonte/Makeba), and her songs frequently appeared on Billboard charts (in 1967 “Pata Pata” reached the top ten R&B singles). But Makeba is most celebrated for the role she played in the struggle against the apartheid regime (1948–1994), which perpetrated severe racism and violence against Black South Africans. It was Makeba who popularized Vuyisile  Mini’s song “Ndod’emnyama” (Beware Verwoerd), which is a warning to apartheid mastermind and then prime minister Henrik Verwoerd that Black people would not submit to his increasingly abusive policies. With its blunt lyrics—Look out, Verwoerd, the Black man is going to get you/Look out, Verwoerd, the people have taken up the song—“Ndod’emnyama” became a staple in South Africa’s arsenal of protest songs and was often sung during confrontations with police. After the Sharpeville Massacre in 1960, Makeba began using her fame to speak out against the South African government and performed increasingly political songs, including Hugh Masekela’s “Soweto Blues,” which condemns the massacre of hundreds of students in the 1976 Soweto Uprising. Miriam Makeba and Stokely Carmichael. Source: STR/AFP/ Getty Images.

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LISTENING GUIDE 8.2

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MIRIAM MAKEBA NDOD’EMNYAMA (BEWARE VERWOERD)

LISTEN

ISTEN TO THIS RECORDING several times. The first time, familiarize yourself with the lyrics: Nans'indod' emnyama Verwoerd Nans'indod' emnyama Verwoerd Nans'indod' emnyama Verwoerd Nans'indod' emnyama Verwoerd Pasopa nansi'ndod' emnyama Verwoerd Pasopa nansi'ndod' emnyama Verwoerd Pasopa nansi'ndod' emnyama Verwoerd Pasopa nansi'ndod' emnyama Verwoerd literal translation: here is the black man, Verwoerd! watch out, here is the black man, Verwoerd! translation, taking into account political context and meaning: Look out, Verwoerd, the Black man is going to get you Look out, Verwoerd, the people have taken up the song

The second time consider how the song’s structure (two alternating verses, set to a repeating melody that is supported by a harmonic progression consisting of three chords [I IV V]) is particularly well-suited to being learned quickly and then sung by larger groups of people at, say, protests. The third time through, think about how powerfully insistent the message of this song is—the economy of lyrical content and the compact musical form, repeated again and again, combine to drive the point home. Think also about how singing together in this way marks time (memorializes), creates relation (bonds community), and produces political courage (mobilizes).

AFROBEAT A style of popular music incorporating elements of African music and jazz, soul, and funk. JÙJÚ A form of Nigerian popular music associated with the Yoruba that combines electric instruments with indigenous drums and percussion. HIGHLIFE A form of urban-popular dance-band music of Ghana; also played in Nigeria and elsewhere in West Africa.

It is for these songs, for her role in the Civil Rights and Black Power movements, and for her contributions to pan-African liberation efforts on the continent that Makeba earned the title “Mama Africa” and continues to be the subject of musical theatre productions, films, and materials commemorating the pivotal role music played in South Africa’s fight against oppression. Another iconic figure to play the lion’s griot was Nigerian musician, composer, and political activist Fela Kuti. He was the pioneer of Afrobeat, a genre that combines highlife and jùjú music with funk and jazz and became  extremely popular in Nigeria and other parts of West Africa by the 1970s. Sonically Afrobeat relies on complex interlocking rhythmic patterns and thick  instrumentation including drums and other percussion instruments,  horns, guitars, keyboards, and vocals. Among Fela’s musical trademarks are long tracks (his recorded tracks regularly exceed ten minutes; in live performance songs often lasted upwards of 40 minutes) and extended introductions, with danceable grooves layered beneath tightly orchestrated

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Fela Kuti performing with Egypt 80. Source: Ebet Roberts/Redferns/Getty Images.

horn parts and lengthy solos before the lead vocals enter (in “Zombie,” which is an iconic example of Fela’s Afrobeat, he does not start singing until 05:20). For Fela, every aspect of music making was political. His complex polyrhythms are a defiant assertion of precolonial African heritage, the funk and jazz influences a sonic tribute to the radical Black thought he imbibed during his time in the United States. And then there are the lyrics. Fela’s songs are a veritable diatribe against the social, economic, and political impacts of colonialism that he saw oppressing Africa. In some songs, like “Expensive Shit,” he takes deeply personal incidents as a springboard to critique corrupt politicians and military leaders (in this case it was the failed attempt to plant a joint on Fela and imprison him for multiple years). In others, like “Water No Get Enemy,” he reflects on the seething anger fueled by social inequality through proverbs (in this case about the inevitable eventual triumph of the laws of nature). There are also songs, like “Zombie”— which he composed after nearly 1,000 soldiers ransacked his compound, beat, assaulted, and imprisoned him and his band members, and threw his ailing mother out a window—that launch a scathing invective against African leaders (both political and military) who mimic colonial violence. Like many of Fela’s popular hits, “Zombie” encapsulates a common phenomenon in accessible language and became somewhat of a rallying cry for activist youth. Indeed there were riots in both Nigeria and Ghana when Fela performed it. It is for this brand of pan-Africanist activism that Fela was nicknamed the “Black President.” Potent as they are, the aesthetics and content of Fela’s music were, in some ways, a soundtrack to the political persona he embodied as the contradictory figure who, for example, established a commune and tried to secede from the

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COLONIALISM A structure of conquest and control in which one country gains political power over another through economic, social, and cultural exploitation, usually in pursuit of natural resources.

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LISTENING GUIDE 8.3

FELA KUTI ZOMBIE

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ISTEN TO THE FIRST 5 minutes of the track. Here Fela relies on the groove developed by his rhythm section to provide a vehicle for sax and trumpet solos and tight brass arrangements. At 5:20, Fela begins to sing, alternating in call-and-response style with his chorus. The lyrics are profoundly political and serve as an indictment of the behavior of those in power (including both politicians and the military). And throughout this masterpiece of Afrobeat, the band comes in and out to punctuate the power of the lyrics. Zombie o, zombie (Zombie o, zombie) Zombie o, zombie (Zombie o, zombie) Zombie no go go, unless you tell am to go (Zombie) Zombie no go stop, unless you tell am to stop (Zombie) Zombie no go turn, unless you tell am to turn (Zombie) Zombie no go think, unless you tell am to think (Zombie) Notice, too, that the entire 12:25 of the recording features a static harmonic structure centered around a G minor tonality (basically one chord). What makes this work and remain compelling (instead of boring) is the way the song is arranged. So, for example, listen to how the bass guitar drops out from time to time. When it returns to the mix, it does so to new musical possibilities (either because the horns do something new or because the vocalists add a new wrinkle to their call and response relationship with Fela’s vocals). Let’s see how this works in the next few sections of the song: At 6:12 the bass and drum kit drop out of the mix. It’s just Fela singing over the guitars and percussion. Tell am to go straight A joro, jara, joro No break, no job, no sense A joro, jara, joro Tell am to go kill A joro, jara, joro No break, no job, no sense A joro, jara, joro Tell am to go quench A joro, jara, joro No break, no job, no sense A joro, jara, joro At 6:33 the bass returns, along with the drum kit, and the chorus takes over in prominence, singing “joro jara joro,” while Fela calls out orders. Go and kill! (Joro, jara, joro) Go and die! (Joro, jara, joro) Go and quench! (Joro, jara, joro) Put am for reverse! (Joro, jara, joro)

continued

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At 6:55 the bass and drums kit drop out again, and it’s just Fela singing over guitars and percussion. Joro, jara, joro, zombie wey na one way

Joro, jara, joro, zombie wey na one way

Joro, jara, joro, zombie wey na one way

Joro, jara, joro

At 7:13 everyone is back in, and the horns add their voices to the mix for the first time in a while, creating a powerful new texture and renewed energy that drives the song forward. Attention! (Zombie)

Quick march!

Slow march! (Zombie)

Left turn!

Right turn! (Zombie)

About turn!

Double up! (Zombie)

Salute!

Open your hat! (Zombie)

Stand at ease!

Fall in! (Zombie)

Fall out!

Fall down! (Zombie)

Get ready!

Halt!

Order!

Dismiss!

These musical strategies for arranging the band continue throughout the rest of the track as well.

state of Nigeria, petitioned to run for president, advocated for women’s rights yet married twenty-seven women in a day, and was, simultaneously, a scourge of Nigeria’s government and military as well as a champion of people’s rights.

Presidents d’Afrique Another approach to playing the lion’s griot is to revive forgotten histories. After decades of fighting for liberation, in 1960 seventeen African countries gained independence from European colonization. This monumental political achievement represents the efforts of generations of African leaders, intellectuals, and activists. Yet despite the magnitude of their accomplishments, their stories are not frequently featured (or even included) in lessons about “African history.” This presents a problem, for without learning about the strategies employed by the influential figures who preceded them, subsequent generations struggle to build on past legacies.

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EXPLORE

BOX 8.1 INDEPENDENCE 1960

See a complete list of national independence dates across Africa

EXPLORE The album Presidents d’Afrique

SABAR DRUMS A traditional instrument of Serer origin, and important within Senegal and the Gambia. KORA A twenty-one-string bridge harp played by Mande jalolu.

Benin Burkina Faso Cameroon Central African Republic Chad Congo Côte d’Ivoire DR Congo Gabon

Madagascar Mali Mauritania Niger Nigeria Senegal Somalia Togo

To combat this trend, Didier Awadi’s 2010 album Presidents d’Afrique (African Presidents) celebrates key figures in recent African history. Its twenty-one tracks feature their voices and ideas and, simultaneously, question why, fifty years after independence, they are not more widely known. This is both a political and a sonic project. Beyond merely adding hip-hop beats to excerpts of historic speeches, the tracks on Presidents d’Afrique integrate musical clues through which listeners can decipher lessons about history, aesthetics, and culture. If they know what to listen for. Instruments, voices, and genres are one obvious set of clues. Historically, focusing on such categories has contributed to questionable ideas about “African music”—in some cases exaggerating the exotic, in others creating illusions of distinct or rigid categories, in still other cases it has enabled Western scholars to sidestep the political implications of studying music from the continent. Presidents d’Afrique challenges these trends. Many tracks on the album freely integrate a diverse range of instruments. For example, “Dans mon reve” (track 2) features Doudou N’diaye Rose playing sabar drums; “On na plus le choix” (track 10) and “Oser inventer l’avenir” (track 11) feature Noumoucounda Cissoko playing kora; “Ensemble” (track 14) features Freddy Massamba playing “pygmy flutes” (which he imitates by using bottles). All these instruments could be classified as “traditional”—the seven drums of the sabar family, the West African harp, the reed flutes (and glass bottles) all play important roles in West and Central African musical traditions and sound worlds. But their seamless integration with digital beats and other genres disrupts the false binary between “traditional” vs. “popular” and emphasizes instead the diversity of instruments through which African musicians communicate their messages. Similarly, Presidents d’Afrique integrates multiple genres and, in many cases, the voices of historically significant musicians. “Ce qui nous lie” (track 19), for example, features the Serer style singing of Yandé Codou Sène, who was the official griot to Senegalese president Léopold Senghor (1906–2001). Her rich vocal improvisations are a reminder of the intricacies and power of griot traditions and their influence on culture and politics in many parts of

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Patrice Lumumba in Congo in 1960. Source: Dominique BERRETTY/Gamma-Rapho/ Getty Images.

the continent. There are also many varieties of hip-hop—from South Africa (track 3), Kenya (track 9), Mali (track 10), Senegal (track 12), Tanzania (track 13), Congo (track 14), Mozambique (track 15), Burkina Faso (track 16), and Guinea (track 17). Some of these, like the Tanzanian Bongo Flava audible on track 13, have distinct names that denote their integration of local “popular” and “traditional” instruments, rhythms, and aesthetics. All of them reflect the robust engagement with hip-hop among African artists. Collectively the range of instruments, voices, and genres on Presidents d’Afrique pushes us to ponder how fluidly diverse styles of “African music” integrate and interact, and to notice how they defy clean classification into categories that foster illusions that “pristine” Africa is different from “urban” Africa. Instead the sounds cohere around the larger purpose of communicating a message in a complex Africa in which diverse landscapes and musics coexist with equally diverse politics and histories. Melodies, harmonies, and rhythms are another clue. Let’s take a closer look at “Ensemble” (track 14) in order to explore these ideas. For perspective on the significance of reviving Lumumba’s voice in song: three months into his first term, Lumumba was shot and his body was dissolved in acid as a warning to African leaders who aspired to assert control over their resources. Often called “the most important assassination of the twentieth century,” Lumumba’s murder was an effort to eradicate the idea of economic autonomy in Africa. Following Lumumba’s assassination, an ally of the West, Mobutu Sese Seko, was put in power in Congo. For thirty-two years he maintained a dictatorial regime with the robust support of the United States, Belgium, and other Western nations, all of whom continued—and still continue—to exploit Congo’s resources. Only in 2002 (and after much pressure) did Belgium offer an official apology and acknowledge its role in

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BONGO FLAVA A style in dialogue with hip-hop that developed in Tanzania during the 1990s. Additional influences are incorporated from reggae, R&B, afrobeat, dancehall, and traditional Tanzanian styles such as taarab and dansi.

LISTEN “Independence Cha Cha”

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LISTENING GUIDE 8.4

“ENSEMBLE” DIDIER AWADI

LISTEN

T

HE GUITAR PART in the opening section of “Ensemble” (track 14) quotes “Independence Cha Cha,” written by Joseph Kabasele to celebrate Congo’s independence from Belgium. This song, which was adopted as an unofficial independence anthem by many African nations, is a symbol of the optimism of an era. Fittingly, it accompanies the voice of Congo’s first prime minister, Patrice Lumumba (1925–1961), articulating his vision of Congo’s bright future as he officially proclaimed the nation’s independence on 30 June 1960 (0:00–01:14). This section also includes the iconic sound of “pygmy flutes.” Interweaving them with the melody of “Independence Cha Cha” and Lumumba’s fiery words about African autonomy subtly rebukes the long history of Western fascination with—and occasional appropriation of—pygmy music by placing it in a distinctly Congolese context. But like the optimism of the independence era, this celebratory melody and instrumentation are short lived. When, beginning at 01:15, Lumumba recalls the insults, violence, and oppression that Congolese overcame, the bass guitar enters, launching a chord progression that accompanies the story of Congo’s gruesome political history. Through their verses, Awadi (02:24–03:04) and Congolese rapper and activist Lexxus Legal (03:24–03:43) recount the story of Lumumba, an anticolonial and pan-Africanist leader who, by age thirty-five, was among the most powerful opponents to Western hegemony over Africa and had the political integrity to act on his views. Awadi calls Lumumba “number one” for leading the fight to restore control of African resources to African nations; he calls Congo “number one” because it sourced the materials (rubber, copper, tin, etc.) used to industrialize Europe and the United States. Awadi also reminds listeners that “Belgium . . . and the CIA . . . did not want [Lumumba] as number one” because his determination to control his nation’s raw materials—including uranium—was a threat to European countries and the United States that sought to maintain control over African economies and resources even after independence. (For perspective, the French treasury still guarantees the currencies of fourteen former west and central African colonies.) As Cold War tensions escalated through the 1950s, Western governments feared Lumumba might sell minerals to Soviet countries. So Belgium and the United States had him assassinated. Throughout this song, the music adds its own dimension to Lumumba’s story. Starting at 01:49, for example, the guitar plays a sebene, which is the celebratory dance section of a Congolese rumba. This rhythm, which Awadi echoes in his rap, infuses a kind of aspirational optimism into the song and underscores Awadi and Legal’s commitment to honoring Lumumba’s legacy. The vocal harmonies also make a point. While Lumumba’s assassination was described by Western media as the result of “ethnic war” that erupted because Congolese were “incapable” of selfgovernance, “Ensemble” resists the notion that Congo’s struggles are rooted in “ethnic tensions.” Not only do the lyrics emphasize the political context of Lumumba’s death, but the song also integrates the voices of ethnically and stylistically diverse artists. In this sense Fredy Massamba’s traditional Kintwadi­ style singing from southwest Congo and Congo Brazzaville (01:30–01:47), like the rap of Legal, and the harmonies that build through each iteration of the chorus can be heard as a sonic articulation of Lumumba’s message of unity. Lumumba’s death. The CIA continues to deny any responsibility despite proof of its collaboration with Belgium. And Congo’s ongoing economic wars, which have claimed more than 8 million lives, continue to be represented as “ethnic” or “civil” rather than “economic” conflicts.

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Storytelling is a third clue. Musicians, including rappers, often serve as historians and storytellers as evidenced by previous references to griot traditions. Such is the case in “La patrie ou la morte” (track 10), in which Awadi and Burkinabe rapper and activist Smokey celebrate Thomas Sankara (1949–1987), or, as they say in the chorus, “sing” (meaning honor) the “father of Burkina Faso” through lyrics that convey crucial aspects of Sankara’s legacy. They call Sankara “father of Burkina Faso” because in 1983, at age thirty-three, he took control over the Upper Volta Region in a coup, replacing its French colonial name with Burkina Faso (“land of incorruptible/upright/ honorable people”) to reflect his political vision. Sankara also fought for economic autonomy—by redistributing land and compensating farmers, he made Burkina Faso food sufficient within three years, significantly reducing its dependence on Europe. He also expunged corruption, reduced salaries of overpaid government officials (including his own, which he set at $450 per month), sold off the state’s luxury automobiles and mansions, and reduced the discrepancy between wealthy and poor that was instituted under colonial rule. They call Sankara “revolutionary” because of the ways he improved social welfare in Burkina Faso. He supported the construction of more than 350 new schools; implanted educational programs that increased the literacy rate from

African Americans picket outside United Nations building, protesting United Nations action in Congo, at time of Lumumba’s death. Source: Al Fenn/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images.

The President of Burkina Faso, Thomas Sankara. Source: Alain MINGAM/Gamma-Rapho/ Getty Images.

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SEBENE The Sebene is a kind of instrumental bridge typically executed on the electric guitar and is a characteristic element of the Congolese rumba. CONGOLESE RUMBA A popular genre of dance music which originated in the Congo basin during the 1940s, deriving from Cuban son. The style gained popularity throughout Africa during the 1960s and 1970s. ODIOUS DEBT In economic theory, the practice of canceling national debt incurred by dictators. In practice, these nations often continue to carry the load of debt so as to not diminish their international standing. Often, colonizing nations claimed colonies had accrued debts during colonization that needed to be repaid after independence, thus reinforcing a cycle of economic dependence. IMPERIALISM The political framework in which one nation seeks to exert power over another through direct or indirect seizure of geographic, political,and cultural territories; the foundation for colonialism.

13% in 1983 to 73% by 1987; introduced public health programs that vastly reduced infant mortality rates; hired local communities to construct medical dispensaries in every village; built a railway system to connect the entire country—without any foreign aid or financing; and planted over 10 million trees to combat desertification in the Sahel. They call Sankara “visionary” for his stance on gender. Central to his initiatives was Sankara’s staunch belief in the equality of women, whom he viewed as being doubly oppressed for, in his words, under colonialism “women experience the same suffering as men . . . and are subjected to additional suffering  by men.” To support women’s rights, Sankara outlawed forced marriage, polygamy, and excision; invested in women’s education including for pregnant students; appointed women to high government posts and recruited them into the army. He also mandated men share in domestic duties and, famously, required men to perform all household tasks on international women’s day. They call Sankara a “combatant” for his effort to galvanize African nations against the repayment of odious debt. As president, he refused foreign aid and instead nationalized Burkina Faso’s land and resources to avert the power and influence of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, reversing the path of odious debt imposed by colonialism. In his infamous speech to the African Union on Foreign Debt in July 1987, he said, under its current form, which is controlled by imperialism, debt is a cleverly managed reconquest of Africa, aiming at subjugating its growth and development through foreign rules. Thus, each one of us becomes the financial slave, which is to say a true slave. And Awadi and Smokey decry the evils of imperialism and neocolonialism because three months after delivering this speech and vowing to sustain Burkina Faso’s independence from Western financial institutions, Sankara was assassinated and Blaise Compaoré, who was put in power after Sankara’s death, reversed Sankara’s economic policies (with help from the International Monetary Fund, France, and the United States). Awadi and Smokey tell Sankara’s story as they do to refute Compaoré’s portrayal of Sankara as an autocrat who jeopardized the country’s relationship with its former colonizer, France. But the song does more than broadcast a message about Sankara, it also provides an example of the sonic aesthetic of the revolutionary hip hop that was growing in popularity in Africa when Presidents d’Afrique was produced—driving bass lines, aggressive beats, ominous vamps, distorted electronic instruments, confrontational lyrics, etc. This is a style of hip-hop that increasingly intersects with politics. In Senegal, for example, a group of rappers and journalists mobilized enough voters to determine the 2012 elections. And, informed by their example, Smokey—who sings in this track of reviving Sankara’s political projects (02:23–03:04)—played a vocal role in the 2014 uprising that ousted Compaoré from power after his twenty-seven years as dictator.

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Political cartoon by South African artist Zapiro. Source: Zakira.

These are but a few of the lessons embedded in Presidents d’Afrique. Individually the sounds on this album convey significant information, as do the stories of the leaders who strove to change the course of the continent’s social, political, and economic history. Collectively these sounds and stories underscore the album’s most emphatic point: that Africa is impoverished, not poor.

THE OTHER HALF OF THE SKY May my eyes never see and my feet never take me to a society where half the people are held in silence. I hear the roar of women’s silence. I sense the rumble of their storm and feel the fury of their revolt.  The roar of silence Sankara notes in this quote is symbolized by the absence of female political figures on Presidents d’Afrique, which, in turn, reflects the fact that women have historically not been featured, much less recorded in such forums. But that does not by any means reflect a shortage of powerful, influential women on the African continent. Indeed in most domains—politics, economics, business, engineering, agriculture, education, medicine, civil society work, art, and more—women do indeed, as Sankara famously declared, “hold up the other half of the sky.” Take, for example, the movement Women in Liberia Mass Action for Peace, which ended the Second Liberian Civil War in 2003 through sit ins, sex strikes, and barricading heads of state in talks until they signed peace accords. Or take Kenyan environmental activist Wangari Maathai, whose contributions to sustainable development and East African politics won her a Nobel Prize in

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Women in Liberia organizing for peace in 2017, a continual force in Liberian politics since the Civil War. Source: ZOOM DOSSO/AFP/Getty Images.

2004. Or take Synergie des femmes pour les victimes des violences sexuelles, a network of thirty-five women’s organizations in the Democratic Republic of the Congo that galvanized enough political power to pass a bill recognizing rape as a crime in 2006 and, at great risk, holds warlords, politicians, and members of the United Nations accountable for their use of rape as a weapon of war. These achievements, while impressive, are merely a few recent examples proving that throughout the African continent women play powerful—if often unsung—roles in all domains of life. Including music. Indeed there are countless ways women participate in music making in public and private spaces—as griots, stars, and divas, as community organizers and educators, as composers, conductors, entrepreneurs, and executives, and more. There is much to be learned by studying the many intersections of gender and sound on the continent. Yet, like all aspects of “African music,” there is no single or comprehensive way to approach “women and music in Africa.” In keeping with the larger aim of this chapter, it is more productive to explore some of the influential roles women from the continent play through their music, to hear how their voices and stories intersect with larger issues of politics, economics, and history, and to see how they contribute to shaping perceptions of “Africa.”

Remain in Light When the Talking Heads released Remain in Light in 1980, there was controversy about whether or not it had African roots. Members of the band and their producer acknowledged taking inspiration from Fela Kuti (and

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from the book African Rhythm and African Sensibilities by ethnomusicologist John Miller Chernoff), but much of their primary audience—white Americans and Europeans—still considered it rock music. In fact, when Beninese singer Anjelique Kidjo told fellow students at her music school in Paris that she clearly heard African influences in “Once in a Lifetime,” they ostensibly told her it was “too sophisticated” to be African. So in 2016, she released her remake of Remain in Light to address the question of “African music” head on. Like many albums, Remain in Light has musical clues embedded in its musical sounds as well as its lyrics. On the most obvious level, by augmenting the original album’s electronic sounds with acoustic drums, guitars, and horns, Kidjo makes the strong influence of Afrobeat undeniably audible, thus addressing the issue of genre. She also emphasizes the songs’ “Africanness” with iconic instruments, harmonies, and rhythms: “Once in a Lifetime” includes tama drums (sometimes called “talking drums” for their ability to modulate pitch and mimic human speech) and djembes; “Crosseyed and Painless” is driven by a clave (a rhythmic pattern found in music from Africa and its diaspora); “Seen and Not Seen” incorporates “traditional” vocal harmonies sung by Fon women. Call and response, which is also associated with “African music,” is another foundational element of this album. “Once in a Lifetime,” for instance, begins with a literal call and response, with instruments and vocals punctuating each phrase Kidjo sings (0–00:24). Symbolically the juxtaposition of distinct styles— such as the “traditional” vocal harmonies vs. the spoken text in “Seen and Not Seen”—also suggests a metaphoric call and response between genres and styles. In fact, the whole album could be heard as representing a much larger call and response between globally popular genres of music and what Kidjo hears as their deep African roots. Indeed by including “African” instruments and harmonies, by highlighting the influence of afrobeat, Kidjo is not at all suggesting that Remain in Light is not also rock music. Instead, through this album, she reinforces the point that many globally popular genres—blues, jazz, rock, funk, R&B, etc.—in fact have undeniably African roots. For Kidjo this is both a musical and a political issue. Throughout the album she draws parallels between the African sounds at the heart of globally popular genres (for which African artists do not always receive credit) and the African resources at the heart of global industries (for which African nations also do not receive compensation). When she sings “Congo,” a capella, at the very beginning of the first track, “Born Under Punches,” she is referring to the war in Congo, which is fueled by multinational corporations that extract minerals to produce technological devices. This word, eventually accompanied by percussion, strings, and horns, becomes the pulse of the song, which she approaches as a critique of the

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Angélique Kidjo. Album cover

TAMA DRUM The tama is a “talking drum,” or a drum whose pitch can be regulated. The player puts the tama under one shoulder and beats the tama with a curved stick held in the other hand. Similar instruments are found throughout. DJEMBE A kind of goblet drum played with bare hands, originally from West Africa. CALL AND RESPONSE Musical phrases that alternate between two different performers or performing groups in such a way that it sounds like one group is answering the other. A CAPELLA Without instrumental accompaniment.

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NEOLIBERAL CAPITALISM An economic model based on the unlimited and unequal amassing of wealth, and emphasizing deregulation of industry, companies, and private investors. The widespread adoption of this model has resulted in the transfer of power from the public to private sectors, and has necessitated the creation of a network of economic, political, and cultural processes in order to hold this system together. MENTAL COLONIZATION The internalized attitude of ethnic or cultural inferiority felt by people as a consequence of colonization.

LISTENING GUIDE 8.5

devastating impacts of imperialism, neocolonialism, and unchecked capitalism. Riffing on the original lyric that “fire cannot hurt a . . . Government Man” with Fon proverbs about the dangers of fire if it is not controlled, she condemns the silence and impunity with which governments and corporations wage, in Congo, the deadliest humanitarian conflict since World War II. The track “Houses in Motion” offers similar critiques of neoliberal capitalism and environmental destruction, also through added lyrics that reframe the original text. If calling out political injustice is part of Kidjo’s objective, so, too, is suggesting alternatives, which she does in the spirit of Afrofuturism. For example, to preface the spoken lyrics about transforming one’s appearance to mirror societal ideals, “Seen and Not Seen” opens with Fon and Yoruba vocals about self-appreciation and beauty. Kidjo’s specific concern in this song is the deadly practice of skin bleaching that many women in Africa adopt to appear attractive in a racist world that conflates whiteness with beauty—a painful reminder of the lingering psychological impacts of mental colonization. By asserting her voice in languages, melodies, harmonies, and rhythms that have been disparaged or exoticized as “African” to sustain Western hegemony, Kidjo invites listeners to imagine an “Africa” that draws on the riches of its past to build its future on its own terms.

Soul is Heavy We have established that “African music” can be political because of a musician’s public profile, for reasons of genre, instrumentation, and voice, for the melodies, harmonies, and rhythms it embraces or eschews, for the stories it tells and how it tells them. It is also important to note that “African music” can be political for reasons of identity—for exposing intimate, poignant, or mundane portraits that contrast centuries of stereotypes and racist caricatures that reduce “Africans” to one-dimensional, minimally human byproducts of the global lust for wealth and power. (Recall, if you will, the words of Wainaina . . .)

ANGELIQUE KIDJO: REMAIN IN LIGHT

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REFERABLY, YOU’LL LISTEN to this entire album and compare it to the Talking Heads album that it reframes. At the very least, listen comparatively to both versions of “Born Under Punches,” “Seen and Not Seen,” and “Once in a Lifetime,” and make note of the ways that Kidjo rearticulates these tunes and reshapes them, revealing the profound African roots at the foundation of the Talking Heads’ project. But listen also for another, more political intervention she is making here—listen as she drives home the point that what is “African” about music is not only (or merely) quantifiable in aesthetic terms but also requires attention to the perspective that artists bring to the sounds they are producing. Her lyrical interpolations into these well-known songs help us to hear beyond the notes, so to speak, and invite us into her unique perspective. 

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It is in this sense that Nigerian singer-songwriter Nneka’s 2012 album Soul is Heavy is politically potent. Track by track it explores universally human experiences—doubt (“Lucifer”), insecurity and loneliness (“My Home”), love (“Shining Star”), heartbreak and optimism (“Restless”), healing (“Don’t Even Think”), forgiveness (“J”), longing and confusion (“Stay”), outrage (“Soul is Heavy”), nostalgia (“Do You Love Me Now”), indignation (“V.I.P.”), anger (“Camouflage”), faith, (“God Knows Why”), determination (“Still I Rise”), and so forth. Through personal stories, reflections, and confessions, Nneka presents the listener with a portrait of her humanity in all its glory, pain, and messiness. Thought exercise: Listen to and analyze at

least  three tracks on Soul is Heavy. Reflect on

whether you do or do not relate to them and

how/why.

Notably, there is little about this album that sonically signals “African music” in a traditional sense. There are, of course, African roots to the genres the songs draw from, which include reggae, hip hop, R&B, Afrobeat, and highlife. To the culturally astute listener, there are also lyrics in the title track as well as Igbo and Hausa language sections of “Still I Rise” that evoke the continent, specifically Nigeria. But if these references are unfamiliar, the album could just as easily be heard as a geographically indistinct expression of the human experience. Except the music videos complicate things. Some of them (“Shining Star,” “Restless,” “Valley,” and, to a lesser extent, the animations in “Stay”) visually mirror the geographic ambiguity of the music, though they all insistently foreground Black culture and the global Black experience. Others overtly depict Africa. “My Home,” for example, includes scenes from rural and urban Nigeria, showing the exploitation of labor and resources as well as the economic power, ambition, corruption, innovation, and violence that define Lagos, the nation’s largest city. Seeing Nneka inhabit these different domains—as mine worker, business woman, street cleaner, priestess, and more—suggests a second meaning to some of the song’s lyrics. When, for example, she sings “save me now for I am dying,” the traffic and pollution that accompany her words imply she speaks not only as an individual woman but rather as the city, country, or even continent itself. Soul is Heavy is more explicit still. In it, Nneka (sometimes in animated form) projects herself through time and space accompanied by apocalyptic, if abstract, depictions of explosions, mass media campaigns, and corruption connected to the Niger Delta region of Nigeria. Occasional flashes of the Shell Oil logo reference the company’s role in exploiting Nigerian oil, which dates back to 1936. These images, including the United States flag, clarify

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Nneka. Album cover

WATCH Two Music Videos by Nneka

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precisely what she means when she sings, “you are stealing money in my country’s plight.” Historic images of emaciated and exploited oil workers, student protesters, and  forgotten Nigerian activists—including Isaac Boro, Ken Saro Wiwa, and Jaja of Opobo, all of whom were killed for resisting the economic exploitation of Nigeria in different times—accompany the lyric “teacher who knows nothing/do not teach me lies.” In short, as indicated by its dedication, “Remember Ken Saro Wiwa,” a primary aim of this video is to address ongoing political and economic exploitation in part by reviving the legacies of past leaders. Within the larger context of “African music,” Nneka’s insistence in Soul is Heavy that she is “the voice of” Isaac Boro, Ken Saro Wiwa, and Jaja of Opobo, perhaps even the voice of the continent, is a potent message. For, as the tracks collectively suggest, she is also the voice of everywoman. She is a voice of power and fragility, she is the product of her nation’s history. And the fact that her music may or may not sound “African” to some has no bearing on her sense of identity as an African musician. Instead her musical style is a reminder that “Africanness” is often better measured in relation to the larger vicissitudes of global politics than in relation to any particular aesthetic.

Off the Record

TAARAB A music genre popular in Tanzania and Kenya. It is influenced by the musical traditions of the African Great Lakes, North Africa, the

Middle East, and the Indian subcontinent.

The sounds and messages embedded in these albums and videos are but one small measure of the impact women musicians have in Africa. In addition to performing and recording, since 2002 Anjelique Kidjo has been a UNICEF ambassador, she also campaigns for many international organizations, and runs  a  foundation to empower women and girls through education and employment. Nneka has launched a record label to produce independent music in Nigeria and continues to release increasingly political songs, albums, and videos; she has also embarked on humanitarian projects in Nigeria and Sierra Leone. And they are not alone. Malian Wassoulou singer Oumou Sangare, for example, has built a small empire through her musical career and leverages her resources to support women and girls: she owns a popular hotel, which she built in part to act as a role model for women’s economic liberation; she launched a brand of automobile—the Oum Sang—which she markets through the company, Gonow Oum Sang, that she founded to employee Malians, especially women. Similarly, Ugandan musician Halima Namakula, who, in 2000, was the first woman in Uganda to establish a recording studio, built a radio station through which she promotes female artists, addresses women’s issues, and runs educational and vocational trainings to liberate women from sex trafficking and prostitution. And then there are women who refute stereotypes in other ways. As a Taarab singer—indeed the “Queen of Taarab”— Zanzabari-born Tanzanian musician Bi Kidude (born Fatuma Binti Barka) represented a “traditional”

genre and yet defied tradition in many ways that continue to bring attention

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to gendered issues. She fled two abusive forced marriages, spoke out against predatory sexual behavior, and advocated for women’s sexual and reproductive rights. The image Bi Kidude presented to the world was of a free-spirited and defiantly powerful “African” woman. Dressed in traditional fabrics, she often played drums on stage—holding them between her legs, which was considered provocative—to accompany her singing, while also drinking, smoking, and making witty, often sexual, jokes with her audience. Congolese rumba singer Tshala Mwana, who was friends with Sankara, provides an example of the role women musicians sometimes play in politics. In the midst of a politically turbulent period in Congo, she served as a deputy in the nation’s transitional parliamentary assembly, and served as president of the women’s league of one of Congo’s most powerful political parties during the height of its popularity. This is a painfully partial list. But it still makes at least two points worth remembering. One is that there are at least as many ways to understand intersections of gender and sound on the continent as there are women. And the other is that many African musicians do much more than make music. Indeed, not only for the artists listed here, but for scores of other artists on the continent, it is through a combination of music, entrepreneurship, activism, and determination that they hold up the other half of the sky.

SUMMARY Whether or not this chapter does justice to “African music” is for you to decide. It certainly fails to address many important people and practices—there is no discussion of instrument classes or timbre, no mention of sacred rituals or rites, it neglects many of the continent’s most esteemed musical legends. And, even with all of these omissions, it may still raise more questions than it answers, only some of which are even about music or sound. But hopefully it provides some resources for thinking about the snarl of issues that lurk behind the term “African music,” provokes you to think critically about them, and conveys the simple fact that there is no single right way to understand the continent’s music. There are, however, some guiding principles to keep in mind: be aware of the idea of Africa in its many forms; be aware of the power dynamics behind stories of the continent and determine the motivations of those who produce them; remember that history invariably influences what we learn; listen keenly for politics; remember that all stories—including this one—are partial and political. Above all, always question what is being left out. And why. Thought exercise: List ten people, places, or historic events from the continent you would like to learn more about; list ten sources you could use to do so.

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REVIEW CHAPTER RESOURCES

KEY TERMS Ooga Booga Africa Lion King Africa Band Aid Africa Storytelling Economic Autonomy Didier Awadi Angelique Kidjo Nneka Fela Kuti Miriam Makeba

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BIBLIOGRAPHY Agawu, Kofi. Representing African Music: Regional Notes, Queries, Positions. New York and London: Routledge, 2003; Askew, Kelly. Performing the Nation: Swahili Music and Cultural Politics in Tanzania. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2002; Boahen, A. Adu, editor. General History of Africa. Volume 7, Africa under Colonial Domination, 1880–1935. (Unesco General History of Africa.) Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. 1985; De Witt, Ludo. The Assassination of Lumumba. Translated by Ann Wright and Renée Fenby. New York and London: Verso, 2001; Diop, Cheikh Anta. The African Origins of Civilization: Myth or Reality. Translated by Mercer Cook. New York: L. Hill, 1974; Diop, Cheikh Anta, Harold J. Salemson, and Marjolijn De Jager. Civilization or Barbarism. New York: Lawrence Hill Books, 1991; Fanon, Frantz. The Wretched of the Earth. Translated by Richard Philcox. New York: Grove Press, 2005 (reprint edition); Ferguson, James. Global Shadows: Africa in the Neoliberal World Order. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006; Garcia, David F. Listening for Africa: Freedom, Modernity, and the Logic of Black Music’s African Origins. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2017; Gueye, Marame. “Urban Guerrilla Poetry: The Movement Y’ en a Marre and the Socio-Political Influences of Hip Hop in Senegal” The Journal of Pan African Studies 6(3) (2013): 22–42; Hall, Bruce S., Ami V. Shah, and Edward R. Carr. “Bono, Band-Aid, and Before: Celebrity Humanitarianism, Music and the Objects of its Action” in G. J. Andrews, P. Kingsbury, and R. A. Kearns, Eds. Soundscapes of Wellbeing in Popular Music. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2014, 269–288; Henderson, Clara. “‘When Hearts Beat like Native Drums’: Music and the Sexual Dimensions of the Notions of ‘Savage’ and ‘Civilized’ in Tarzan and His Mate, 1934.” Africa Today 48(4) (2001): 91–124; Impey, Angela. Song Walking: Women, Music, and Environmental Justice in an African Borderland. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2018; Mazrui, Ali A., editor. General History of Africa. Volume 8, Africa since 1935. (Unesco General History of Africa.) Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1993; Meintjes, Louise. Dust of the Zulu. Durham, NC: Duke University

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Press, 2017; Mignolo, Walter. The Darker Side of Western Modernity. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011; Monson, Ingrid (Ed.) The African Diaspora: A Musical Perspective. New York: Garland Press, 2000; Ndlovu-Gatsheni, Sabelo J. “Decoloniality as the Future of Africa.” History Compass 13(10) (2015): 485–496; Olaniyan, Tejumola. Arrest the Music: Fela and His Rebel Art and Politics. Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press, 2004; Rodney, Walter. How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. London: Bogle-L’Ouverture Publications, 1972; Sankara, Thomas. “A United Front against the Debt” in Michel Prairie, Ed. Thomas Sankara Speaks: The Burkina Faso Revolution,1983–87. New York: Pathfinder Press, 2007, 373– 382; Sankara, Thomas. Women’s Liberation and the African Freedom Struggle. New York: Pathfinder Press, 1990; Shelemay, Kay Kaufman. “Musical Communities: Rethinking the Collective in Music.” Journal of the American Musicological Society 64(2) (Summer 2011): 349–390; Slobin, Mark (ed.) Global Soundtracks: Worlds of Film Music. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2008; Tenaille, Frank. Music is the Weapon of the Future: Fifty Years of African Popular Music. Chicago, IL: Lawrence Hill Books, 2002; Thiong’o, Ngugi Wa. Something Torn and Something New: An African Renaissance. New York: Basic Civitas Books, 2009; Veal, Michael. Fela: The Life and Times of an African Musical Icon. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2000; Wamba Dia Wamba, Ernest. “Some Remarks on Culture, Development, and Revolution in Africa.” Journal of Historical Sociology 4(3) (1991): 219–235; Wainaina, Binyavanga, “How To Write About Africa,” Granta: The Magazine of New Writing, issue 92: The View from Africa (May 2019). Filmography Amandla: A Revolution in Four Part Harmony Dir. Lee Hirsh, 2003; Bamako Dir. Abderrahmane Sissako, 2007; Finding Fela! Dir. Alex Gibney, 2014; Mama Africa Dir. Mika Kaurismäki, 2011; Music is the Weapon Dir. Jean Jacques Flori, Stephen TchalGadjieff, 1982; Teranga Blues Dir. Moussa Sene Absa, 2007; This Magnificent Cake! Dir. Emma De Swaef, Marc James Roels, 2018.

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Taylor & Francis Taylor & Francis Group http://taylorandfrancis.com

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04/09/20 11:13 AM

MUSIC AND EUROPE Andrea F. Bohlman

INTRODUCTION Every day at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, bells ring out at fifteen-minute intervals. As students rush to class, walking from place to place, many can hear the bells ring loudly to remind them whether they’re late or not. If you’re nearby, in the reading room at Louis Round Wilson Library, watching football at Kenan Memorial Stadium, or absorbed in a film screening at the nearby Sonya Hayes Stone Center for Black Culture and History, you can hear the bells. These buildings are important campus monuments, endowed with the names of people whose lives are woven into campus history. The bells stand out at the university, too. They are perched at the top of a 172-foot tower built in the 1930s (students first enrolled in the university in 1789), named the Morehead-Patterson Bell Tower after the two philanthropists who gave the money to build it. One of the bells—the largest—even has a name, written on its bronze surface: John Motley Morehead. That inscription honors one of

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9 the donors’ grandfathers, who also happened to have been governor of the state of North Carolina in the early nineteenth century. The elder Morehead was an advocate for public education, especially for deaf young people, and a businessman who developed the railroad and established textile mills in North Carolina. He was also a delegate for the Provisional Congress of the Confederate States in 1861. In other words, during his life he advocated for disability rights, developed infrastructure, sought economic power, and was a participant in a government that protected the institution of slavery. The bell is a memorial to Morehead: it is an object of importance that tells us this person was important. In this way, the bell, like a gravestone, keeps his memory alive long after his death. The prominent placement of his name—remember, this is the only bell with a name—suggests to us his influence. Maybe we are inspired to learn who he was by reading about him in history books. Or, maybe, we just become familiar and comfortable with

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An aerial shot of the Morehead-Patterson Bell Tower on the campus of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (USA). Source: Lance King/Getty Images.

ANTHEM A song officially adopted by an organization, school, or nation designed to inspire pride, often through communal choral performance.

his name because it is linked with an important object. The students at the University of North Carolina speak it out when they are headed to the parking lot next to the Morehead Planetarium and when they refer to the MoreheadCain Scholarship, a merit-based scholarship program that fully covers four years of tuition for select undergraduates. The bells are symbols of power. They also sound powerfully. All fourteen of them hang inside a belfry, a small chamber at the top of the bell tower with openings so that the vibrations of the bronze can ring out. When something remarkable happens, the bells play: after graduation, when a sports team wins a championship, and on the anniversary of the university’s founding.The collection used to be rung by hand by means of an elaborate lever system, but now the master bell ringer plays an electronic keyboard that is wired to the mechanism. Or they push a button that sets in motion a pre-recorded song. The music often sends a message: on graduation, the school’s anthem creates a sense of occasion, unity, and pride. “Hark the sound of Tar Heel voices, ringing clear and true . . .” goes the text that accompanies the chimes’ melody. Sometimes, the master bell ringers—members of the university’s marching band—pick well-known songs, like the Beatles’ “Yesterday.” Across campus, people will have more individual and private associations with this 1965 hit about a love that has faded away. Maybe they remember listening to it as children on road trips, or singing it in a choir in high school. Or they take a cue from the song’s forlorn lyrics, and feel a longing for a yesterday filled with hope and promise: “I believe in yesterday.” In general, however, the loud presence of the bells at the University of North Carolina enables them to be quite ordinary. When they ring every fifteen minutes to mark time passing, they play a common melody, the Westminster Quarters. This melody is played by clocks the world over. In the United States many electric doorbells play it, in Taiwan and Japan school bells ring it, and in

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Indonesia it signals that a train is sitting at the station ready to depart, to name just a few examples. The Westminster Quarters is a chime that was designed to be played by bells in a clock tower. Since at least the ninth century, Christian churches in Europe used chimes to let monks know what time of day it was—a way of letting them know when to gather to pray. This music, in other words, has a societal function. The Westminster Quarters is divided into four musical units. Over fifteen-minute intervals they are pieced together in different, ever-longer units, so that at the top of the hour the melody is played in full. Then the largest bell—at UNC that would be the Morehead—is supposed to toll out the hour. Three tolls means three o’clock. (Presumably the listener can use the sun to tell whether it is before or after noon!) The chime is composed so that you don’t need to see the clock face on the bell tower to know what time it is: you can just use your ears. Like the Beatles’ “Yesterday,” the Westminster Quarters came to the US from Europe. It was composed for a church in Cambridge, England, in 1793. But its fame comes from its association with perhaps the most symbolically powerful bell tower in the United Kingdom: the Elizabeth Tower, which houses the bell known—by nickname—as Big Ben. The Elizabeth Tower is the bell tower that adorns the Palace of Westminster, the meeting place of the British Parliament. This is the governing legislative body of the United Kingdom and, previously, of the British Empire. That is to say that, after the clock tower was

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CHIME A tune played on bells, or the sound a bell makes.

BELLS RINGING: “WESTMINSTER QUARTERS”

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HE “WESTMINSTER QUARTERS” (1794) was originally composed by a student at Cambridge University, in England, so that it could be rung by bells at a campus church to mark the passing of each quarter hour. Later, it was adopted by the bell tower of the British Parliament in central London. This skyrocketed its recognizability, and to this day the chimes are used all over the world in bell towers, radio signals, door bells, and more. The chime has four parts, each of which has four notes (beginning at 0:00, 0:03, 0:07, 0:10 in this recording). They share some patterns: each one has the same length and rhythm. However, the pitches are constantly varied: no part is an exact repetition of a previous one. At quarter past the hour, one part is played, and the melody gets longer every fifteen minutes until it is completed when the next hour begins. This was a way of helping people to tell the time but also a way to cue people to listen into the world around them, by way of interrupting everyday routines and also weaving the sound into everyday life. Activity: Listen to the chime until you can sing along—even if you think you already know it. Then, try and sing it without the aid of the recording. Is it easy to remember? Can you remember it a day later? Can you sing it to someone else? British Parliament has uploaded this twenty-second recording of Big Ben, encouraging people to use it as a ringtone. Thought exercise: Would you make this your ringtone? Why or why not? Would it make a good ringtone? Why or why not? What would it mean, to you, if you heard someone’s phone ring with this exact recording? Activity: Create your own chime in four parts—use your voice or another instrument.

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A 1929 map of the British Empire “Spanning the World” from a political campaign. Source: Cornell University – PJ Mode Collection of Persuasive Cartography. EUROPEAN UNION A political and economic union in which some, but not all European nations belong, founded 1958. Its policies aim to enable the free movement of people, goods, services, and capital across its member states. NATION-STATE A sovereign political entity that is centrally organized and in which the majority of the population shares a common identity (whether historical, cultural, or ethnic).

completed in 1859, the Westminster Quarters was the sounding symbol of the biggest political entity in the world. The British imperial project, which began its decline after the Second World War, controlled people, industrial development, land management, and economics far beyond the shores of its islands. At one point, the Empire made up almost one-quarter of the land on earth and dominated the waterways’ trade routes. Through the domination of others—subjects in its colonies, lower classes across its Isles, and migrants whose movement connected its territories—the Empire built its power and exemplified European power. We cannot contain Europe by drawing borders on a map. We cannot define Europe by listing a series of nation-states, such as the members of the European Union, a political and economic alliance that links many of the people living on the European continent through shared policies that work toward the free movement of people, goods, services, and capital. Portugal, England, France, Belgium, Germany, Russia, Italy, the Netherlands, Denmark, Austria, Hungary, and Turkey (as the Ottoman Empire) are all modern nation-states that have pasts as imperial powers, controlling places, peoples, and cultures beyond their own territory. Thinking about Europe always means thinking about the expansion of Europe, its history and its legacy. This means considering the violence European empires have inflicted on others through war, the dehumanizing practices (such

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as the slave trade and slavery) these empires established as integral to their economic growth, and the ways that European ideas and ideals were imposed as standards to help maintain an international order in which these global powers reigned supreme. What does empire have to do with music? Sound—Big Ben—was built into its most important structures, domineering architectural symbols of power. Sounds moved where the Empire reached. Sometimes this movement was by design: the British Empire used the Westminster Quarters to synchronize its subjects not just in London, but across the globe. Its public service radio broadcaster, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), transmitted programming to its colonies in the 1930s and ’40s (now it broadcasts globally as the BBC World Service). News hours would begin with the Westminster Quarters, so that listeners could imagine a connection to London, and to the heart of the Empire, for themselves. The Empire stole sound, too. Following the British victory over the Russian Empire at the Battle of Sebastopol during the Crimean War (1853–56), for example, they took two bells from a church in that city. The bells are war trophies; one was brought

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A satellite image of the European subcontinent from space. Source: Doug Armand/ Getty Images. The European Union in 2019. Source: PSboom/Vectorstock.

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A fireworks celebration on the River Thames with the Houses of Parliament, including Big Ben, lit ceremonially. Source: Jaroslav Havlicek/EyeEm/Getty Images.

back to the British Army’s main training grounds in Aldershot. The other is housed in Windsor Castle, where the Queen resides. That bell is imbued with such significance that the only time it may be struck is upon the death of a monarch. Sounds moved, too, as new institutions modeled their own, local power structures on those of Europe. Such is the case with the bell tower at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. The recognizable sonic signal of Big Ben shows the continued cultural relevance of the Empire beyond Europe’s borders—it cloaks the US university with the prestige of Westminster Palace. What does Europe have to do with world music? Europe took the lead in controlling the global flow of money, goods, and people. It keeps economic circulation globalized today. Europe, then, is inextricable from thinking globally about music by design. Indeed, across this book’s chapters, it is implicit and explicit that many assumptions we have today about what music is are legacies of European values. Various authors take pointed distance from Europe, others show how industrialization, colonization, and migration—often the result of slavery and war—have influenced music’s many styles, communities, and spiritual resonances. Both of these approaches show how European empires that tried to control territory made themselves inextricable not just from stories about world music’s pasts, but also from its presents. What does empire have to do with music? Take a moment to think about your own experiences of music: Do you think of music as beautiful, entertaining, and consoling? These are examples of common aesthetic values that lead us to think some styles of music are better than others, or even just that the music we like is objectively better than other music. The branch of philosophy devoted to the nature of art and beauty, called aesthetics, flourished during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in Europe. Though systems of value are central to many musical traditions around the world—it is discussed across the Vedas, ancient Hindu scriptures originating in India—this emphasis on music being “good” in contemporary North America is a result of the presence and influence of European thought. When you think of your favorite music, do you think of a song with an author? Is that music performed on stage by a professional

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or circulated in some kind of object, like a video recording online? These are some of the expectations of music—genius composer, talented musician, a clear division between performers and audience members, and the ability to buy the experience of music, whether a ticket, instrument, recording, or streaming subscription—set into motion by the European imperial project. What does music have to do with empire in contemporary Europe? This chapter offers the opportunity to think carefully about musical power, value, and judgment in answer to this question. Our primary goal is to learn about the context for some of the everyday expectations we have of music in the twentyfirst century, so that we as individuals might become more aware of what our implicit musical biases are. Context shows how the example of the bell tower at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is also European music. A second way we will elaborate context is to point out the limitations of our values. Below I draw out four angles that show that there are—and have been— cultures of sound and music in European communities that refute everyday contemporary assumptions about what music is (and what it does). What does empire have to do with music? Empire is the reason that the Westminster Quarters can sound ordinary to students on a US college campus. Let’s think about the power of bells again and return to the deep, tumbling sound of the Westminster Quarters in London. We can build upon our previous discussion of the bells at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. The English bells ring out of a tower that also commemorates: it was named after the current Queen of the United Kingdom, Elizabeth II, in 2012 on the occasion of her Diamond Jubilee. The name reminds us of her legacy even while she still reigns: it celebrates 60 years since her accession to the throne as hereditary monarch. These bells also ring out on special occasions: at midnight on New Year’s Eve, Big Ben tolls against the backdrop of a fireworks display on the banks of the River Thames. On November 11, bells ring in a moment of silence to commemorative the lives lost in World War I on the anniversary of the war’s conclusion. The Westminster Quarters shapes life on the streets of central London, evoking a kind of reverence and routine. In her novel, Mrs. Dalloway (1925), Virginia Woolf draws attention to how her characters interact with the familiarity and intrusion of Big Ben as they lead their lives. Hear the quick pace, anxiety, and calm she describes for one of the book’s central characters, the white, high-society hostess, Clarissa: One feels, even in the midst of the traffic, or waking at night, Clarissa was positive, a particular hush, or solemnity; an indescribable pause; a suspense [. . .] before Big Ben strikes. There! Out it boomed. First a warning, musical; then the hour, irrevocable. The bells are loud—they “boom” like bombs, even—think again of their relationship to military conquest and victory, as in the case of the Sebastopol Bells. Westminster Palace sits along the Thames River in the heart of London, the bustling metropole that is the British capital. Many of the city’s most

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recognizable landmarks flank its banks, drawing tourists and Londoners to walk along its route. Along with the Elizabeth Tower, an enormous Ferris wheel, theaters, a large modern art museum, and the Tower of London all pave the way to the city’s financial district, with its shiny skyscrapers and trade activity that must happen like clockwork, in sync with markets around the world. It’s easy to get swept up in the pomp and circumstance of these buildings as the bells echo across the open water, like Clarissa, who hears the melody as poetic (“musical”) and the tolling of the hour as a reminder that time is precious. Just as bell towers, with their symbolic power and capacity to cover territory with sound, provide orientation points for the people around them, Europe’s presumptive musical power provides an orientation point for this chapter. Learning about the bell tower affords us the opportunity to appreciate how other people might hear this place differently, actively focusing their attention on other sounds. Another novelist, Bernardine Evaristo, has a main character, Amma, in her 2019 novel, Girl, Woman, Other, who glides along the banks of the Thames. This protagonist, a Black British playwright, dwells on a figure whose sound fills the public space: a young street musician. A guitarist plays on the banks of the River Thames, encouraging passersby to buy his CD and follow him on social media. Source: George Rose/Getty Images.

GRIME A genre of popular music in the UK that has strong influences from North American hip-hop and Jamaican dancehall. Known for its rapid emceeing, quick pulse, and electronic sound.

Amma

is walking along the promenade of the waterway that bisects her

city, a few early morning barges cruise slowly by [. . .] she feels the sun begin to rise, the air still breezy before the city clogs up with heat and fumes a violinist plays something suitably uplifting further along the promenade [. . .] Amma passes the young busker she smiles with encouragement at the girl, who responds in kind she fishes out a few coins, places them in the violin case Clarissa was extraordinarily invested in the importance of sound; Amma seems to find it almost unremarkable, if pleasant. Indeed, the streets of London are peppered with street musicians (“buskers”), who receive permits from the city to play for its dwellers and visitors. There is one Big Ben, but there are many budding violinists, steel band drummers, musical theater stars, rappers, shredding guitarists, mimes, and spoken word poets, who earn extra cash filling the city with sound, banking on the appreciation and generosity of people like Amma. She listens to the city from below—focusing on the artistic expression of individual people and in the process keeping the sounds of power out of view. (Take a look at how the anti-establishment grime megastar Stormzy plays on the image of music on the streets and from the streets in his 2019 hit music video to

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“Vossi Bop,” as he raps at the foot of Big Ben.) Amma and Clarissa present two different perspectives on the sounds that define their everyday lives, two different stories about the sounds of London. The different ways they hear do not contradict each other. Music can be a product of power and it can also be inherently personal. Music can be a means to exclude and also serve as the fabric of social relations. It can be the spectacular boom of vibrating metal. It can be modest, at a distance, and made up more of wind than of pitch. If music can be so many things, how do we—as a society— decide what we need to know about it? This is perhaps the most important question for higher education, or for learning and understanding broadly construed. As you have already gleaned, this question is particularly important for this chapter, because at universities around the world, until very recently, it was assumed that European music was the most important music to know. Courses like “Introduction to Musical Fundamentals” were overviews of the important musical parameters, especially notation, for what is commonly called Western music, a term that recognizes the connection between the history of European imperialism and the rise of the United States as a global superpower by grouping their shared cultural field as the West. Surveys of music history are still, most often, surveys of European music history. Such courses introduce students to a collection of pieces that make up what is called a musical canon. A canon (and there are canons of artworks and literature, too) refers to a list of people or works that are deemed of greater value than others, and thus necessary to know. Suggesting someone—say, the German-born composer Ludwig van Beethoven, who lived most of his life in the capital of the

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Henry Baerer’s 1884 bust of the German composer Ludwig van Beethoven in Central Park, New York City. A personification of the “Genius of music” stands at the base of the pedestal. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

A flash mob performance of the choral movement to Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 on the streets of Sabadell, Spain, with the participation of a professional orchestra. Source: Screenshot by Andrea F. Bohlman.

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MOVEMENT A section of a larger musical work in Western Art music. CHORUS Anything sung by many people at once. SYMPHONY An extended work for a European orchestra.

FIELD RECORDING A recording made as part of the ethnographic research process. Historically “fieldwork” required that a scholar travel to a distant site, but contemporary field recordings can be made wherever the researcher is studying music making or sound in culture.

Austro-Hungarian Empire, Vienna—is canonic is akin to putting them on a pedestal, above others. So-called canonic works of art, like Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony (1825), which is known for the melody of its final movement, the “Ode to Joy,”—are framed as timeless and universal (this puts the “classic” in classical music). One of the lines of the majestic chorus that concludes this symphony celebrates the possibility of global harmony loudly: “All people shall become brothers!” It also performs this promise: the people singing together on stage represent a community of equals and mutual respect. In eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe, knowing canonic composers and canonic pieces increasingly became an indicator that one was a full citizen and well-rounded human. Concert attendance became a ritual that supported this endeavor: people attended (and still attend) in their finest attire to be seen by their peers, drinking glasses of fine wine during the intermission and gabbing about the performance to show their appreciation. By implication, music outside the canon and outside elite, ornate concert halls was generally not the stuff out of which history was made. Dance tunes performed at taverns by ensembles to animate reveling guests, melodies sung by protesters on the streets, lullabies hummed to children falling asleep, the devotional chant of religious prayer, and other forms of musical practice that were passed down orally—without being written down—did not get written about in books. In the twenty-first century, what do we need to know about European music? What do you need to know about European music as a student of world music? Perhaps nothing. By writing around Europe I have resisted defining the place and tried to avoid making complete lists—both techniques of exclusion. I have also suggested that you already know a lot about European music and European musical values. The rest of the chapter is organized along four themes, each of which engages aspects of European empire—power, authority, personhood, and progress—and listens beyond it. To discuss power, we’ll think about musical instruments and how they can, like bells, be symbols of power and prestige, but also how they are sites of creativity that provide platforms for musicians to intervene in common practices. We’ll question the ways certain individuals have exerted authority over Europe as a musical place as they made field recordings. In the process they drew attention to some places as more musical than others. You’ll learn about recent projects that, in order to critique this history, cede authority to individuals living and working, singing and listening to sound environments and communities that are sounded from a grassroots perspective. A vicious vector of imperial power has been the policing of who belongs to Europe and who belongs in Europe: minoritized populations have been deprived of their personhood. The vocal practices we study here have long served as a means of resisting dehumanization and articulating—asserting—the self. Its emotional impact becomes a means of asserting and experiencing belonging in the face of diverse situations of man-made adversity. In the final section, we focus on musical mobilities like dance, social movements, and tourism, to counter the narrative of musical progress that has been so dominant in stories of Europe. To conclude, the precarious state of progress issues a challenge: What are the next steps for Europe’s musics, musicians, and movements?

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The four sections that structure the rest of this chapter unite disparate musical worlds within Europe to show how people are turning to music (as performers, listeners, and more) to speak back to power. Like Amma on the banks of the River Thames, I do not celebrate the spectacle of Big Ben—the cultural dominance of Europe—by looking up at it in awe. We must acknowledge that this power is and has been—that Big Ben continues to ring—and also work to listen beyond it.

THE MUSICAL INSTRUMENT When Barbie, a doll made by the US toy company Mattel, teaches music, she teaches the violin, flute, and trumpet. These three musical instruments would ostensibly prepare her young student to play in a symphony orchestra, the large musical ensemble that brings together instruments of different families in a coordinated effort that some have compared to the division of labor we associate with a factory. Wooden string instruments are bowed, silver flutes are blown, lips vibrate against the mouth pieces of brass instruments, and yarncovered sticks strike the animal hides stretched tightly across drum frames. Coordinated by a leader, the conductor, the elite ensemble plays symphonies, accompanies operas, and records film soundtracks: it is the industry standard for classical music. It makes sense that music teacher Barbie would reinforce musical standards, since the doll is well-known (and criticized) for bolstering a limited range of conventions of fashion, beauty, and femininity. Trumpet, flute, and violin, however, are also flexible technologies. Let’s take the standard trumpet, with its loud, bright sound, as a first way to hear power and then listen beyond it. The trumpet is a common solo instrument in jazz combos, at military funerals, in marching bands, and in brass bands of amateur musicians, to name just a few examples common in Europe. From the Western musical canon, it is Joseph Haydn’s Trumpet Concerto (1796), a piece for solo instrumentalist accompanied by symphony orchestra, that showcases the ideal trumpet sound and the skills expected of a master performer. The 15-minute piece follows many conventions, including that it is broken up into three parts, movements, with contrasting characters. In the first movement, first the orchestra plays the main melody, followed by a contrasting tune. Then, the soloist enters with the main melody again. This stately tune, built out of three rising notes, lets the trumpet soar above the texture of the orchestra. The best performances are praised for being clean, clear, and elegant. A trumpeter with breath control can play long and smooth phrases. To keep the audience’s interest, the composer writes out variations on the melody: these little twists and turns are called ornaments, because they are designed to sparkle and delight. Though they sound spontaneous or improvised,

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CONDUCTOR The leader of a symphony, in charge of rehearsing the ensemble and coordinating it during live performance. Does not play an instrument. CONCERTO An instrumental work that maintains a distinction between the ensemble and soloist. ORNAMENTS Brief musical embellishments.

UK-based trumpeter Alison Balsom performing on a modern instrument. Source: Brill/ullstein bild/Getty Images.

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CADENZA A virtuoso passage inserted at the end of a concerto movement.

LISTENING GUIDE 9.2

they are not. Instead there is a great pause near the end of the movement, when the orchestra ceases to play and the soloist takes up a flourishing improvisation on the movement’s themes—the cadenza. These predictable components of the concerto show how important it was for composers at the time to codify their practices. Rules and expectations enabled people to compare not just compositions, but also performers. Haydn’s trumpet concerto did all of this and more, for it was intended to celebrate a feat of human achievement: a technical innovation that made the instrument more versatile. It was written for the composer’s friend, a court musician in Vienna who had previously performed

MUSIC FROM THE CANON: CONCERTO FOR TRUMPET

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HE FIRST MOVEMENT of Franz Joseph Haydn’s Concerto For Trumpet (1796) shows off the skill of its trumpet soloist, who is almost always the most prominent musical voice. This piece also shows off technological advances in the instrument, especially the ease with which they could play quickly up and down scales. Like many pieces in the Western Canon, it was designed to be performed in a concert hall for an attentive and upper-class audience, who would have probably learned to read and play music on a piano at home—since this was long before the advent of sound recording and playback! The ornate, red-velvet saturated Viennese concert hall where this piece was premiered in 1800 was also used for the theater: Can you think of multipurpose performance venues where you hear music? Do you think the same audiences go to hear live symphonies and attend plays today? What kinds of concerts do you go to where prior knowledge of the music being performed is important? Like many compositions from the eighteenth-century in central Europe, this piece begins with a brisk pace and a hummable first tune that becomes the basis for a lot of the later countermelodies— music that answers and responds to the first impression that the piece makes. The theme is so important, that it is introduced a second time by the trumpet, this time with a lot of quick notes to embellish the familiar music and keep it interesting. A trademark section of the concerto is the cadenza, a section in which the trumpet player improvises, inspired (again!) by music from the main theme. Listen for echoes of the three-note theme here. TIME

MUSICAL EVENT

0:00

Orchestral introduction with the main theme, built of three stately notes. Can you hum along to the melody when it’s introduced by the orchestra?

1:10

Solo trumpet enters with the main tune. How does the melody sound different to you here? Does it have a different personality?

3:57

Trumpet plays the main theme again. Do you have an emotional response when this tune returns in its original form?

5:20

Trumpet cadenza, improvisation without the orchestra. When does it sound like the trumpet player is showing off? Breaking away from the strict rhythmic pulse of the main composition? Does this music sound “free”?

6:09

Orchestra reenters to conclude the piece as an ensemble.

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as a field trumpeter in the army—note that this is an indicator of the concerto’s social and cultural context. This friend had just developed a way to expand the number of pitches this instrument could play by drilling holes in the curved metal, one step on the way to the valves that are standard on trumpets today. Standardized musical instruments help ensemble members match pitch. The durable metal of brass instruments has made brass bands one of the most popular ensemble configurations the world over, with different community constellations, social functions, and stylistic grooves. The instruments of Portuguese military ensembles in Brazil became the horns flanking the parades of carnaval in many European cities. These bands bring the sounds of the African diaspora back to the (former) seats of empire. One of the most storied brass bands is that of the Battle of Jericho. Their story is told in the Old Testament and the African-American spiritual, “Joshua Fit the Battle of Jericho:” the sound of trumpets brought down the walls of an enclosed city in Palestine. These biblical blasts have become a metaphor for musical resistance against human-built barriers that block movement across borders and boroughs. “Walls Will Fall: The 49 Trumpets of Jericho” is a 2018 political composition that weaves together these different trumpet stories. Its author, the Berlin-based Lebanese graphic artist and musical improviser, Mazen Kerbaj, reconfigures the trumpet in his hands. He rarely purses his lips against the mouthpiece: instead he uses extended techniques like tapping the brass with drumsticks, removing the mouthpiece and breathing heavily (without pitch) into the horn, singing into the instrument, and more. These are non-standard ways of playing the instrument that—in free jazz, electronic music, and contemporary art music—have been used to critique the sound of classical trumpet in attempts to reframe it beyond its regal and military European roots. “Walls Will Fall” is a site-specific and immersive piece designed to be performed in a water reservoir in Berlin by an international roster of trumpeters from Australia, Austria, Cuba, Denmark, England, Germany, Iran, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Lebanon, Poland, Russia, Serbia, Somalia, Spain, Sweden, Syria, Turkey and the United States. Though it is also a musical composition, it shares few features with the trumpet concerto. Over the course of thirty-five minutes, the players use the resonant brick walls of the structure to amplify their unconventional sounds—nothing like a theme, ornament, or sparkling virtuosic improvisation occurs. Influenced by experimental art from the theatre, the performers walk around audience members who mill about as the vibrations increasingly overwhelm—the trumpeters move from delicate tapping of their instruments’ keys to mournful asynchronous moaning through the tubes, ever louder and overlapping. Gone is the notion of prized progress: destruction—implied to be ongoing in the Middle East—is made palpable by reconfiguring the trumpet sonically to make a political point.

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CARNAVAL (ENG. CARNIVAL) The festivities that accompany the weeks leading up to Lent in Catholic communities.

EXTENDED TECHNIQUES A term that refers to new ways of making music on traditional instruments, often those performance techniques developed in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. SITE-SPECIFIC COMPOSITION A work designed to be performed and experienced in a specific location. Can be inor outdoors. EXPERIMENTAL MUSIC A broad term that encompasses various musical practices that radically oppose traditional musical institutions, aesthetics, and models of composition.

MUSICAL PLACE London, Vienna, Berlin: much of what we’ve listened to so far orients us to Europe through its capital cities, where, in the twenty-first century, postcolonial

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FOLK SONG A term developed to refer to songs that had no specific authorship or were understood to be collectively authored over time.

EPIC POETRY Orally transmitted narrative song, often recited by experts known as bards to honor their mastery. GUSLE A single-stringed bowed instrument cultivated in south­ eastern Europe that is similar in shape to a lute.

diasporas make racial and musical diversity more visible and audible, and where economic inequality has an everyday visibility. However, we can and should also look further afield, to the less-populated climes, often conceived of as peripheral, in order to bolster the centripetal force of urban environments. Since the rise of industrialization in the nineteenth century—especially the steam engine and factory—cities set the tempo of modernity, and the rural was relegated to a romanticized idyllic past. The countryside was understood as a place where natural beauty was more precious than the often itinerant, indigenous, and/ or marginalized communities who toiled the land, trawled the waters for fish, and herded cattle. Partially because these populations were imagined to be untouched by modern technology, they were understood to have authentic and natural relationships to their environments. In the eighteenth century, the influential German philosopher, Johann Gottfried Herder, theorized that music was an art form particularly suited to capturing this authenticity. He promoted the idea of the folk song, a text and tune that represents a particular ethnic group, regional population, or religious community. Before sound recording was invented in the late-nineteenth century, folklorists transcribed orally transmitted folk songs as texts and published them, sometimes with musical notation for educated readers. Collections of music—also called anthologies— were like playlists for which one author curated a selection of music to represent vast populations of musicians. Authorities mapped territory as they collected. Knowing the songs in these anthologies was one way in which readers formed knowledge about Europe. Books shaped Europe into a semi-coherent place, drawing attention to remarkable musical localities. Once recording devices were increasingly portable in the 1920s, scholars returned from travels across the rural plains of the east, the cold tundra of the north, and the rugged island shores to the west and south of the subcontinent with wax cylinders and, later, reels of magnetic tape. The newest sound recording devices were the products of engineering advances often funded by military communications research. The canon, which preserved art music compositions, was complemented by the sound archive, which preserved folk traditions. Both represent ways that scholarly authority expertise could be used to control and exert power over music, its circulation, and its preservation. Through books and recordings, scholars shaped what sounds people could—should—associate with a certain place. Many of the recordists in Europe were musical enthusiasts who loved discerning patterns in songs of all kinds, whether they were about working in the fields, birthday tunes, and long stories recited musically. Two Harvard University classics professors, Milman Parry and Alfred Lord, recorded singers on the Balkan peninsula who recited narrative poems called epics using rhythmic bow strokes on a single-stringed instrument, the gusle, to keep track of where they were in the intricate story. They hoped that these living subjects would give them insight into the creative process behind works they thought were the cornerstone of Western knowledge: the ancient Greek epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey, attributed to Homer. Other recordists, like Bela Bartók, were composers who used the musical materials of the songs that they recorded as

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An eighteenth-century engraving depicting women waulking and singing. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

building blocks for new compositions for the concert stage. Published under their names, these compositions were also a means of claiming authorship of other people’s music, since the source material had often been played, sung, modified, and recomposed over, presumably, centuries. Folk song was initially defined and cherished in contrast with popular music, which was scorned by many because of its commercial dissemination, for example, as sheet music, and due to its mass appeal, for example at variety shows and cabarets. But this artificial and elitist distinction faded with the rise of commercial recording companies in the 1930s and ’40s, especially as song collectors began to work for these corporations. They would get access to recording equipment, travel funds, and even a team of assistants, in exchange for handing over musical material for commercial release—very rarely did the people whose voices were recorded get directly compensated for the financial success of these albums. The American folklorist, Alan Lomax, connected major international media corporations—the Library of Congress, CBS, Columbia Records, and the BBC—with a huge recording project after the Second World War. As European empires lost their governing presence in Africa and Asia, rebuilt their own infrastructures, and came to terms with horrific human loss and the consequences of large-scale genocides, Lomax curated and crafted the Columbia World Library of Folk and Primitive Music, published in 1955 as a collection of eighteen long-playing vinyl records. Being this project’s author meant that Lomax scoured libraries of recordings and made new ones for the anthology, crafting a canon of the world’s music in the process. But Europe was certainly Lomax’s focus. Ten of the volumes are devoted to its folk musics: more than half of the “world library”!

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SHEET MUSIC Unbound printed music that is under twenty pages and, often, available for commercial purchase. CABARET A music theater tradition that usually brings music and theater together in a place where food and drink can be consumed.

ANTHOLOGY A published collection that is curated by an editor.

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WAULKING SONG A song sung, frequently by women, while beating wool to make tweed. CALL AND RESPONSE Musical phrases that alternate between two different performers or performing groups in such a way that it sounds like one group is answering the other.

The BBC sponsored Lomax’s 1951 trip to the Hebrides Islands, an archipelago of more than 100 islands off the west coast of Scotland. There, the environment overwhelms. These islands’ craggy cliffs jut into a tumultuous sea that is the stuff of myths and maritime adventure. It is hard work to stay alive. For over two thousand years this place has challenged explorers looking to conquer, whether Romans, Celts, Vikings, English, or Scots, all of whom settled there. Lomax painted a portrait of the place through music enmeshed in the details of the place. He sought out people who would sing for him in island-specific Gaelic dialects. He engaged people in interviews about the fishing, whaling, and farming industries to learn more. These strategies emphasized that the Hebrides were a very different Europe from the one familiar to urban dwellers and travelers. A main goal was to preserve the songs, which he perceived of as threatened, since the kinds of work they accompanied were being supplanted by industrialization. He was particularly compelled to record a lot of waulking songs, tunes sung by groups of women pounding wool against a surface in order to soften it before it was woven into tweed to be worn. Lomax noticed the songs’ call and response structure, which reminded him of some of the singing he had recorded in the American South sung by imprisoned Blacks who had been put to work. Banging heavy wool—soaked in human urine, which fixed the dye—against a wooden table was physically demanding labor and monotonous, so the women sang to pass the time, crafting elaborate stories in these songs. When everyone joined in during the chorus, the songs became longer as they repeated what had just been said and sang nonsense syllables. The music’s rhythm coordinated their movements so they could be more efficient: they sang in sync with the pounding. Though they were at work, many of the songs show them wanting to be distracted. Waulking songs tell of love, fantasy, and drama and give us insight into the social hierarchies and norms among these communities. Take “Cha Déid Mi Do Dh’Fhear Gun Bhàta” (“I’ll Not Go to a Man without a Boat”): the lead singer lists all the ways the captain of a fishing boat is the best kind of man for a woman (reliable, strong, smart). We can only guess why Lomax recorded this song. He merely notes that he gathered the singers at the airport on Benbecula and that they weren’t actually waulking while they were singing. They mimicked the pounding sound for posterity. Did Lomax find the music beautiful? Did he think the valorization of fishermen made a nice story about gender roles on the islands? Did he enjoy chatting with these singers more than others? Was this the song with the best recording quality? We don’t know much about how he curated his canon. On the Hebrides, wind and waves effect a constant, searing sound: it is hard to hear and hard to orient yourself. There is often horizontal rain that slams trees and homes: these become loud drums when precipitation is propelled into them. A cave with particularly unusual basalt rock formations (Fingal’s Cave) produces haunting echoes off the water and around its sharply angled stone pillars: people travel to the otherwise uninhabited (by humans) island of Staffa just to experience its otherworldly melodic resonance. These are some of the characteristics that sound artist Cathy Lane wanted to capture in her 2013 portrait of this place. She traveled around the islands on boat, ship, bike,

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LISTENING GUIDE 9.3

MAPPING WITH SOUND: “WHERE ONCE WERE WHALES”

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ATHY LANE’S ALBUM, The Hebrides Suite (2013), began as an installation in gallery spaces, where instead of looking at art, visitors were invited to use their ears to develop an idea of what it felt like to be on the Hebrides. The entire album weaves together recordings made of people and the environment by Lane over the course of many visits—the rain you hear here is from Harris Island in 2006—with archival recordings of oral histories and songs woven and remixed into the composition. Lane thinks of the whole project as both art about and research into a place: a way of mapping the islands that combines many experiences of them. She includes music, but the project is not first and foremost musical. At the same time, she invites us to think about sound carefully—listen to it with some of the techniques we use to listen to music. Her guiding question is: “How does history—past lives and past events—leave sonic traces and how do we hear them?” Listening Exercise: Give the track a listen without learning more about this particular excerpt. First listen with your eyes shut. When it’s over, take two minutes to write down what you thought about as Lane’s composition happened in real time. Now listen again. At each of the following moments, a new sound is introduced: 0:00, 0:33, 1:01, 1:54, 2:01, 2:16, 2:36, 2:45. What do you hear? What do you associate with that sound? When the track is over, take two minutes to jot down what kind of place you think she is composing out of sound. Now read the accompanying notes that Cathy Lane shares on her SoundCloud upload. Listen again. What did you hear that you didn’t hear before? How does knowing more about her interests and questions influence your own ideas about the place evoked by these sounds?

and foot, recording sounds of shipping deliveries, birds soaring above, birthday parties, and all kinds of weather. Unlike Lomax, Lane was trying to evoke the ordinary pace of life in this extraordinary place. Her composition, The Hebrides Suite, is a contrast to Lomax’s suggestion that the islands’ cultural vitality is waning. The sixty minutes of this recording compilation show how the Hebrides are alive: rocks live, sheep live, people live. It is a story of adaption and of changing times, rather than the end of a pastoral European myth. Although it is released as an album (on CD), in a gesture of reciprocity toward the community who inspired her art, it was also made publicly accessible through installation in arts centers and museums on the Hebrides and across Scotland. Lane tries to cede authority rather than command it. In particular, she tries to let people and place co-author her environmental portrait. The track “Where Once Were Whales” features an almost constant downpour as the sonic backdrop. Listening to it can feel cold or dank, crystalline or energetic. As with Lomax’s recordings, we hear people at work. But we don’t hear them sing clean tunes, primed to perform for a microphone. Instead, Lane captures non-musical sounds. The workers lift lobsters out of the sea, new work since the decline (and prohibition) of whaling. Another track captures the listener’s attention with a nagging alert (“Beep, beep, beep, beep!”) from a truck or boat. This is not untouched nature nor a nostalgic ode to preindustrial times. Lane allows stories to be told by current

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ORAL HISTORY The systematic process of recording interviews with people to gain insight into and study their everyday lives. REMIX A recording made of previous recordings in new configurations and, frequently, employing substantial editorial intervention.

SÁMI Circumpolar peoples, living in northern Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia, whose musical practices in Europe mix indigenous and modern sounds. JOIK Traditionally unaccompanied vocal practice of the Sámi that establishes and develops relationships between the singer and their environment, including humans, ideas, and non-human components. Characterized by a distinctive vocal sound, highly ornamented, and featuring extensive use of glottal stops.

inhabitants and intersperses her interviews with associates on the islands with oral histories from local archives. She is playful: near the end of the track we hear a rhyme that teaches you how long to boil different kinds of seafood. Is this an authoritative history of culture in the Hebrides? A familiar sound closes the track about life after whaling: a distorted remix of the waulking song collected by Lomax. Lane draws out the women’s laughter by speeding up the recording: Rather than a highly produced take of history—maybe even a highly sterilized take on history—to be catalogued and analyzed, the messy delight of interpersonal connection keeps her sound art open ended.

THE MUSICAL SELF If making field recordings, for Lomax, was a way of learning about Europe, historical field recordings have become sources of knowledge about Europe for music scholars. Look how much we were able to reflect critically about the Hebrides Islands and their pasts by listening to and contextualizing the waulking song. We thought about music’s communicative capacity (bang the wool now!), music as social adhesive, singing as energizing entertainment (to pass the time), music as a source of information about class hierarchy (fishermen are the best lovers), songs as part of regionally specific traditions (sheep farming and tweed making), and songs as helping us to hear languages (Gaelic dialects) to which we don’t have access (and which might not be spoken any more). Historical recordings have been sources for artists, too. Cathy Lane, perhaps, was captivated by the sound, especially of women’s voices, in her response to Lomax. But other artists—popular musicians of many stripes— learn by listening to these old sounds. Some, like Lane, sample and remix them. Others, like those who play in Irish music sessions in pubs the world over, learn tunes by ear listening to them, so that they may embody them anew. Yet others, like the Sámi singer Ulla Pirttijärvi, seek out information about themselves in the archives, looking to know the voices of their ancestors. Pirttijärvi begins her 2002 track, “Cˇálkko-Niillas,” by laying a beat that evokes the soft timbre of a shamanic ceremonial drum filtered electronically. She then overlays a recording of an ancestor’s voice and, when it comes to a close, repeats the melody with her own voice, adapting it to her body. For Pirttijärvi, the stakes are not just personal, a matter of knowing her kin, a male shaman, and honoring her family. The stakes are political and they have everything to do with place. The Sámi are Europe’s only recognized indigenous people. Sámi traditional land, called Sápmi to designate the region, spans a contrasting “far reach” of Europe to that of the Hebrides: the Arctic across Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia. Over the course of European modernity, Sámi populations were subject to techniques of oppression and suppression similar to those used by empires to subjugate colonies on other continents: land dispossession, Christianization, forced industrialization, and cultural assimilation. Having been suppressed by the church because of its association with shamanistic ritual, the vocal practice of joik has been central to a cultural

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Fans waving the Sámi flag and cheering to support the Sámi soccer team at the Confederation of Independent Football World Cup (2014), a tournament for stateless or indigenous people and regions seeking autonomy. Source: JONATHAN NACKSTRAND/ AFP/Getty Images.

revival that has as twin goals an assertion of the right for Sámi self-determination and resistance to state assimilation. Their movement is transnational, shared among Sámi populations who have divergent histories, linguistic dialects, and values, and in global conversation with indigenous communities. The practice of joik has a distinct sound that perhaps explains why so many early recordists captured it: it is extraordinarily physically demanding and the sound is specific to individuals’ physiognomy rather than a product of the discipline of, for example, Western singing. In fact, this deeply embodied premise of joik led to one of the most nefarious deployments of field recording: the sound of the joik was a way of proving that Sámi had bodies that were different than those of Europeans. Codifying and analyzing joik was a means of racializing and dehumanizing Sámi people, especially because their sounds were not classically “beautiful.” Was this practice even musical, people argued, as they justified systemic violence against Sámi populations. When joiking, the practitioner’s vocal chords are utilized in such a way as to unite head and chest voice for a nasal timbre. Rather than planning their breath around musical phrases, the performer follows the breath until their lungs are depleted. Traditionally, joik has been an unaccompanied vocal styling, though contemporary Sámi artists have expanded its possibilities. Listening musically— which is not necessarily the way joik has customarily been heard—the melodic contour and rhythm take priority over precise pitches or discernible text. Joiks contain repeated patterns that invite personalization and improvisation, including the addition of non-semantic monosyllabic vocables with long vowels that can meander (no, na; lo, lai; yo, etc.). So as someone like Pirrtijärvi learns, she might first try and embody her ancestor’s version, but ultimately make her own twists and turns, perhaps with a back-up band of rock musicians or with the

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TRACKING ANCESTORS: “Cˇ ÁLLKO NIILLAS”

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HE SÁMI MUSICIAN Ulla Pirttijärvi has released two interpretations of this joik, both of which she titled, “Cˇállko Niillas” (“They said he was a noiadi”), one on a Finnish label, and one for global release with her band, Ulda (Ulda, 2002). The title describes the circumstance through which she learned the joik: listening to a recording of an ancestor of hers who was a shaman—noiadi in Northern Sámi, her language. On the Finnish recording, she incorporates the recording of his voice. Her own interpretation follows and we are implicitly asked to compare them, to hear a conversation between Pirttijärvi and her ancestor. On the recording for the global market, the source recording is absent. She gives voice to the joik against the backdrop of an ensemble that includes both traditional rock instruments and traditional Sámi instruments. They switch between them throughout. Listening to instruments: The band provides a rhythmic groove—a repeating pattern that loops beneath Pirttijärvi’s voice. Pick one rhythm and clap along with it through the whole track. Then, pick another and do the same. Was one easier than the other? Listening to voice: One limiting factor for vocal performance is the human breath. It shapes musical phrasing and provides one way to control volume, but we run out of it. As you listen to Pirttijärvi, use a pen to trace a line on a piece of paper. (The line can respond to the melodic movement of the joik, or her volume, or the emotional path you are on while you listen, or some other factor entirely of your own devising.) Every time you imagine Pirttijärvi to take a breath, lift the pen and start again. Listening to history: In North America we are left to imagine the historical recording of Pirttijärvi’s shamanic ancestor. Why do you think that is? How might you go about imagining it? Come up with three questions to ask.

EUROVISION SONG CONTEST An annual televised media event in which three-minute performance acts from European nations compete against each other. This popular music competition, founded in 1956, stages nationalism and flamboyant performances and attracts animated discussion among fans and critics alike.

accompaniment of a classically-trained chamber music ensemble. Pirttijärvi is deeply invested in the next lives of joik, as a teacher who has authored materials for adults, which include transcriptions in musical notation, and a children’s story book with accompanying CD (Hong Kong Doll, Pirttijärvi, 1996). By sampling her shaman ancestor’s voice, she strategically reclaims that which belongs to her community. She lets one generation precede her own, making space for the next as she leaves the end of the track open. Pirttijärvi surely also has joiked her kinsman’s joik in the presence of her daughter, with whom she performs. In 2015, their pop duo, Solju, tried to enter the Eurovision Song Contest, a bombastic media event every spring in Europe that pits acts from across Europe’s nations against each other to crown one winner—a symbol of European taste and catalyst for musical conversation. Their group was not selected to represent Finland, but Solju’s participation shows how loudly and widely Pirttijärvi wants to give her people a voice and what institutions she is willing to mobilize to do it. Like her fellow Sámi artist, Mari Boine, she turns to the powerful brand of the World Music genre to claim a space for herself in Europe. Joiking is a means of taking a stand within the Sami indigenous rights movement, a process through which to celebrate and transmit a valued tradition, and a way to articulate a specifically Sámi relationship to place. A

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joik names people, animals, environmental elements, and land formations. To partake in joik is to articulate your own relationship to a person, bird, tree, river, wind, rock, or feeling: words, when decipherable, merely hint at the deeply personalized subject of the joik. It is not a map, not an anthology of representative people, and not something that can be fully known by anyone but the person who joiks. It resists institutions like the museum, a powerful guardian of art on European terms. And this is the case because joik is not a fixed cultural object to be lined up on a shelf. It is not a song; it does not have a direct referent or author. Changeability is an inextricable part of joik. Such dynamism has also made joik particularly challenging to intellectual property legislation. Collectively authored and always made anew, “traditions” like joik (contra copyrighted popular music) are deemed as free for public use. The South Sámi composer Frode Fjellheim, like Pirttijärvi and Lane, is creatively inspired by historical recordings and transcriptions. He is someone who writes in a number of musical idioms to evoke a Nordic aesthetic: you might know his music already, if you’ve watched the Disney films, Frozen or Frozen II. An arrangement of a choral composition by Fjellheim that is inspired by joik (“Eatnemen Vuelie”/“Song of the Earth,” 1996) wafts over the opening title slides, setting the tone for both stories. In other projects, he edits historical recordings in studios using digital techniques: looping them, fading them in and out of stereo, and adding many filters. The politics of his work might be summed up in his first album’s title: The Song We Forgot (Sangen vi glemte, 1991). He writes, “I hope that this recording can cast light over a cultural heritage we all can enjoy, and give new life to songs we forgot.” The pleasure principle is at work here, but think carefully about who he might mean by “we.” Who is the “we” that enjoys? Who is the “we” that forgets? Music tells stories big and small, and making it is a particularly powerful way to tell stories that might otherwise be forgotten. It can remind us of the indescribable emotions we experience at life’s highs, perhaps the birth of a child or the promise of love, and lows, perhaps environmental devastation or personal loss. Frequently, the fact that tunes stick in our heads has been utilized as a tool to keep values and memories alive. The cultural losses of the Sámi were a direct consequence of European subjugation. Other major destructive forces on the European continent—both historically and into the present—have been war and genocide (more about which below) and environmental disaster. Floods and fires have destroyed and will continue to destroy instruments, manuscripts, libraries, and schools. Destruction can be intentional and politically loaded: in Nazi Germany during the 1930s and ’40s, books were burned, among them folk song anthologies of Yiddish-language songs collected across the small Jewish villages (shtetl) of Eastern Europe. It can also be accidental: in April 2019, a structure fire—possibly even caused by the twelfth-century structure’s now-electric bells—ravaged the Notre-Dame de Paris cathedral, devastating its acoustics and endangering its three organs and nine bells. In April 1986, one of the most disastrous nuclear accidents in human history occurred when an electrical surge caused explosions within the reactor of the Chernobyl Atomic Energy Station outside the city of Prypiat, then a

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SHTETL A small town in Eastern Europe before the Holocaust with a majority Jewish population.

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POLYPHONIC SINGING Choral music in which all of the distinctive vocal melodies have equal importance.

part of Soviet Ukraine. Evacuation of the city began twenty-four hours after the explosion. Within a week 200,000 people had been relocated from a 30-kilometer “zone of exclusion.” Prypiat had been built to house employees of the power plant; the rest of the zone, whose natural environment was horribly harmed by the explosion’s release of radiation, is relatively rural. For centuries, people living there had led lives entwined with the rhythms of nature, such as planting and harvesting crops on the outskirts of their small villages. Local traditions across the forested region, called Kyivian Polissia, had been influenced by the richly multiethnic and religiously diverse smattering of settlements. As a borderland, the area had long fostered the coexistence of small villages—some German and Lutheran, others Jewish and Hassidic, some Polish and Catholic, some Ukrainian and Orthodox, and more. These now vanished communities were not governed by the nation-state to which they belonged, but by local social, economic, and cultural fabrics of which music was a part. In the Soviet Union, this would change when Joseph Stalin, as the premier, systematically undertook ethnic cleansing of its unwelcome “others” in the 1930s and ’40s. This was a first project of forced displacement that preceded the one following the Chernobyl disaster. The approximately 130 villages that remained after Stalin’s resettlement programs were forcibly evacuated after the disaster. An estimated 300 people live in the zone today, risking radiation exposure so that they can feel a sense of belonging. Devastation seeps through the recent history of this land, which is soaked with blood and now radiates poison. People who called it home and have survived in new generations are flung the world over. Musical responses to this erasure of lives do not, however, dwell upon the tragic. Like Fjellheim, people turn to music to help them remember. And they insist that music be remembered. The Chornobyl Songs Project: Living Culture from a Lost World (2015) is a collaboration between ethnomusicologists and singers to keep songs from Kyivian Polissia sung and, in the process, keep the region from being forever in the shadow of the power plant’s disaster. (Chornobyl is the transliteration of the Ukrainian spelling and a way of honoring that, though the Soviet government was responsible for the explosion, most of the lives affected were those of Ukrainian civilians.) Yevren Yefremov has made field recordings in Polissia since the 1970s and led choirs performing traditional music in Ukraine’s largest city, Kyiv. Like Lomax before him, Yefremov was in part interested in these villages because their rural isolation had protected and preserved unusual music: a specific style of polyphonic—multi-part—vocal performance. His US-based collaborator, Maria Sonevytsky, assembled a choir of performers, only some of whom could trace genealogy to Ukraine, interested in learning the songs that accompanied the activities of everyday life and the vocal practice. The album is oriented across the rituals of a year, a way of honoring that the nuclear catastrophe (like all nuclear catastrophes) disrupted not just human life, but that of plants and non-human animals. It altered climate (seasons) locally and, ultimately, globally. The track list brings together songs out of pre-Christian rituals (the celebration of the winter solstice) with those of the Christian calendar (a Christmas carol). Many songs mark the rituals of working

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the land. “A v Chuzhoho Sokola,” a harvest song, is a pretty quick piece of choral music. Loud and bombastic, these full voices are loaded with overtones and the song would certainly be heard if sung outdoors. Like the waulking song we learned about from the Hebrides, it is designed for homosocial performance: women singing about a man. In this case, they are mocking the overseer who monitors their work in the fields. This mockery pops out of the music as the whoop at the end of each line, opening from unison vocal declamation to a long polyphonic sustain on a sweep of pitches across the human voice’s range. The overseer in the song could stand in for any authority figure, as they ask for divine intervention to vex him: “May fish and frogs crawl on our overseer’s head.” The song plays with power (vocal power, local power) and all the while the specter of the disaster of nuclear power seems so far away, even if it is the impulse for this song’s learning and remembering.

MUSICAL MOVEMENT “Come wander with me, love . . .” This invitation lingers over the opening strummed chords of fado singer Lula Pena’s English-language song about the life of a troubadour. The melancholic song—a rare contribution to the Portuguese singer-songwriter tradition in English—tells the story of a person who has fallen for an artist on the move and is left behind now that his heart, too, has moved on. Pena’s deep voice rests right in the middle of the fluctuating strummed guitar accompaniment that flows through the whole song. She wavers as she holds onto syllables, in a gesture that mimics the unstable emotional state of her subject. The wooden body of the guitar, lightly tapped, also transforms the pulse of the song into some kind of heartbeat. Fado is cherished for its heartbreaking melancholy, opening up raw emotional states in intimate café settings. Its stretched time and overt longing—most often romantic or for a moment of past happiness—invite comparisons to the heart-bleeding chansons of Parisian night clubs, where the stakes of fresh love and its later betrayal are belted above orchestras and jazz ensembles, as in the classic popular music hits of Edith Piaf, Charles Aznavour, and Georges Brassens. We might compare it again, to the popular music of Turkey, which has its roots in the melody types of Turkish classical and folk music, called makam. This music, too, prizes a close relationship between poetry and vocal performance as a sincere expression of the musical, inner self. Melancholy and rich symbolic imagery guide adoring audiences to tap into their most intimate experiences, as they grapple with and cherish the trials and tribulations of love. These musics collapse the public and collective consumption of music at shows in amplified venues, hyped underground spots, boisterous clubs, and expansive concert halls, into the depths of the individual. Music’s intimacy persists through popular music and its common stories precisely because we can hear these stories as our own. We tap into little moments in performances. Lula Pena’s fingers tap independently above the strings of her guitar to make us listen hard for gentle interior melodies. We

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FADO A Portuguese vocal and dance genre, oriented around the poetic interplay between words and music by a solo singer. Famously developed in Lisbon, where it was historically associated with marginalized neighborhoods. CHANSON Popular French-language song that emphasizes the rhythm of the French language and is often accompanied by guitar or small jazz ensemble. MAKAM The system of melody types used in Turkish classical and folk music.

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Lula Pena performs live at WOMAD festival. Source: Francesca Moore/Alamy Live News.

ARABESK A popular music form of twentieth-century Turkey that drew heavily on Arab aesthetics. Debates about the value of the genre often reflected tensions about the place of Turkey between east and west.

notice what Charles Aznavour sings about when he closes his eyes and ask ourselves just what makes those feelings too much to share without retreating, at least a little bit, into his body as his voice remains firm. On the stages of restaurants and television sets in the Turkish capital of Istanbul the singer Zeki Müren used his microphone, held at various angles toward and away from his mouth or comporting his body variously around it, as an expressive instrument. The distinction between human body and musical technology fades. Technology becomes a part of music’s liveness as it becomes a fundamental way we relate to ourselves. Pena’s song about the troubadour and his lover’s heartbreak offers an invitation to think about the fact that different places in Europe have thriving popular music genres, celebrities, and stars. Do know that there is much more to be heard from these voices and about these fan cultures. Through careful attention, you would most certainly observe how they complicate the musical assumptions and values you bring to them, whatever your own musical biography might be. Fado, chanson, and Turkish arabesk, like other European popular music genres do occasionally trend on the World Music charts. In these moments, Europe, fleetingly, is a part of the routine exoticization of non-Anglophone popular musics. These genres are kept on a separate list— increasingly part of an alternative canon to mainstream pop. Pena’s voice, “Come wander with me . . .” also importantly introduces the final theme of this chapter: mobility. The invitation to wander through and with music is very much the gesture of this entire textbook’s many invitations to listen beyond comfort zones and borders. In the twenty-first century, one privileged understanding of mobility is to think of it as enabling access, as one of the great markers of human progress. Air travel opens up new experiences,

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keeps far flung families a few hours away from each other. Digital media make news travel fast, enable the global transfer of capital, and allow music in the cloud to remain a mere click away. Forced mobility, however, has nothing to do with ease, safety, and belonging. So much of Europe’s movement, historically, has been to conquer other places on route to empire. The wars of the twentieth century curtailed the colonial project, while also forcing internal displacement and migration. Systematic genocides organized the murder and deportation of entire populations, forever transforming just who lives in and feels at home in Europe. These genocides were implemented on an unprecedented scale, but are the outgrowth of centuries of persecution of Europe’s internal others, such as the thirteenth-century Albigensian Crusade against non-Catholics in southern France and the violent massacres aimed at Jewish settlements in Eastern Europe called pogroms, which intensified in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Romani men, women, and children, members of an ethnic group with a migration history that can be traced to the Indian subcontinent, were forced into bondage and slavery across Europe from the fourteenth century onward, denigrated precisely because of their often-nomadic ways of life—usually a result of prejudice, harassment, and disenfranchisement. Over the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, serial edicts in the Habsburg Empire called for the execution or violent torture of Romani men, women, and children, while the Portuguese and British Empires deported Roma to North America in connection with the slave trade. From 1914 to 1923 the Ottoman Empire exterminated and expelled 1.5 million Armenians from what is now eastern Turkey. They also systematically

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GENOCIDE The systematic action to destroy a people based on their ethnicity, race, religion, or race.

ROMA Transnational communities of people pejoratively referred to as Gypsies; active participants in Europe throughout history and across the continent. Charles Aznavour singing in 2001 at the monument of the Armenian Genocide in Yerevan, Armenia. Source: PAOLO COCCO/AFP/Getty Images.

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DIASPORA A group of people who have been forcibly displaced from their traditional homeland or point of origin. Within Asian Diasporas the term is currently also used to refer to concentrated communities of ethnically Asian groups living outside of their ancestral homeland, though not exclusively through forced displacement.

TROUBADOUR Historically a lyric poet from southern France who performed their music in song, in contemporary usage it conjures a romantic notion of the wandering artist or minstrel.

murdered Ottoman Greeks and Ottoman Assyrians under the same policy of ethnic and religious persecution. Descendants of the survivors of this horrific genocidal campaign make up much of the Armenian diaspora in Russia, the United States, France, and Georgia to this day. In the 1930s and 1940s Joseph Stalin organized famines, brutal labor camps, and forced resettlements to eliminate ethnic minorities in the Soviet Union—in addition to Germans, such as those living in Kyivian Polissia, this included Crimean Tatars, Poles, and Balts. Between 1941 and 1945 Nazi Germany and its collaborators murdered six million Jews in the Holocaust. The project to annihilate difference by the Nazis extended to Roma populations, as they murdered approximately 25% of those living across Europe. Jehovah’s Witnesses, non-Jewish Poles, Soviet prisoners of war, disabled Germans, homosexuals, and political dissidents were also deported from their homes to labor and concentration camps and routinely murdered by the Nazis. These horrors, along with the large-scale destruction of war and other losses of human life on the battlefield are scars that remain visible in Europe today. After the First and Second World Wars, national borders were redrawn—some that had been easy to traverse were made into barriers. Populations were resettled: lower classes (particularly peasants) were moved to these newly desolate areas. The European Union is a product of a moment of agonistic rebirth after the Second World War, conceived of as a way to encourage economic growth across the region. As the decade of the 2020s ushers in the departure of the United Kingdom from the collaborative endeavor of the EU (known as “Brexit”), it would seem that Europe—including the idea of Europe—is shrinking. But movement—musical movement—is afoot. Artists like Stormzy, the British rapper we encountered earlier, might be understood as updates to the medieval troubadour figure Pena conjured in her song. Grime, a bracingly quick, UKoriented electronic dance music genre that developed out of hip-hop, dancehall, and garage, boasts of being a music for the many, crafted out of rhymes about life struggles in the public spaces around social housing in British cities. Stormzy is its star, touring from stadium concert to stadium concert, collecting stories to tell and prominent figures and politicians to court, just as medieval troubadours sang to impress heads of court. Touring musicians make music accessible, and their stories about the road allow us to imagine that we travel along. Music has also been a driving force for tourism, a major European industry. Historically, musical tourism has been for the moneyed. They could order tickets years in advance in order to make the once-in-a-lifetime journey to Bayreuth, for example. There they flock to the concert hall built on top of a hill by the nineteenth-century German composer Richard Wagner just outside the city limits of this southern German city. The building was designed for the purpose of performing Wagner’s compositions, especially the four-evening cycle of operas he composed based on the German epic, The Ring of the Nibelungen (1848–74). Little luxuries build up the sensory delight: at the intermission people order sausages, pretzels, and sparkling wine. Twenty-first century travel has a different pace. The increased ease of airline travel, especially the low fares offered by budget airlines, opens up weekend

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Kraftwerk perform at the Exit Festival in Novi Sad, Serbia (2009). Source: REBEL Media/ WireImage/Getty Images.

jaunts to students. People commute across European borders by plane and train. Festival culture is booming, particularly techno-tourism, which invites people to take a step out of their monotonous 9-to-5 lives and immerse themselves in the booming halls of electronic dance music. Emotional (and sometimes chemical) ecstasy is laced through the all-nighters through which bodies move together. Dancing and sex release stress. The diverse participants represent the Europe of the future and they meet on the dance floor, at late-night fast-food kiosks, and at overbooked hostels. DJs move about to different urban hubs, looking for the scene that likes their taste. Electronic music festivals take over expansive open fields, former factories, abandoned theme parks, and military fortresses, as does the electronic-, indie-, and rock-oriented EXIT Festival in Novi Sad, Serbia. For a long weekend, attendees listen and dance to music across stages that bridge the moats, flood sound through the tunnels, and are perched at the river overlook of the brick citadel. Berlin is at the heart of techno-tourism for musical, historical, and economic reasons. The electronic music that booms day in and day out, year round has a long legacy in Germany, not least because electronic instruments (especially synthesizers and sequencers) were readily available in West Germany. In the 1960s and ’70s, money flowed into West Berlin from capitalist countries (especially the United States) in part to pump up this fractured city, which was surrounded by East Germany. New musical instruments were manufactured across the Atlantic and imported to Western Europe. Bands like Kraftwerk, formed in 1970, used these new tools to make dance music that pulsed with repetitive rhythms and minimalist synthesized melodic fragments. These percolate through long tracks with slowly changing sound worlds: the basic formal task of electronic dance music today. Unlike North American dance genres of the time—like funk, which wiggles along grooves and syncopated bass lines and is often played by larger instrumental ensembles—European electronic music drew attention to its robotic nature and the uncomfortable

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TECHNO-TOURISM The travel industry that is fueled by the popularity of live experiences, especially in clubs or at multi-day festivals, of electronic dance music.

ELECTRONIC DANCE MUSIC A large umbrella category that encompasses music genres dominantly produced electronically and played back by DJs in clubs and at raves and festivals.

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relationship between man and machine. Kraftwerk manipulated their voices electronically—with vocoders, that made their voices sound synthesized. What control do you have over your life? Are you a robot, or can you reclaim agency and resist the system? These are questions Kraftwerk’s clean textures and monotonous English- and German-language lyrics seem to ask. In Germany, these questions had clear political overtones. Kraftwerk worked to show the need to resist—the rise of totalitarianism, the seduction of capitalism, the ease of prioritizing oneself over others. They wanted to push back against the notion that technological progress was inherently good. As they used fancy equipment, they drew attention to the ways that Nazi Germany had abused new technologies—like the radio, which was designed to spread white supremacist ideologies. Their hit album, Trans-Europe Express (1977), ironically engages with the dynamic motion of electronic dance rhythms. This is a train ride through

LISTENING GUIDE 9.5

MUSIC FOR DANCING: “SHOWROOM DUMMIES”

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HIS TRACK OF electronic dance music from Kraftwerk’s Trans Europe Express (1977) is built out of layers of repeated small units—many of which appear across the whole concept album. The German artists used technology that was new in the 1970s to automate some aspects of musical production: notably a sequencer and orchestron. Across the album, the lyrics and electronic sounds are used to critique modern life with its technological competition and emphasis on polished appearances. Maybe there is even some fear for a lost sense of humanity. At the same time: this is music designed for dancing, and the constant rhythmic pulse and monotone (maybe even dead-pan) vocal delivery of the lyrics is fundamental to that possibility. One track, “Europe Endless,” seems to point out that very fact: this music could go on for hours. Perhaps it also asks: with its effervescent melody: must we keep thinking about Europe? Take a listen for yourself. Some of the sounds on “Showroom Dummies” are obviously “electric” to our ears, like the short melody that enters two seconds into the track. Others resonate with familiar instruments and timbres of popular music—like the hi hat sound across the track or the choral fragment that comes in for the first time at nineteen seconds. That choir functions kind of like a “response” to the sequencer’s call. It was made on a now-antiquated instrument called the orchestron. Find an example of this interface by looking online! Trans Europe Express was branded differently for European and American audiences. For one, Americans listened to the lyrics in English translation. Take a listen to this track and try and transcribe the lyrics as you do so, pausing and stopping along the way. What phrase comes up the most? The musical fragments change ever-so slightly as the track develops, too. Can you nail down two or three significant moments where change happens? Another way the branding was different was in the album’s packaging: it had two different covers, depicting the four white men in the ensemble. Online, locate the two versions and write down five similarities and five differences. How might we understand their messages to be different? The 2009 remastering has an image of a train—another strong editorial choice! Remember the wisdom of Kraftwerk as you reflect on image presentation: “We are showroom dummies.” (And do note the humorous mistranslation of a German line, “We exhibit ourselves,” as “We expose ourselves.”)

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Europe filled with possibility and potential entrapment. The music mimics the trains’ smooth movement: apparently the members spent time thinking about the album while hovering over railroad tracks at bridges. At times they let movement be tedious (“Europe endless”), at times the journey burbles happily along (as in the instrumental track “Franz Schubert,” named after a canonic composer for perhaps no reason at all but to poke fun) and at times they agitate with instructions on how to break free. “Showroom Dummies” has a twang and kick to it, but the lyrics begin in a sinister tone: “We are standing here, being watched. We are showroom dummies. We are showroom dummies.” Verselet by verselet, “we” break free: “We step out and take a walk through the city,” they recite, linking personal liberation and mobility. “We go into a club, and there we start to dance.”

REVIEW CHAPTER RESOURCES

SUMMARY: RESOUNDING EUROPE It is May 2018 and I am approaching the Brandenburg Gate with tens of thousands of other demonstrators. We are coming from the east, along the avenue that coursed past the palace from which the rulers of the Prussian Empire reigned (1701–1918) and past the parliament of East Germany during its forty-year existence (1949–90). It is a promenade not unlike the banks of the Thames in London: designed for people walking through the city to enjoy the vibrant life of the city, see its monuments, attend its museums, and play in A May 2018 “Shimmering Protest” by the artistic community—including Berlin’s clubs—at the Brandenburg Gate against right-wing extremism. Source: courtesy of the author, Andrea F. Bohlman.

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Manaf Halbouni’s November 2017 monument to the lives lost in Aleppo during the Syrian Civil War. Source: courtesy of the author, Andrea F. Bohlman.

its parks. The Brandenburg Gate is one such monument: so closely intertwined with German identity that it can be found pressed onto the German 10-, 20-, and 50-cent Euro coins. The Gate is a monument to the peaceful restoration of order following unrest in the Prussian Empire. During the Cold War, when Germany was divided, the Berlin Wall ran along the territory of the wall. The wall, lined with barbed wire and military watch stations empowered to shoot at suspicious pedestrians at will, etched the scars of World War II in stone and kept East Germans from free border crossings, dividing families. At one point, the story goes, the English rocker David Bowie (who was intensely inspired by West Berlin’s countercultural ethos, including Kraftwerk) gave a concert near the Wall in 1987 that was loud enough for people in East Germany to approach the wall by the gate and strain to hear, “We can be heroes, just for one day!” When, in 1989, the dissolution of East Germany began, the pillared passageway was reimagined again, as a symbol of the hope and energy of reunification. The Brandenburg Gate is a frequent site of demonstrations on the streets of Berlin, because of the huge avenues that lead up to it from both sides and because of its proximity to governmental buildings. In November 2017, on the day after the anniversary of Germany’s reunification, the Syrian-German artist Manaf Halbouni installed three upended busses in front of the gate to create a barricade that evoked one erected during the Syrian Civil War in the now-decimated city of Aleppo to stop sniper fire. The installation, sponsored by a local theater, reminded onlookers of the Gate’s recent past and incited debate about the hospitality Germans could (or should) extend to refugees fleeing that war zone and seeking asylum in the European Union. Around the busses, people across the political spectrum held signs up to respond and enlisted volunteers to take action. The Brandenburg Gate, then, serves as a site to discuss and reflect upon the very local (how can school-age Syrians get access to language learning resources?) along with the global (what do we do about destruction—whether that of global climate change or war—so far away from us, we can hardly know it is there?). When I approach the gate in May 2018, there are two large-scale demonstrations underway. The far-right party, Alternative for Germany, is holding a rally to the West in a lead-up to the September federal election. Their parliamentary candidates run on isolationist platforms that argue, for example, that the EU is draining Germany of resources or that foreigners steal jobs from Germans. Its members are most often hostile to foreigners, like migrant workers from Poland, and openly Islamophobic—a means of denying TurkishGermans who have lived their whole lives in Germany a sense of belonging and of articulating that asylum not be granted to those from North Africa and the Middle East who have sought it. Under German law, as a political party, the

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Alternative for Germany has a right to assemble, though on this day only 5,000 show up. This in contrast to the counterdemonstration among whom I walk, estimated at 20,000 people. The city’s arts venues are at the helm of this gathering, which feels more like a party than a rally: state-funded museums and theaters as well as other ventures—notably most of the largest clubs—have called for people to come together to “Boom away the AfD” (“AfD wegbassen”). The premise is simple: so many people are out clubbing into Sunday’s wee hours anyway, why not take the party to the streets as the sun rises and makes visible the diverse bodies who revel in the creative energy of this city. Combat hate with art: make the party irresistible. Rented busses with large soundsystems are bedazzled with gold streamers, DJs preside in rainbow face paint, and protester-dancers cheer frequent bursts of confetti. Some of the speakers blast techno, others soul, yet others US-pop hits (like Beyoncé’s 2016, “Formation”). There might not be something for everyone, but no one is comfortable all the time. Music’s loudness—think back to the bells that rang out at the beginning of this chapter—can be weaponized. Loud music can hurt ear drums; it is even used to torture people. On this May day, however, anti-fascist demonstrators of many stripes dance to the loud bass and sing along when they care to as the counterdemonstration overrides the public addresses of the Alternative for Germany politicians. The energy, I get the feeling, invites people from the club who might not otherwise take part in political organizing to think about what role they might play in combatting the rise of white supremacy in Europe. What would you do? The social movement underfoot uses music’s mobility not to dominate, but as social glue and glitter. In the energy of that afternoon, I catch a glimmer of hope, too. That today music is a means to critique Europe, reconstitute power relations, and reimagine the future.

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KEY TERMS Monument/memorial Empire Street musician Western music Nation Musical canon Folk song Field recording Forced displacement Sound art Reciprocity War Intimacy Tourism

BIBLIOGRAPHY Money, Power, and Access Bates, Eliot, “Music, Mobility and Distributed Recording Production in Turkish Protest Music,” in Jason Stanyek and Sumanth Gopinath, Eds., Oxford Handbook of Mobile Music Studies, Vol. 2, 239–260 (New York: Oxford University Press); Burkhalter, Thomas, “Multisited Avant-Gardes or World Music 2.0?: Musicians from Beirut and Beyond between Local Production and Euro-American Reception,” in Thomas Burkhalter, Kay Dickinson, and Benjamin K. Harbert, Eds., The Arab AvantGarde: Music, Politics, Modernity, 89–120 (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2013); Engelhardt, Jeffers, “Music, Sound, and Religion,” in Martin Clayton, Trevor Herbert, and Richard Middleton, Eds., The Cultural Study of Music, 2nd ed., 299–307 (New York: Routledge, 2012); Evaristo, Bernardine, Girl, Woman, Other (New York: Hamish Hamilton, 2019); Nettl, Bruno, “Mozart and the Ethnomusicological Study of Western Culture,” in Katherine Bergeron and Philip V. Bohlman, Eds., Disciplining Music, 137–155 (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1992); Nooshin, Laudan, “Introduction to the Special Issue: The Ethnomusicology of Western Art Music,” Ethnomusicology Forum 20(3) (2011) 285–300;

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Stokes, Martin, “Music and the Global Order,” Annual Review of Anthropology 33 (2004) 47–72; Whitmore, Aleysia K., “The Art of Representing the Other: Industry Personnel in the World Music Industry,” Ethnomusicology 60(2) (2016) 329–355; Thurman, Kira, “Performing Lieder, Hearing Race: Debating Blackness, Whiteness, and German Identity in Interwar Central Europe,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 72(3) (2019) 825–865; Western, Tom, “Field Recording and the Production of Place,” in Samantha Bennett and Eliot Bates, Eds., Critical Approaches to the Production of Music and Sound, 23–40 (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2018). Nation: Unrest and Belonging Bohlman, Philip V., Focus: Music, Nationalism, and the Making of the New Europe, 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 2011); Daughtry, J. Martin,“Russia’s New Anthem and the Negotiation of National Identity,” Ethnomusicology 47 (2003) 42–67; Castello-Branco, Salwa El-Shawan, “The Politics of Music Categorization in Portugal,” in Philip V. Bohlman, ed., The Cambridge History of World Music, 661–677 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press (2013); Hilder, Thomas R.,

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Sámi Musical Performance and the Politics of Indigeneity in Northern Europe (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015); Hofman, Ana, “Disobedient: Activist Choirs, Radical Amateurism and the Politics of the Past after Yugoslavia,” Ethnomusicology 64(1) (2020) 89–109; Rice, Timothy, May It Fill Your Soul: Experiencing Bulgarian Music (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1994; Silverman, Carol, “Gypsy/Klezmer Dialectics: Jewish and Romani Traces and Erasures in Contemporary European World Music,” British Forum for Ethnomusicology 24(2) (2015) 159–180; Sonevytsky, Maria, Wild Music: Sound and Sovereignty in Ukraine (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2019). Popular Music, Lyricism, and Intimacy Garcia, Luis-Manuel, “Whose Refuge, This House?: The Estrangement of Queers of Color in Electronic Dance Music,” in Fred Everett Maus and Sheila Whiteley, Eds., The Oxford Handbook of Music and Queerness (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018); Gray, Lila Ellen, Fado Resounding: Affective Politics and Urban Life (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2013); Holt, Fabian, “New Media, New Festival Worlds: Rethinking Cultural Events and Televisuality through YouTube and the Tomorrowland Music Festival,” in Christina Baade and James A. Deaville, Eds., Music and the Broadcast Experience: Performance, Production, and Audiences, 257–292 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016); Pirttijärvi, Ulla, Hoŋkoŋ Dohkká [The Hong Kong Doll]. (Kautokeino: DAT, 1996); Ramnarine, Tina K.,, “‘In Our Foremothers’ Arms’: Goddesses, Feminism, and the Politics of Emotion in Sámi Songs,” in Fiona Magowan and Louise Wrazen, Eds., Performing Gender, Place, and Emotion in Music: Global Perspectives, 162–184 (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2013); Raykoff, Ivan, and Robert Deam Tobin, eds., A Song for Europe: Popular Music and Politics in the Eurovision Song Contest (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2007); Stokes, Martin, The Republic of Love: Cultural Intimacy in Turkish Popular Music (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2010); Sugarman, Jane, “Those ‘Other Women’: Dance and

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Femininity among Prespa Albanians,” in d. Tullia Magrini, Ed., Music and Gender: Perspectives from the Mediterranean, 87–118 (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2003); Tochka, Nicholas, Audible States: Socialist Politics and Popular Music in Albania (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016). Violence, Race, and Representation Beckerman, Michael, Jessica Schwartz, Roland Huntford, Roger Buckton, Michael Cwach, Kevin C. Karnes,Timothy J. Cooley, Bret Werb, Petra Gelbart, and Jeffrey A. Summit, “Auditory Snapshots from the Edges of Europe.” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 22 (2012) 199–221; Buchanan, Donna A., “‘Oh, Those Turks!’: Music, Politics, and Interculturality in the Balkans and Beyond,” in Donna A. Buchanan, Ed., Balkan Popular Culture and the Ottoman Ecumene: Music, Image, and Regional Political Discourse, 3–56 (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007); Lie, Siv B., “Genre, Ethnoracial Alterity, and the Genesis of jazz manouche,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 72(3) (2019) 665–718; MacMillen, Ian, Playing It Dangerously: Tambura Bands, Race, and Affective Block in Croatia and Its Intimates (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2019); McMurray, Peter, “After the Archive: An Archaeology of Bosnian Voices,” in Frank Gunderson, Robert C. Lancefield, and Bret Woods, Eds., The Oxford Handbook of Musical Repatriation (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019, 607–626); Rollefson, J. Griffith, Flip the Script: European Hip Hop and the Politics of Postcoloniality (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2017); Sweers, Britta, “Music against Fascism: Applied Ethnomusicology in Rostock, Germany,” in John Morgan O’Connell and Salwa ElShawan Castelo-Branco, Eds. Music and Conflict, 193–216 (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2010); Teitelbaum, Benjamin, “Rap, Reggae, and White Minoritization,” in Fabian Holt, Ed., The Oxford Handbook of Popular Music in the Nordic Countries, 345–362 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017); Woolf, Virginia, Mrs. Dalloway (Boston, MA: Mariner Books, 1990 [1925]).

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Taylor & Francis Taylor & Francis Group http://taylorandfrancis.com

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04/09/20 11:13 AM

MUSIC OF LATIN AMERICA Timothy Rommen

LOUIS TOWERS IN PHILADELPHIA The announcement read: “Direct from Colombia! Champeta singer Louis Towers, with Palenke, brings danceable afro-Colombian rhythms to you.” My colleagues in Latin American Studies and Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania had invited Towers to town and everyone was excited about the upcoming performance. The concert took place at The Rotunda, a community arts space located in West Philadelphia on October 13, 2009. Well before the 7 pm start, the space had filled to capacity—in fact, the place was electric with anticipation. The audience for that night included Penn students and faculty, to be sure, but Philadelphia’s Latino/a community was, by far, the largest constituency present at the show. Louis Towers and his band took the stage and simply owned the room, performing a generous set of champeta music that extended to well over two hours in length. Many in the audience danced, and a significant portion of the audience clearly knew most of the lyrics to his songs and performed their knowledge by singing along with the band.

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10 The highlight of the set was a powerful rendition of Towers’ song, “Return to Your Roots / Mama Africa,” in which he lyrically and sonically links his Afro-Colombian diasporic identity to the much longer history of his community’s African heritage. In so doing, Towers is also making obvious connections with more pan-African sentiments articulated throughout the Americas. The lyrics, sung in both Spanish and a creole language called Palenquero, offer a vision of Mother Africa calling her children home. The following morning, Towers and his band reluctantly packed their bags and headed back to Colombia. They had dearly wanted to spend some time in New York City, reconnecting with friends and family members living abroad and working to establish new professional relationships and networks in hopes of garnering future opportunities, but their visas were severely restricted due to the difficult post-9/11 political immigration climate in the United States. In fact,

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Louis Towers. Source: provided by Louis Towers.

CHAMPETA An Afro-Colombian popular music associated particularly with the címarron (maroon) village of Palenque de San Basilio and centered in the city of Cartagena. PALENQUERO A creole language, developed in Colombia, and mixing Spanish with Bantú.

securing the visas at all (limited as they were) had been a rather protracted and unpredictable process in the months leading up to the show.The disappointment of missing out on the ancillary (and potentially career-enhancing) benefits of traveling more extensively within the United States highlights the precarity of the mobility required of (and afforded to) professional musicians hailing from regions other than the North Atlantic, and I’ll have occasion to return to this idea in the pages that follow. In the contemporary moment, champeta is a popular Afro-Colombian dance music rooted in the Caribbean port city of Cartagena and the wider costeño region of the country. But the path to such success was a long one, and that history is instructive here. The beginnings of the genre are generally associated with large sound systems (called picós) that, beginning in the 1970s, would spin imported records (mostly of African and Caribbean genres) and provide entertainment for primarily black audiences in the poorer neighborhoods of Cartagena. Significantly the term champeta, the name of a local machete-like knife, was not initially associated with music at all. Instead, as urbanization drew more and more rural people to the city, middle- and upper-class inhabitants of Cartagena, as early as the 1920s, began derisively referring to the newcomers as champetudos in order to mark this growing community as lower class (economically insignificant), vulgar (culturally inferior), and black (other). In the 1970s, when the picós became popular, the term was repurposed by the economic elite in order to disparagingly class and racialize the community of listeners and dancers (Cunin 2003; Escallón Miranda 2007). By the early 1980s, however, having listened to a wide range of African and Caribbean genres at the picós, local Afro-Colombian musicians, many of whom hailed from a famous town called Palenque de San Basilio, began to integrate these sounds from

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abroad with local sounds, creating a style that was initially called “Colombian therapy” or “creole therapy.” Thanks to an internal revalorization of an externally imposed, negative term (champetudos), however, the community was soon calling the music champeta. Champeta is conspicuously hybrid in its musical makeup. This is the case in large part because champeta grew out of a social and geographic context where the roots and routes of peoples, languages, and sounds all met, converged, and mingled. Nigerian, Congolese, and Caribbean sailors (among many others) exchanged their musical and cultural ideas with the local community at the picós, and these interactions became audible features of the style in the 1980s and 1990s. When listening to champeta today, it’s easy to hear echoes of circum-Caribbean sounds, including styles as divergent as reggae, soca, zouk, rumba, dancehall, son, and calypso. It’s also easy to make connections with African sounds such as soukous, juju, mbaqanga, and highlife. Local sounds, such as cumbia, of course, find their place in the mix as well. But if we listen closely, champeta can also fill our ears with the sounds of history—with the sounds of slave resistance, of independent towns (like Palenque de San Basilio, the town whence many of the innovators of champeta came and where Louis Towers still lives), and of great struggles over language (Palenquero vs. Spanish), race (blackness in Colombia), and geography (rural vs. urban). Palenque de San Basilio, for instance, is the only surviving címarron (maroon) village among several founded in colonial-era Colombia. Against overwhelming odds, it survived from its birth in the seventeenth century, right up to the contemporary moment, developing its creole language (Palenquero), unique customs and music (especially burial rituals and the lumbalú music, which accompanies those rituals), and a rich diasporic imagination in the process. In the mid-twentieth century, as migration to urban centers began to draw more and more Palenque-born people to cities like nearby Cartagena, interactions, both musical and cultural, began to shape new practices and new sounds (including champeta). Language, too, became part of this history, for Palenquero (a creole language mixing Spanish with Bantú), the primary language of the community at Palenque de San Basilio, found its way to the city and into champeta. To be sure, Palenquero is not winning its struggle against the national language (in fact, Palenquero is currently fighting to retain speakers against the twin pressures of urbanization and assimilation), but the spirit of resistance embedded in the language itself and in the community that developed it (San Basilio) remains powerfully symbolic. Champeta also highlights the social and cultural place of blackness within Colombia—a history that continues to be quite complicated (cf. Wade, 2000; Aldana 2012). But champeta gives artists like Louis Towers a voice in these negotiations, for many of these struggles are played out in the music itself, either as explicit political messages (singing in Palenquero) or as more subtle (but highly effective) claims to place, space, and identity. I open this chapter with a reflection on Louis Towers’ music because the long history of champeta illustrates several of the recurring issues that we will encounter in our excursions in Latin America, including: (1) the reliance of the style on

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RETURN TO YOUR ROOTS “MAMA AFRICA”

LISTENING GUIDE 10.1

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Composed and performed by Louis Towers

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HIS SONG BY LOUIS TOWERS is a good example of the popular music called champeta. The lyrics make a strong case for remembering Africa as a source of cultural production and heritage. They also illustrate the linguistic complexities at play in Columbia, moving between Spanish and Palenquero (a creole language developed from Spanish and Bantú sources) several times throughout the performance. The lyrics also offer a glimpse at the fraught racial dynamics at play within Colombia (and by extension, elsewhere in Latin America), highlighting stereotypical and racialized attitudes toward dancing bodies (verse 4). Like many genres of popular music, it is strophic in structure. The bridge, moreover, makes use of a formal device often deployed in champeta and called the despeluque. Despeluque means, roughly, losing one’s composure or losing one’s head, and is characterized by a very deliberate focus on the groove (often melody instruments drop out and percussion is foregrounded, as happens in this performance). Translation courtesy of Ann Farnsworth-Alvear. TIME

SECTION

MUSICAL EVENT/LYRICS

0:00–0:13

Introduction

Vocal callouts

0:13–0:31

Verse 1

Recordase en donde naciste— ¡te acuerdas! Y la madre que te parió Eso que tu corazón dice—ay ómbe Lo que eres, tu propio yo

0:31–0:40

Instrumental interlude

Vocal callouts

0:40–0:54

Verse 2

Sientes muy dentro de tí Algo que te grita vuelve Esa es la propia raíz Que no se corte y que crece Dentro de tí

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Instrumental interlude

Vocal callouts

1:03–1:21

Chorus

Mamá Africa te llama te llama Mamá Africa Mamá Africa te llama te llama Mamá Africa

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Instrumental interlude

Vocal callouts

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Verse 3 with extension

Si un día mientras caminas— te pones a bailar Al son de algo que no escucha— debes escuchar Piensa serio, no es excusa— esa es la verdad

Remember where you were born— You remember? And the mother who bore you Hear what your heart says—ay hombre (man!) What you really are, your own self

You feel it way inside yourself, Something that calls to you: Come back that’s it, that’s the root It’s not cut, it grows Inside of you

Mamá Africa is calling you She’s calling you— Mamá Africa is calling you She’s calling you—

If one day when you’re walking— you start to dance To a rhythm you don’t hear— you should listen to it Think, be serious, no excuse— it’s the truth

continued

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TIME

SECTION

MUSICAL EVENT/LYRICS No se trata de una bruja— esa es tu Mamá Que te llama vuelve—vuelve Que te grita . . . vuelve bis

1:58–2:24

Bridge/ Despulque

That’s not a witch—she’s your mother She’s calling you, come back—come back She’s shouting to you, come back bis.

Lyrics in Palenquero. Majaná, majaná onde jué ugtere ta majana [Rough translation from Palenquero: ¿Mi gente en donde estan? / Where are my people?]

2:24–2:34

Instrumental interlude

2:34–2:51

Verse 4

2:52–3:01

Instrumental interlude

3:01–3:19

Chorus

3:19–4:13

Bridge/ Despulque

Cuando un blanco baila sabroso— comentan “Esto no sé si sea verdad.” Que un negro lleva en el fondo . . . ajá De su alma, dicen acá— será mentira.

When a White guy dances good— They’ll talk “Could it really be true?,” Since a Black guy has it deep down, ah— In his soul, here they say that— “Maybe it’s a lie.”

Mamá Africa te llama te llama Mamá Africa Mamá Africa te llama te llama Mamá Africa

Mamá Africa is calling you She’s calling you— Mamá Africa is calling you She’s calling you—

Lyrics in Palenquero. Salino pa tiela ugtere Minino pa tiela mí Bukeno gende suto Bukeno gende mí

[Rough translation from Palenquero: Regresen a su tierra, vengan a la mia. Busquen a nuestra gente, busquen a la gente mia.

Come back to your land, Come to my land, Find our people, Find my people.

mobilities of various kinds; (2) the importance of race and ethnicity to the genre’s meanings; (3) the crucial role that hybridity plays in shaping the genre’s sound; and (4) the deep impact of urbanization on the style’s development. Let me just briefly elaborate on these four themes. The concert at The Rotunda was brilliant, and left its audience buzzing. It was a unique moment of musical exchange and, accordingly, a significant event. That said, however, Towers’ performance is also important precisely for its everyday ordinariness—for the mobilities it illustrates. In Philadelphia, any given week will find musicians and bands from Latin America and the Spanish-speaking Caribbean playing shows at local clubs, and these concerts draw the many Latin American expatriates living in the area (as well as other Philadelphia residents) to the venues. New York City, located just a short drive up Interstate 95, is embedded even more firmly within these fluid nodes and networks of mobility (of both musicians and their audiences).

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MESTIZO A relative term referring to people and a social identity involving the blending of European and Amerindian beliefs and cultural practices. Although in the past used as a racial category, it now more accurately denotes the variable incorporation of Iberian (Spanish and Portuguese) and indigenous cultural heritages. SYNCRETISM A term, used within religious studies, to describe processes of mixture between religious traditions.

Race and ethnicity, too, have shaped in powerful ways not just the music of Louis Towers, but the musics performed by and important to many Latin American communities. We will discover that Amerindian music, Europeanderived styles, and African aesthetics have all contributed to Latin America’s rich musical traditions and that these are often at the heart of negotiations over space and place within the modern nation-states of the region. The notion of hybridity, moreover, so deeply rooted in Champeta’s sound, also finds a ubiquitous, if widely variegated presence throughout the region. The notion of mixture embedded in the concept of mestizaje, for instance, is a powerful means of thinking through the many musical genres that have emerged in the course of colonial and post-colonial encounters between Amerindians and Europeans in the region. And, thinking about sacred sounds will lead us inevitably to explore the many beautiful ways that communities have made religious practice relevant and meaningful in their day-to-day experiences through recourse to syncretism. And finally, champeta isn’t exceptional in terms of how urbanization has affected its sound and standing over the years. In fact, as we shall see, this is a recurring trope throughout the region, and one that has affected a great many of the musics we will be encountering in dramatic fashion. Our excursions in this chapter, then, will be directed toward thinking musically about these four themes and to illustrating, in as wide-ranging and representative a way as possible, the sheer variety of forms that they assume when communities wrestle them into meaningful sound.

LATIN AMERICA: DEFINITIONS AND SHARED HISTORIES Before delving into our series of excursions, however, it is necessary to offer a few words about how this chapter will conceptualize the region as well as a few thoughts about the common themes that animate the long history of Latin America. For our purposes, Latin America comprises the Spanish- and Portuguesespeaking countries of North, Central, and South America. One way to organize and conceptualize the vast geography explored in this chapter is to think about the ways in which Latin America can be subdivided into smaller regions (see Box 10.1). These include North America (Mexico and the Latino/a community in the United States) and Central America (Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama). Within South America, several more regions are commonly recognized, including: the Andean Region (Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia, Chile, and parts of Colombia, Venezuela, and Argentina); the Southern Cone (Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay); and Portuguese-speaking Latin America (primarily Brazil). Ordinarily, the Spanish-speaking Caribbean and circum-Caribbean (Cuba, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, and Caribbean coastal areas of Central America, Colombia, and Venezuela) are included as well, but since Chapter 11 covers the Caribbean, our excursions in this chapter will touch only briefly on the circum-Caribbean. Conspicuously absent here are the English-, French-, and Dutch-speaking nations of Guyana, French Guyana, and

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BOX 10.1 REGIONS WITHIN LATIN AMERICA North America (Mexico and the Latino/a community in the United States) Central America (Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama) The Andean Region (Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia, Chile, and parts of Colombia, Venezuela, and Argentina) Southern Cone (Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay) Portuguese-speaking Latin America (primarily Brazil) Spanish-speaking Caribbean and circum-Caribbean (Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, and Caribbean coastal regions of Central America, Colombia, and Venezuela).

Suriname on the Caribbean coast of South America. But, for the purposes of this chapter, we will confine ourselves to exploring only the musical diversity of the Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking communities in Latin America. Even after excluding the Caribbean, however, this chapter still aims to explore a tremendously diverse area, spread across two continents, and home to some 600 million people. How to begin to think about such a vast geography and such diverse communities? One place to start is to remind ourselves that there are some shared histories we can point to that, while experienced to different degrees and at varied moments, have contributed greatly to the shape of contemporary Latin American life. These include at least the histories of colonialism; the questions related to race and ethnicity that colonialism inevitably raised; and the powerful effects of urbanization on communities throughout the region. Let us briefly consider these interrelated histories.

COLONIALISM, RACE, AND URBANIZATION What Christopher Columbus “discovered”—and what Europe quickly began calling the New World—wasn’t at all new to a great many people who had lived there before he (and then many others) arrived in the region. Great civilizations had grown up centered in Mexico (Aztec), Central America (Maya), and Peru (Inca). Over many millennia, Amerindians had made the Americas their own,  but within only a few decades, European colonial expansion devastated those communities unfortunate enough to have met these visitors. Exposure to European diseases (like smallpox), war, and forced servitude took a tremendous toll on these communities, reducing the population by 50–80 percent (even more in some regions). Within the next century, even the Inca, initially somewhat protected by geography itself, living as they did in the highlands of the Andes, fell into European hands. Only those Amerindians living in the most inaccessible locations (such as Amazonia) remained relatively untouched by the inexorable expansion of European colonial power in the region.

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To one degree or another, this encounter between Europe and the Americas also raised questions about the value of human beings. Initially, Amerindians and, increasingly, African-born slaves were incorporated into a social order within which Europeans (peninsulares and criollos) held power and considered “others” inferior, and this both socially and culturally. This foundational struggle that indexed ethnicity and race in the service of power extended to inform attitudes toward mixture and cultural relevance, contributing a whole host of gradations in vocabulary designed to assign bodies a place within the social order. Terms like castizo, mestizo, cholo, mulato, indio, and zambo all delineated social rank within the caste system established in Latin America. Even after the Latin American Wars of Independence (fought during the first decades of the nineteenth century), these attitudes continued to inform the criollo elite, relegating mixed-race, Amerindian, and free black individuals to roughly the same positions they had occupied before. The fight for recognition and equality throughout Latin America continues in the contemporary moment and, as elsewhere in the world, it remains a pressing concern. The twentieth century saw Latin America become the world’s most urbanized region. In fact, the United Nations estimates that, by 2050, nine out of ten Latin American citizens will live in a city. This history of rural to urban migration has, as you can imagine, had major implications for populations throughout Latin America. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that many of the region’s poorest city dwellers are also racially marginalized, and that they live in the least desirable areas of these urban areas (the number of people living in urban slums throughout the region has recently risen above 110 million). The economic inequalities that emerge in the face of such rapid and pervasive urbanization, thus, parallel longstanding racial and ethnic fissures within Latin American societies. We will have occasion, in the pages that follow, to think about how music can highlight these processes by raising awareness and/or facilitating protest. But we’ll also have a chance to explore the ways that music provides entertainment and fosters solidarities in spaces otherwise marked by these overarching issues.

THEMES IN LATIN AMERICAN MUSIC Our excursions into the musics of Latin America will follow the themes outlined above, focusing on: (1) mobilities; (2) race and ethnicity; (3) hybridity; and (4) urbanization. Our case studies will cover both traditional styles and popular genres, and will visit as many musical communities as possible. Importantly, they will also illustrate quite consistently the ways that the themes suggested above blend and blur into each other as soon as we delve into specific musical histories and practices. Rather than thinking of these themes as separate from each other, then, it will be important to recognize the extent to which they can each participate in shaping any given case study. I use the themes, then, primarily to provide a general focus for our excursions, indicating points of connection between the themes along the way.

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Mobilities TANGO Let us begin by thinking about the emergence of tango in Argentina, paying particular attention to the ways in which this genre has depended on mobilities of both sounds and people for its successful integration into the national and international scenes. The pre-history of tango is bound up in the ubiquitous narratives of urbanization in Latin America. Starting in the mid-nineteenth century, the image of the rural rancher, or gaucho (a kind of cowboy figure), was increasingly popularized in Argentina. The gaucho, associated in the public imagination with courage, individualism, machismo, and independence, became a figure easily mobilized to embody national values, traditions, and beliefs. This image was coupled with and subsumed into a massive labor migration to Buenos Aires, which was occurring at the same time, leading to a new social figure called the compadrito—as one commentator has succinctly put it, the compadrito was akin to a “gaucho unsaddled” (Lago 2001). The men who adopted this persona tended to dress flashily and engage in petty crime, and also adopted and helped to develop a local dialect called lunfardo, which reinforced their social position (as lower class and ne’er-do-well) within Buenos Aires and the greater Río de la Plata region. The compadritos also developed a reputation for a machismo cultivated through skillful knife play, powerful song and dance, and success in romantic liaisons. They pursued this lifestyle in the tenements around Buenos Aires, called conventillos, which were growing rapidly at the time. Due to the overwhelming rate of labor migration to the city (primarily by men) the demographics of the conventillos eventually skewed to the point where men far outnumbered women (5 to 1 by some estimates). It was in this environment that, during the 1880s the tango emerged as a distinct social dance. Borrowing from earlier styles such as the malambo (a form of improvised male dance competition), milonga (a style of song that arrived to the city from the more rural areas of the Rio de la Plata region), the Cuban habanera, and candombe (a practice with explicitly African roots, of which more a bit later), the music and dance became an integral part of the entertainment scene throughout the conventillos (and, just as an aside, here we have a great example of the kinds of mixtures and hybridities that inform so many of the musical practices throughout Latin America). Because women were present in such small numbers in these communities, men often sharpened their dancing skills by dancing with each other, preparing themselves for the inevitable competition at brothels, where women had their pick of the best dancers or, alternatively, dancing with each other for the sheer pleasure of the experience (a homosocial and homoerotic narrative that has been downplayed in many of the historical accounts of tango). Musically, tango developed into two distinct forms—one designed for accompanying dancing, the other for listening, called tango-canción. From the outset, tango lyrics focused on misery, lost love, pain, longing for better times, violence, and the effects of poverty. In short, the lyrics focused on what it was

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EXPLORE Tango

TANGO A form of popular dance music developed primarily in Buenos Aires and the greater Río de la Plata region. GAUCHO Residents of the South American pampas and particularly important to the national imaginations of Argentina, Uruguay, and Chile. A term roughly equivalent to the North American cowboy. COMPADRITO A stereotypical character in the early history of tango. A male of modest means who makes do, both within and outside of the law, managing life with flair. LUNFARDO A particular approach to language (slang) that developed in the tenements of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Buenos Aires. Associated with early tango. CONVENTILLOS Tenements around Buenos Aires. MALAMBO A form of Argentine improvised male dance competition important to the early development of tango. TANGO-CANCIÓN A form of tango music designed to be listened to instead of danced.

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Carlos Gardel graffiti in Abastos Town in Buenos Aires. Source: Luis Davilla/Getty Images.

BANDONEÓN A type of concertina commonly associated with tango music and particularly popular in Argentina and Uruguay.

MILONGA A style of song popular in the more rural areas of the Rio de la Plata region and influential during the early development of tango.

like to live in Buenos Aires at the time, and the foremost exponent of this style was Carlos Gardel, who became a legendary figure in the early tango scene. The instrument most iconically associated with tango is the bandoneón, but it was really instruments such as guitars, flutes, and violins that initially provided the soundtrack to tango dance and song. In fact, it was common to use whatever instruments were on hand, and this often meant solo accompaniment (guitar, for instance). The bandoneón didn’t make a permanent place for itself in tango until the first decade of the twentieth century, but once it did, it gradually became the principal sonic marker of the genre. Ensembles featuring two bandoneóns, two violins, piano, and upright bass became common, but bandleaders would, in subsequent decades, expand dramatically on the size of their ensembles. The composition of ensembles performing tango remains very flexible, even today. The dance (and its musical soundtrack) developed into three substyles—tango, milonga, and vals (waltz). The tango (4/4) and milonga (2/4) are both duplemeter dances, while the vals (3/4) is a triple-meter dance. The tango is often characterized by strong accents at the quarter-note level, a technique called marcato. The milonga, for its part, is generally a bit faster and more energetic than the tango, offering a variant and contrast for both musicians and dancers (and the term also refers to the venues where tango is danced). Due to the context within which tango was performed and danced, however, the upper class drew implicit links between poverty and indecency and, of course, between wealth and decency. As such, tango wasn’t initially widely accepted beyond the tenements and the working-class communities in which it was popular, although that did not prevent young members of the middle and upper class from frequenting the brothels and salons where tango was performed. And, in part because wealthy Argentines regularly traveled abroad for education and leisure,

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LISTENING GUIDE 10.2

TANGO: “EL CHOCLO”

LISTEN

Performed by René Marino Rivero

T

HIS TANGO, WRITTEN by Argentine composer Ángel Gregorio Villoldo in 1905 and performed here by the Uruguayan musician René Marino Rivero is an excellent example of several features of tango. We can hear here four sections, which can be designated roughly as ABA’A’’. In each of these sections, the rhythmic flexibility to slow down, stretch, or speed up the tempo is clear. We also hear the marcato style with the firm accented and on-beat chords played on the bandoneón. The regional character of the dance and music and the mobilities foundational to its development and dissemination are highlighted here by the fact that an Uruguayan performer records this and includes it on an album entitled Bandoneon Pure: Dances of Uruguay. Each of the sections introduces new musical features and ideas into the performance, with the last two serving as variations on the first. TIME

SECTION

MUSICAL EVENT/LYRICS

0:00–0:26

A

This section introduces the main melodic and harmonic themes of the piece, presented in a minor key. Notice the very slight stretching of the tempo around 0:10–0:12 that makes that melodic moment much more expressive. Listen also to the strong accent on the downbeat in the bass notes (a style of playing called marcato).

0:26–0:51

B

This section presents contrasting melodic and harmonic material.

0:51–1:23

A’

This section slows the tempo, presents a variation of section A in a major key and with the melody presented an octave higher than it was in the opening section. Listen also for the manipulation of tempo for expressive purposes.

1:23–1:58

A’’

This section returns to the original octave and minor key introduced in the opening A section, but adds a great deal of additional ornamentation to the melodic line, making it the most virtuosic statement of the theme and a climactic ending to the piece. Notice again the dramatic stretching of the tempo in order to achieve artistic expression.

tango was eventually introduced to the dancing publics of Paris, where it was immediately seized on as the focus of a new dance craze. During the 1910s, tango rapidly became an internationally popular style, spreading to New York, London, and the rest of Europe. Several interesting developments are worth noting here. First, because of the popularity of tango dancing among communities who did not have direct access to the style’s roots in the conventillos, tango developed a new, more generic choreography and was then incorporated into the ballroom dance complex. Second, the fact of tango’s international popularity became the catalyst for a re-evaluation of the significance of tango within Argentine society. As the middle and upper classes began to realize that tango brought international approval, they quickly readjusted their own negative attitudes toward the music and dance (if not toward the communities in which it developed), incorporating it fully into the nation’s narrative. It was in this moment that Osvaldo Pugliese and Anibal Troilo became two of the most famous bandleaders in the Argentine tango scene, even pushing tango into film.

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The mobilities involved in creating such a reversal of fortune are important to keep in mind. Tango, itself a product of rural to urban migration and indebted to a particular combination of local and non-local musical influences for its sound, needed the international community to claim it as spectacular and worthwhile before the local Argentine elite took it seriously. Ironically, tango transcended both national boundaries and class boundaries in its rise to world prominence and to its place as a marker of Argentine identity. The 1930s–1950s were a period of tremendous growth for tango. During the second half of the twentieth century, Astor Piazzolla, the innovative and controversial tango bandleader and composer, emerged into international stardom. He lived between Paris, New York, and Buenos Aires, and connected tango deeply to jazz and Western Art Music. He tried many different configurations for his ensemble, but the most famous was his quintet, featuring bandoneón, electric guitar, violin, piano, and bass. He wrote material expressly intended for listening, not dancing, and sought to create virtuosic, avant-garde music. We can think of Piazzolla’s reception in Argentina as parallel to the initial development and reception of tango in Buenos Aires. Both had to go away to come home, as it were. In the case of Piazzolla, it was only late in his career that Argentina accepted his stylized and experimental music as a major contribution to tango. The formation of the National Academy of Tango in 1990 has helped this process a great deal. Today, a new hybrid, fusing tango with electronic dance music and rock, is proving popular in Argentine clubs, and bands like Goapele Project and Bajofondo Tango Club are busy innovating new approaches to tango’s sound and dance (and their videos are readily available on YouTube). Interestingly, they are rethinking the original myths about tango, exploring the homosocial Astor Piazzolla and bandoneón. Source: Eugene Maynard/Getty Images.

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and homoerotic possibilities embedded in the long history of the genre and generally pushing questions of gender and sexuality to the foreground of their projects. These developments, too, are bound up in the ability of sounds and bodies to travel—in the mobilities of both musical style and individual artists and their audiences.

SALSA Salsa counts among the most ubiquitous sounds traveling around Latin America. It has deep roots in the Spanish-speaking Caribbean, was developed in New York City, and then circulated throughout the region. Since the 1970s, it has expanded to inform and affect the popular music and dance repertories of the entire region. I include it here because of the particularly important ways that it illustrates mobilities, not just of people and musical practices, but also of the affinities and solidarities generated in and through its travels—solidarities that help shape the sounds and sensibilities of what many have called Latinidad. During the 1930s and 1940s, New York City became an important fulcrum around which communities began to explore what it meant and sounded like to be Latino/a in the United States. People had moved to the city to find work, to seek education, and to join family. This growing community included Cuban master drummers, and Puerto Rican plena and bomba musicians. By the 1950s, famous bandleaders like Tito Puente, Tito Rodríguez, and Machito held court, playing mambos at the city’s premier dance club—the Palladium. All of this musical activity was recorded, circulated, and broadcast, moving around the region along with the people who came and went between Latin America, the Caribbean, and New York City. Many important intersections were being explored during these decades, including connections with jazz. For instance, a significant Cu-bob movement (bebop placed in dialogue with Cuban musical ideas) developed in the 1940s. By the 1960s a younger generation of Latino/a musicians in New York, tired of the sounds of the Latin Big Bands of the 1950s, was attempting to find their way into the mainstream US markets, creating a musical style that blended elements of R&B with Latin percussion, using both Spanish and English in their lyrics, and generally working to create a party atmosphere (hand clapping, a live sound, etc.). This style came to be called boogaloo, but it was over almost as soon as it started (by 1968 it was effectively over). As the effects of the Cuban revolution, which occurred in 1959, began to be felt around the region, moreover, new artists and new ideas began to arrive in New York City, contributing their energy to the formation of what would eventually come to be called salsa. So, New York had already been a site for mixture, experimentation, and Latino/a sounds for decades before salsa emerged to prominence in the 1970s. But musicians had also been doing their thing in places other than New York during this time. It is worth mentioning just two musicians here to illustrate how much the circuits of people and recordings during earlier decades impacted on the sounds of salsa. In Puerto Rico, Cortijo y su Combo created a formidable sound and mined the resources of local plena and bomba styles in order to create

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EXPLORE Salsa

SALSA A style of popular Latin dance music.

PLENA A Puerto Rican folk song style associated with political and social protest and accompanied by frame drums and scrapers. BOMBA An Afro-Puerto Rican music and dance complex.

BOOGALOO A musical genre envisioned as a crossover between Latin and North American popular musics and actively pursued during the 1960s.

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vibrant grooves that contributed in no small measure to the musical palette from which salsa musicians eventually began to choose. His band’s popularity made a huge impression on many of the artists who would eventually rise to the top of the salsa scene. Similarly, a bit earlier, the Cuban bandleader, composer, and virtuoso tres player, Arsenio Rodriguez, created a richly percussive sound for his dance band. Playing son and doing so with an ensemble centered around a piano, tres, bass, two trumpets, and percussion (including congas), he influenced in very significant ways the formation of smaller, flexible ensembles for salsa. He also contributed one of the most recognizable rhythmic markers of salsa by codifying the conga part (still called the son conga today). The innovations of both of these musicians reached the bands and dancehalls of New York and, as boogaloo was fading, provided a way forward for the musicians seeking to play but uninterested in the big band sound of the 1950s. By the 1970s, the larger Latin big bands had been replaced by more nimble and flexible ensembles and salsa had emerged as a viable genre. The style was initially dominated by a single record company—Fania Records—and the repertory was comprised of both new material and existing popular song from Cuba and Puerto Rico. Much has been made of the fact that many Cuban songs were recorded that circumvented the need to pay royalties because Cuba was being embargoed. But, because Fania was so dominant, a particular sound became a hallmark of their recordings, branding salsa in a way that became recognizable as a genre. Major stars became a part of the scene, too—artists like Celia Cruz, Willie Colón, Rubén Blades, and Héctor Lavoe wound up as household names. And, because Fania promoted its sounds far and wide through record distribution, films, and touring, salsa began to find its way into communities around Latin America. Two of the most enthusiastic audiences for salsa were in Colombia and in Venezuela, where bands and dancing audiences sprang up almost overnight in response to the genre. So, in Venezuela, artists like Oscar D’Leon and bands like Dimension Latina entered the scene and began touring themselves. In Colombia, bands like Grupo Niche and Orquesta La Identidad achieved similar popularity. Both of these bands are based in Cali, which has come to be called the “World Capital of Salsa” in a move designed to replace New York City as the center of gravity for the genre. And, in some ways, this is a very accurate assessment of the state of salsa. By the time Fania Records began to falter and then fail in the 1980s, it had successfully seeded salsa in other places around Latin America, and Cali became one new center for the sound. Another way of thinking about it is that salsa became a thread that sonically tied the region together—a set of sonic practices in which the region could hear itself and with which it could identify. The mobilities we can trace in and through salsa are, thus, really about: (1) the simultaneous movements of sound and people between several important nodes (New York City, Cuba, and Puerto Rico); (2) a secondary movement of sound and people to a wider range of locations, some of which (including Cali) then also became central nodes in a wider network; and (3) a development of solidarity in and around these very mobilities.

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Race/Ethnicity Race and ethnicity provide another perspective from which to explore the complexities of musical life in Latin America. The following excursions will very briefly consider several Amerindian, European, and African contributions to musical practice throughout the region. And, while the genres and styles we encounter here are understood as deeply ingrained in particular racial and ethnic pasts, they will, nevertheless, also provide us with a foundation from which to begin thinking about hybridity and mixture—a process ubiquitous throughout the region.

HIGHLAND AMERINDIAN MUSICAL PRACTICES: THE AYMARA The Aymara-speaking Amerindians living in the highlands of Bolivia and Peru and Northern Chile predate both the Inca Empire and the arrival of Europeans in the region. They have maintained a sense of solidarity across centuries, and in spite of the limitations imposed by the borders of modern nation-states. They have, of course, also engaged with mestizos and with people of European heritage for much of that time. Many, for instance, travel from the highland region around Lake Titicaca to Lima in search of jobs, to join family, or to pursue their education. Conversely, many people and sounds also reach these highland communities even if they never leave home, contributing to new mixtures, hybridities, and cultural formations in the process. As such, there is much in their musical lives that could fruitfully be discussed when we get to our considerations of hybridity and mestizaje in Latin America (and also in our previous considerations of mobility). That said, however, there are also aspects of their musical and aesthetic lives which have been maintained in spite of these histories of encounter, and it is these that I would like briefly to explore. A preference for community over individuals characterizes Aymara social life. As Thomas Turino has put it in a previous incarnation of this chapter, “reciprocity, egalitarian relations, and community solidarity have come to constitute core values for ordering the Aymara social world” (2011: 297). And you might imagine that these values would surface in musical life as well. One area of performance where these social values become particularly evident is in the flute and drum ensembles so prevalent among the Aymara. I will focus here on an ensemble consisting of siku (cane panpipes) and large double-headed drums called bombos (also known as), but several other types of flutes and drums (including a side-blown cane flute called the pitu, an endnotched vertical cane flute called the kena, vertical duct flutes such as the pinkillus and tarkas, and indigenous snare drums called cajas) also occupy a significant place within Aymara musical performance. A final note about these various flutes—only a single type of flute is used in any ensemble (so tarkas never play with kenas, for instance). But let’s now take a closer look at the siku ensemble. These ensembles are usually large, and they are formed in order to provide musical accompaniment

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EXPLORE Andean Music WANKARA Sometimes called bombos, these large, doubleheaded drums are used to accompany siku ensembles. SIKU Andean instrument consisting of different lengths of reed or cane tubes, lashed together, each tuned to a specific note. The performer blows across the top of a cane to make it sound. The siku is a doublerow panpipe, divided between two players, the pitch row alternating between the two rows.

Aymara pinkillu ensemble. Source: provided by Thomas Turino.

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Aymara sikuri ensemble. Source: provided by Thomas Turino.

EXPLORE Aymara Sikuri Ensemble

HOCKET Interlocking pitches between two or more sound sources to create a single melody or part. SUYÁ Amazonian indigenous community of Brazil.

for occasions ranging from harvest festivals and life-cycle events, to community projects and religious celebrations. The egalitarian values of the community emerge in the way the ensembles are structured, in the dynamics attendant to performances, and in the physical structure of the instruments themselves. The ensembles are comprised of any male who wishes to participate (regardless of musical knowledge or skill). Music is composed collectively during rehearsals, and a great deal of emphasis is placed on an aesthetic of unity. They play “as one”—in a manner that suggests a much smaller number of players than are actually performing, that is—a goal toward which the members of siku ensembles strive. The more the community can sound like a single entity, the more satisfying their performance becomes. The process of creating a sound unified in this fashion involves some technique but is also reinforced by the physical makeup of the instruments themselves. In terms of technique, the music is performed in hocketed fashion, by which I mean that the melodies themselves can’t generally be played by a single individual on a single instrument. Melodies (and the instruments) are structured such that two or more instruments (and players)  are needed to realize the melody. But this isn’t simply an aesthetic choice—the instruments themselves are designed such that the full range of notes is not available on a single instrument. This means that two instruments (like the two performers responsible for playing them) must combine their respective resources to perform the melody as one. Structural, aesthetic, and ideological reasons for privileging group over individual thus permeate musical life among the Aymara.

LOWLAND AMERINDIAN MUSICAL PRACTICES: THE SUYÁ The Suyá, an Amerindian people living within Brazil’s Amazon rainforest, is but one of many communities living within the vast Amazon region. The physical and logistical difficulties attendant to traveling deep into the Amazon rainforest have tended historically to contribute to more isolation for many of these communities (whether from colonial forces or, more recently, from national governments) than is the case with, say, the Aymara. That said, however, the Suyá have in recent decades established a working relationship with the Brazilian government. Among the Suyá, musical life has taken on a different shape than we see among the Aymara. Flute and drum ensembles are not the norm here— instead, vocal music, sometimes accompanied by rattles, takes center stage. The Suyá engage in a wide variety of vocal genres, and these range from speechlike and chanted oratory (political, historical, artistic) to different singing styles. Their social organization, moreover, is determined by gender and age cohorts, and different singing styles and genres are pursued by each such sub-group within the community. For the Suyá as for the Aymara, joining together in collective participation is a major means of reinforcing social ties and the importance of community. But, unlike the Aymara, the Suyá also find room for songs that are individually

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owned (called akía) and, for music specific to particular age and gender cohorts. Songs are believed to be learned from animals, insects, fish, and plants, and Suyá festivals and song types are named for and often represent natural species (through costumes, dance, and style). Anthony Seeger has shown that some Suyá performances find a number of individuals singing their own different akía songs simultaneously within a musical context also including laughter, other vocal sounds, and shouts. This type of musical performance would likely feel quite disorienting to Aymara, who are committed to playing “as one.” And yet, community and collective performance is deeply important in the Suyá context as well. What is different here is the role that individuals can play in contributing their distinct and unique voice to the communal effort. Whereas the Aymara are concerned with collectively sounding as close to an individual performance as possible, the Suyá are comfortable showcasing the many voices that make up the collective. So, we can see in these brief contrasting examples a glimpse of the diverse approaches to music that exist among Amerindian peoples throughout the region. We will also see, a bit later on in this chapter, that some of the instruments and ideas about music prevalent among Amerindian communities have become embedded in the mestizo genres and hybrid sounds so ubiquitous throughout the region.

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AKÍA An individually owned and sung song of the Suyá Indians of Brazil.

EUROPEAN ART MUSIC It should come as no surprise that European musical heritage is also strong throughout the region, and we can see this in many different areas of musical life, including within Latin American sacred, art, and folk musics. Within sacred music, in particular, Christian liturgical practices loom large, and the colonial period found many composers taking on the challenge of writing for the church or within the idioms favored by the church. Initially, this task was adopted by European-born composers like, for example, the Spanishborn Gutierre Fernandez Hidalgo (1553–1618), who served at the cathedral in Bogotá, and Juan Gutiérrez de Padilla (ca. 1590–1664), who served at the cathedral in Puebla, Mexico. And these composers introduced masses, psalm settings, Magnificats, motets, sacred villancicos, and other liturgical settings to the musical landscape. In efforts to convert local communities, liturgical texts were also often translated into local languages like Quechua and Nahuatl. Instrumental music and operas also found their way to the Americas and the techniques, instruments, and aesthetics attendant to all of these art music genres were passed on to new generations of local composers. A vibrant art music tradition developed (and this especially since the nineteenth century) and composers of amazing creative scope have been working throughout the region ever since, including the Brazilians Antônio Carlos Gomes and Heitor Villa-lobos, the Argentine Alberto Ginastera, the Colombian Jaqueline Nora, the Venezuelan Paul Desenne, and the Mexican Hilda Paredes, to name only a very few. Efforts to connect to local folk music and dance have become a major theme within Latin American art music, and this

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VILLANCICOS A form of polyphonic song, either secular or sacred, important to the development of Latin American art music from the late fifteenth to the eighteenth century. QUECHUA The most widespread indigenous Andean language; the state language of the Inca, largest indigenous ethnic group in the Andes.

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has taken the form, for instance, of articulating a Yucatan Operatic tradition in Mexico (e.g. using local myth and folklore as the basis for librettos and musical material) and incorporating rhythmic ideas and melodic conventions from local folk practices into compositions. But the reverse trend is also important for our purposes here—the introduction of European instruments, musical ideas, and formal conventions into local popular and folk idioms has impacted regional musical life in profound ways as well. As we will see in the following section, string instruments of European provenance, in particular, have been adopted, rethought, redesigned, and then combined with flutes, local drums, and percussion, to produce mestizo/hybrid ensembles. But European scales, formal structures (strophic music, for instance), and harmonic conventions also became integral to mestizo music throughout the region.

AFRICAN-DERIVED MUSICAL PRACTICES: MARIMBA, CANDOMBE, CANDOMBLÉ As with the Amerindian and European examples we’ve explored, musics connected to African aesthetics are also to be found throughout much of the region. This is the case, not least because the slave trade brought so many Africans to Latin America. In fact, Brazil alone received four million slaves (1.5 million more than any other nation in the Americas). Even though Brazil is the prime example of the ways that the slave trade moved people from Africa to the Americas, African presence was and continues to be ubiquitous throughout the region. A few examples will illustrate this point.

MARIMBA MARIMBA Wooden keyed xylophone, originally from Africa, widely popular in Latin America.

CURRULAO Afro-Colombian, AfroEcuadorian dance in the Pacific Coast region in which marimba is featured.

We might point, for example to the marimba—an instrument of African provenance and, for many in places like Ecuador, Colombia, and Costa Rica, a symbol of their heritage. The marimba and its repertory was also historically a major component of musical life in parts of Peru. Although the instrument takes different shapes and is accompanied by different instruments, depending on where you are, the African origins of the instrument are widely accepted. Let’s explore the marimba’s role in a community dance, prevalent along the Pacific coasts of Ecuador and Colombia, called the currulao. The currulao features the entire community and includes the marimba, single-headed conical drums in two different sizes (male and female), two double-headed drums (bombos), and bamboo shakers. The performance is a chance for the community to dance and features marimba playing that follows a basic ostinato pattern, varying it with improvisatory material. The drums and rattles interlock with each other, setting up a dense rhythmic backdrop against which the marimba sounds and to which the dancers move. Over the top of all of this, a singer and female chorus lock into a call-and-response pattern. But, as with most musical matters, the on-the-ground situation is much more complex than it first appears, and this is the case not least because the marimba has also become central to the musical life of Amerindian communities and mestizo communities throughout Central America, Ecuador,

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MARIMBA DANCE: “CURRULAO BAMBUCO”

LISTENING GUIDE 10.3

LISTEN

Two-person marimba, drums, shakers, male and female voices. Recorded by N.E. Whitten in Buenaventura

Y

OU CAN CLEARLY hear the African influences on this recording of “Currulao Bambuco.” The instruments play interlocking duple and triple rhythms; the vocal parts are organized in leaderchorus, call-and-response patterns; melodies and rhythms are based on short, repetitive phrases (ostinatos); and the vocal style features yodeling and other vocal sounds. The primary ostinato on which this piece is grounded is supplied by the marimba, which with some variations continues throughout the performance. As the performance progresses, a female lead vocalist takes over from the male lead singer who is heard early on. The following reductions are designed to help you key in on the simultaneous presence of duple and triple meters and to hear it with reference to several of the instruments performing on this recording. The marimba and one of the drums play rhythmic patterns that fall into duple meter, whereas the shakers and a separate drum perform patterns that are best heard in triple meter. See if you can follow along with one instrument at a time, first counting it in duple and then counting it in triple while listening to the song. Aligned in duple meter (6/8): Count

1

Beat

1

Marimba, duple Drum, duple Shaker, triple

X

Drum, triple

X

2

1

2

3

4

x

x

X

x

x

X

x

x

x

X

x

X

x

X

5

6

1

x

X

X

2 2

3

4

x

x

X

x

x

X

x

x

x

X

x

X

x

X

X

5

6 x

X

Aligned in triple meter (3/4 within 6/8): Count

1

Beat

1

Marimba, duple Drum, duple Shaker, triple

X

Drum, triple

X

2

3

3

4

x

x

X

x

x

X

x

x

x

X

x

X

x

X

5

1

2

6

1

x

X

X X

2

3

2

3

4

x

x

X

x

x

X

x

x

x

X

x

X

x

X

5

6 x

X

As this song develops, listen for the marimba, which supplies the basic ostinato: two short sixbeat phrases (in 6/8 meter). One of the drums reinforces this duple feel. Notice also that the shakers emphasize a triple pattern. One of the drums strongly reinforces this triple feel. Attempt to hear the performance as unfolding in triple meter and tap your foot or hand in duple meter. Now try hearing the performance in duple meter and tap your foot in triple meter. See if you get one foot or hand to mark time in duple meter while the other foot or hand marks triple meter. continued

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TIME

MUSICAL EVENT

0:00–0:04

The ensemble is already in full swing when the recording fades in.

0:04–0:16

A male vocalist enters, singing a short phrase, and a female chorus responds [0:08–16]. The male leader uses a falsetto voice often throughout the performance.

0:16–0:21

The vocalists give way to the instrumentalists.

0:21–0:32

The male singer rejoins the ensemble, and the female chorus responds [0:28–032].

0:32–0:44

The vocalists give way to the instrumentalists again.

0:44–0:57

The male singer rejoins the ensemble again and the female chorus responds [0:48–0:57].

0:57–1:03

The vocalists give way to the instrumentalists yet again.

1:03–1:14

The vocalist rejoins the ensemble, and the male-call and female-response patterns become shorter.

1:14–1:29

The female chorus introduces a new melodic motif in yodeling style.

1:29–1:45

A female vocalist enters and sings a series of short calls, and the female chorus quickly responds with the new yodeling motif.

1:45–2:15

The yodeled motif is repeated numerous times by the female vocalists, who introduce some subtle individual variations.

2:15–2:37

The female vocalist reenters and sings a series of short calls, and the female chorus quickly responds with the new yodeling motif.

2:37–2:52

The female chorus continues to perform the yodeled motif.

2:52–3:09

The female singer adds a new, higher variation over the rest of the female chorus, and the track fades out even as the performance continues.

and Colombia. Like all of our excursions, we can see here how musical style, musical instruments, and even aesthetics habitually transcend ethnic and racial boundaries, spreading across communities and into new spaces.

CANDOMBE CANDOMBE An Afro-Uruguayan music and dance complex.

COMPARSA The name given to the entire group of candombe revelers, including dancers, masqueraders, and drummers. LLAMADAS The name given to the drum ensembles featured in Uruguayan candombe.

Another example of African presence within Latin America is the celebration of candombe in Montevideo, Uruguay. First called candombe in 1830, it developed as an expressly African practice within a European space (slaves never exceeded 26 percent of the population). Until the turn of the twentieth century, candombe was performed by and for Afro-Uruguayans in spaces set apart for themselves and called salas. During the early twentieth century, the practice was gradually incorporated into the nation’s carnival celebrations and emerged from the salas, being staged instead in the streets of Montevideo. The practice has long been understood as African and includes masking traditions, parading, dancing, and drumming. The whole group of revelers, including the dancers, masqueraders, and drummers, is called a comparsa. But, for our purposes, let’s focus on the drumming, in particular. Candombe drum ensembles, called llamadas, are the backbone of any comparsa and are organized around three different instruments, including the piano, the repique, and the chico. The piano is the biggest of the drums and holds down the basic rhythm. The chico is the smallest of the drums and the highest in pitch. This drum plays counterrhythms and locks into the rhythms of the piano. The repique improvises over the texture laid down by

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Unidentified candombe drummers participate in the Montevideo annual carnaval, in Montevideo, Uruguay. Source: Kobby Dagan/ Shutterstock.com.

the other two drums. All of the drums are played with a stick in one hand and the other hand free, and llamadas can be as small or large as a given comparsa requires. By 1920, candombe had become institutionalized within carnival. The drums (llamadas) now led the comparsas to and from street stages (through the crowd) and these drums became increasingly important markers of the nation, and this not only for the Afro-Uruguayan community but also for Uruguayan popular culture more generally—but this did not occur without struggle. The 1950s saw the beginning of an economic decline within Uruguay, a decline that culminated in the coup of 1973. Unfortunately, the new leadership prohibited the llamadas from performing in their traditional neighborhoods, destroyed a great deal of the cultural history of the country (including black shrines), and generally attempted to control the comparsas as much as possible by relocating them to a street of its own choosing. During these difficult years, however, a new counterculture began to emerge, one that was envisioned around the image of exile within the country’s borders. As it turns out, candombe became a touchstone for a wide range of Uruguayans, such that it became broadly useful for artists, composers, carnival performers, popular musicians, etc. No longer confined to carnival, artists and musicians of various stripes shared stages, reworked materials together, and generally created a very different sense of what candombe might mean in Uruguay. Democracy was restored in 1985 and candombe has been an important, if still contested, part of the national imaginary ever since (see www.candombe.com for a nice collection of materials on this music). Importantly, candombe has, since 2009, been recognized as part of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO, a fact that grants it an international standing that greatly reinforces its value at home.

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CANDOMBLÉ

CANDOMBLÉ An Afro-Brazilian religion heavily involving West African religious beliefs and musical practices. ORIXA A spirit or deity in the Yoruba religion of Nigeria.

ATABAQUES Drums of West African origin, used in Brazilian candomblé music.

PENTATONIC Having five pitches.

We can also find African provenance in the sacred practices of many communities. For instance, if we consider candomblé in Brazil, we can see deep connections to African religious sensibilities and cosmology as well as musical connections that tie the two together. In Brazil, African deities are called orixas (Yoruba orisa or orisha) and each orixa is characterized by particular colors, songs, anecdotes, objects, animals, plants, and atmospheric phenomena. Each candomblé devotee has a relationship to a guardian orixa—an orixa that she receives while in trance. Importantly, each orixa is also identified with one or more catholic saints. This was initially strategically important in order to camouflage African beliefs and to give the impression that Afro-Brazilians were “good Catholics” within a colonial context that would not tolerate any other religious sensibilities. Since that time, Catholic and African ideas, symbols, and practices have continued to mingle and merge, and candomblé is, as such, an excellent example of syncretic (or mixed) religious practice. In this respect, candomblé shares much with santería in Cuba and shango in Trinidad. Importantly, candomblé is not a singular, unified practice. It might, in fact, be better to think of candomblé as a complex that encompasses many branches (nations). These branches are distinguished from one another by language, ethnic histories (Yoruba, Fon, Bantu, etc.), particular rites, region within Brazil, etc., but they are all, nevertheless, considered part of the candomblé complex. In Salvador, Bahia, the Ketu (Yoruba) branch is most prevalent. The music for candomblé ceremonies is extremely important because it summons the gods—without music, worship couldn’t happen. Three drums, called atabaques in some but not all traditions within candomblé, are used in ceremonies, including, in order from biggest to smallest, the rum, rum-pi, and lé. Drums used for ritual purposes are baptized shortly after they are made, dressed (adorned with beads, shells, cloth), and fed (chicken blood, oil, honey, holy water). In candomblé, the lowest-pitched, biggest drum (rum) plays the intricate parts, leaving the two smaller drums to hold down the basic groove. Two other instruments are part of candomblé music: the agogô, a double bell struck with a metal stick; and the aguê, a rattle that is basically a big gourd containing cowries, pebbles, or dry seeds. During candomblé ceremonies, there is a continuous exchange between drummers and dancers, and the master drummer (who plays the rum) is always in control, leading the proceedings through the appropriate songs. Add to this the solo male voice and the female chorus, and you have the sound of candomblé rituals. The singers basically accompany the drums, not the other way around. Many of the songs use a pentatonic scale, and all of them use call-and-response, often with a bit of overlap between leader and chorus. As you might expect by now, the music of candomblé has had a major influence on carnaval in Brazil. From the 1880s on, carnaval became a battleground, and this especially after emancipation in 1888. The black population would come out into the streets of Salvador during carnival, celebrating in large groups and playing on candomblé instruments: atabaque drums, agogôs, and gourd shakers. Serious controversy erupted as a result but, by the 1920s, a distinct movement

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Procession before the Lavagem, the washing of the steps of the Itapua church. Source: Godong/Getty Images.

called street candomblé or afoxê (fronted by priests who could tell the future) was codified. A period of less active Africanization of carnaval was followed in the 1970s by a real effort to re-Africanize the carnaval. Parading groups like Filhos de Gandhy, Ile Aiye, and Olodum emerged and re-centered the drums in important ways and extended the reach of candomblé beyond carnival to other festivals as well. All of these excursions within the Amerindian, European, and African musical contributions to the region, however, must be carefully tempered by the reality that individuals of European descent were, almost always, in a position to impose their worldview and politics on those around them. Occasionally slaves were able to escape and form communities of resistance (like Palenque de San Basilio in Colombia, for example) and, as we’ve seen, some Amerindian communities remained isolated within the Amazon region, but these were exceptions that proved the rule. As such, the music of Latin America has been shaped by official and middle- and upper-class approbation and, more commonly, disapprobation, just as those communities that have chosen to remain mindful of their own heritage have often suffered politically, economically, and socially at the hands of others. In the midst of these challenges, and in part because of them, many adaptations, mixtures, and experiments have become a major hallmark of the region’s musical life.

AFOXÊ A secular manifestation of candomblé, connected to carnival and performed on the streets.

Mestizaje/Mixture/Hybridity This insight brings us to our third organizing theme—mestizaje. The term points to a mixture between European and Amerindian provenance. This could

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(and very regularly did) take the form of inter-racial coupling, producing mestizo offspring. But freed from its biological meanings, the term has also been applied to make sense of the significant impacts that such extended encounter between Amerindian and European people and their cultural practices engendered throughout the region. Music is, it turns out, a particularly fruitful area within which to explore, and hear such mixtures. Let’s briefly explore just two examples. EXPLORE Mariachi MARIACHI Ensemble type originally from Jalisco, Mexico, consisting of two or more violins, vihuela, guitarrón, two trumpets, and various guitars. RANCHERA A Mexican song genre with rural and working-class associations. CORRIDO Mexican ballads usually on historical or topical themes using the copla text form. GUITARRÓN In Mexico, a large acoustic bass guitar with a convex back.

MARIACHI The modern mariachi ensemble developed in Jalisco (a state bordering the Pacific in central Mexico) during the mid-nineteenth century. The repertoire is quite diverse, including rancheras, waltzes, polkas, cumbias, corridos, huapangas, and son jalisciense, among other styles. The presence of waltzes (Europe), cumbias (Colombia), and polkas (which probably entered with German immigrants coming from the United States) should bring to mind just how much the repertory of mariachi ensembles has been shaped in and through the history of mobility in and around the region. One of the ways of understanding what mariachi is, then, is as a type of ensemble as opposed to a type of musical style or genre. That said, mariachi does have a particular sound and is easily identified. A modern ensemble usually includes two trumpets, three or more violins, guitar, vihuela (a five-stringed guitar-like instrument with a rapid decay), and guitarrón (which is kind of acoustic bass guitar). The ensemble can be quite large in cases where the mariachi is putting on showcases at, say, restaurants or festivals, but all you really need is one of each of the above instruments in order to produce a mariachi sound. Eight musicians are often considered an ideal number. The ensemble evolved over time. There is evidence that the trumpet and violins replaced older, indigenous instruments like flautas (flutes) and that the

Mexican traditional mariachi musician Isabel Aguilar poses with her group. Source: ALFREDO ESTRELLA/Getty Images.

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guitarrón replaced the Jaliscan harp (another Native American instrument) by about 1900. There is, in fact, some tension between those who would wish to champion the European instruments that have replaced the indigenous ones as a sure sign of progress and modernity and those who acknowledge that these very same instruments are not being played in the manner of European instruments at all—that the mariachi ensemble still embodies Amerindian aesthetics, regardless of instrumentation. The mestizo character of the mariachi, then, is an important—a crucial, and much debated—feature of the ensemble’s composition. The nationalist ideal of the ranchera, which was promoted starting in the 1930s, is enshrined within mariachi repertory and was reproduced in song and in film throughout the twentieth century. A great example of this focus on the ranchera is the career of actor/singer Pedro Infante, who sang and performed his way through some sixty movies during his career. Using metaphors of women to reference both actual, physical relationships as well as relationships to nation, land, and region is very common in the repertoire. Beauty is, however, often connected to Iberian ideals at the direct expense of Indigenous or mestizo beauty. The repertoire thus wrestles with the specter of Spain in both its instrumentation and in its lyrics, and ethnicity and race remains a major area of negotiation within the mariachi complex. One more dimension worth thinking about here is a prominent rhythmic feature common across much of the mariachi repertory—the compás. This term refers to a rhythmic gesture, spread across two equal halves, that shifts the accent patterns to create syncopation. You can think of it as an approach to generating a triple over duple feel. The syncopation that results from the application of compás is called sesquialtera (see Listening Guide 10.4).

COMPÁS Within Mexican traditional musics a rhythmic gesture, spread across two equal halves, that shifts the accent patterns to create syncopation. SESQUIALTERA The combination/juxtaposition of duple and triple rhythmic patterns, both simultaneously in different instrumental parts, or sequentially in the same part, hemiola.

WAYNO (HUAYNO) In Peru and throughout a good portion of the Andean region, wayno is ensconced as the most important mestizo genre. The ensemble (which accompanies a fast couples dance), along with the aesthetics animating the music, offers another great example of the extent to which hybridity and mixture permeate Latin American music. Several aspects of the wayno predate the colonial encounter, including some of the instruments employed, as well as some of the performing aesthetics (vocal quality, in particular). So, indigenous flutes, Andean harps, and bombas (see section on Aymara music) are all prominently present within wayno ensembles. Vocally, the timbre and quality is high-pitched and tense, reflecting Andean aesthetics. But the region’s long history of contact with European musical ideas has found important markers of the genre incorporated from that stream as well. Guitars, mandolins, accordions, lutes, and violins, among other instruments, variously add their voices to the overall texture of the ensemble. This mestizo ensemble is simply called an orquesta típica. Wayno has also adopted the popular strophic form (two-, three-, or four-line texts over short, repeating melodic sections) from European models, resulting in strophes with AABB or ABAB melodic structures. The lyrics, usually centered on humorous,

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EXPLORE Wayno/Huayno

WAYNO, OR HUAYNO The most widespread Andean mestizo song-dance genre in Peru, also performed by some indigenous musicians. The song texts are strophic, and the tunes comprise short sections in forms such as AABB. Waynos are in duple meter with a rhythmic feel varying between an eighth and-two­ sixteenth-note figure and an eighth-note triplet.

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LISTENING GUIDE 10.4

MARIACHI: “LA MALAGUENA”

LISTEN

Performed by Nati Cano’s Mariachi Los Camperos Vocalist, vihuela, guitarrón, violins, trumpets

T

HIS RECORDING OFFERS a good example of the ensemble sound, singing style, and aesthetics of mariachi groups. In this performance, the singer is lamenting the fact that a beautiful woman “La Malaguena” is ignoring his advances—a fact that is leaving him lovelorn. The vocalist’s consistent use of falsetto throughout the song helps to convey his pain and his longing for reciprocated interest. The performance is also a good example of a rhythmic feature called sesquialtera. Sesquialtera is created by the fact that both 3/4 (triple) and 2/4 (duple) rhythms are present at the same time. The easiest way to hear this is to listen for the (relatively consistent) eighth-note strumming pattern (also called a compás) established by the vihuela and then attempt to count it in both meters. The strumming pattern can be sketched as follows, with the “x” indicating the muted, percussion-like sound of the strings being struck but prevented from vibrating.

TIME

SECTION

MUSICAL EVENT/LYRICS

0:00–0:24

Introduction

During this introduction listen for the vihuela strumming pattern and notice also the other instruments involved: several violins as well as a lead violin, and the guitarrón (the bass instrument).

0:24–1:03

Verse 1

Listen for the singer’s use of falsetto and for the first entrance of the trumpets at 0:35.

1:03–1:13

Transition to slower, Listen for how clear the vihuela strumming pattern becomes as the tempo slows. more deliberate See if you can follow along with the patterns above and hear it within the context tempo of 3/4 and 6/8 meter.

1:13–1:47

Verse 2

The slower tempo and new melodic material in this section allow the singer to incorporate even more falsetto into his performance. Listen also for the way that the trumpets occasionally add their voices to the mix.

1:47–3:43

Chorus

Continue listening for the falsetto technique of the vocalist and consider the degree to which the vocalist, singing about his desire for the woman from Malaga, infuses his performance with a depth of emotion that you can hear.

EXPLORE Wayno/Huayno

romantic, or political topics, are rendered in Quechua or in Spanish, further underscoring the Amerindian and European contributions to the genre. Rhythmically, wayno is distinguished by a pattern that varies between an eighth-and-two-sixteenth-note figure and an eighth-note triplet within a twoor four-beat measure. An extra beat is often added at the end of phrases, creating a very distinctive and asymmetrical phrase structure (see listening example). Taken as a whole, the sound of the ensemble and the structure of the songs have

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absorbed influences from both Amerindian and European sources, making of wayno an expressly mestizo practice.

VALLENATO But mixture isn’t confined to the binary of Amerindian and European cultural provenance. In fact, African instruments and aesthetics have consistently been incorporated into musical practices throughout Latin America, and I offer just one excursion here in order to move beyond specifically mestizo musics and toward a consideration of hybridity. Vallenato is a genre characterized by a history of mixture, in this case combining elements of African, Amerindian, and European contributions within its sound. For our purposes, let’s call it a hybrid genre. The popular version of the genre gained world prominence during the early 1990s and, in 1996, it was even awarded its own Grammy category. But the genre has a much longer history. Its contemporary form started to develop in the 1940s within the Caribbean coastal region of Colombia (La Costa). According to the origin myth of the genre, carefully cultivated during the middle years of the twentieth century and tied to literary magical realism in complicated but significant ways (see Ana Maria Ochoa), this style was originally played in rural areas. The ensembles of the mid-nineteenth century included European-derived instruments like the guitar, and instruments of Amerindian and African provenance such as the gaita (indigenous flute), guacharaca (a bamboo scraper), and caja (drum). The modern ensemble came into focus around the turn of the twentieth century, when the three-row button accordion was incorporated into the sound. The modern folk ensemble consists of the three-row button accordion, a caja, and the guacharaca. Primarily a dance genre, it was popularly played at parties, but also at parrandas, which were basically big festivals with lots of dancing and competitions. The repertory played by vallenato ensembles can be grouped into four main categories and two distinct metric groupings: The son and the paseo operate within a duple-meter framework. The son is generally slower and characterized by a “long/short/rest” bass pattern with heavy emphasis on the downbeat. The paseo, for its part, emerged in the middle of the twentieth century and features romantic, nostalgic, and/or regional lyrics. Within a triple meter framework, the merengue (not to be confused with a popular genre by the same name in the Dominican Republic) and the puya are common. The puya is, more often than not, a vehicle for displaying extreme virtuosity. Performers play very fast, incredibly complicated melodies and rhythmic patterns on their respective instruments during these showpieces. A gradual move into urban centers since the middle of the twentieth century has created a popular version of vallenato, and these ensembles tend to include electric bass, one or two guitars (acoustic and electric), and drum kits, in addition to the traditional instruments of accordion, guacharaca, and caja. This popular form of the genre, though consistently maligned by traditionalists, has thrived, with the 1980s and 1990s witnessing the style’s emergence into international prominence. Carlos Vives is largely responsible for bringing

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EXPLORE Vallenato

VALLENATO A traditional music of Colombia that has also found expression as popular music since the middle of the twentieth century.

GAITA A duct flute, played in gendered pairs. The female gaita hembra has six holes and the male gaita macho is made with two holes. The gaita is an integral part of the traditional Colombian cumbia ensemble. GUACHARACA A wooden scraper played with a fork consisting of many wire prongs mounted into a wooden handle. Part of the traditional Colombian vallenato ensemble.

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the style to these new markets, fusing traditional vallenato with other genres such as rock, funk, and R&B to create a fusion that appeals to a wider base of fans. Vallenato, then, is a great example of a genre hybrid in its very creation and continuously exploring new mixtures and possibilities in its popular forms.

Urbanization Vallenato offers a great example of hybridity, but it could just as easily have served as a case study within this chapter’s final section on urbanization. After all, the popular version of the genre is characterized by a major move from rural to urban spaces and reflects these shifts in both sound and markets. In the pages that follow, I offer three case studies of urbanization, illustrating through them the immense changes that continue to play out within urban spaces throughout the region.

FORRÓ FORRÓ A Northeast-Brazilian traditional music that has, since the middle years of the twentieth century, also found expression as popular music. SERTÃO A region within Northeastern Brazil.

CHORO An instrumental Brazilian form of popular music. CAVAQUINHO A small, four string instrument belonging to the guitar family and used in Brazilian choro music. VIOLÃO Tenor guitar used in early Brazilian choro ensembles. PANDEIRO A frame drum used in a variety of Brazilian musical genres.

Forró emerged into the national imagination within Brazil in part because of rural to urban migration, and in part because the rather decentralized and vast Brazilian state was attempting to find its way toward a more centralized mode of engagement across the entire nation. A northeast to south migration from the mid-twentieth century saw a great many people moving from places like the sertão and the state of Bahia to the big cities of Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo. In fact, Rio doubled in size between 1920 and 1950—in the space of just three decades, the city grew from approximately 1.2 million to 2.4 million, and many of these newcomers hailed from less developed and less urbanized areas around Brazil. As a consequence, Northeastern stereotypes grew up around these migrations. That said, Northeastern styles were already a part of the musical landscape in Rio. Artists and composers such as Pixinguinha, Villa Lobos, João Pernambuco, and many others were playing Northeastern rhythms and singing about the region in their choros. Choro is a genre incorporating both composed and improvised material and was played in an ensemble that was quite fluid. Early on, the ensemble included flute, cavaquinho (like a ukulele and used as a strumming instrument), and guitar. This genre was pretty well established by the turn of the twentieth century. In the early years of the twentieth century, the ensemble was rounded out with mandolin, violão (tenor guitar), and pandeiro (tambourine/frame drum). These days, however, the violão is not much used. Many ensembles now use an additional, sevenstring guitar for better bass lines. At any rate, these initial, nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century experiments with Northeastern lyrics and sounds met with some success. In the 1930s, the Getúlio Vargas government, which was trying to centralize power, mounted a campaign against the political strength of the outlying regions. But, in the process of centralizing power, the Vargas government also

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needed to present a national face. In order to create this national narrative (Brazil: unified but diverse), the administration actively mobilized culture and folklore. Ironically, at the very moment that political power was being stripped from places like the Northeast, the roots of Brazilian culture were also being invented and then presented to the nation by drawing on and showcasing the Northeast’s folklore and folk culture. This project was aggressively pursued through radio broadcasts featuring regional performances starting in the 1930s. It was within this political and cultural environment that several musicians were  able to establish a new imaginary (mythical and thoroughly unnuanced) of the Northeast for the nation. On the one hand was the popular musician Dorival  Caymmi, who traded on his Northeastern authenticity (he hailed from Bahia) in order to establish himself and his sound (a guitarbased samba feel). In the process of establishing his own career, however, he also helped solidify certain stereotypes in the Southeast about Northeastern culture. In his case, he traded on West African cultural heritage, erotic delights (the mulata), tropical languor, and general bliss in spite of poverty. He communicated  these ideas through his lyrics, self-representation, and the iconic materials he chose for album covers and promotional materials (photos of him chilling out in a hammock by the beach, for instance). Caymmi offered a compromise that brought Northeast and Southeast together through samba. On the other hand was Luiz Gonzaga, who came from the interior of the Northeast—from the sertão. He too, traded on his regional roots, reinforcing through his music stereotypes of the sertão, including hardship, rugged selfsufficiency, tendencies to banditry, and religious fanaticism. Gonzaga hit on a rhythm that was generically called baiãno and which made a big impression among his audiences in Rio. He sold his musical style, called forró, on radio shows, in concert, and on record. In the sertão, this music was traditionally played by ensembles for dances called forrobodó (great dances/parties) and, as we’ve seen elsewhere, these ensembles were quite flexible. The basic ensemble tended to include only an eight-bass accordion (called oito baixos or sanfona), a zabumba (two-headed drum played with a mallet in one hand [bass] and a thin stick in the other [treble]), and a triangle. Other instruments could include snare drums and flutes (small, six-hole, transverse instruments called pífanos). Gonzaga regularly recorded songs featuring the baião rhythm (also a designation for an accompanying dance) which, at its most basic, consists of a dotted eighth note followed by a sixteenth note and a quarter rest in 2/4 time. But there are, in fact, three main types of dances associated with forró: the xóte (the slowest of the three); the baião (medium tempo and with the characteristic rhythm very foregrounded); and the Arrasta-Pé (the fastest, with an almost polka-like feel). The emergence of forró as a national genre within Brazil (along with the stereotypes it reinforced about the sertão) is directly related to the political need for centralization, to the economic need of so many laborers to relocate to urban centers, and to the ability of radio to create solidarities (i.e., listeners nostalgic for home) and imagined communities (Brazil as a unified nation). Urbanization

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EXPLORE Samba SAMBA The most important Brazilian musical genre, often associated with Carnival in Rio but performed in other rural and urban contexts.

OITO BAIXOS An eight-bass accordion used in Brazilian forró ensembles. ZABUMBA The drum used in traditional Brazilian forró ensembles. PÍFANO A small flute, similar to a piccolo, often used in traditional Brazilian forró ensembles.

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puts new pressures on communities even as it opens up new opportunities and possibilities. In the case of forró, individual artists were able to capitalize on the tastes of a very large community of recently relocated workers from the Northeast and simultaneously tap into a new market of “local” listeners who were ready to hear regionally specific sounds.

NORTEC EXPLORE Nortec NORTEC A popular music centered in Tijuana that combines sonic markers of Mexican traditional ensembles (including bandas sinaloenses and norteño groups) with electronica (especially techno).

In contrast to forró, which thrived in a moment of intense rural to urban migration and national consolidation, let’s explore the development of nortec in the Mexican border city of Tijuana during the late 1990s. Nortec can be read as a response to the failures of urbanization—as a creative rethinking of an urban environment historically plagued by poverty, transient labor, drugs, and tourism. Emerging toward the end of the 1990s, nortec rose to popularity and rather spectacular success by combining sounds from rural Mexico with techno and electronica. This rather unorthodox combination of musical components worked in part because of the city’s history, and in part because of the vision that accompanied the music. As Alejandro Madrid has pointed out, nortec as “sound” is only one part of a much larger artistic endeavor, involving art, architecture, and style. Conceptually, nortec is a new engagement with age-old questions of border relations, industrial architecture, cityscapes, and tradition. Nortec basically turns a generally negative set of stereotypes inside out, refiguring and reimagining them and offering an ironic but hopeful blend of symbols in the process. Musically, this takes the form of blending musical markers from norteño groups and bandas sinaloenses with the most cutting-edge

Members of the band Nortec Collective perform during the Sabrosura Concert Los Angeles. Source: JC Olivera/ Getty Images.

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techniques of live electronic dance music. But it is also a project that takes on the visual arts and architecture, along with style. So, guns and cowboy hats, old warehouses and abandoned buildings, mustaches and cowboy boots—all of these are reconfigured in a positive light as markers of identity within nortec. It is because of this careful balance between music, art, and architecture, all coalescing around this philosophical and audio-visual approach, that nortec achieved its success. The song “Odyssea” became a hit in the UK in 2000 and the song launched nortec into a wide range of transnational spaces. Musically nortec is a dance genre, performed with both live and sampled sounds. The sounds and rhythms that characterize nortec are gathered from norteño music, from bandas sinaloenses, and from techno/electronica. Turning to the sounds of banda highlights the connections between Sinaloa and Tijuana (drug growing and drug trans-shipping). And the inclusion of norteño makes  explicit the fact that nortec, like norteño is all about the experience of living in a border region, an experience shared by those living in Tijuana. A group of artists and producers, now known as the Nortec Collective, explored how to feature the accordion and bajo sexto, instrumental hallmarks of norteño bands,  along with the tubas, trombones, tarolas (snare drums), and tamboras (bass drums) of the bandas sinaloenses, within a dance groove informed by techno and electronica. Blending samples with live instruments, they created a sound that juxtaposed rural and urban sounds, electronic and acoustic instruments, and live and sampled performances, thus highlighting the junctures and disjunctures of life in Tijuana. Actively turning negative stereotypes of the city and the border region into positive markers of space and place, nortec offers a counter narrative (if not a solution) to the challenges of urbanization.

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BAJO SEXTO A twelve-string guitar used in Mexican norteño music. TAROLA The snare drum in the banda sinaloense ensemble.

CUMBIA As a final example, let’s take a closer look at cumbia. Many of the genres we considered in this chapter are obviously informed by several (perhaps even all) of our guiding themes, even though I chose to focus our conversations around a primary theme in each case. That said, cumbia affords a great opportunity to think about how these themes can combine in a single genre—an excursion that will also remind us just how complex all of the musical practices we’ve explored really are. The style, developed in and around the Caribbean coastal region of Colombia during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, has, in recent decades, become a transnational phenomenon. Mexico has become a premier site of production for the genre, and Peru and Chile have found it useful, modifying it to their aesthetic needs along the way. It continues to inform the popular music scene throughout the region and a brief history will offer some context for the genre’s popularity. Like tango, cumbia came into its own as a transnational genre once it reached a major urban area—a history that speaks to the importance of urbanization and various types of mobility. But cumbia’s early history helps us understand the extent to which the genre is informed by our other two themes—race/

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CUMBIA Colombian traditional music combining Amerindian, African, and European musical ideas and instruments. It has, since the middle of the twentieth century, also become an internationally important popular music.

EXPLORE Gaita

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TAMBORA The bass drum in a traditional cumbia ensemble. Also identifies the bass drum in banda sinaloense. TAMBOR ALEGRE The improvisational drum within a traditional cumbia ensemble. TAMBOR LLAMADOR The “calling” drum within a traditional cumbia ensemble, it plays a very steady rhythm, helping the other instruments to orient themselves around that beat.

ethnicity and hybridities. With these ideas in mind, let’s briefly review some of the genre’s history. Cumbia developed in the Caribbean lowlands of Colombia. The exact degree of African and Amerindian influence on early cumbia remains a matter of debate for scholars but, for our purposes, the important issue here is that the genre was, from very early on, an amalgam or mixture of African and Amerindian musical ideas. So, starting in the nineteenth century, during which time it was practiced as a courtship dance, the ensembles came to be characterized by drums, maraca (a gourd shaker), and gaitas. The drums come in three sizes with different, interlocking roles: the large tambora (which plays a long-short-short pattern on the wood of the drum, accented by a strokes on the drum head at regular intervals); the medium-sized tambor alegre (responsible for counter rhythms and improvisations); and the smaller tambor llamador  (which plays consistently on the off-beats and gives a reference against which the other drums align themselves). All of this was organized within a duple-meter framework (most often 2/4). This percussion ensemble was augmented by indigenous flutes, called gaitas, which are long duct-flutes that are played in gendered pairs—the six-hole female (hembra) and two-hole male (macho). A great contemporary exponent of traditional cumbia is Totó La Momposina, whose recordings are readily available on YouTube and streaming services, and another important group is the ensemble called Los Gaiteros de San Jacinto. As a working class and rural music, it was initially quite maligned by Colombian elites, but as urbanization began to affect the coastal region of Colombia, cumbia made its journey to the cities, taking on many new instruments and influences and eventually gaining recognition from both national and international audiences in the process. By the 1940s, cumbia had acquired a whole new, hybrid sound, though many of the rhythms that hold traditional cumbia together continued to characterize the genre. For a while the sound turned toward big band (that sound was everywhere during the 1940s and 1950s and radio was alive with these sounds). But ensembles with large brass sections were eventually trimmed down and electrified in the 1960s and 1970s. One of the most characteristic aspects of expressions within this more electric and urban cumbia is the bass-line, which often plays a half note followed by two quarter notes (long, short, short), thereby imitating the basic tambora part. Another marker is the highly accented cymbal/ shaker/scraper work on 2 and 4 of each measure, which mirrors the role of the tambor llamador. By the 1960s, elements of salsa begin to find their way into cumbia, too. One of the most obvious of these is the piano part, which often plays an arpeggiated montuno pattern. All of these changes to the traditional cumbia began to translate into new audiences, and the genre made a highly successful transition from traditional to popular music during these decades. As you can imagine, the rise of cumbia did not sit all that well with elites, who found the dance too sensual and the music too lowbrow. But, radio made a huge difference and, by the 1960s, Discos Fuentes (the first Colombian record label) was disseminating the latest recordings at a rapid clip. This forced a change of attitude and cumbia has since become a major marker of the Colombian national imagination.

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“FUEGO DE CUMBIA (CUMBIA FIRE)”

LISTENING GUIDE 10.5

LISTEN

Los Gaiteros de San Jacinto

T

HIS RECORDING IS an excellent example of traditional cumbia music. The ensemble features two gaitas, three drums (more on these below), and maraca (a gourd shaker) plus vocals. The lyrics reflect on the racial complexities of the genre, making reference to Amerindian and African contributions to the cumbia and claiming it as a cultural heritage. The lead singer of the band, Rafael Pérez García, sings the following during the first verse: Dark nights light up in fire like a feast that enchants. The beating of the drums, the black race rises up, and the Indian, passively with his melodic gaita, interrupt the silence when a bonfire dances, and I feel through my veins a fire that goes unquenched. It is the fire of my cumbia; It is the fire of my race: A fire of pure blood, Sung in laments. The three drums interlock with each other, each having a distinct role to play in the performance. The tambora (bass drum) is a double-headed drum played with two sticks. The performer plays a longshort-short pattern on the frame of the drum with the sticks and punctuates this pattern with strokes on the drum head at the end of each measure. The tambor llamador (calling drum) is the smallest (but not the highest-pitched) of the drums and plays a steady pattern on the off-beats so that the other performers can orient themselves around its sound. The tambor alegre (lively drum) is the most improvisatory of the drums, often interacting with the gaitas and the vocalist, and able to create a wide variety of tones and timbres depending on the techniques the performer applies to each stroke. Both the tambor llamador and the tambor alegre are played with hands not sticks. Added to this is the maraca, which plays a longshort-short pattern in support of the stick-work of the tambora. Over this rhythmic foundation, the gaitas coordinate repeating motives into a melodic groove. TIME

SECTION

MUSICAL EVENT/LYRICS

0:00–0:07

Vocal call

The vocalist sings the last two lines of the chorus to introduce the melodic contours of the piece and the lyrical themes that will be addressed.

0:07–0:46

Instrumental introduction

Led by the gaitas, the ensemble enters and establishes the melodic and rhythmic context. Listen here for the way one flute (the gaita hembra) plays a melody and the other plays the role of harmonic support and countermelody (the gaita macho). One is more active, the other a bit more restricted, allowing you to hear the fact that the gaita hembra has six holes and more possibilities as a result, whereas the gaita macho is more restricted because it only has two holes. continued

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TIME

SECTION

MUSICAL EVENT/LYRICS

0:46–1:22

Verse 1

Listen for the way the vocals match the gaita hembra’s melody. Also listen for the short instrumental interlude that sets up the chorus (1:17–1:22).

1:22–1:51

Chorus

Listen here for the alternation of lead vocalist, instrumental response, chorus repeat of the last two lines of text, and the instrumental response.

1:51–2:10

Instrumental interlude

Listen here for the drum that’s playing most rapidly and improvising during the interlude. That is the sound of the tambor alegre.

2:10–2:45

Verse 2

Although the vocalist is now singing again, listen for the sticks and the maraca, noticing the long-short-short pattern that they are consistently playing. See if you can hear the lowest pitched drum regularly punctuating the long-short-short cycles. That is the voice of the tambora. Notice again the short instrumental interlude before the chorus (2:41–2:45).

2:45–3:14

Chorus

Listen here for the alternation of lead vocalist, instrumental response, chorus repeat of the last two lines of text, and the instrumental response. This time it should sound familiar and you should be able to anticipate the interactions between the ensemble and the vocalist/chorus.

3:14–3:51

Instrumental interlude

Notice that the gaita hembra takes center stage during this interlude, soloing and improvising around the established melody.

3:51–4:26

Verse 3

Listen here for utterly consistent stroke on the off-beat by the tambor llamada. Notice how it locks in with the maraca and the sticks, falling in the middle of the long-short-short cycle. And, again, be aware of the way the instruments provide the transition from verse to chorus (4:22–4:26).

4:26–5:26

Chorus

Listen now for the whole ensemble and how it fits together sonically. Notice that the chorus is extended here, with the chorus singing the last two lines of text two times, and the lead singer completing the song with an elongated, last repeat of those lines.

REVIEW CHAPTER RESOURCES

But some of the most interesting developments in cumbia since the mid­ 1960s have occurred outside of Colombia itself. This is the case not least because cumbia has achieved a level of mobility as great as or greater even than salsa, garnering vast fan bases in virtually every corner of Latin America. During the 1960s, cumbia made a journey to Mexico City, where it came to influence the recording industry in profound ways. Even as cumbia was conquering the popular music industry in Mexico City, it was expanding into Peru, Chile, and Argentina. In Peru, in particular, the genre was adopted and then merged with local Andean wayno to create a sub-style called chicha. And as cumbia continued to find new spaces within Latin America, it continued to inspire local versions. During the last few decades of the twentieth century, a whole range of sub-styles developed (including Argentine cumbia villera, Peruvian tecnocumbia, and Chilean “sound,” to name just a few). So we see in cumbia a genre that requires us to think about it using all of the themes under discussion in this chapter in order to understand how it has developed and its significance around the region.

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SUMMARY

357

KEY TERMS

This chapter has, of course, only explored the tiniest fraction of the diversity and richness of Latin American music. Even those genres I have managed to include in our excursions have only been introduced in rather schematic fashion. It is my hope, however, that the sounds and ideas you’ve encountered in this chapter will lead you to dig more deeply into the region’s musical life—that you will be compelled to continue learning more about Latin American music. Although mobility, race/ethnicity, mixture/mestizaje/hybridity, and urbanization are particularly appropriate themes around which to organize our journeys through the region’s musical landscapes, you’ll no doubt find that they work quite well to think about musical communities in other regions of the world as well. I encourage you to take these themes and use them as a means for comparison across different musical contexts. These themes also give you an opportunity to think about your own subject position. How does your own mobility inform your musical choices? What impact does your own race/ethnicity play in opening up sonic possibilities and how might this help you generate insights about yourself or the music you are listening to/making? What role (if any) does the concept of mestizaje or hybridity play in your own musical life? And, finally, how does your own geographic history (rural, urban) inform your musical horizons? In the process of answering these questions, you might find that you are drawn into new relationships to the sounds you encountered in this chapter and, for that matter, throughout this textbook.

Aymara Candombe Candomblé Cumbia Currulao Ethnicity Forró Gaita Hybridity Mariachi Mestizaje Mobility Nortec Race Salsa Sesquialtera Suyá Tango Urbanization Vallenato

BIBLIOGRAPHY General Béhague, Gerard, “Folk and traditional music of Latin America: General prospect and research problems,” The World of Music 25(2) (1982), 3–18; Olsen, Dale A. “Folk music of South America—a musical mosaic,” in Musics of Many Cultures: An Introduction, edited by Elizabeth May, 386–425 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1980); Olsen, Dale A., and Daniel E. Sheehy, Eds., The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music, vol. 2: South America, Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998); Olsen, Dale A., and Daniel Sheehy, Eds., The Garland Handbook of Latin American Music (New York: Routledge, 2008); Schechter, John M., Ed., Music in Latin American Culture: Regional Traditions (New York: Schirmer Books, 1999). Highland Indigenous and Mestizo Music Baumann, Max Peter, Ed., “Music of the Indios in Bolivia’s Andean Highlands (survey),” World of Music 25(2) (1982), 80–98; Garfias, Robert, “The marimba of Mexico and Central America,” Latin American Music Review 4(2) (1983), 203–212; Izikowitz, Karl Gustav, Musical and Other Sound Instruments of the South American Indians (Göteborg, Sweden: Elanders Boktrycheri Aktiebolag, 1934); Mendoza, Zoila, Shaping Society Through Dance: Mestizo Ritual Performance in the Peruvian Andes (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2000); Peña, Manuel, The Texas-Mexican Conjunto: History of a Working-Class Music (Austin,

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TX: University of Texas Press, 1985); Romero, Raul, Debating the Past: Music, Memory, and Identity in the Andes (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001); Schechter, John, The Indispensable Harp: Historical Development, Modern Roles, Configurations, and Performance Practices in Ecuador and Latin America (Kent, OH: Kent State Press, 1991); Simonett, Helena, Banda: Mexican Musical Life Across Borders (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2001); Stanford, Thomas, “The Mexican Son,” Yearbook of the IFMC (1972); Stevenson, Robert, In Aztec and Inca Territory (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1968); Stigberg, David, “Jarocho, tropical, and ‘pop’: Aspects of musical life in Veracruz, 1971–1972,” in Eight Urban Musical Cultures: Tradition and Change, edited by Bruno Nettl, 280– 291 (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1978); Henry Stobart, Music and the Poetics of Production in the Bolivian Andes (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2006); Turino, Thomas, Moving Away from Silence: Music of the Peruvian Altiplano and the Experience of Urban Migration (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1993). Amazonian Cultures Hill, Jonathan David, Made-from-Bone: Trickster Myths, Music, and History from the Amazon (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois, 2009); Seeger, Anthony, Why Suyá Sing: A Musical Anthropology of an Amazonian People (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1987); Seeger, Anthony, “What can we

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learn when they sing? Vocal genres of the Suyá Indians of Central Brazil,” Ethnomusicology 23(3) (1979), 373–394; African Traditions Azevedo, Luis Heitor Correa del, Luis Heitor, “Music and musicians of African origin in Brazil,” World of Music 25(2) (1982), 53–65; Béhague, Gerard, “Patterns of Candomblé music performance: An Afro-Brazilian religious setting,” in Performance Practice: Ethnomusicological Perspectives, edited by Gerard Béhague, 222–254 (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1984); Brennan, Timothy, Secular Devotion: Afro-Latin Music and Imperial Jazz (New York: Verso, 2008); Courlander, Harold, “Musical Instruments of Cuba,” Musical Quarterly 28(2) (1942), 227–240; Crook, Larry, “A Musical Analysis of the Cuban Rumba,” Latin American Music Review 3(1) (1982), 92–123; Guillermoprieto, Alma, Samba (New York: Vintage Press, 1990); Hagedorn, Katherine J., Divine Utterances: The Performance of Afro-Cuban Santeria (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2001); McGowan, Chris, and

Ricardo Pessanha, The Brazilian Sound: Samba, Bossa Nova, and the Popular Music of Brazil (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2009); Manuel, Peter, Popular Musics of the Non-Western World (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988); Manuel, Peter, Ed., Essays on Cuban Music: North American and Cuban Perspectives (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1991); Moore, Robin D., Nationalizing Blackness: Afrocubanismo and Artistic Revolution in Havana, 1920–1940 (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1997); Perrone, Charles A., Masters of Contemporary Brazilian Song: MPB 1965–1985 (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1989); Raphael, Alison, “From popular culture to microenterprise: The history of Brazilian samba schools,” Latin American Music Review 11(1) (1990), 73–83; Thomas, Susan, Cuban Zarzuela: Performing Race and Gender on Havana’s Lyric Stage (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois, 2009); Whitten, Norman E. Jr., and C. Aurelio Fuentes, Black Frontiersmen: A South American Case (New York: Schenkman, 1974).

REFERENCES Aldana, Ligia, “Blackness, Music, and (National/Diasporal) Identity in the Colombian Caribbean.” In Let Spirit Speak!: Cultural Journeys through the African Diaspora, edited by Vanessa Valdés, 39–50 (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2012); Cunin, Elisabeth, Identidades a flor de piel. Lo negro en Cartagena. (Bogotá: Instituto Colombiano de Antropología e Historia, Universidad de los Andes, Instituto Francés de Estudios Andinos, Observatorio del Caribe Colombiano, 2003); Escallón Miranda, Rafael, La Polarización de la Champeta: Investigación que motivó el reconocimiento de esta cultura

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y de este género en el Salón Regional y Nacional de Colombia. (Roztro: Museo de Arte Moderno de Cartagena, vol. 1, no. 2, 2007); Lago, Daniel, “Las letras de tango como género discursivo complejo.” In Doce ventanas al tango, edited by Jorge Adámoli, 131–145 (Buenos Aires: Fundación El Libro, 2001); Turino, Thomas, “Music in Latin America.” In Excursions in World Music, 6th ed., edited by Bruno Nettl and Timothy Rommen, 276–309 (New York: Routledge, 2011); Wade, Peter, Music, Race, and Nation: Musica Tropical in Colombia (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2000).

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Taylor & Francis Taylor & Francis Group http://taylorandfrancis.com

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04/09/20 11:13 AM

MUSIC OF THE CARIBBEAN Timothy Rommen

CAT ISLAND, JUNE 2, 2006: NINTH ANNUAL RAKE ’N’ SCRAPE FESTIVAL It’s pushing 8:00 p.m. on a Friday in June, and the crowd is packed into virtually every nook and cranny of the improvised fairground—a fairground erected next to the Arthur’s Town airport especially for this event. The revelers have gradually assembled here over the past day or two, and although the crowd is predominantly Bahamian, a small handful of tourists and a group of folk music aficionados from Atlanta have joined the celebration. Cat Island is one of the many “Family Islands” in the Bahamas, and Arthur’s Town is located on its northern end. For most of the year, Arthur’s Town is a small village on a relatively small island (the entire population of Cat Island stands at about 1,600 people), but during the Rake ’n’ Scrape festival, which was first held in 1998, the island is bursting at the seams with people. As the festival weekend draws near, guest houses and private homes

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CHAPTER

11 throughout the 60-mile-long island are filled to overflowing with visitors. If you want to attend, then you’d better have made reservations a few months in advance. The overwhelming majority of Bahamians live on New Providence in the city of Nassau. The Family Islands have historically, and somewhat paradoxically, been touted as the greatest cultural repositories of the nation while, at the same time, receiving very little financial attention from the government. This state of affairs—which has led to increased migration out of the Family Islands in search of employment and educational opportunities—has been changing in recent years, though, and the Festival is a good example of current efforts to bring the Family Islands into the national limelight in tangible (and material and financial) ways.

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RAKE 'N' SCRAPE A traditional Bahamian music, usually played on accordion, saw, and goatskin drum. QUADRILLE A dance, originating in Europe and adapted to Caribbean contexts. It was historically performed by couples arranged in a square formation and following a series of set dance figures.

The stage, set up at the far end of the fairgrounds, is flanked on either side by a giant tower of speakers, and several cabinets of subwoofers line the foot of the stage. The stage itself is arranged to accommodate both a full house band and a range of smaller ensembles. The perimeter of the fairgrounds, meanwhile, is completely overtaken by shacks (small temporary booths made of plywood) out of which Cat Islanders are serving food, straw work (for which Cat Island is famous), and other handmade souvenirs. I arrived here this afternoon from Nassau and am looking forward to hearing some of the very best rake ’n’ scrape bands in the Bahamas perform. Ophie and the Websites are here, as are Bo Hog and the Rooters. Rake ’n’ scrape is a traditional music of the Bahamas, today usually played on accordion (most commonly on a two-row button accordion such as the Hohner that Ophie plays), saw (literally a carpenter’s saw), and goatskin drum. Rake ’n’ scrape ensembles traditionally accompanied quadrille dancing, and although quadrille is not as popular today as it was even twenty-five years ago, rake ’n’ scrape artists have continued to play their tunes outside of that social context. Perhaps equally important, the rhythms and sounds of traditional rake ’n’ scrape provide the foundation for a great deal of the popular music being performed in the Bahamas today. Musicians are increasingly exploring ways of incorporating rake ’n’ scrape into the context of full dance bands, adding saw, accordion, and goatskin drum to ensembles that already feature at least drum kit, bass, and electric guitar, and, sometimes, also keyboards and a horn line. In fact, one of the most exciting of these popular rake ’n’ scrape singers is going to be performing tonight. His stage name is Ancient Man, and his songs,

Ophie and the Websites, Saturday, June 3, 2006, in Arthur’s Town, Bahamas. Source: courtesy of the author, Timothy Rommen.

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along with those of a few other rake ’n’ scrape–influenced artists, including the Lassido Boys, Elon Moxey, and Ronnie Butler, are leading what might be considered a revival of sorts in Bahamian popular music—rake ’n’ scrape style. But this night isn’t just about rake ’n’ scrape; storytellers will precede the musical entertainment, and the audience has packed in to hear them. Storytelling was, not so long ago, a major pastime and an art form in its own right throughout the Bahamas (and the rest of the Caribbean, for that matter). Today, few can still tell the stories the way they used to be told, but there are active attempts to keep the oratory arts alive in the Bahamas, and the fact that it has been programmed into the festival is a good indication of that initiative. The fairgrounds are cooling off nicely from the oppressive heat of the day, and the festival gets under way in earnest at about 9:30 p.m. After several rounds of storytelling by both children and adults, the sounds of rake ’n’ scrape take over. First on stage are the Lassido Boys (a Cat Island band). They perform for nearly an hour, heating up the crowd before handing over the stage to Ophie and the Websites. In contrast to the Lassido Boys, who incorporate electric guitar, bass, and an additional percussionist into their rake ’n’ scrape sound, Ophie and the Websites are a traditional ensemble consisting only of accordion, saw, and drum, and their set highlights many of the traditional tunes that Bahamians associate with rake ’n’ scrape. Ophie and the Websites’s set is dominated by tunes that, not so very long ago, would have accompanied quadrille dancing. Although there isn’t any organized quadrille dancing on stage this evening, something else is happening. Here and there around the fairgrounds, in small groups of two, three, and four dancers, the quadrille is being taught and danced. Mothers are teaching daughters, grandchildren are copying their elders. Rake ’n’ scrape and quadrille dancing are, among other things, about being together—about enacting community— and tonight’s festivities are providing a forum for doing just that. As night turns to morning, Ancient Man takes the stage, singing his current hit single, entitled “I Ain’t Asking for Much.” He is wearing a scarf that bears the word “Kuumba.” (Kuumba is the name of the sixth day of Kwanzaa and it means “creativity.”) The scarf, moreover, is woven in Rastafari colors. By wearing this scarf, Ancient Man is simultaneously affirming his affinity for African American cultural symbols and his solidarity with his Caribbean neighbors. And this is not surprising, for he very deliberately foregrounds Bahamians’ African heritage through his music, fashion, and spirituality. Earlier this afternoon I asked him why he chose to call himself Ancient Man, and his response was, “I didn’t name myself. The spirits [specific to obeah, and pronounced “sperrets”] named me.” Embracing and valuing African heritage is, for Ancient Man, an important key to thinking about identity in the Bahamas—a key that he embodies in his performances. Ancient Man performs a half-hour set backed up by the house band, and the band remains on stage to accompany the evening’s remaining headliners, including Sparkles and Nita. The Lassido Boys come back on stage at about 1:45 a.m. and they play a short set to finish things off. The first night of the festival comes to an official close at about 2:30 a.m. The music continues, however, because many of the artists, along with a few hundred festival-goers,

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OBEAH Bahamian folk belief and practice derived from African religious models and concerned with controlling and deploying powers in service of both good (i.e., healing) and evil (i.e., vengeance).

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LISTENING GUIDE 11.1

RAKE ’N’ SCRAPE: “TIMES TABLE”

LISTEN

Ophie and the Websites

T

HEIR RENDITION OF “Times Table” illustrates the principal musical characteristics of rake ’n’ scrape. Listen especially to the rhythm played on the saw, which consists of a series of successive sixteenth notes, with an accent placed on the third sixteenth note of each beat. This accent pattern emphasizes the “and” of each beat in a measure (one AND two AND, in 2/4 meter). If you listen carefully, you can also hear that the saw player is bending and releasing the saw to get different timbral effects. Notice, too, the way that the drummer interacts with the saw player. During the first phrase (four measures per phrase), the drummer generally executes a single low-pitched stroke on the “and” of the second beat of measures 2 and 4. The next phrase finds the drummer playing an extended fill that eventually culminates on the second beat of measure 8. This pattern is, of course, varied from time to time in the course of improvisation, but the variations are effective and interesting, thanks in large part to the fact that the general structure is firmly in place. Finally, notice the short melodic phrases, each four measures long, which are put together into a verse form (six phrases of four measures each, paired together to create a three-part structure [ABA]). The only exception to this pattern is at the very beginning of the performance, when the A section is played once as an introduction and then repeated as the first section of the ABA structure. The initial moments of the song can be represented as A(intro)–ABA (first verse). Saw Pattern

x

Alternate Saw Pattern

x

x

X

x

x

X

x

x

x

X

x

X

x

Rake ’n’ scrape rhythm (saw). TIME

SECTION

MUSICAL EVENTS

0:00–0:07

Introduction: A section (two phrases of four measures each in 2/4).

Accordion begins and is immediately accompanied by strong foot stomping that marks the quarter note throughout the piece. Saw and goatskin drum enter in the third measure of the first phrase.

0:07–0:14

First verse: Listen for the ABA form of this strophic song.

A

0:14–0:22

B

0:22–0:29

A

0:29–0:36

Second verse: Continue listening for the ABA form.

0:36–0:43

B

0:43–0:51 0:51–1:12

A A

Third verse: Listen to the rhythms played on the goatskin drum.

The drummer marks the “and” of the second beat of the second and fourth measure in the first phrase of each section with a strong, single stroke.

continued

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TIME

SECTION

MUSICAL EVENTS The drummer marks the third and fourth measures of the second phrase of each section with a fill that culminates “on” the second beat of the fourth measure of the second phrase.

1:12–1:34

Fourth verse: Continue listening to the goatskin drum.

The pattern sketched predominates throughout this performance with minor exceptions due to intensification or to improvisatory gestures.

1:34–1:55

Fifth verse: Focus on the saw.

The saw plays a consistent sixteenth note pattern that is accented on the “and” of each beat in a given measure (x x X x x x X x). The saw player subtly bends and releases the saw to create timbral effects that give the impression of changes in pitch (not unlike the effect created by a flanger).

1:55–2:10

Sixth verse: Listen for the intensification of melodic improvisation in the accordion in this last verse.

retire to a nearby nightclub, owned and operated by the Lassido Boys—a club called “Dis We Place.” The festivities finally lose steam sometime around 4:30 in the morning, and I retire for a few hours of sleep. For two nights (and well into the mornings) the audience at the festival is treated to both traditional rake ’n’ scrape bands and to popular music heavily influenced by the rhythms and sounds of that musical tradition. On the third night, however, rake ’n’ scrape takes a backseat to gospel music. All the performances this night are focused on sacred music traditions, from traditional anthems to songs influenced by African American gospel and R&B. Once again, traditional and popular forms share the stage, juxtaposed to highlight both distinctly Bahamian sounds (such as the anthems) and connections to broader musical and religious trends and sensibilities (like African American gospel music). I should note here that Cat Island is, in Bahamian lore, a center not only of rake ’n’ scrape, but also of obeah. Obeah is associated in the Bahamas with folk magic and (at times) with black magic. There are so many well-known tales about obeah on Cat Island, that, in the weeks leading up to the festival, I have been regaled with stories and by turns solemn and joking warnings anytime I mentioned that I was going to be attending the rake ’n’ scrape festival. The juxtaposition of Christianity with obeah—in this case by singing gospel music in what is considered by many to be quintessential obeah country—is a powerful reminder of the various negotiations that Bahamians (and inhabitants of the entire Caribbean region) have found necessary to make sense of their spiritual histories and futures. The gospel concert marks the end of the Festival, and along with a great many other visitors, I plan to make my way back to Nassau the following day. The festival illustrates at multiple levels the simultaneous presence of unmistakably local characteristics and of elements drawn from (or present in)

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EXPLORE Bahamian Music

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Ancient Man in Concert at the Cat Island Rake-n-Scrape Festival, Friday, June 2, 2006. Source: courtesy of the author, Timothy Rommen.

GUIRO A rattle made out of a vegetable gourd.

regional and transnational sources. For instance, the rake ’n’ scrape rhythm, although performed in a particularly Bahamian instrumental configuration and claimed as a quintessentially Bahamian form of musical expression, is actually only one version on a theme that extends, in a great musical arc, from the Bahamas right down the Antilles. The rake ’n’ scrape rhythm, altered a bit here and there, and played on different instruments, like shakers, washboards, squashes (a kind of guiro), and triangles, is called by other names depending on where you happen to be. So, in the Turks and Caicos Islands, it is called ripsaw; in the U.S. Virgin Islands, the rhythm is central to scratch bands; in the British Virgin Islands, it is known as fungi; and in Dominica, it is called jing ping. A festival highlighting the unique contributions of rake ’n’ scrape, thus, points to the connections that exist between the Bahamas and the rest of the Caribbean (and vice versa). Ancient Man’s expressions of solidarity with Rastafarianism and Kwanzaa, moreover, illustrate his deliberate engagement with other locations in the Caribbean and with North America in the process of negotiating Bahamian identity. The sacred music performed at the festival underscores a similar set of relationships. The anthems, although sung in particular ways by Bahamians, nevertheless tie Bahamians to other Protestants throughout the Caribbean, whereas the North American gospel songs—and local artists like Tracy Tracy, who write and perform in that style—make explicit a strong connection between the Bahamas and the United States. More subtly still, because the festival takes place on Cat Island, the imagined heart of obeah in the Bahamas, the presence of syncretic religious belief here (and elsewhere throughout the Caribbean) remains an insistent companion to the proceedings. (Syncretic practices draw elements from two or more religious systems to create new ways of practicing and believing.)

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SHARED HISTORIES, MUTUAL CHALLENGES The Caribbean is marked by several shared and interrelated experiences that have contributed in significant ways to some of the common elements of the region’s musical life. Yet, each of these experiences has been filtered through local circumstances, negotiated in particular contexts, entered into at different historical moments, and interpreted in diverse ways, evidence of which we can see in the great diversity of the region’s cultural productions. So, for example, diaspora—the forced movement of ethnic groups from their homeland—plays a foundational role throughout the Caribbean. Everyone living in the region is, in one way or another, from somewhere else. The places that people called home before arriving in the region are varied indeed—West Africa, Europe, South Asia, East Asia, the Levant—and these people and their descendants have, over the course of several centuries and through a process often called creolization, become Caribbean nationals. The Caribbean also shares a colonial history. The region was born in the violence of the middle passage, slavery, indentured laborers, and imposed European laws, languages, religions, and economies. The consequences of the colonial encounter are in evidence in various ways in contemporary Caribbean life. For example, that encounter has left its mark in terms of political organization: the region includes nation-states (Cuba, Trinidad and Tobago, and the Dominican Republic); protectorates (Puerto Rico); overseas territories (British Virgin Islands); départements (Martinique and Guadeloupe); insular areas (U.S. Virgin Islands); and states within larger kingdoms (Aruba). The shared colonial experience has also left a mark on the languages spoken throughout the region. The colonizers (Dutch, English, French, and Spanish) brought their own languages to the Caribbean, installing them as the “official” languages of government and business. The slaves that found themselves confronted by these languages, however, often developed new ways of communicating (French-based creole, various patois, and Papiamento) that combined their own native tongues with the European-imposed ones. These languages existed (and to varying degrees continue to exist) in a hierarchical relationship to each other wherein the official languages are considered proper (literate), whereas local forms are viewed as vulgar (oral). Language has, in fact become a ground on which musicians lyrically inscribe local identity, deploying local forms of language against the métropole (zouk [creole]), across class within a given nation-state (reggae and dancehall [I-ance and patwa]), and even to claim identity and express solidarity across national borders (punta rock [Garifuna]). I will return to these musics later. Religious life also reflects the colonial encounter. Although some have found a spiritual home within the Catholic and Protestant beliefs imposed on the region, many others have preferred to adapt their beliefs and cosmologies, giving rise to a great variety of sacred traditions that variously resist, combine with, or oppose Catholic and Protestant practices. The result is a wide range of religious practices, including vodoun (Haiti), santería (Cuba), obeah (Bahamas), shango and Spiritual Baptist (Trinidad), and myal, convince, and Rastafarianism

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DIASPORA A group of people who have been forcibly displaced from their traditional homeland or point of origin. Within Asian Diasporas the term is currently also used to refer to concentrated communities of ethnically Asian groups living outside of their ancestral homeland, though not exclusively through forced displacement. COLONIALISM A structure of conquest and control in which one country gains political power over another through economic, social, and cultural exploitation, usually in pursuit of natural resources.

MÉTROPOLE From Metropolis, or “mother city.” Also used for any colonizing “mother country.”

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HISPANIOLA The name of the large Caribbean island shared by the modern nation-states of Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

MARÍMBULA A large box lamellaphone used as a bass instrument in a variety of Caribbean ensembles.

OSTINATO A repeated or cyclical melody or rhythmic pattern. COPLA An Iberian-derived verse form with four octosyllabic lines per stanza. DÉCIMA An Iberian-derived, octosyllabic verse form with ten octosyllabic lines per stanza. The rhyming scheme is ABBAACCDDC.

(Jamaica), to name just a few. Many of these negotiations resulted in syncretic religious practices. That said, Hindu, Muslim, and Jewish religious practices have also found a home in the Caribbean. The colonial encounter, moreover, almost immediately set in motion forces that devastated indigenous populations. This took various forms, but the principal mechanisms of the encounter included forced labor, often involving forcible removal of people from one location (such as from the Bahamas, where mineral resources were scant) and transfer to important centers of production (such as Hispaniola, where many Bahamian Lucayans eventually perished). Other forces contributed as well, including European diseases against which the inhabitants of the Caribbean had no immunity and warfare with Europeans and among themselves. The colonial encounter was so overwhelming that indigenous populations survive only in very small numbers and in but a few locations throughout the region today. These shared histories are audible in the region’s instruments and musical styles. As you might expect, African- and European-derived musical practices, aesthetics, and instruments predominate throughout the region. Many varieties of drums (batá, gwoka, and bomba, to name just a few), various shakers and scrapers, bass instruments such as the marímbula, dances like rumba and bèlè, as well as rhythmic concepts such as timelines and clave are only the most tangible African-derived contributions to the region’s musical life. More subtle, but equally significant, are several African-derived aesthetic and compositional concepts, including call-and-response structure, careful attention to the rhythmic complexity of music (syncopation, interlocking parts, 3+3+2 patterns), and what Peter Manuel has called cellular construction (taking a short repeating motive and treating it as an ostinato from which the form of a song emerges). Stringed, wind, and brass instruments, pianos, and accordions are a few of the most prominent European-derived instruments. The European musical heritage has also contributed dance forms such as the waltz, mazurka, and quadrille and verse forms such as the copla and décima (a ten-line verse form). East Indians have contributed instruments and genres to the region’s musical life—instruments such as the dholak (drum), dhantal (metal clapper), and harmonium—but these contributions remain comparatively localized (in places like Trinidad, Guyana, and Suriname). The maraca, a shaker usually made from gourds and dried seeds, is the principal Native American instrument thought to have survived the colonial encounter. In a great many instances, these musical antecedents have been combined to create new, creole styles and musical traditions. Rake ’n’ scrape is an excellent example of a creolized musical style, because it is based on a combination of European and African instruments (accordion and goatskin drum) and on a successful combination of European and African conceptions of embodied rhythm (quadrille dancing and the rhythms played on the drum). In the end, rake ’n’ scrape is a creole musical tradition, neither European nor African, but rather Caribbean—specifically, Bahamian. The Caribbean also shares a neighbor to the north, a neighbor that has grown ever more powerful both politically and culturally. The United States

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and, to a lesser degree, Canada exert a great deal of influence on the region, and that influence (at least in the cultural realm) is often exerted through the mass media. That said, however, the United States also has a long history of physically intervening in the region’s political affairs, often deploying its military for strategic purposes in places like Cuba, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Trinidad, and Grenada. This physical and media presence has profoundly affected the musical life of the region. Finally, the Caribbean shares, in a broad sense, a struggle to negotiate identity against the complex backdrop of diaspora, colonial histories, and influential neighbors, both leading up to and in the wake of independence.

THEMES IN CARIBBEAN MUSIC Caribbean music has been shaped through the choices that various communities have made in responding to the presence of both European-colonial and African influences. As such, the range of musical styles and performing traditions is very broad. Yet, several recurring themes illustrate some of the challenges that these shared experiences have engendered throughout the region. In this chapter, I’ll introduce a number of musical case studies that explore the breadth of Caribbean performance traditions while simultaneously relating these musics to four interrelated and overlapping themes: (1) patterns of musical reception, (2) questions of identity, (3) class and cultural politics, and (4) tourism and travel.

Calypso in New York, Rumba in Paris: Patterns of Musical Reception in the Caribbean I start this story in the Bahamas during the 1950s, when a performer by the name of George Symonette was riding high on the opportunities afforded by the early days of tourism in Nassau. The music that he played in those days—called goombay—included the rhythms of traditional rake ’n’ scrape, played, in this case, on goatskin drum and maracas (instead of saw). But Symonette’s goombay sound also included piano, guitar, upright bass, and clave. The songs he sang included original compositions, traditional tunes, and calypsos, all performed in goombay style. One of the calypsos in his repertory was especially popular; he called it “Love Alone.” Symonette’s performance of this song incorporates Trinidadian and Cuban influences without losing its distinctively Bahamian characteristics. The goatskin drum, for instance, incorporates a strong beat on the “and” of the second beat of each measure (2/4 meter)—a rhythmic marker of traditional rake ’n’ scrape (see Listening Guide 11.1). The song itself, though, is a calypso (a Trinidadian genre), and the clave you hear is associated most closely with Cuban musics. Suffice it to say here that to accommodate the desires and tastes of tourists, goombay artists turned to a complex range of musical influences to create their sound, blending Bahamian, Cuban, Trinidadian, and even North American sounds into a genre unique to the Bahamas and yet audibly indebted

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to several other musical traditions throughout the Caribbean. But goombay’s heyday in the 1950s and 1960s was made possible, in some respects at least, thanks to other musical successes, occurring in the years between the late 1920s and the early 1950s and involving at least the reception histories of calypso and commercial rumba.

Calypso THE TRINIDADIAN CARNIVAL COMPLEX FROM EMANCIPATION TO “NO, DOCTOR, NO” CARISO Traditional French creole song. Early form of calypso, often employing insulting or satirical lyrics.

CANBOULAY Processions that commemorated the harvesting of burnt cane fields before emancipation.

TAMBOO BAMBOO BAND Bamboo percussion band that accompanied cariso songs during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

As early as the 1780s, the word cariso was used to describe a French Creole song and, in Trinidad, cariso seems to have been perfected by the (mostly female) chantwells during the first half of the nineteenth century. The chantwells, assisted by drums and alternating in call-and-response style with a chorus, were a central component of the practice called kalenda (stick-fighting). Kalenda bands (organized by neighborhood) would square off with each other, first through song and then, more often than not, through stick-fighting. Kalenda was a central component of early carnival celebrations in Trinidad, and after emancipation (1834), Afro-Creoles essentially took over the streets during carnival. Elite French Creole revelers, for their part, moved their carnival celebrations indoors and to private parties. Official and elite unease over carnival revelry (which was considered violent and unruly) grew during the course of the next few decades, and in 1883 drumming was banned in an attempt to clean up carnival. This injunction came on the heels of a serious disturbance that occurred during the 1881 Carnival, known as the Canboulay Riots. Canboulays were processions during carnival that commemorated the harvesting of burnt cane fields during slavery, a process so labor intensive that it had often involved forced marches of slaves from neighboring plantations to more efficiently harvest the cane (once burned, sugar cane requires immediate harvesting or it spoils). These canboulay processions were quite popular and often incorporated kalenda. The government’s attempt to ban the processions in 1881 resulted in open riots between AfroCreole revelers and police, a turn of events that, not surprisingly, caused deep resentment within Trinidadian society toward the government’s use of power. The open resistance of Afro-Creole revelers, of course, redoubled concerns among government officials over this potential threat to public order and led to an alternative strategy—the banning of drumming—in 1883. To make sure that the point got across, stick-fighting itself was banned in 1884. An ingenious substitute for the drums and sticks, called tamboo bamboo, was introduced in the 1890s. Tamboo bamboo bands consist of three different instruments (each cut from bamboo): boom, foulé, and cutter. The boom serves as the bass instrument, is usually about five feet long, and is played by stamping it on the ground. The foulé, which is a higher-pitched instrument, consists of two pieces of bamboo, each about a foot long, and is played by

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striking these pieces end to end. The cutter, which is the highestpitched instrument in the ensemble, is made from a thinner piece of bamboo (of varying length) and is struck with a stick. These three types of instruments combined to beat out rhythms that accompanied the chantwells and were a staple of carnival celebrations for many years (they were gradually rendered obsolete by the steel band). One consequence of the ban on stick-fighting was that men became much more involved in singing carisos, thereby increasingly relegating women (formerly often participating as chantwells) to the sidelines. These cariso (calypso) singers gradually shifted their formerly physical competition to the lyrical content of their songs—lyrics in which boasting, double entendre, insults (picong), and powerful, satirical political and social commentary came to be central features. By the early years of the twentieth century, calypsonians began to perform in tents, leaving the streets to the tamboo bamboo, and in the 1920s they began charging admission to their shows. The 1930s saw contests between tents become a standard part of carnival, and in 1939, Growling Tiger was crowned the first calypso monarch of Trinidad (for his song, entitled “The Labor Situation in Trinidad”). During the 1890s—at roughly the same time that tamboo bamboo bands were getting up and running on the streets—string bands modeled on Venezuelan ensembles were coming to prominence in Trinidad. The string band usually consisted of guitars, violins, and cuatros (similar in sound and construction to the ukulele), but many groups also incorporated other instruments such as clarinet, trumpet, and even piano. String bands were the favored ensemble in elite circles and gradually came also to provide the musical backdrop for calypsonians, remaining a staple of calypso for decades. Carnival festivities, then, split into two kinds of venues during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, occupying both the street and more performance-oriented calypso tents. Both of these spaces, however, were the preserve of the lower class and of Afro-Creoles. Calypsonians were considered potentially dangerous by elites and government officials because they commanded large followings and could sway public opinion with their songs. The streets were also carefully monitored, setting up an atmosphere within which calypso and carnival were embraced by the lower class and kept at a distance by elites. The Afro-Creole middle class, moreover, working toward upward social mobility and thus concerned with aligning itself with the elite, also attempted to distance itself from carnival and calypso. C.L.R. James remembers this about calypsos:

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A portrait of Calypso singer and musician Lord Kitchener. Source: Popperfoto/Getty Images.

Like many of the black middle class, to my mother a calypso was a matter for ne’er-do-wells and at best the common people. I was made to understand that the road to the calypso tent was the road to hell. (James, Beyond a Boundary, 1993 [1963], 16)

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LISTENING GUIDE 11.2

CALYPSO: “NO, DOCTOR, NO”

LISTEN

By The Mighty Sparrow (Slinger Francisco)

T

HE MIGHTY SPARROW’S SONG, entitled “No, Doctor, No,” illustrates many of the characteristics of calypso discussed so far. The ensemble includes a horn line, upright bass, guitar, and percussion and basically reflects the modern calypso sound (although this recording minimizes the drum kit and does not incorporate a keyboard—both of which are often featured prominently in calypso ensembles). Sparrow’s lyrics engage with a political issue current in 1957 revolving around the (recently elected) government’s failure to come through on campaign promises and the increasing cost of basic food and transportation. The verse–chorus structure, the call-and-response interplay during the chorus, the secondary importance of the music in relationship to the lyrics, and the aggressive tone of the lyrical content are all characteristic of calypso. Sparrow’s self-identification with the lower class is significant as well in that it suggests the possibility of lower-class action of some sort should the political situation remain unchanged. The ability of calypsonians to mobilize public opinion continues to be a matter of concern even today, and the popularity of Sparrow’s calypso, combined with the barely masked threats of lower-class action he incorporated into the lyrics, offers a case in point. TIME

SECTION

MUSICAL EVENTS

0:00–0:10

Introduction of Sparrow: Listen for tent atmosphere, announcer, and audience.

Announcer: The ever-popular King Sparrow and the situation in Trinidad.

0:11–0:30

Introduction: Music played here returns later as the chorus.

The instrumentalists introduce the chord progression and melody that forms the basis for the chorus. Notice that the ensemble includes an upright bass, guitar, percussion, and a horn line.

0:31–0:50

Verse 1: Listen for the repeating chord progression (ostinato) that drives the verse.

Listen, listen carefully/I am a man does never be sorry (repeat) But I went and vote for some council men/They have me now in the pen After promising so much tender care/They forget me as they walk out of Woodford Square Woodford Square is an important space for political debate in Port of Spain.

0:51–1:11

Chorus: Listen for the call-and­ response interplay between Sparrow and the ensemble.

Because they raise up on the taxi fare/No, doctor, no And they have the blasted milk so dear/No, doctor, no I want them to remember/We support them in September They better come good/Because I have a big piece of mango wood The mango wood (club/stick) Sparrow sings about here is his way of promising retribution if the politicians fail to come through on their promises. The doctor is none other than Dr. Eric Williams, the leader of the People’s National Movement (PNM), who had recently been elected to power.

continued

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TIME

SECTION

1:11–1:20

Instrumental interlude: Drawn from the last half of the chorus.

1:21–1:41

Verse 2: Listen for the way that Sparrow plays with the rhythm being set by the ensemble, speeding up and slowing down as he sings his lines against the ostinato.

MUSICAL EVENTS

Well, people, plenty people sorry/Sorry they thrown down big belly Not me, I sticking my pressure/When I can’t buy milk I use sugar and water Support local industries they done declare/They mean Vat 19 rum and Carib beer The way how they forcing we to drink Vat/It look as if they want to kill we in smart “Big belly” references Albert Gomes (defeated by Eric Williams in 1956).

1:41–2:01

Chorus

2:01–2:11

Instrumental interlude: Notice that the music is a vehicle for the lyrics and that the arrangement remains essentially unchanged throughout.

2:11–2:30

Verse 3: Listen to the intensity in Sparrow’s delivery in the last two lines of the verse.

I only hope they understand./I am only a calypsonian What I say may be very small/But I know that poor people ain’t pleased at all We are looking for a betterment/That is why we choose a new government But they raise on the food before we could talk/And they raise taxi fare so we bound to walk Sparrow’s suggestion that he is merely a calypsonian and that his words have a negligible impact is entirely satirical. Calypsonians were (and to some degree remain) very powerful within the Trinidadian social and political landscape.

2:31–3:02

Chorus: Listen for the change in lyrical content here.

But still, I don’t want them to catch cold sweat/No, doctor, no Because this mango wood talk is not a threat/No, doctor, no But still they must remember/We support them in September They better come good/I have no intention of throwing down my mango wood. The withdrawal of the threat only to reinstate the possibility of violent action (he is not going to put down his stick) serves as a powerful warning to the government.

In the early 1940s, the United States built a military base in the northwest portion of Trinidad. The military presence in Trinidad provided many opportunities for calypsonians to write about current events and also contributed to a shift in the instrumental composition of the calypso ensemble. By the end of World War II, ensembles more reminiscent of jazz combos were taking hold, and a typical calypso ensemble today includes a horn line, drums, percussion, bass, guitar, and keyboard. A performance by the legendary calypsonian, the Mighty Sparrow, recorded in 1957 and entitled “No, Doctor, No,” illustrates many of the characteristics outlined above.

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“EDWARD VIII”: CALYPSO IN NEW YORK In 1937, twenty years before the Mighty Sparrow wrote his politically charged calypso, several Trinidadian calypsonians traveled to New York to record the season’s calypsos for the export market, a trend that had begun in the late 1920s. One of Lord Caresser’s calypsos, entitled “Edward VIII,” generated a huge amount of publicity that year and arguably contributed, at least in part, to the increased popularity and visibility of calypso in the United States during the 1940s and 1950s. It is a topical song that incisively relates a bit of current news and gossip (in this case humorously discussing the abdication of King Edward VIII to marry an American divorcée), and it revolves around a catchy refrain: “It was love, love alone, that caused King Edward to leave the throne.” Caresser’s “Edward VIII” catapulted calypso into households throughout the United States and, significantly, helped initiate a sustained love affair with calypso outside Trinidad. Indeed, by the mid-1940s artists like the Andrews Sisters were covering calypsos like Lord Invader’s “Rum and Coca Cola,” which was a sardonic commentary on the U.S. military presence in Trinidad. In the 1950s, Harry Belafonte ushered in the heyday of calypso’s popularity in the North American market—and beyond. Everywhere that American tourists went—to the Bahamas, for example, where George Symonette covered Caresser’s tune, calling it “Love Alone”—calypso followed. So, by the time that The Mighty Sparrow was singing “No, Doctor, No” in Trinidad, Harry Belafonte was making a career out of calypso in the United States, and George Symonette was covering calypsos to satisfy his audiences in Nassau’s hotel clubs. In two short decades (1937–1957), calypso had become an internationally viable popular music.

SWEET STEEL: THE STEEL BAND IN TRINIDAD AND ABROAD

STEEL BAND A band composed of oil drums that have been “tuned” to play a range of pitches. IDIOPHONE Scientific term for all instruments whose bodies vibrate as the principal method of sound-production, including rattles and many other percussion instruments.

While calypso was gaining popularity in the United States and finding expression in the nightclubs of Nassau, calypsonians were also winning fans in England, where performers like Kitchener, Lord Beginner, and the Mighty Terror were contracted for extended engagements. But calypso was not the only Trinidadian musical practice moving abroad in a big way during these years, for the 1950s also found the steel band making inroads in England and the United States. The steel band, which gradually replaced the tamboo bamboo ensemble during the 1940s, is composed of idiophones—called steel pans—made from oil drums that are “tuned” to play a range of pitches. The lower the pitch, the more area is needed on the surface of the drum, meaning that bass instruments have fewer notes on a given instrument than do melody instruments. Today several different sizes of instruments (or “pans”) are used, and they have names like tenor, double second, cello, and bass (generally, the bigger the instrument [the more metal], the lower its register). These instruments fill roles not unlike those found in a Western orchestra. The tenor pans generally play the melodies (like violins), the seconds handle

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harmonies and countermelodies (like violas), the cellos fill in harmonic materials (like cellos), and the bass pans, of which there are several different types, play the bass lines (like the double bass). Unlike orchestras designed to play Western art music—where the musicians rely on scores to learn and perform repertory— steel bands depend on arrangers. Arrangers fulfill multiple roles, adapting a given calypso or song to the steel band, assisting in the process of teaching the parts to the steel band, and once the arrangement has been learned, helping the steel band to polish the overall presentation for performance. When playing in the Panorama Festival (a kind of massive battle of the bands, complete with big prizes and great notoriety, that parallels the Calypso Monarch competition), steel bands include as many as one hundred and twenty performers, of which several are responsible for running the “engine room,” the battery of percussion (including a drum kit) that provides the rhythmic foundation for the band. But smaller ensembles are also common; the Trinidad All Steel Percussion Orchestra that toured London in 1951, for instance, included only eleven performers. It played to rave reviews and helped to bring steel pan into wider acceptance within Trinidad. Discussing this tour, Stephen Stuempfle (1995) noted: “Because British artistic taste was widely respected and often taken more seriously than local judgments, the critical acclaim that the band received in the course of its tour brought greater legitimacy to steelband music at home” (Stuempfle, The Steelband Movement, 99). So, both calypso and steel pan went abroad in a big way between the 1930s and the 1950s, garnering enthusiastic responses from both European and North American audiences in the process. At the very height of calypso’s first international breakthrough in New York, however, the government in Trinidad was hard at work censoring calypsos, Petrotrin Katzenjammers Steel Orchestra performs during National Panorama SemiFinals in the Queens Park, Savannah as part of Trinidad and Tobago Carnival. Source: Sean Drakes/CON/Getty Images.

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banning albums, and in general making life pretty miserable for calypsonians. Atilla the Hun wrote a calypso in response to this mistreatment of musicians, calling it “The Banning of Records”—and, yes, it was banned. One of the verses he sang included the following lyrics: Imagine our records being banned / From entering in our native land! That they are obscene I must deny / But all things look yellow to the jaundiced eye. I think that they have been ungenerous / To attempt to take our music from us. It is not a coincidence that the first calypso monarch competition was held in 1939, some years after calypso had become an internationally viable and “hip” music. Calypso remained a threat to political figures and elites (and there are famous examples of confrontations between government officials and calypsonians over the contents of a given calypso), but came to be understood as an important genre, in part, through the recognition that calypsonians garnered abroad. This heightened visibility and external approval generated the atmosphere within which steel bands and calypso, formerly quite maligned and considered the domain of ruffians and the lower class, became the symbols of Trinidad during the drive toward independence. It is no coincidence that the first Panorama competition occurred during the carnival following independence in 1963. This pattern of outside legitimation extends, in some form and to varying degrees, to many areas of cultural production in the region. The pattern of reception that I describe here is also intimately bound up in class conflicts and Rumba dancers in the Casa del Caribe in Santiago. Source: Günter Nindl/Getty Images.

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in questions of identity (can we really use steel band and calypso to represent the nation?), and dependent on travel (both of Trinidadian musicians and of the sounds of calypso [over airwaves, or relocated in Bahamian nightclubs]).

Rumba Rumba developed as a secular African-derived drumming tradition in Cuba during the second half of the nineteenth century.The ensemble generally consists of a lead vocalist, a chorus, and at least three types of percussion instruments (clave, palitos [short sticks], and three conga drums [usually called tumbadoras in Cuba]). Several types of rumba developed, with three becoming widely popular: the guaguancó, the yambú, and the columbia. The most paradigmatic style for later Cuban dance band music was the guaguancó, and the characteristic rhythms of this style consist of the interlocking patterns created by the two-three clave, the palitos, the basic patterns of the congas, and the improvised play of the lead, quinto conga. Rumba guaguancó consists of two main sections: canto (narrative text) and montuno (call-and-response with the chorus/percussion). Once the montuno starts, a male and female dance a ritualized enactment of male conquest. The male dancer uses surprise, stealth, and grace to get close enough to the female dancer to thrust his pelvis at her in a move called a vacunao. She in turn evades his moves, improvising her own playful dance steps in the process. As you might imagine, rumba caused a great deal of hand-wringing among the middle and upper classes, and it was banned or severely limited on several occasions throughout the late nineteenth century.

EXPLORE Rumba Guaguancó RUMBA Cuban dance form that developed at the end of the nineteenth century. The typical Rumba ensemble consists of a lead vocalist, a chorus, clave, palitos, and congas. MONTUNO A term designating both the improvisatory call­ and-response section of a Cuban rumba or son performance (and, later on, the same section within salsa performances) and the technique of arpeggiating chords on the piano.

THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RUMBA At the turn of the twentieth century, according to Robin Moore (Nationalizing Blackness, 1997), Cuban elites were looking for a musical identity for their newly independent nation. European-derived forms, including operettas (called zarzuelas), burlesques, and light classical salon and dance musics, all of which were common in Cuba at the time, were too European to offer a distinct national sound. There were, to be sure, Cuban elements that stood out. The habanera rhythm (from the contradanza) and the cinquillo were very popular, both within Cuba and abroad. And yet, there was some concern that the musical genres within which these rhythms operated were, in the end, still too European to serve nationalist purposes. On the other hand, Afro-Cuban musics like rumba were maligned by the middle and upper classes. The central paradox was how to create a national culture (a project virtually inconceivable without incorporating Afro-Cuban expressions) and present it as “modern” (for which it seemed necessary to marginalize “blackness”). In short, how to find a way to “browning” Afro-Cuban music? Mirroring the state of affairs in Trinidad, members of the black middle class did not object to this project because they were attempting to distance themselves from their own

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CINQUILLO A rhythmic cell common throughout the Caribbean, containing five separate articulations and organized into a long-short-longshort­ long pattern.

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RUMBA GUAGUANCÓ: “CONSUELATE COMO YO”

LISTENING GUIDE 11.3

LISTEN

Carlos Embale Ensemble: Clave, Palitos, Congas, Leader, and Chorus

T

HIS RECORDING ILLUSTRATES the main formal and rhythmic structures of rumba guaguancó. The narrative section (canto) is followed by the montuno (beginning at [2:47]) and the clave, palitos, and congas all provide an interlocking, rhythmic foundation for the dancers. The quinto, or lead, conga, improvises over the top of the texture. The song’s lyrics are an encouragement to give up on love because it only leads to heartbreak. Console yourself like me, because I also had a love that I lost. And for this (reason) I say now that I won’t love again. Because what good was love to you if that love betrayed you like it did me O my negra I love you but now I don’t love anymore Hear me . . . Hear me well (trans. Jodi Elliott)

The clave, palitos, and congas play the following rhythms fairly consistently throughout the performance as shown here. Try to hear them individually. Although the clave in this performance follows a 3/2 pattern (that is a group of three strokes, followed by a group of 2 strokes) another very common clave pattern in rumba is the 2/3 pattern. Clave:

Clave

x

x

x

x

x

x

x

Palitos:

Palitos

x

x

x

x

x

x

x

x

Conga:

Conga

x

x

x

x

The whole rhythmic texture looks like this: Clave

x

Palitos

x

Conga

x

x x

x x

x x

x x

x

x

x

x

x

x

x x

continued

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TIME

SECTION

0:00–2:46

Canto: Listen to the way this narrative section features the soloist/leader and his interactions with the chorus, who always sing the main melodic phrase with him. Listen also for the individual percussion instruments and see if you can hear their unique contributions to the overall rhythmic texture of the performance.

MUSICAL EVENTS

Listen to this section multiple times. The first time, focus on the melodic and textual organization. Next, listen for the congas (the lowest-pitched of the percussions instruments). Then listen for and clap along with the clave (3 strokes, then 2 strokes). Finally see if you can hear and clap along with the palitos (the highest-pitched of the percussion instruments). 0:00–0:06

The clave, palitos, and congas open this performance, getting their interlocking rhythms set and preparing for the vocalists’ entry.

0:06–0:32

Lead vocalist improvises an introductory melody using vocables.

0:32–0:43

Chorus responds to the leader with the first phrase of the canto (and also the first phrase of the melody). Consuelate como yo . . .

0:43–0:59

The lead vocalist returns with another improvisatory flourish.

1:00–1:13

The chorus returns, repeating the melody and text. Consuelate como yo . . .

1:14–1:36

The chorus, now augmented by additional singers, repeats the first phrase of melody and text twice more.

1:36–2:00

The lead vocalist again improvises a text-less melody.

2:01–2:24

The smaller version of the chorus sings the second and third phrases of the melody, complete with new text, revealing the overall structure of the canto melody to be ABA.

2:25–2:46

The expanded chorus takes up the second and third phrases of the melody as well. Chorus and lead vocalist take turns singing short phrases.

2:46–3:14

Montuno: Notice the slight increase in tempo and the new melody. Listen for shorter intervals between the lead vocalist and chorus here and for the quinto solo. continued

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TIME

SECTION

MUSICAL EVENTS

3:14–3:33

The quinto, or lead conga, plays a solo. This is a good moment to see if you can hear the individual percussion instruments in addition to the solo.

3:34–4:00

The lead vocalist and chorus reenter, continuing their call-and-response interaction until the performance comes to an abrupt end.

“Wie Tanzt Man Rumba?” Reproduction of a how-to guide for German-speaking rumba dancers, created by dance instructor Walter Carlos. Initially printed in the October 1931 edition of Wintergarten Magazine. Source: Used by permission, Biblioteca Nacional Jose Marti with thanks to Robin Moore.

cultural heritage to obtain a greater measure of acceptance within Cuban society. They resented the “blackness” of rumba as much as, if not more than, did the elite. While elites were busy looking for their answers within Cuba, the World’s Fair of 1889 in Paris had illustrated quite clearly the marketability of the exotic and of l’arte negre. Composers like Debussy were fascinated by Indonesian gamelans, artists were thrilled by African masks, and a bit later, audiences went wild over Josephine Baker’s revues. Jazz was beginning to make inroads in Europe and, by 1920, a tango craze hit all of Europe. People turned to l’arte negre for a variety of reasons, both aesthetic and philosophical, and the stage was set for a new dance craze to hit the streets. A few Cuban entertainers who had been performing rumba in a “cleaned-up,” staged form in Havana found their way to Paris, where, in 1927, they performed with great success. By the 1930s, this cleaned-up, commercial rumba was being danced all over Europe and in the United States—ironically solidifying precisely the “exotic” image from which Cuban elites were trying to distance themselves. While rumba swept through Paris and the world, the rumba of the urban lower class was still quite maligned in Cuba. When tourists became increasingly interested in rumba, however, things gradually changed. The toptier clubs began hiring more Afro-Cuban musicians (in order to claim greater authenticity). Rumba found acceptance abroad and this led, at least in part, to its subsequent repositioning at home despite the fact that it was still symbolically tied to the legacy of slavery and to Africa. A parallel development had, nevertheless, taken place within Cuba itself during these years. Elements of the traditional rumba had also become firmly entrenched in the formal structure and instrumentation of a new genre called son—the dance band tradition that gradually became the international face of Cuba. The clave and the two-part formal structure of canto (called largo in sones) and montuno, to name but two aspects of traditional rumba, became central to the sound of son, and sones rapidly became extremely popular in Cuba and abroad. So, rumba found its way into the world and into a more benign local genre (son), and the combination of these two processes made it possible

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for elites to embrace it—outside recognition, inside redefinition (Moore 1997). The popularity of son was such that the sounds traveled throughout the region, contributing to the incorporation of elements like the clave into Trinidadian calypsos, Jamaican mento bands, and George Symonette’s cover version of “Love Alone.” This is another example in which questions and issues related to class, cultural politics, travel, tourism, and national identity all contribute to the ways that a musical practice is received and rethought. And, in similar fashion to calypso and steel pan, the sounds of rumba, and especially of son, had an effect beyond Cuba’s borders as the music was “exported” through recordings, radio, and performing groups.

WE, THE PEOPLE: NATION AND IDENTITY IN THE CARIBBEAN A second theme in Caribbean musics concerns how musical style reveals national or communal struggles with identity. The Bahamas offer a case in point. As the country moved to majority rule in 1967 and then achieved independence from Great Britain in 1973, a concomitant cultural negotiation was taking place. As in our example from Cuba, middle-class Bahamians felt that the island’s cultural icons were too provincial for mobilization in the service of national identity. The long history of colonialism had ingrained a certain predilection for British culture, resulting in a parallel silencing of Bahamian culture. Significantly, musicians played an important role in bringing Bahamian customs, foods, clothing, language use, and musical traditions back into the public eye, both through their lyrics and by means of performance. In fact, junkanoo, a carnivallike festival celebrated on Boxing Day (December 26) and New Year’s Day, gradually came to serve as an icon of Bahamian identity. In the Bahamas, junkanoo developed during the nineteenth century and took the form of a nighttime festival during which slaves would get together to visit, celebrate, and socialize. After emancipation in 1838, however, it came to be associated in the minds of elites with loud revelry and violence (more imagined than real) and was generally disparaged. Junkanoo gradually became associated with a particular rhythm, performed on goatskin drums and accompanied by whistles, cowbells, and whatever other instruments people could get their hands on (bugles, bicycle horns, etc.). The characteristic rhythms of junkanoo developed over the course of some decades, but by the early twentieth century, they had codified to some degree into roles for the various drums and bells. The festival was variously banned, threatened, and limited throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Just as with carnival in Trinidad, elites felt threatened by junkanoo and passed injunctions, such as the Street Nuisance Act of 1899, that severely limited the festival (in this case by prohibiting junkanoo during the late nighttime hours when it was customarily celebrated). However, as tourists began to frequent the Bahamas more regularly in the years following World War II, they began to express real interest in junkanoo. Merchants along Bay Street in Nassau seized the opportunity and began to institutionalize the festival. During the 1950s there was a gradual recognition

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JUNKANOO A Bahamian festival, celebrated on Boxing Day (December 26) and New Year’s Day and including music, costume arts, and dance.

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Junkanoo drummers in Nassau. Source: Richard Ellis/ Alamy Stock Photo.

that this festival could generate tourist revenue. The drive toward independence began in earnest around the same time, and junkanoo thus began to factor as a marker of Bahamian identity. By the time independence became a reality in 1973, junkanoo was a very different festival than it had been prior to World War II. It now took place in a centralized location with a set parade route (along Bay Street), had been recognized as an official competition (with rules, judges, and prizes), was broadly “Bahamian” and sponsored by the state (the Masquerade Committee had been absorbed into the Ministry of Tourism). Most importantly, junkanoo had become a positive source of identity for Bahamians (including elites). Junkanoo illustrates how a festival tradition gradually came to define for a nation-state an important aspect of its identity leading up to and in the wake of independence. But the Caribbean also plays host to other political arrangements. The next two case studies consider what happens when identity is being negotiated in the context of a foreign département (that is, within the French Antilles, which are foreign départements of France) and—more drastically still—when it is being negotiated by people who do not have any way of constituting themselves within the geographical boundaries of a nation-state (as is the case with the Garifuna).

Zouk EXPLORE Zouk

The French Antilles were not particularly active in the popular music scene during the early 1970s. Biguine, the local dance band music, had been a hugely

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successful genre earlier in the twentieth century and had, in fact, been one of the first Caribbean musics to attract early and sustained interest by recording companies (along with calypso). But biguine had gradually lost much of its popularity to other regional styles. George Decimus, a founding member of the band called Kassav’, came to believe that this void—which was filled by nonlocal musics like merengue (Dominican Republic), cadence-lypso (Dominica), and konpa-direct (Haiti)—was a result, ultimately, of a lack of confidence in Antillean identity. This belief led in 1979 to the birth of Kassav’, a band explicitly committed to producing technically flawless, rhythmically complex, unquestionably Antillean music for world consumption. The band implemented several strategies of representation, starting with its name. “Kassav’” is a local dessert that is made from manioc and needs to be carefully prepared, because if made improperly, it can result in a toxic cake. The band thus claimed local cuisine and folk knowledge as their own. Kassav’ also decided that its lyrics would be sung in the local language, creole. Among Antilleans, creole had for the longest time been considered the language of the poor and uneducated, whereas French was considered proper and refined. The band featured the gwoka (Guadeloupean drum) and foregrounded local rhythms to instill a sense of pride in Antillean sounds and instruments. The rhythms of the gwoka were soon transferred to the drum kit, but nevertheless remain the basis for the music that came to be called zouk. Kassav’ recorded in Paris to have access to the best equipment possible and was extremely sensitive to international sounds (especially to those of the World Beat craze of the late 1970s and early 1980s). In 1984 Kassav’ released the song “Zouk­ la se sel medikaman nou ni” (“Zouk is the only medicine we have”), to massive acclaim. Having gained traction on the international market, the band was forced to articulate their ideology more clearly to the public both at home and abroad. They claimed that: They wanted to create a music that would be picked up and understood by non-Caribbean ears, to write music that would defend the sounds of the Antilles and of the black diaspora on the international market, and to craft a current translation, with the available means, of the Caribbean musical sensibility, which enters into contact with all cultures. It is important to note also that the band boasted a broadly international membership. Originally a Guadeloupean band, the membership quickly expanded to include Martinician, Belgian, Cameroonian, French, and Algerian musicians. Finally, one of the remarkable aspects of Kassav’s membership is the union of Guadeloupe and Martinique, a remarkable union because of the strong, long-standing mistrust and competition that has divided these two départements. So Antillean unity is a particularly salient message—a message that the band literally embodies. As Jocelyne Guilbault (1993) has noted, Kassav’ foregrounds its hybrid nature and, in so doing, proposes a new vision of Antilleans as mixed and hybrid, culturally rich, and modern world citizens. There is also a peculiar logic to challenging the métropole with creole by so carefully appealing to the exoticism that drives the world music industry. In the end, Kassav’ was able to turn both Paris and Fort-de-France in a big way—Fort-de-France, because

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ZOUK Popular music style of the French Antilles, popularized in the 1980s by the band Kassav’.

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Jocelyne Beroard (C) and Jacob Desvarieux (L) from Antillean group Kassav. Source: KAMBOU SIA/AFP/ Getty Images.

creole thumbed its nose at Paris, and Paris because creole had found a space outside French national culture (the world music market) that could then be reabsorbed as French diversity by the urban elite.

PUNTA AND PUNTA ROCK Garinagu is the name of the people of West African and Amerindian descent who settled along the Caribbean coast of Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua during the nineteenth century. Garifuna is another, more common name for this people—a term that serves also to refer specifically to their language. The beginnings of the Garifuna trace to the island of St. Vincent, one of the few places in the Caribbean where Amerindians were able to successfully resist the colonial encounter well into the eighteenth century. On St. Vincent, the Amerindians met and intermarried with two shiploads of Africans, who had reached shore after their slave ships were wrecked in a storm on the way to Barbados around 1635. The Garifuna, known in St. Vincent as the Black Caribs, eventually found themselves at war with and technologically outmatched by the British, who had become increasingly interested in St. Vincent during the course of the eighteenth century. The Garifuna, led by a chief named Chatuye, were eventually defeated in 1796—a defeat that prompted a massive (and forced) Garifuna migration with eventual resting points in places like Guatemala and Nicaragua. This migration began with the exile in 1797 of some 2,000 Garifuna to Roatan Island off the coast of Honduras. The dispersal of the Garifuna from St. Vincent has led many to refer to themselves as the Garifuna Nation throughout the diaspora.

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In 1802, Garifuna from Honduras began settling in Belize (then British Honduras), and on November 19, 1832, many of the exiles from Roatan Island joined the Garifuna who had already settled there, a day that, since 1977, has been recognized as Garifuna Settlement Day. There are six major Garifuna settlements in Belize today, but beginning in the middle of the twentieth century, large numbers of Garifuna have been migrating to the United States, where there are now sizable communities in New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago. Oliver Greene has pointed out (2002) that in 1993 there were an estimated 225,000 Garifuna in Central America and about 90,000 in the United States. The difficulties of maintaining identity across several host nations and between multiple languages (Spanish, English, and Garifuna) have led many Garifuna to focus careful attention on preserving language, customs, music, and other traditions. This concern is illustrated in the creation of punta rock. To understand the ideology and sound of punta rock, though, it is necessary to offer a brief introduction to its musical antecedent—punta. Punta is a song genre that symbolically reenacts the cock-and-hen mating dance and is usually composed by women. Punta is performed during festivals, at wakes, and at celebrations that follow dugu ceremonies (religious ceremonies during which a family appeals to the ancestors for help in solving a given problem). It is a secular, duple-meter genre, and the lyrics are often cast in the vein of other regional genres such as calypso, giving expression to strong currents of social commentary and political consciousness. It’s a couples dance that features rapid movement of the hips and a totally motionless upper torso. Punta usually involves call-and-response singing, drums, rattles, and sometimes conch shell trumpets. The drums used in punta are called the primero and the segunda. As you might imagine, the primero improvises over a steady ostinato (repeating motive) laid down by the segunda. “Punta” (recorded in 1982), illustrates both the extent to which children were still being taught Garifuna musical practices at that time and the increasing need for renewed attention to Garifuna language and identity. It reminds us that Garifuna were actively passing on traditions despite the rhetoric that accompanied the rise of punta rock while simultaneously offering a bit of perspective on the ideological position that artists took with respect to their project—not enough was being done to promote Garifuna lifeways. Accordingly, the late 1970s found a new musical approach gaining momentum among Garifuna. Indeed, punta was being consciously revitalized as popular music through a genre called punta rock. Punta rock is an adaptation of punta and to a lesser extent of paranda (a folk-song genre for voice and guitar) and is very popular in Belize and in places like Guatemala and Honduras (where only cumbia outstrips it in terms of popularity). The language of punta rock is Garifuna, a major marker of ethnicity and of identity for performers and fans alike. There are, to be sure, punta rock songs with English or Spanish lyrics, but Garifuna, along with the rhythms of punta, remain major markers of identity. Unlike punta, however, punta rock is composed and performed largely by men instead of women.

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PUNTA ROCK Popular music style developed by the Garifuna, featuring call­ and-response vocals and a rich percussion accompaniment derived from traditional punta music.

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LISTENING GUIDE 11.4

PUNTA

LISTEN

Performed by Henry, Bobsy, and Lena Núñez TIME

SECTION

MUSICAL ELEMENTS/LYRICS

0:00–0:20

Listen briefly for the three main elements: the vocals, the primero, and segunda drums.

This song is being performed by three children. The lyrics of the song are mostly in English: When the teacher speaks I don’t like it. Hey Dandi (Mountain Cow or Tapir) walking away. Hey, Tiligad’s sister is walking away.

0:20–0:40

The vocals: Listen for the English content in the lyrics.

The children are singing in a mixture of Garifuna and English. Recorded in 1982, at the very moment that the first punta rock artists were gaining popularity, this performance illustrates both the continuation of traditional forms of tutelage (these children learned how to drum and sing punta from their elders) and offers some sense of the felt need for a revitalization of Garifuna language (the children sing mostly in English).

0:40–1:00

The segunda pattern: Listen for the repeating ostinato in the segunda drum.

The rhythm that drives this song is played on the segunda. It consists of the following pattern: You can hear it in 2/4 or as a 6/8 pattern, but the actual feel is somewhere between these two: 2/4 feel Segunda

x

x

Pulse

x

x

x

x

x

x

6/8 feel

1:00–1:30

The primero: Listen for the improvisatory and virtuosic role of the primero.

Segunda

x

x

Pulse

x

x

The primero is free to improvise over the segunda pattern. In this sense, it fulfills a role not unlike the quinto drum in rumba ensembles.

The shift from punta to punta rock was motivated in part by concern over the degree to which young Garifuna were identifying with the musical styles they were hearing primarily over the radio. Sounds from Bob Marley to James Brown were floating across the airwaves, and traditional punta simply couldn’t compete. Initially (in the late 1970s) the traditional punta ensemble was merely augmented with a lead guitar and a turtle shell (to approximate a snare drum sound). Performers gradually added keyboards and drum machines (which replaced the segunda) in the 1980s, and the basic tempo of punta was increased, leading to a radio-friendly and ethnically marked popular music. One of the ways that the sound was adapted to more modern-sounding arrangements was to split the traditional punta rhythm (the segunda part) between kick drum and snare.

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Garifuna continue to face significant challenges to their identity. They live in modern nation-states of which they form but a small minority. They share a common heritage, but are spread over several national borders, including the United States, making large gatherings for reunions or dugu ceremonies quite difficult to realize. Finally, they continue to eat, dance, sing, and speak in ways not recognized as mainstream within their respective nation-states, making it tempting for some to entertain the thought of blending in. These challenges, however, have been confronted with a focus on the shared history of the Garifuna—by a renewed interest, growing during the 1970s and 1980s, in preserving language, customs, and rites and by new artforms that include the creation and dissemination of punta rock. This is a story of identity quite different from zouk or junkanoo, but it offers another example of the challenges to identity that confront peoples living in the Caribbean region.

“All O’ We Is One”: Class and Cultural Politics in the Caribbean Junkanoo also serves as an excellent introduction to the next theme in Caribbean music—class and cultural politics within the region. Junkanoo is touted as the great, national unifier by the Bahamas Ministry of Tourism and by participants alike. All Bahamians, whether day laborers or prime ministers, participate in the festival. For these two parades (Boxing Day and New Year’s Day), at least, Bahamian society dissolves ethnic and class issues and celebrates together—so the argument goes. And yet, a closer examination reveals some very interesting trends within the structure of junkanoo groups themselves. Each junkanoo troupe is made up of a front line and a back line. The front line includes dancers (both choreographed and free dancers) and a range of set pieces designed to illustrate and explore the group’s chosen theme. The back line consists of the instrumentalists: brass players, bellers (cow bell players), lead drummers, and bass drummers. Bellers and drummers also blow whistles along the parade route. The number of people who participate in these troupes is quite considerable. The largest groups, like the Valley Boys, Saxons, Roots, and One Family, for example, can bring as many as one thousand junkanooers to Bay Street for a given parade. Vivian Nina Michelle Wood has pointed out that women generally gravitate toward the costume arts while men play instruments, and that drums are generally the domain of the grass roots while local whites play mas (i.e., masquerade). In other words, junkanoo groups tend to preserve an internal division of labor that traces some of the historical fissures within Bahamian cultural and social life. Metaphors of unity, then, only go so far toward explaining junkanoo. When subjected to a bit of analysis, it becomes clear that some of the struggles related to cultural politics within the Bahamas continue to rest uneasily at the very heart of this most powerful of national symbols. Junkanoo illustrates gender, ethnic, and economic fissures within Bahamian society and offers an introduction to a theme that plays out musically in powerful ways throughout the Caribbean.

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CHUTNEY AND CHUTNEY-SOCA An example of cultural politics as it relates to ethnicity can be found in Trinidad, where East Indians and Afro-Trinidadians continue to work out just what sounds and tastes should represent the nation. East Indians, the descendants of indentured laborers brought to the region from South Asia, are present in large numbers in Trinidad, Guyana, and Suriname. They arrived first in Guyana, where some 250,000 disembarked between 1838 and 1917. Suriname, getting a rather late start, imported some 37,000 East Indian laborers between 1873 and 1916. Trinidad followed Guyana’s example more quickly and began importing indentured laborers in 1845. By 1917, some 144,000 East Indians had arrived in Port of Spain, and the resulting East Indian community has since grown to comprise approximately 36 percent of Trinidad’s population. Hindu and Muslim religious beliefs and practices were added to the growing number of religious systems in Trinidad, such that approximately 25 percent of the population claims Hindu or Muslim faith. East Indians, of course, brought with them not only religious beliefs, but also ways of living, making music, and speaking, all of which added layers of complexity to Trinidadian society. Dr. Eric Williams, Trinidad’s first prime minister, attempting to find a way of uniting Trinidadians toward the common goal of nation building in the early 1960s, tried to do away with this complexity by reconfiguring the way people thought about their place in Trinidadian society. In a now-famous address he suggested, There can be no Mother India, for those whose ancestors came from India . . . there can be no Mother Africa, for those of African origin. . . . The only Mother we recognise is Mother Trinidad and Tobago, and Mother cannot discriminate between her children. (Williams, Forged from the Love of Liberty, 1981, 281) And yet, Dr. Williams’s attempt at using familial metaphors to unify a society splintered along ethnic fault lines foundered. One reason for this failure was that the cultural productions that the government chose to represent the way that Trinidad looked, sounded, and tasted, were, almost without fail, of Afro-Trinidadian extraction. We have already seen that calypso, steel bands, and carnival came to hold a special place in terms of Trinidad’s national identity. East Indian musical traditions, like Tan-singing, tassa drumming, and chutney, were not equally promoted. Although Dr. Williams’s address posited Mother Trinidad as the only mother for all Trinidadians, the terms of inclusion into the ostensibly multicultural nation did not change appreciably for East Indians. Added to this political dimension of interethnic relations in Trinidad has been the increasing economic success of East Indians. Afro-Trinidadians have found themselves increasingly economically outstripped by East Indians, whether in small business ventures or in terms of employment. By the mid­ 1980s, this growing East Indian economic power had translated into burgeoning

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political power. When, in the 1990s, East Indians succeeded in turning the political tables on Afro-Trinidadians, electing Basdeo Panday prime minister in 1995, there was a great deal of worry among Afro-Trinidadians that the cultural tables would be turned as well. And ethnic voting blocks, aligned with political parties, have continued into the present moment to define priorities and policies in Trinidad and Tobago. Musical style plays a major role in these cultural politics, each style carrying an extra measure of weight as an expression of a particular identity and subject position within the nation. Styles such as calypso and soca continue to be tied to the Afro-Trinidadian community, whereas chutney and tan-singing are understood as “authentically” East Indian forms of expression. And although there were artists and fans who broke through these categories of musical ownership to explore mixtures or simply to sing or participate in a different style, these artists were the exception rather than the rule. It is predictable that these artists were often roundly criticized for these breaches of artistic (read cultural) propriety. Even as recently as the 1990s, controversy raged over musical styles. A case in point is chutney-soca, which blends aspects of both soca and chutney to produce a hybrid drawing on both Afro-Trinidadian and East Indian musical styles. As musicians began to sing chutney-soca in the tents during carnival and in the Soca Monarch competition, both Afro-Trinidadian and East Indians raised concerns. Afro-Trinidadians were unsure how to judge chutney-soca in a competition designed to deal only with soca. East Indians were by turns aggravated at the fact that East Indian musicians and musical characteristics were even participating in carnival and upset at those Afro-Trinidadian musicians who chose to perform “their” music—a musical blend that they had vigorously opposed in the first place. To satisfy both groups, a new category for  competition, called the “Chutney-Soca Monarchy,” was created in 1996. This move, although certainly making the job of judging the soca competition more clear-cut (a happy development for Afro-Trinidadians), continued to legitimize and further institutionalize the “separate but equal” policies for which East Indian leaders had been pushing (see Edmondson 1999; Manuel 2000). Musical ownership thus remains a major component of cultural politics in Trinidad. Two other East Indian musics—Tan-singing (now on the verge of falling out of use) and chutney—further illustrate Caribbean cultural politics. Tansinging is a light-classical tradition and features several different genres, the most important of which is Thumri. Thumri is, for many East Indians, a tangible link to South Asian musical practices, and although it is certainly indebted to South Asian models, it has developed as a uniquely East Indian musical practice. Thumri is a vocal genre accompanied by dholak (drum), dhantal (metal clapper), and harmonium, which doubles the vocal line in heterophonic style. And yet, this musical style is gradually passing from active performance into folklore. Most performers no longer can speak Hindi, and the tradition seems to be dying a slow death at the hands of chutney and Bollywood film music.

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CHUTNEY-SOCA Popular music style of Trinidad that combines elements of two earlier styles, soca and chutney.

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MERENGUE Popular dance music of the Dominican Republic.

EXPLORE Merengue Típico

Fefita la Grande. Source: Reynaldo Brito/CC/Wikimedia Commons.

Chutney is a folk music of South Asian origin, usually sung by women for women at celebrations such as weddings. The lyrics are often humorously educational with regard to domestic and marital subjects. Traditional instrumentation for these songs is not unlike that for Tan-singing, employing a harmonium, dholak, and dhantal, although the performance style is no longer touched with the virtuosity of Tan-singing. This tradition continued through the 1960s, but starting in the 1970s, male East Indian singers like Sundar Popo began to explore chutney as a popular genre, performing it in public and even in carnival tents and adding other instruments to the ensemble, including keyboards, drum kits and drum machines, bass, and electric guitars. This move from the private to the public sphere—and from folk to popular status—caused a great deal of concern among East Indian leaders and was only exacerbated when women performers began to experiment with the style as well. And yet, chutney grew in popularity and, in the 1980s, helped to launch the hybrid I discussed earlier: chutney-soca. Both performance styles continue to be popular, and East Indian leaders seem to have resigned themselves to the fact that East Indian culture and social structures can no longer remain isolated from Trinidadian national culture. And yet, the separate but equal policies continue to be attractive, and Trinidadians continue to face serious challenges in the realm of cultural politics.

MERENGUE Merengue music of the Dominican Republic offers a very different example of class and cultural politics. During the mid-nineteenth century, merengue developed from the salon-type music popular throughout the region at the time (danza and contradanza). It was gradually picked up as a folk music, and this style came to be played far away from the dance halls and salons of Santo Domingo. It should come as no surprise that those in positions of power denounced this rural merengue as vulgar. The early merengue ensemble usually included guira, guitar/quatro, marimba (like the marímbula), and tambora (a double-headed drum), and by 1870, the button accordion took the place of the string instruments. Merengue was quite varied from region to region, but the style of the Cibao valley was most influential. By the 1920s merengue típico of Cibao had become somewhat standardized and could even include a saxophone playing melodies and countermelodies alongside the accordion. In contrast to many of the genres explored earlier, merengue focuses a great deal of its rhythmic intensity in emphasizing on-beats. So merengue is in 2/4 meter, and the “one, two, one, two” of each measure is pounded out by the kick drum and by the bass guitar (in contemporary ensembles), making this a prominent feature of the genre. The structure of these songs is similar to Cuban rumba/son in that there is a narrative section (called merengue) followed by a more syncopated call-and-response section (called jaleo). Early merengues also often included a short, march-like introduction, called a paseo, during which the dancers would make their way to the

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dance floor. This introductory section is rarely played in the contemporary moment. In the 1930s, nation, music, and ideology were linked by Rafael Trujillo, who rose to power in 1930 and remained in power until his assassination in 1961. Merengue was re-urbanized under Trujillo, who championed it as the national music (starting in 1936), using it not only to solidify his own dictatorial power, but also to posit a Dominican Republic distinctly different (in every possible respect) from Haiti. If Haiti was African, then the Dominican Republic was Iberian, and merengue from the Cibao region appeared to support that claim. That merengue was already a thoroughly creole musical tradition, developed in and through negotiating both African and European influences, was expressly denied by Trujillo. This was to be a musical genre that countered Haitian musical styles, emphasized European aesthetic ideas, and could, so Tujillo hoped, unify the country with regard to class relations. He mandated that urban dance bands take up the merengue, and not a few merengues were composed in his honor. That lower-class, rural music was now being performed in elite ballroom settings was not a particularly satisfying turn of events for Dominican socialites, and yet Trujillo’s mandates managed to firmly install merengue at the heart of Dominican national identity. The lower-class roots of merengue were resounded, in part through the use of swing bands, complete with trumpets and especially saxophones, that came to play a type of merengue called orquesta merengue. The piano accordion, moreover, became the instrument of choice in these orchestras because of the increased flexibility that it offers over the button accordion (which can play in only a few keys). During the middle years of the twentieth century, both urban and rural styles of merengue existed side by side and were played on national radio, and although both remained tied to their class roots, both also served as markers of Dominican identity. The merengue típico of the Cibao has come to be called perico ripiao and remains the “roots” version of merengue. Following Trujillo’s assassination in 1961, the orquesta merengue style gradually evolved into the popular, commercialized merengue (utilizing fairly typical electric dance band ensembles) that took the international scene by storm in the 1980s and 1990s and remains popular today.

Travel and Tourism: Reconfiguring Home and Away As we have already seen, travel and tourism are important themes throughout the Caribbean—themes that play out in both centripetal (inward-moving) and centrifugal (outward-flowing) patterns. The musical styles that are created at “home” are affected by travel and tourism even as these creations, in going abroad, affect other places and musical practices. We will explore some of the other ways that travel and tourism can help us think about musical practices both within and outside the Caribbean by considering the several types of travel (both actual and imagined) with which the growing Caribbean diasporas in many locations throughout North America and Europe continue to negotiate

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LISTENING GUIDE 11.5

MERENGUE TÍPICO: “CONSANGRACIÓN DE CARIÑA”

LISTEN

Accordion, saxophone, bass, guira, tambora, congas La India Canela

T

HIS RECORDING ILLUSTRATES the old three-part structure of merengue that used to be standard for merengue típico. It begins with a short, march-like paseo, which would have been used to give dancers enough time to escort each other to the dance floor. This is followed by the merengue section. At about [1:17], the performance moves into the third section, called jaleo. It is more improvisatory, more syncopated, and even moves between duple and triple meter toward the end. In the contemporary moment, most merengues will simply start with the merengue section, creating a two part merengue/ jaleo structure not unlike the rumba/son structure explored earlier. The lyrics are an expression of true love: You are so beautiful and so pretty that I love you. I love all of you now and forever. I dedicate to you my affection and help and I’m thinking of loving only you eternally. Yes! Before getting married, stop by here. You belong to me and I will make you happy. Before getting married, think it over. Mami, you don’t know how much I love you. Listen beautiful negra, how do you know . . . how much I love you? Nobody loves you like I love you! (trans. Jodi Elliott) TIME

SECTION

MUSICAL ELEMENTS

0:00–0:09

Paseo: This opening section presents only the accordion, bass, and guira. Notice the marchlike quality, and think about how this short section provides just enough time to grab a dance partner and make your way to the dance floor.

The opening paseo melody is played by the accordion and accompanied by bass and guira.

0:9–0:18 0:19–0:32

The paseo is repeated. Merengue: Notice the dramatic increase in tempo and the straight-forward 2/4 meter, emphasized by the bass, which plays on one and two consistently throughout this section. Listen also for the nimble counter-melodies and harmonies played by the saxophone in response to the accordion.

The merengue gets underway, and the accordion and saxophone set the stage for verse one.

0:32–0:48

Verse one, delivered by two vocalists, is sung over an accompaniment accented by accordion and saxophone riffs at the end of phrases.

0:48–1:01

The accordion and saxophone take over and play an interlude.

continued

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TIME

SECTION

1:01–1:17 1:17–1:36

MUSICAL ELEMENTS The vocalists return and sing verse two.

Jaleo: This is the most syncopated, energetic section of the performance. Listen for the improvisatory explorations by all members of the ensemble and, in particular, for the sections, toward the end of the jaleo, during which the ensemble switches back and forth between 2/4 and 6/8 meter, creating sections during which 3 against 2 rhythms are prevalent.

The jaleo begins, and it is signaled by both a new melodic theme and by the shift in the bass guitar. Instead of playing on beats 1 and 2, the bass now intones notes on the off-beats of each measure (playing on the AND of 1 and the AND of 2). Notice that the end of this subsection ends in a repeated formula that signals the vocalists.

1:36–1:51

The vocalists take over, singing another verse.

1:51–2:10

The instrumentalists play another interlude, concluding with the repeated formula introduced earlier.

2:10–2:25

The vocalists take over again.

2:25–2:42

The instrumentalists return, this time playing in 6/8 time so that the rhythm shifts to 3 eighth notes per beat instead of 2 per beat as has been the case throughout the performance to this point. This 3 against 2 is heard most easily by listening to the bass guitar line. This shift to 3 against 2 heightens the intensity of the improvisations.

2:42–3:03

The instrumentalists return to the repeated formula that signals the return of the vocalists and also shift back to 2/4 meter in the process. Instead of bringing the vocalists back immediately, however, the accordion performs a solo over the repeating formula.

3:03–3:19

The vocalists return for a final verse.

3:19–3:44

The instrumentalists move again to a 3 against 2 feel in 6/8 meter. Listen for the bass guitar here, which improvises a bit within the harmonic framework.

3:44–3:52

The instrumentalists return to 2/4 meter and play a concluding figure to bring the performance to a close.

their understandings of home and away, illustrating that Caribbean musics have participated in significant ways in globalized networks of music-making, and exploring several of the religious practices that have historically emerged in response to travel in the Caribbean. The emergence of major carnival festivities in New York (Labor Day Carnival), London (Notting Hill Carnival), and Toronto (Caribana) reminds us to think about globalization as a double-edged and uneven process that globalizes the local while localizing the global. When we think about patterns of reception within the Caribbean, we also need to keep in mind that the movement outward from the Caribbean of these various

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musical styles and festival traditions does, in fact, affect in a tangible way the life of people in the métropoles even after it has returned “home.” And this not least because many of these urbanites are Caribbean nationals who for educational or employment reasons have found themselves “abroad.” The Labor Day Carnival works in large part because of the enthusiastic support of the Caribbean community in New York. Caribana represents not merely a chance to get together and play mas or to hear great artists, but also a means of recognizing publicly the twice-diasporized nature of life in a city like Toronto. That non-Caribbean participants gain exposure to and often appreciation for Caribbean Carnival arts and musical life is, of course, an important motivating factor and source of pride for those who are representing, say, Barbados at Notting Hill Carnival in London. But travel and tourism also suggest the possibility of considering new relationships to the past and to “home” that are coming to characterize communities living abroad as well as those who have stayed behind. Nostalgia, for example, drives perceptions of home and away in significant ways. Take the lyrics of a Bahamian song entitled “Island Boy,” and written by Eric Minns, which repeatedly assert: “Island Boy, you’ve got your mind on your job in New York but your heart’s in the Caribbean.” The new diasporas of the Caribbean configure themselves not only around family networks and everyday concerns related to employment and education, but also around memory and particular views of history that allow narratives of the past to be woven into a more nuanced sense of place in the present. One strategy is to configure home as an idealized place that exists in the past (not just the good old days, but also that good old place). This process allows diasporic communities to view their “home” (say, Port of Spain) as simply a stopover on the road toward the “real home,” but not really all that much better than their present physical location (say, London). This affords a new relationship to identity forged through recovering a way of being in the world (and of being in the present) that works toward that “good old place” (with all of the cultural and social implications that this idea entails), regardless of one’s actual physical location. Importantly, this approach to home and away means that new traditions in new places not only become possible but desirable, and carnival celebrations in cities such as London, New York, and Toronto are merely the most obvious examples of this trend. Another example of this tendency is the musical effects that follow from the artistic interactions that occur between musicians from various locations throughout the Caribbean in places like New York. For instance, salsa is an example of how travel has influenced the music of the Caribbean and of Latin America. Salsa, which grew out of experiments by Latino musicians in New York during the 1960s, variously combined elements of Cuban and Puerto Rican musical styles (the principal, if not the only musical influences) to create a hybrid, flexible style that swept to popularity during the 1960s and 1970s. The presence of musicians from various locations throughout the Caribbean in New York and their musical interactions and negotiations led to a new genre that has since found a home (and legions of fans) in most urban centers of Spanish-speaking

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Chronixx on stage in Toronto, Canada. Source: Isaiah Trickey/FilmMagic/Getty Images.

Latin America. Travel and tourism have led to new trends of music-making (salsa) and to new cultural practices (various carnivals) in those places outside the Caribbean where Caribbean nationals make their homes. Caribbean musics have also had a global effect quite independent of Caribbean communities living abroad. Evidence of this can be seen in the immense global popularity of reggae, which took the world by storm during the 1970s and ’80s. But reggae represents only one of the chapters of Jamaica’s engagement with North American and globalized music markets. Jamaican popular dance music, in fact, has a long history of reciprocal exchanges with North American popular music. R&B heavily influenced the early history of ska in the 1950s and into the 1960s. While reggae was being sold to worldwide audiences by artists like Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, and Bunny Wailer (to name only three of the most iconic performers), dub music (versions of recorded reggae manipulated by engineers in ways that created new aesthetic visions of reggae) was beginning to influence the early explorations of hip-hop in New York City. Dancehall, itself heavily influenced by hip-hop, represents only the latest example in a long history of these musical exchanges. Artists like Beenie Man, Sean Paul, Lady Saw, Buju Banton, Bounty Killer, and Elephant Man, to name just a few, are variously benefiting from collaborations with North American artists and finding it possible to release their own, very successful, records. It is important to recognize, then, that sound travels in different ways and along different routes than do people, but that both of these patterns continue to create new and powerful musical practices that afford individuals, whether living within or without the Caribbean and irrespective of citizenship, new means of constructing their identities.

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EXPLORE Jamaican Musics

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ORISHA A spirit understood as one of the manifestations of God within Yoruba and Yoruba­ derived religious practice.

Some sacred musics offer another range of responses to questions of travel in the Caribbean. These musics are tied quite closely to diasporic narratives, growing from the need to address fundamental spiritual concerns in new contexts. Other sacred practices are clearly predicated on travel to the region by missionaries and, more recently, on the role of the mass media. All Caribbean sacred musics, however, give expression to the variety of ways that beliefs and cosmologies have been negotiated within the region. Catholic, Protestant, Hindu, Muslim, Jewish, and African religious contexts were all brought to the region during the colonial encounter. Of these religious systems, Catholicism and Protestantism were imposed on a great many people for whom these religions represented primarily another register of colonial control. One of the main results of these traveling (and imposed) religious practices has been religious syncretism, a strategy whereby elements from two or more religious traditions are combined into new practices. Stuart Hall (2001: 35) has remarked, “It is impossible, in my experience, to understand black culture and black civilization in the New World without understanding the cultural role of religion, through the distorted languages of the one book that anybody would teach them to read.” His assertion rings true without regard to whether that one book was being taught by Baptists, Anglicans, or Catholics. That said,African-derived drumming is a major component of the ceremonial music central to syncretic religious systems such as Cuban santería, Trinidadian shango, and Haitian vodoun, all of which have found ways of combining African deities and cosmologies with Catholic saints and doctrines. In santería the drums are called batá, and there are three main instruments in a batá ensemble: the iyá (largest drum), itótele (midsized drum), and okónkolo (smallest drum). The drums are considered sacred, and important rules and rituals circumscribe their construction, consecration, care, and use. Only initiated drummers may touch these drums, and the drums are imbued with a spiritual force, usually called Añá, upon their initiation. The drums are played without the improvisational elements present in genres such as rumba, bélé, and bomba. Instead, each drum plays more-or-less set rhythms that are associated with individual orisha and that also correspond, in part at least, to patterns and inflections particular to Yoruba language. These rhythms provide the foundation that the lead singer builds on in invoking the particular orishas toward which the batá drums are directed. In Jamaica, a particularly rich range of responses to Protestant missionizing was deployed, including a practice called dual membership, whereby an individual could claim to be, say, Baptist, but would also participate in myal or convince rituals (both of which are local, African-derived religious practices). Rastafarianism, which developed in the 1930s, is significant in that it managed to link, albeit for a short time, its theological and social message to the soundtrack of reggae (thanks in large part to artists like Bob Marley). The message and the sound have been split from one another in recent years (especially with the rise of dancehall in the mid–late 1980s). Niyabinghi drumming, however, continues to be an important component of Rastafarian religious life. The

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Niyabinghi ensemble consists of three drums—bass, funde, and askete (which improvises over the solid rhythms performed on the other two drums)—an ensemble of instruments and an associated set of rhythmic ideas adapted from Jamaican Kumina rituals and from Burru drumming. Niyabinghi drumming is an excellent example of the ways that African-derived instruments and traditions can be “retuned” in the process of searching out and refashioning African roots. During the middle decades of the twentieth century, Pentecostal missionaries made significant inroads throughout the Caribbean (and in Latin America), as a result of which gospel music and contemporary Christian musical styles are now very prevalent in the region. Beginning in the 1970s, local genres have also been identified as potential evangelical tools, leading to new styles like gospelypso (calypso and gospel dancehall). These musical traditions often illustrate the complex ways in which church communities are utilizing regional and transnational styles both for their own local purposes and to participate in globalized forms of Christianity (see Rommen 2007). Finally, there are also sacred musics that participate in religious networks  separate from those that trace European and African religious travels.  Tassa drumming, for example, accompanies the Hosay festival in Trinidad. Hosay is a Shia Muslim festival commemorating and celebrating the martyrdom of Husayn ibn Ali (the Prophet Muhammad’s grandson). Ensembles include two primary kinds of drums—lead and second drums— and hand cymbals, but the number of players can vary greatly. Significantly, the Hosay festival has, in Trinidad, become a site of potential interethnic and interreligious participation. Hindu East Indians also contribute to the range of sacred musics circulating in the Caribbean. Two of the principal genres include bhajans and chowtal. A bhajan is a devotional song almost always incorporating a text dealing with a spiritual topic. In Trinidad, the bhajan is usually accompanied by a harmonium and sometimes by a violin, but because of the devotional nature of the material, virtuosity is consciously downplayed in bhajans. One of the major Hindu festivals on the Trinidadian religious calendar is called phagwa, or holi. This festival is held in March and celebrates the victory of good over evil. Groups of East Indian men play and sing a style called chowtal during this festival, and there are often competitions during the phagwa season. Chowtal is usually accompanied by percussion (including hand cymbals, dholak, and dhantal). The complex colonial encounter, coupled with the continued presence of missionaries, has created within the Caribbean a wide range of religious practices, each deployed to make sense of histories and futures, and each reflecting the need to make meaningful the present. Music has accompanied these travels and continues to offer audible and tangible support to people of faith throughout the region.

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BHAJAN Hindu devotional song. CHOWTAL A form of folk music associated with phagwa (holi) in Trinidad and having roots in Indian (Bhojpuri) folk music.

REVIEW CHAPTER RESOURCES

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KEY TERMS Bélé Bomba Calypso Canboulay Cariso Chowtal Chutney Copla Décima Diaspora Junkanoo Merengue Obeah Punta Quadrille Rake ’n’ scrape Rumba Soca Steel band Tamboo bamboo Zouk

SUMMARY Cat Island, Monday June 5th: I am waiting at the Cat Island Airport, along with several dozen other late-departing festivalgoers, shooting the breeze and reliving some of the great moments of the weekend. We’ve heard storytelling, seen quadrille dancing, experienced traditional, popular, and sacred musics. In short, the festival provided a glimpse at many of the registers of musical life I have discussed in the preceding pages. In offering these short vignettes, I have juxtaposed each of these musics and themes to suggest ways they overlap, draw on each other, interact, and in general offer inspiration to each other. The unifying themes are powerful—formal patterns like canto/montuno, ensemble aesthetics (like the predominance of three interlocking drum parts), and patterns of religious life, to name just a few possibilities, appear and reappear throughout the region. And yet, these common musical threads are highly individuated in terms of their local instantiations, accruing different meanings, diverse social functions, and new sounds, depending on where (and when) they happen to be performed. Caribbean musics thus reflect the challenges of shared history while simultaneously reworking the present into sounds and shapes that offer new ways of making meaning and creating community. This holds true for nationstates and festivals like junkanoo, for the Garifuna Nation and genres such as punta rock, and for Arthur’s Town, Cat Island, and that one rake ’n’ scrape band: Ophie and the Websites.

BIBLIOGRAPHY General Allen, Ray, and Lois Wilcken, Eds., Island Sounds in the Global City: Caribbean Popular Music and Identity in New York (New York: New York Folklore Society: Institute for Studies in American Music, Brooklyn College, 1998); Aparicio, Frances, and Cándida F. Jáquez, Eds., Musical Migrations: Transnationalism and Cultural Identity in Latin/o America (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003); Bilby, Kenneth, “The Caribbean as a Musical Region,” in Sidney W. Mintz and Sally Price, Eds., Caribbean Contours, 181–218 (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985); Burton, Richard D.E., Afro-Creole: Power, Opposition, and Play in the Caribbean (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997); Edmondson, Belinda, Ed., Caribbean Romances: The Politics of Regional Representation (Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia, 1999); Hall, Stuart, “Negotiating Caribbean Identities,” in Brian Meeks and Folke Lindahl, Eds., New Caribbean Thought: A Reader, 24–39 (Kingston, Jamaica: University of the West Indies Press, 2001); James, C.L.R., Beyond a Boundary (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1993 [1963]); Manuel, Peter, with Kenneth Bilby and Michael Largey, Eds., Caribbean Currents: Caribbean Music from Rumba to Reggae, 2nd ed. (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2006); Manuel, Peter, Ed., Creolizing Contradance in the Caribbean (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2009); Moskowitz, David, Caribbean Popular Music: An Encyclopedia of Reggae, Mento, Ska, Rock Steady, and Dancehall (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2006); Olsen, Dale A., and

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Sheehy, Daniel E., Eds., The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music, vol. 2: South America, Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998); Paquet, Sandra Pouchet, Patricia J. Saunders, and Stephen Stuempfle, Music, Memory, Resistance: Calypso and the Caribbean (Kingston, Jamaica: Ian Randle, 2007); Thomas, Susan, Cuban Zarzuela: Performing Race and Gender on Havana’s Lyric Stage (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2009); Williams, Eric, Forged from the Love of Liberty: Selected Speeches of Dr. Eric Williams, Paul Sutton, Ed. (Port of Spain: Longman Caribbean, 1981); Yelvington, Kevin, Ed., Trinidad Ethnicity (Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press, 1993). Monographs and Articles Aparicio, Frances, Listening to Salsa: Gender, Latin Popular Music, and Puerto Rican Cultures (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1998); Austerlitz, Paul, Merengue: Dominican Music and Dominican Identity (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1997); Averill, Gage, A Day for the Hunter, A Day for the Prey: Popular Music and Power in Haiti (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1997); Baker, Geoffrey, Buena Vista in the Club: Rap, Reggaetón, and Revolution in Havana (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011); Berrian, Brenda, Awakening Spaces: French Caribbean Popular Song, Music, and Culture (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2000); Best, Curwen, Culture @ the Cutting Edge: Tracking Caribbean Popular Music (Kingston, Jamaica:

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University of the West Indies Press, 2004); Bilby, Kenneth, Trueborn Maroons (Gainesville, FL: University of Florida Press, 2005); Bodenheimer, Rebecca M., Geographies of Cubanidad: Place, Race, and Musical Performance in Contemporary Cuba (Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2015); Charters, Samuel, The Day is So Long and the Wages So Small: Music on a Summer Island (New York: M. Boyars, 1999); Cooper, Carolyn, Sound Clash: Jamaican Dancehall Culture at Large (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004); Cooper, Carolyn, Global Reggae (Kingston, Jamaica: University of West Indies Press, 2012); Cooper, Carolyn, Noises in the Blood Orality, Gender, and the “Vulgar” Body of Jamaican Popular Culture (London: Macmillan Caribbean, 1993); Cowley, John, Carnival, Canboulay, and Calypso: Traditions in the Making (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996); Daniel, Yvonne, “An Ethnographic Comparison of Caribbean Quadrilles,” Black Music Research Journal 30(2) (Fall 2010) 215–240; Dudley, Shannon, Music from behind the Bridge: Steelband Spirit and Politics in Trinidad and Tobago (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008); Dudley, Shannon, Carnival Music in Trinidad: Experiencing Music, Expressing Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004); Flores, Juan, From Bomba to Hip-Hop: Puerto Rican Culture and Latino Identity (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000); Frances, Henry, Reclaiming African Religions in Trinidad: The Socio-Political Legitimization of the Orisha and Spiritual Baptist Faith (Barbados: University of the West Indies Press, 2003); Greene, Oliver, “Ethnicity, Modernity, and Retention in the Garifuna Punta,” Black Music Research Journal 22(2) (2002) 189–216; Guadeloupe, Francio, Chanting down the New Jerusalem: Calypso, Christianity, and Capitalism in the Caribbean (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2009); Guilbault, Jocelyne, Zouk: World Music in the West Indies (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1993); Guilbault, Jocelyne, Governing Sound: The Cultural Politics of Trinidad’s Carnival Musics (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press 2007); Guilbault, Jocelyne, and Roy Cape, Roy Cape: A Life on the Calypso and Soca Bandstand (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014); Hagedorn, Katherine, Divine Utterances: The Performance of Afro-Cuban Santeria (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2001); Hebdige, Dick, Cut ’n’Mix: Culture, Identity, and Caribbean Music (New York: Routledge, 1987); Hernandez, Deborah Pacini, Bachata: A Social History of Dominican Popular Music (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1995); Hill, Donald, Calypso Calaloo: Early Carnival Music in Trinidad (Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 1993); Jong, Nanette de, “The Tambú of Curaçao: Historical Projections and the Ritual Map of Experience,” Black Music Research Journal 30(2) (Fall 2010) 197–214; Largey, Michael, Vodou Nation: Haitian Art Music and Cultural Nationalism (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2006); McAlister, Elizabeth, “Listening for Geographies: Music as

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Sonic Compass Pointing Toward African and Christian Diasporic Horizons in the Caribbean,” Black Music Research Journal 32(2) (Fall 2012) 25–50; McAlister, Elizabeth, Rara! Vodou, Power, and Performance in Haiti and Its Diaspora (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2002); Manuel, Peter, East Indian Music in the West Indies: Tan-Singing, Chutney, and the Making of Indo-Caribbean Culture (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2000); Miller, Rebecca, Carriacou String Band Serenade Performing Identity in the Eastern Caribbean (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2007); Moore, Robin, Nationalizing Blackness: Afrocubanismo and Artistic Revolution in Havana, 1920–1940 (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1997); Moore, Robin, Music and Revolution: Cultural Change in Socialist Cuba (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2006); Munasinghe, Viranjini, Callaloo or Tossed Salad? East Indians and the Cultural Politics of Identity in Trinidad (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001); Myers, Helen, Music of Hindu Trinidad: Songs from the India Diaspora (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1998); Niaah, Sonjah Stanley, “A Common Space: Dancehall, Kwaito, and the Mapping of New World Music and Performance,” The World of Music 52(1/3) (2010) 515–530; Niranjana, Tejaswini, Mobilizing India: Women, Music, and Migration Between India and Trinidad (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006); Perry, Marc D., Negro Soy Yo: Hip Hop and Raced Citizenship in Neoliberal Cuba (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2015); Rivera, Raquel Z., Reggaeton (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009); Rommen, Timothy, “Funky Nassau”: Roots, Routes, and Representation in Bahamian Popular Music (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2011); Rommen, Timothy, “Make Some Noise”: Gospel Music and The Ethics of Style in Trinidad (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2007); Rommen, Timothy, and Daniel Neely, Eds., Sun, Sea, and Sound: Music and Tourism in the Circum-Caribbean (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014); Stolzoff, Norman, Wake the Town and Tell the People: Dancehall Culture in Jamaica (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000); Stuempfle, Stephen. The Steelband Movement: The Forging of a National Art in Trinidad and Tobago (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995); Sublette, Ned, Cuba and Its Music: From the First Drums to the Mambo (Chicago, IL: Chicago Review Press, 2004); Veal, Michael, Dub: Soundscapes and Shattered Songs in Jamaican Reggae (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2007); Vazquez, Alexandra T., Listening in Detail: Performances of Cuban Music (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2013); Waxer, Lise, Ed., Situating Salsa: Global Markets and Local Meanings in Latin Popular Music (New York: Routledge, 2002); Woods, Vivian Nina Michelle, Rushin’ Hard and Runnin’ Hot: Experiencing the Music of the Junkanoo Parade in Nassau, Bahamas (Ph.D. diss. Indiana University, IN, 1995).

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MUSIC OF INDIGENOUS NORTH AMERICA Byron Dueck WINNIPEG POWWOW CLUB In 2016, conducting research in Winnipeg again after some time away, I stopped in at a powwow club whose organizers I have known since 2002. Ray and Rhonda Stevenson initially ran the club as part of the community programming of the Ma Mawi Wi Chi Itata Centre, a social service organization serving Indigenous families; they now ran it with the support of the University of Winnipeg, whose new recreation center they used for meetings. I took the stairs up to the second floor, where volunteers were setting up chairs. A group of musicians arrived a little later, carrying with them a large powwow drum wrapped in a blanket. This was placed in the center of a circle of chairs with its skin facing upward. Once the club got started, seven drummers would sing around it. The events have had a very similar formula over the years, typically beginning with prayer and smudging (there was no smudging at the 2016 meeting; although many schools and public buildings in Winnipeg now accommodate smudging, not

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12 all do). This is followed by instruction in various powwow dances and drum songs. Toward the end of the 2016 meeting, there was a round dance in a swinging rhythm, and everyone was invited to take part. Rhonda led a line of dancers, holding hands, through spirals that coiled and uncoiled again. At another moment, we honored a pair of children whose birthday it was. They stood with backs to the drum as a song was sung, while attendees came to shake their hands and in some cases give them a little money. All told, there were perhaps forty or fifty people present, for the most part young dancers and accompanying parents or guardians. Afterward, I learned that it was not unusual for well over one hundred people to attend. Powwows are Native North American gatherings at which participants perform in a number of specific dance styles, accompanied by drum song. Some are local and small in scale while others bring together thousands of participants over a period of several days. Some are community events that celebrate special people

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Young Native Indian boys in Grass Dance competition at the Grand River Powwow. Source: Education Images/ Universal Images Group/Getty Images. SMUDGING An act of purification in which one washes oneself with the smoke of a smoldering medicinal plant, typically sage. POWWOW Native North American gatherings at which participants perform in a number of specific dance styles, accompanied by drum song.

or dates or raise money for a cause; others are competitions, with the winning dancers awarded cash prizes. In the Northern Plains area, these tend to be distinguished as “traditional” and “competition” powwows, respectively (see Scales 2007). The six core dance styles at powwows in the Northern Plains are Women’s Traditional, Men’s Traditional, Grass Dance, Jingle Dress Dance, Fancy Dance, and Fancy Shawl Dance, each one having its associated regalia and choreography. Interspersed at regular intervals with dances in these styles are Intertribal dances, typically open to all participants. A range of other dances may also be offered, including traditional dances specific to the group hosting the event. There is considerable regional variation from powwow to powwow, including in matters of event protocol. At the powwow club, young dancers focus on three of the core styles: boys typically on Grass Dance and girls on Jingle Dress Dance and Fancy Shawl Dance. The Jingle Dress Dance is often said to have had its origins in an Anishinaabe (also known as Ojibwa, Ojibwe, Chippewa, or Saulteaux) community close to Winnipeg (see Browner 2002), and is understandably important in the area. The dancing at the club is usually accompanied by a drum group (Figure  12.3) performing powwow songs in the style that predominates in the Northern Plains. Songs in this northern style start at the very top of the vocal range and gradually descend; they are sung with a wide vibrato and a pulsating sound (see Perea 2019). They are usually sung four times through; the repetitions are called “push-ups,” probably in recognition of the vocal effort required at the opening. Dancers are expected to come to a halt on the last beat of the last push-up of a powwow song, something that may sound like a challenge even before I mention that this includes when dancing to a song they have never heard before! They are able to stop at the right point in part because the songs sung at powwows have the same structure, a form that can be thought of as ABB. The A section of this form, often referred to as the “lead,” contains the material in the highest part of the singers’ range. It can be divided into two subsections with similar melodies, the first of which is sung by a soloist and the second by the rest of the group (In Listening Guide 12.1, I distinguish these subsections as asolo and agroup). Dancers can keep track of where they are in the performance in part by remembering how many times they have heard the beginning of the lead; the fourth time, they know the end is coming. Following the lead, the rest of the song—BB—is heard twice. The B sections are much longer than the lead and can be divided into subsections. Each subsection ends with a distinctive pattern of vocables—syllables without a fixed meaning (e.g., way-ay-ay-hey-oh)—sung on a repeated pitch. Following Tara Browner (2002), I will call this pattern the cadence. As the designation BB indicates, the entire B section is repeated before the lead is heard again. Powwow songs can consist entirely of vocables or of a mixture of vocables and words. “Aapiichii Daaniigamowaa,” the song you will listen to in Listening

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Guide 1, is largely made up of words, with vocables heard only at the ends of sections or subsections. The songs have a contour that descends overall: they end much lower than they begin, gradually moving down over the course of the form. The conventions I have just described help dancers know when to stop dancing, even when they are dancing to an unfamiliar song. They are able to count the number of push-ups by listening for the number of times they hear the solo lead. They know that a push-up ends when the melody reaches its lowest point, at the conclusion of the second time through what I have called B. They are finally aware that sections and subsections end in cadences, so they can time their dancing to end exactly on (for example) the final “oh” of the cadence pattern “way-ay-ay-hey-oh.” Listen through “Aapiichii Daaniigamowaa” two or three times while following along with Listening Guide 12.1. On your first listen, pay attention to the moments when the four push-ups begin; these timings are marked with an asterisk in the guide. As you get familiar with the song, listen for the sections and subsections and the cadence patterns that mark their endings. On the night I attended the powwow club in 2016, the drum group performed a song entitled “Treaty #1.” Ray introduced it by explaining that the land on which we met was part of the territory addressed in Treaty 1, the first of several “numbered” treaties agreed between the Canadian government and Indigenous peoples beginning in the late nineteenth century. He told us that the lyrics of the song ask the question, “Where do we come from?” and answer “We come from here.”

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Ohsweken, Ontario, Canada. A young Jingle Dress Dancer performs during the Grand River Champion of Champions Powwow. Source: Wayne D’Eon/123RF Stock Photo.

Canada, Alberta, Lethbridge, International Peace Powwow drumming and singing group. Source: Eye Ubiquitous/ Universal Images Group/Getty Images.

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LISTENING GUIDE 12.1

WHITEFISH BAY SINGERS, “AAPIICHII DAANIIGAMOWAA”

LISTEN

P

OWWOW SONGS are typically in the form ABB. In this song, the A section is made up of two subsections, labeled asolo and agroup. The B section can also be divided into two subsections—labeled b and c—somewhat longer than those in A. Cadences are heard at the end of subsections agroup, b, and c.

TIME

MUSICAL EVENTS

0:00

Drumming begins

0:02*

A section of first push-up begins; asolo and agroup at 0:02 and 0:08

0:16

B section begins; subsections b and c at 0:16 and 0:32

0:41

Repetition of B section; subsections b and c at 0:41 and 0:57

1:05*

A section of second push-up begins; asolo and agroup at 1:05 and 1:11

1:19

B section begins; subsections b and c at 1:19 and 1:35

1:44

Repetition of B section; subsections b and c at 1:44 and 2:00

2:08*

A section of third push-up begins; asolo and agroup at 2:08 and 2:13

2:21

B section begins; subsections b and c at 2:21 and 2:37

2:46

Repetition of B section; subsections b and c at 2:46 and 3:01

3:08*

A section of fourth push-up begins; asolo and agroup at 3:08 and 3:14

3:22

B section begins; subsections b and c at 3:22 and 3:36

3:46

Repetition of B section; subsections b and c at 3:46 and 4:00

EXPLORE Treaties of Canada

In the years since I first began fieldwork, it has become more and more common to invoke treaties—not only at gatherings such as powwow clubs, but also at concerts, ceremonies, and sporting events where non-Indigenous people are in the majority. Invoking these accords accomplishes a number of things. In the first place, it acknowledges the original inhabitants of territories that are now occupied by both Indigenous and non-Indigenous people (hence the words “We come from here” in the song Ray sang). Second, it highlights the nationto-nation relationships that exist between Indigenous and non-Indigenous inhabitants of those territories, and how Native and non-Native people alike are bound in treaty relationships. Third, and less obviously, it is a reminder that those treaties have often been broken or misapplied to underwrite racist colonial policies, with devastating consequences for Indigenous communities and ways of life. In interviews I conducted in 2016, powwow instructors around the city of Winnipeg understood the programs they organized as ways to redress such wrongs, and many were involved in efforts to engage with ongoing aspects of racism and inequality. For example, on the night I attended the powwow club, Ray announced that there would be a ceremony for missing and murdered Indigenous women held that weekend at a downtown community center. The

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ceremony acknowledged not only a specific set of tragic circumstances known to the organizers, but also national calls to address the overrepresentation of Indigenous women as victims of violence (see Boyce 2016:16).

INDIGENOUS MUSIC AND COLONIALISM The opening section of this chapter introduces a number of themes explored in the material to follow: Indigenous music in relation to colonialism; its sounding structures and instruments; its role in Indigenous ceremony; and the part it plays in acknowledging and initiating relationships. This section looks at the first of these themes. So far, I have used terms such as “Indigenous” without offering explanations for them. At the powwow club, “Indigenous” would have been understood as an inclusive term encompassing three large groups: First Nations, Métis, and Inuit people. “First Nations” is similar to the US term “Native American,” “Métis” is often understood to designate people who have mixed Indigenous and nonIndigenous ancestry, and “Inuit” is the name given in Canada to peoples from certain groups Indigenous to the Arctic. Most of the Indigenous population in Winnipeg is Métis or First Nations. There is immense variety in the terms by which Indigenous people in the United States and Canada identify. When speaking of a specific tribe or Indigenous group, it is usually best to use that group’s name (e.g., Lakota), and there is an increasing preference for using names in Indigenous languages (e.g.  for “Anishinaabe” rather than “Chippewa”). In contexts where more than one Indigenous group is under discussion, general terms including “Aboriginal,” “Native,” “First Nations,” “Indian,” and “Alaska Native” may be used. Note that some of these terms are strongly preferred by some groups and strongly rejected by others. In this chapter, I tend to use the terms that are most widely regarded as unproblematic—“Indigenous,” “Native American,” “Native,” and “Aboriginal”—but acknowledge that even these can be controversial. These general terms designate descendants of groups that have been subject to what is sometimes called “settler colonialism.” Like other kinds of colonialism, settler colonialism sought the political and economic domination of indigenous inhabitants and the transformation or eradication of indigenous ways of life. It was distinct, however, in that it also sought demographic advantage, rendering indigenous populations minorities in their own lands through mass settlement. Settler countries include the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Taiwan (and I should acknowledge here that I have been a non-Indigenous resident of the first two of these countries at various points in my life, and am thus someone who has benefitted materially from settler colonialism). The music and examples discussed in this chapter come for the most part from North America, but the broader concept of indigeneity should be borne in mind throughout.

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Indigenous Music in the Face of Settler Antipathy and Fascination

GHOST DANCE A ceremonial dance, with associated songs, that sought to hasten the coming of a new world of natural abundance

POTLATCH A ceremony once common among the peoples of the North Pacific Coast, held to exhibit personal wealth and family status, and often commemorating important events in the life of the host (i.e., marriage, death, birth of a child, etc.). Potlatch ceremonies usually included a feast and the giving of gifts.

One consequence of settler colonialism was that it interrupted or otherwise inhibited the transmission of Indigenous musical traditions. Key in this respect were prohibitions of Indigenous religious practices, in which both dance and song were often central. In 1883, the United States Office of Indian Affairs instituted a “Code of Indian Offenses” that forbade ceremonies including the Sun Dance (Department of the Interior, Office of Indian Affairs, 1883). A first offense was punishable by the withholding of rations for ten days, no small punishment at a time when Native Americans were dying of starvation (see Warren 2015:157). The most infamous correlate of the ban on ceremonial dancing occurred in Pine Ridge, South Dakota in 1890. A group of Lakota people from that community had taken up the Ghost Dance (Warren 2015:147). As I explain later in this chapter, the Ghost Dance had emerged relatively recently in western Nevada and subsequently been adopted by several Indigenous communities, some quite far away from the point of origin. The US government was particularly concerned about the dances held in Pine Ridge, home to the Lakota nation that just a few years earlier had delivered a devastating defeat to US troops under Custer. Some in the government regarded the Ghost Dance as not only a contravention of the laws against ceremonies, but a practice with insurrectionary elements, for instance, expressions of hope for a return to the way things were before the coming of European settlers. In late 1890, the army was sent in to halt the dances, and the ensuing confrontation culminated in the mass killing of scores and perhaps hundreds of Lakota people at Wounded Knee (see Coleman 2000:354–57). The US ban on traditional Indigenous ceremonies lasted until 1934, when a new policy forbade “interference with Indian religious life or ceremonial expression” (Office of Indian Affairs 1934). Nor were laws restricting traditional ceremonies limited to the United States: in Canada the Indian Act was amended in 1884 to forbid the potlatch and in 1927 to prohibit sun dances and giveaways, and these bans were only struck down in 1951 (see Canada, Department of Indian and Northern Affairs 1895). Remarkably, even during the period of government suppression of religious practices, the non-Indigenous public had an immense interest in performances of Indigenous singing and dancing, which appeared at wild west shows, fairs, and exhibitions. For instance, in 1891–92, just two years after Wounded Knee, Buffalo Bill’s Wild West toured the United Kingdom with a number of performers who had been Ghost Dancers in Pine Ridge (Maddra 2002). Doc Carver’s Wild America also appears to have employed Ghost Dancers from Pine Ridge, and an 1892 performance in Piedmont, California promised the scalp dance, the war dance, and “the Ghost Dance by the Indians who first performed it” (Maddra 2002:232). Some such events even created opportunities for ceremonialism. For instance, in the early twentieth century, Dakota people gathered each year at an exposition in the western Canadian town of Brandon to perform a war dance,

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after which a man named Wanduta announced the number of spirits he had seen (Pettipas 1994:199). Wanduta was at one point arrested and sentenced to four months’ hard labor for organizing a grass dance incorporating a giveaway ceremony in the community of Rapid City; he had been paid to do so by settler members of the community, who charged admission to the event (117). Such was the fascination of settlers (and, further afield, Europeans) with Indigenous people, customs, and music that dances forbidden by law were nevertheless undertaken publicly. As this suggests, settler society at once sought to end practices it regarded as “uncivilized” and remained fascinated by them—perhaps particularly the elements of music and dance.

Understanding Indigenous Music in Relation to Contact and Colonialism Some Indigenous communities did find ways to maintain traditional ceremonial life, but colonialism was nevertheless immensely disruptive. In Canada, generations of Indigenous children were taken away from their home communities, families, languages, and ways of life to be educated at residential schools far from their homes (see Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada 2015). More recently, other factors have inhibited the intergenerational transmission of culture; in both the United States and Canada, Native children have been removed from their families by social workers at an inordinately high rate, with many children subsequently placed in non-Indigenous homes (see e.g. Cooper 2013). There is now much more effort to place children in contexts where they will be in touch with Indigenous families and culture, but this does not always happen. One of the reasons the powwow club I visited in Winnipeg was created was to ensure that Indigenous children in social care were exposed to Indigenous cultural practices. A number of the programs that target Indigenous children in and around the city of Winnipeg teach them to play the fiddle and to do the various kinds of step dancing and square dancing that fiddle music accompanies. The popularity of these traditions among First Nations and Métis people from that area has its origins in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century encounters between Indigenous people and European fur traders. As this suggests, not all of the music that is valued by Indigenous people—and not all of the music that is understood as traditional—involves instruments and sounds that have a straightforwardly Indigenous patrimony. This in turn suggests that the meanings of the term “Indigenous music” need some careful consideration. In some cases, notwithstanding centuries of contact and colonialism, Indigenous musicians have maintained musical practices that elaborate older ways of doing things. In many instances, however, current practice needs to be understood in relation to a history that includes contact and colonialism. This is true even of the nineteenth-century Ghost Dance, which as mentioned was a response to the changes that followed European settlement in Nevada.

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Indigenous musicians and communities have frequently made settler music and dance their own. Sometimes this has happened in contexts where there was immense pressure to abandon older kinds of music and dance, and sometimes the new practices simply appealed. In certain instances, Indigenous musicians have changed settler musics in ways that reflect Indigenous aesthetics—for instance, certain traditions of Indigenous fiddling and hymn singing demonstrate an especially fluid approach to rhythm and meter. In other cases, Indigenous musicians have worked within existing idioms, including western art music (i.e. classical music), country, rock, and blues. Finally, Indigenous musicians continue to seek out opportunities to engage with music whose transmission was interrupted by colonialism. One such is Jeremy Dutcher (Figure 12.4), whose song “Mehcinut” is the subject of Listening Guide 12.2. Dutcher is a member of the Wolastoq First Nation, whose traditional territory extends through parts of what is now New Brunswick, Maine, and Quebec. Dutcher comes from a Wolastoqey-speaking family and trained formally for some time at university as an opera singer. Also while at university, he took an interest in studying his nation’s traditions. Maggie Paul, an elder from his community, recommended he look into a collection of old Wolastoqiyik songs, held at the Canadian Museum of History, that had been recorded on wax cylinders between 1907 and 1913 by the anthropologist William Mechling (Bliss 2018). After a long engagement with the songs, Dutcher created new pieces inspired by them, in many cases incorporating extracts from the original recordings. Dutcher’s musical project resonates with a number of themes brought out in the preceding discussion. First, it exemplifies the increasingly urgent Jeremy Dutcher performs onstage at Joni 75: A Birthday Celebration. Source: Vivien Killilea/Stringer/Getty Images.

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LISTENING GUIDE 12.2

JEREMY DUTCHER, “MEHCINUT” (DEATH CHANT) FROM WOLASTOQIYIK LINTUWAKONAWA

LISTEN

A

SINGLE REPEATED line makes up the core melodic material of this song. It is heard several times, sometimes by Dutcher and sometimes by Jim Paul, the singer on the wax cylinder recording. Dutcher introduces variations to the melodic material as the song progresses. TIME

MUSICAL EVENTS

0:00

Dutcher introduces the melody, singing in a free rhythm and accompanying himself with chords in the upper register of the piano.

0:19

Dutcher presents the melody a second time with similar piano accompaniment. This time it is lengthened through two additional statements of the closing syllables, supported by different harmonizations in the piano part. The pulse is a little more regular.

0:49

Dutcher sings the shorter version of the melody twice (at 0:49 and 1:04), now with a running accompaniment in the right hand of the piano part and single, sustained notes in the left.

1:17

Instrumental interlude: the running accompaniment continues in the piano, incorporating fragments of the song’s melody. A cello joins the texture, as do fainter electronic sounds.

1:42

The regular rhythm comes to a halt, as do the running figures in the piano, which returns to playing chords. The cello plays sustained notes near the bridge of the instrument, creating a distinctive whistling sound. At 1:48, Dutcher sings a free passage based on the text of the melody.

2:06

The original version of the melody returns, but this time in an extract from the wax-cylinder recording. This is heard against tremolo in the cello part, single notes in the piano, and, for the first time, the sounds of percussion instruments.

2:19

The version of the melody from the wax-cylinder recording is heard twice more (at 2:19 and 2:33). A regular pulse—in fact, a clear sense of compound meter—is reintroduced in the accompanying instruments, now including piano, electric bass, cello, violin, and percussion (drum kit).

2:46

Dutcher takes over the main vocal melody again. He begins it three times (at 2:46, 3:04, and 3:23), each time ending it in a way that differs from the version presented at the beginning of the track. The third time, his voice moves up into a high falsetto range and there is a break in the accompaniment.

3:31

The wax-cylinder recording returns, and the initial version of the melody is heard three times (at 3:31, 3:44, 3:57), accompanied by piano, percussion, cello, and violin. The piano part imitates the melodic material, but in a rhythm that seems independent.

4:11

We hear two exclamations by Jim Paul, followed by a short speech. This is accompanied by scattered concluding gestures in the piano, stringed instruments, and percussion. In a 2018 interview, Dutcher explains that Paul’s speech is “about death and what comes after” (Slingerland 2018).

sense in many Indigenous communities of the importance of reconnecting with Indigenous languages, ideas, and musical practices, following years of colonialism under which these were suppressed or derogated. Second, it demonstrates that Indigenous music making draws on a whole range of musical possibilities, some of which may not be stereotypically associated with Native identity. Dutcher’s singing incorporates stylistic elements from contemporary pop and western art music, and the accompanying instruments include piano,

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violin, and cello. Certain sounds have clearly been manipulated electronically using studio technologies. In this track, as in performances by many other Native musicians, Indigenous music is revealed as thoroughly contemporary. Dutcher’s music and what he has to say about it also highlight contemporary efforts to decolonize—that is, to redress the wrongs of colonialism, challenge colonial ideologies, and transform inequitable social structures. The singer has used the attention his album received in 2018 and 2019 to draw attention to concerns about the loss of Indigenous languages. In other ways, too, Indigenous music and musicians have sought to address issues that are important to their communities: sovereignty, land rights, discrimination, poverty. For example, both drum song and rap played a part in recent Indigenous activism against the construction of the Energy Transfer Partners Dakota Access Pipeline close to the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota.

INDIGENOUS INSTRUMENTS AND MUSICAL MATERIALS As should already be apparent, North American Indigenous musics employ an immense range of instruments and styles. Some of these musics foreground elements that have a longstanding Indigenous heritage. For instance, the Ghost Dance and the contemporary powwow emerged after European contact and settlement but elaborate longstanding Indigenous approaches to sound and movement. Other musics deploy elements that are conventionally associated  with settler cultures. I understand all of these musics to be Indigenous; at the same time, I devote a little more attention to those musics that Indigenous communities regard as traditional, in part because they value them, and in part because they receive all too little attention in the majority of writing on music. In this section, I will begin by talking about instruments and go on to discuss elements of musical style including vocal sounds, rhythm, and form. Note that the music I consider represents only part of a much larger body of practice. For instance, the first Listening Guide looks at an example of northern-style powwow singing, perhaps one of the most recognizable North American Indigenous musical styles, but it might just as easily have presented an example of southern-style powwow song, which is generally sung in a lower range and with less vocal tension. It is important to remember that the Native American musics you may encounter on your own are not somehow less Native American if they do not sound like the ones in this chapter, or do not conform to certain generalizations that follow.

Instruments Central to many traditional North American Indigenous musics are voices and percussion instruments, especially drums and rattles. Perhaps the most common

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An activist hits a drum outside the Army Corps of Engineers Office to protest against the Dakota Access Pipeline March 10, 2017 in Washington, DC. Source: Alex Wong/Getty Images.

FRAME DRUM Found across North America, frame drums are wide in diameter and shallow in depth; some are single-sided and others double-sided.

musical texture, historically speaking, comprises single-line melodies (sometimes sung by one person and sometimes by more, in unison or in octaves) supported by a steady pulse maintained by a percussion instrument or instruments. There is an immense array of Indigenous percussion instruments, but a few particularly common ones can be described here. Frame drums (Figures 12.5 and 12.6) are found across North America. They are wide in diameter and shallow in depth; some are single-sided and others double-sided. Inuit frame drums (Figure 12.6) tend to have an especially large diameter. Musicians typically hold them in one hand and play them with a stick held in the other (Haefer 2001:475–76); for this reason, they are sometimes called hand drums. Frame drums are played in a variety of ways: in the songs sung for Cree round dances, for example, drummers lightly touch the inside of the drumskin with a finger of the hand holding the drum, creating a subtle buzzing sound (Scales 2012:93). Log drums are also common. In the past, these were constructed by hollowing out a log and fitting the cylinder with one or two drumskins. Smaller log drums tend to be played by one person; other larger ones may be played by several people at once. Contemporary powwow drums seem to have had their origin as log drums and are now made in a variety of ways, including by using curved wood laminate or a set of staves (see Haefer 2001:476). Frame drums, log drums, and powwow drums typically have skins made of animal hides. Especially important in ceremonial life are water drums, single- or doubleheaded instruments whose body is partially filled with water. The bodies of

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Inuit man doing traditional drum dance, Gjoa Haven, Nunavut, Arctic Canada. Source: Education Images/ Universal Images Group/Getty Images.

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LOG DRUM These drums were historically constructed by hollowing out a log and fitting the cylinder with one or two drumskins. Smaller log drums tend to be played by one person, but larger ones may be played by several people at once.

Drum and drumstick, Haudenosaunee (Iroquois), Undated, Wood and animal hide. Source: Canadian Museum of Civilization, III-I-55 a, b, CD98-216-016.

these drums are made of a range of materials: traditional Navajo water drums are made of pottery; Ojibwe ones are often made using logs; drums associated with the Native American Church are made from metal cooking pots (Haefer 2001:476–77). Rattles make up another large group of instruments. These include container rattles, hollow containers filled with small, hard objects that make noise when they strike the sides of the containers. Traditional instruments of this kind are made from natural materials including gourds, wood, bark, hide, bones, horns, and turtle shells. The material used to make drums and rattles often comes from local plants and animals; frequently, the choice of material has a ceremonial significance. Another kind of rattle, the suspension rattle, does not have an enclosing container; rather, sound is produced by objects strung closely enough together to strike one another when the rattle is moved. Suspension rattles are similarly made out of a range of materials including hooves, bones, and claws. They are often incorporated in dance outfits: the regalia for the Jingle Dress Dance mentioned earlier incorporates hundreds of conical metal jingles that create a distinctive shushing sound during the dance (Figure 12.2). Here as in many music cultures, dancers make an integral sonic contribution to dance music. It is important to mention that not all Indigenous musical instruments are percussion instruments. The flute is an important traditional instrument in several regions of North America, especially the Southwest, but also the Plains, the Northwest Coast, the Northeast, and the North (Nettl et al. 2013). Fiddlelike instruments seem to have existed before European contact in the Southwest, with the fiddle itself taken up in a number of places afterwards (ibid.).

Instruments and Ceremonies

Skidi Pawnee Rattle, ca. 1890, Oklahoma. Source: Infinity of Nations: Art and History in the Collections of the National Museum of the American Indian.

Indigenous instruments are often closely bound up with sacred practice: they are widely employed in communicating with spirit beings, and some may be understood to have spirits themselves. For these reasons, there may be special protocols around them. Musicians may make offerings to instruments or hold feasts for them, and certain steps may be taken in constructing them, as well as before, during, and after their use as instruments (see Diamond, Cronk, and van Rosen 1994:160–62). For all of these reasons, some instruments require different kinds of treatment than those deemed appropriate for everyday use in settler society. Concerns around respect and protocol may mean that some kinds of music cannot be presented in universities and schools, or that special care needs to be taken to present them in an appropriate way. It may not be proper to buy and sell certain instruments as one might an electric guitar or saxophone, and holding or displaying certain instruments in a museum or private collection may be controversial. You may wonder, then, how one goes about engaging with Indigenous instruments and musical traditions in an appropriate way. The ideal way forward

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is through ongoing, respectful engagement with people in their communities of origin, ensuring that representatives of those communities are consulted and involved on occasions when their music or instruments are concerned.

CONTAINER RATTLE Hollow containers filled with small, hard objects that make noise when they strike the sides of the containers.

Stylistic Elements: Vocal Sounds, Rhythm, Form

SUSPENSION RATTLE These rattles produce sound through objects strung closely enough together to strike one another when the rattle is moved.

As mentioned earlier, the human voice is a central part of many traditional Native American musical styles. Many traditional styles are monophonic (see Nettl 1954), having a single melodic line even when more than one person is singing. In many of these styles, singers employ vocal tension and produce a pulsating sound (ibid.). Another widespread characteristic is the use of vocables. All these elements are evident in the singing in “Aapiichii Daaniigamowaa,” the northern-style powwow song you heard in Listening Guide 12.1. As might be expected, given the prominent role played by percussion instruments, a great deal of traditional music has a strong sense of pulse and forward motion. It is therefore notable that much of the music is metrically irregular, by which I mean the beat is not grouped into regularly recurring groups of two, three, four, etc. beats. A similarly irregular approach can sometimes be heard in older Indigenous adoptions of European musics: hymns, fiddle music, and even popular country music. Some stylistic elements are particular to a single tribe or a small number of tribes. For example, in a small number of Anishinaabe and Lakota songs recorded in the early twentieth century, vocal melody and drum beat both maintain a steady pulse but move at independent speeds. Figure 12.9 shows “Song of the Moccasin Game (d)” as sung by Gray Hawk and transcribed by ethnomusicologist Frances Densmore. Notice the performance indications “Voice ♩=76” and “Drum ♩=108,” which tell us that the vocal melody moves at 76 beats per minute and the drum at 108. Densmore remarks of another song in this style that the vocal and drum parts are “entirely independent in tempo” and that these distinct tempos are “steadily maintained” (1918:277).

“Song of the Moccasin Game (d)” sung by Gray Hawk. Source: Densmore 1918:487.

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INCOMPLETE REPETITION A way of referring to the assymetrical repetition common in the ABB structure of powwow songs, where the long B section is heard twice, but not the shorter A section.

I have already said a little bit about song form when discussing how dancers at a powwow are able to predict when a song is about to end. The ABB structure of powwow song is sometimes referred to as “asymmetrical repetition” or “incomplete repetition” form, because the long B section is heard twice, but not the shorter A section (see Browner 2002, Levine and Nettl 2011). Victoria Levine and Bruno Nettl (2011) have observed that similar kinds of asymmetrical repetition can be found in many North American Indigenous musical contexts, including certain song traditions of Lakota and Arapaho people of the northern plains, Chickasaw people of the southeastern part of the continent, and Akimel O’odham, Tohono O’odham, and Navajo people of the southwestern part of the continent. As they suggest, the pervasiveness of this approach to organizing song reflects a long history of intertribal interaction and musical exchange (2011:312–13). In short, form is not only a property of music, but a socially circulating way of organizing sound that bears witness to relationships through history.

Musical Expertise and Participation In listening to field recordings of Indigenous music (especially older recordings), you may notice that some of the singing does not sound polished or professional. These “everyday” voices are included in these collections because they are representative—but not because North American Indigenous music is “simple,” “primitive,” or “at an early stage of development.” The idea that some non-European societies are or were fixed at some early stage has long been debunked, whatever mischaracterizations persist in popular culture. Musical ability, including the capacity to cultivate musical complexity, is a possibility for all human societies. The incorporation of music by singers with ordinary rather than extraordinary voices is, broadly speaking, representative because, in many Indigenous communities, song has traditionally been understood to be part of nearly everyone’s experience. Everyday musicians have used songs to obtain success in hunting, healing, and other endeavors, and they have often understood these songs to have been received from—or to enable communication with—other-than-human beings. Valued singing is not necessarily singing that demonstrates virtuosity or technical control; it is often singing that attests to valued relationships. When Densmore asked a group of Chippewa and Sioux people “what they considered the standards of good singing,” she was told that “a man must sing with authority. . . . The singer might have a weak voice but he must sing in a way that would inspire confidence,” for instance in treating the sick or bringing success in an undertaking (Densmore’s emphasis; 1945: 638). As this suggests, there are many contexts in which songs are less aesthetic objects to be admired than tools with which important work is accomplished, for and with one’s relations.

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INDIGENOUS MUSIC AND RELATIONSHIPS Writing on North American Indigenous music has focused increasingly on relationships during the last three decades, inspired especially by the importance of concepts of relatedness in Indigenous discourses. Michael McNally, for example, describes an orientation among Ojibwe/Anishinaabe people “toward the social, natural, and spiritual world that presumes relationality, that prioritizes the subject’s place in a web of relations, and that vigilantly reminds the subject ever to place her/himself in terms of that web of relations” (2009:85; see also Diamond 2011, Diamond et al. 1994, and Robinson et al. 2019: 20–21). It is therefore fitting to consider how Indigenous musical practices both acknowledge and initiate relationships, whether with known intimates or more diffuse publics. In what follows, relationships should be understood in an inclusive sense, to encompass ties not only with people but also with the land, its inhabitants, and spirits (whether ancestors or other-than-human persons). Although I have just distinguished human, natural, and spiritual beings, these are not necessarily exclusive categories: in some Indigenous understandings, animals and spirits may appear as people and people may take the form of animals. It is for this reason that terms such as “other-than-human persons” or “more-than-human persons” have sometimes been used to describe supernatural relatives.

Relationships with Intimates Intimate musical relationships, as understood here, are connections cultivated with known persons, lineages, community members, spirit beings, and so on— the key thing is that they are known or knowable. Some of the most significant ones across a range of Native societies have been with guiding spirits who provide assistance in crucial areas of endeavor such as healing and hunting; such relationships have often been sought through dreams and visions. Those who pursue them have sometimes received songs; in especially significant visions, dances or even entire ceremonies may be imparted. Affiliations of this kind may impose requirements on their beneficiaries, including obligations to honor the spirits and their gifts. In many cases, beneficiaries do not speak lightly or even openly of sacred songs, dances, and ceremonies, or of the other-than-human persons who have granted them, lest doing so harm those who have acted irreverently. This is one of a number of reasons why sharing information about sacred experiences and ceremonies with outsiders can be regarded as problematic in Indigenous communities. It is also why not much is said about such things in this chapter: experience indicates that when such information circulates freely in the public sphere, it may be subject to all manner of disrespect. Performances of songs and dances may also express—through observance of certain protocols—relationships to kin and to lineages, as is notably the case in the Pacific Northwest. As Dylan Robinson explains, in Nisga’a

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KATAJJAIT Vocal games traditionally played by Inuit women and making use of an immense array of vocal sounds, some created while inhaling and some while exhaling, some voiced and some unvoiced.

tradition, certain songs are only to be sung when a member of a particular family dies (Robb 2019). In traditional Nuu-chah-nulth practice, meanwhile, songs are understood to belong to particular persons or families, and it is problematic for one family to sing the song of another. Songs may be inherited, acquired  by  marriage, or commissioned for important occasions (Halpern 1974:2), but in each case, there is a clear sense that they belong to a specific family group. These concepts are rather different from the understandings of public domain that are enshrined in US and Canadian law, in which anyone is free to perform certain traditional songs. The Pacific Northwest songs under discussion here are owned by families, and can only be sung in certain circumstances with particular permissions. In short, they are subject to Indigenous laws, albeit ones that may not yet be officially recognized by North American governments. These different understandings of ownership and access recently came to a head in a revival of Harry Somers’s 1967 opera Louis Riel by the Canadian Opera Company. One of the arias in that opera employs a significant amount of vocal material from  a traditional Nisga’a funerary song (see Queen’s Gazette 2017, Renihan 2011, Robb 2019). Somers had taken the material from a transcription of the song by the folklorist Marius Barbeau (Barbeau 1933:106–07), perhaps understanding the material to be freely available for anyone’s use. This was not the  case and caused real  distress to Nisga’a people. After sustained advocacy by Sto:lo ethnomusicologist Dylan Robinson and Nisga’a dancers Goothl Ts’imilx Mike Dangeli and Wal’aks Keane Tait, the Canadian Opera Company (the company reviving the opera) and the National Arts Centre in Ottawa commissioned a new aria to replace the problematic original (Queen’s Gazette 2017, Robb 2019). Music and dance also connect intimates in other ways—for example, Katajjait (sing. katajjaq), vocal games traditionally played by Inuit women. In traditional performances, two performers stand face to face, in some cases holding one another’s arms while moving together in time (Figure 12.10). The games make use of an immense array of vocal sounds, some created while inhaling and some while exhaling, some voiced and some unvoiced (see Listening Guide 12.3). A game traditionally finishes when one of the participants runs out of breath or laughs; in some field recordings, you can hear participants’ laughter. Beyond the joy of the game, Jean-Jacques Nattiez writes, performers are valued for their endurance and quality of the vocal sound they produce (Nattiez 1991 [1976]:4). These vocal games are a good example of how music connects people to one another in immediate ways: performers often sing these interlocking patterns directly into one another’s faces. Yet they also articulate aspects of the broader network of relations in northern Indigenous communities. For example (and as you heard in the first recording), some katajjuat incorporate imitations of natural sounds such as the honking of geese, effectively connecting through sound the human and other-than-human inhabitants of the land.

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Timania Petaulissie and Haunaq Mikkigak, Inuit throat singers from Cape Dorset, Baffin Is., Nunavut, Canada. Source: Bryan & Cherry Alexander Photography/ ArcticPhoto.

LISTENING GUIDE 12.3

“KATAJJAQ FROM HUDSON BAY (SORIA EYITUK AND LUSI KUNI)” AND “KATAJJAIT SUNG BY A SOLO VOICE (NELLI APAQAQ AND TEMEGEAK PITAULASSIE)”

LISTEN

T

HE TWO RECORDINGS in this Listening Guide pack a remarkable array of vocal sounds and patterns into a very short span of time. These are outlined in detail below. I suggest listening to the recordings a few times each, following the notes below with your finger on the pause button. As mentioned in the main text, some of the vocal sounds you will hear are made while inhaling and others while exhaling, and some are voiced and others unvoiced. In voiced sounds, the vocal cords vibrate; in unvoiced sounds, they do not. The “th” in “there” is voiced but the “th” in “thanks” is unvoiced. Both sounds would usually be made while exhaling. To get an idea of what a voiced, inhaled sound is, try speaking a word (e.g. “hello”) while inhaling. Katajjaq from Hudson Bay (Soria Eyituk and Lusi Kuni)

This recording features two singers, Soria Eyituk and Lusi Kuni, from Sanikiluaq in Qikirtait (the Belcher Islands) in Hudson Bay. They present five patterns in quick succession. The first two of these can be divided into distinct subsections. TIME

MUSICAL EVENTS The first pattern features an alternation between sung vocables and voiced, inhaled sounds. It has three subsections—A, B, and C—each with its own distinctive vocable. The performers cycle through these subsections in the pattern ABCABC (0:00, 0:07, 0:11; 0:17, 0:23, 0:28).

0:33

The second pattern gradually speeds up. The performers cycle through two subsections, C and D, in the pattern CDCDC (0:33, 0:42, 0:47, 0:53, 0:58) continued

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TIME

MUSICAL EVENTS

1.00

The third pattern in the track has clear sung elements that seem to outline a melody.

1:24

A fourth pattern is reminiscent of the cries of geese.

1:43

The fifth pattern also has a distinct sung element.

The vocal textures in this first recording are very densely textured because the participants are performing the same or very similar patterns just a beat apart. To give you some sense of what a single performer is doing during one of these vocal games, the next track features musicians performing on their own. Katajjait sung by a solo voice (Nelli Apaqaq and Temegeak Pitaulassie)

There are two performers featured on this recording. The first is Nelli Apaqaq from Sanikiluaq, who presents three patterns. The second performer is Temegeak Pitaulassie from Kinngait (Cape Dorset) on Baffin Island. She presents a single pattern. TIME

MUSICAL EVENTS

0:00

Nelli Apaqaq: The first pattern features an alternation between sung sounds and voiced, inhaled ones.

0:10

Nelli Apaqaq: The second pattern involves a similar alternation, although this one is a little faster, and there is more variety in the inhaled syllables. Notice how, in this pattern, the sung syllables together form a melody. It may be the same one heard at 1:00 in the previous recording.

0:54

Nelli Apaqaq: The third pattern again incorporates voiced, exhaled sounds and voiced, inhaled ones, as well as some additional components. Two vocables used in vocal games across northeastern North America make an appearance here, namely “hamma” and “hapapa”; “hamma” is heard first on its own and then in alternation with “hapapa.”

1:24

Temegeak Pitaulassie: Voiced and inhaled syllables are particularly prominent at the beginning of the pattern, alternating rhythmically with unvoiced exhalations (outward breaths, quiet in comparison). Around 1:33, Pitaulassie introduces one vocable, then another. She returns briefly to the opening material at around 1:38

Community Relationships In many Cree and Ojibwe communities in what are now the Canadian provinces of Manitoba and Ontario, the seasonal round historically played an essential role in shaping social and economic life. As late as the middle of the twentieth century, small groups based on extended families moved out to separate hunting and trapping territories during the winter, reuniting as larger encampments during the summer months (Hallowell 1992:48). It was accordingly during the summer that major ceremonial events took place, and that a broader sense of community was experienced through larger, collective forms of music and dance. In the present day, summer remains an important time for social gatherings, although these reflect in more heightened ways the consequences of contact and colonialism. Many First Nations communities host summer festivals and treaty-day ceremonies. A range of special musical events take place, including

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powwows, talent shows, concerts by Native artists playing in mass popular styles, square dancing tournaments, and step dancing contests. As noted earlier, the square dancing and step dancing events reflect a very long history in these communities of fiddle music and associated dance styles; these were adopted over the course of encounters with British and French Canadian fur traders and have remained a significant part of community life. The prominence of rock, urban music, and (especially) country, meanwhile, reflects engagement with the various forms of pop culture of the continent, to which (as discussed below) Indigenous artists have long made significant contributions. Such summer celebrations provide occasions for communities to celebrate themselves in ways that express a complex contemporaneity, incorporating traditional Indigenous music and dance, neotraditional practices such as the powwow, European forms adopted during the fur trade, and newer pop styles associated with both rural and urban experiences. That many of the events feature local participants reinforces how the gathering is both for and by the community. So too does intergenerational participation at the gatherings, and the prominence (in many sites) of Indigenous languages.

Relationships Beyond the Community: Intertribal Connections Music, dance, and the ceremonies in which they are found are also bound up with the relationships between tribes, acknowledging old connections and initiating new ones. There are over one hundred and fifty distinct Indigenous peoples across North America. Many of these groups were connected by complex forms of trade and interaction long before European contact. This long history of exchange may be reflected in the existence of similar kinds of musical organization across the continent—for example, the aforementioned asymmetrical repetition form found in many songs (Levine and Nettl 2011: 312–13). Of course, interactions between these groups have only intensified in the present day. I have already mentioned the Ghost Dance as one relatively recent example of the intertribal circulation of music. The dance originated in the 1880s in the visions of a Paiute man named Wovoka or Jack Wilson. He initially shared his visions with representatives from other Great Basin groups, including the Bannock and Shoshone. Eventually, the dance was also given to representatives of more distant Plains groups, including Cheyenne,Arapaho, Kiowa, Comanche, and Lakota people. In the nineteenth century, Ghost Dances were held over the course of several nights. Male and female participants danced clockwise in a circle, singing and holding hands, for hours at a time. Occasionally, a participant would fall unconscious, and upon awakening, relate additional visions to others (Warren 2015). The songs sung during these dances, even in places far from Nevada, evidence the origin of the ceremony among the Paiute in that they have the AABB form characteristic of the music of Indigenous communities from the Great Basin (see Rhodes 1982:9). It was not only the ideas around the

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Ghost Dance that circulated to new communities, then, but also specific kinds of movement and song. Another example of how music acknowledges and instantiates relationships between communities is the Ojibwe Drum Dance, which has connected a number of different tribes across the US Midwest. The dance emerged among the Santee Dakota in the late nineteenth century and seems from the beginning to have been associated with intertribal peace and with an imperative to circulate between communities and tribes. As Thomas Vennum writes, “The Drum was … built as an instrument of peace and was meant to be copied and passed on to other tribes to bring an end to bloodshed” (1982:45). The first recipients of the dance were probably Ojibwa, but the dance circulated much further, including to Menominee, Fox, Potawatomi, Absentee Shawnee, and Plains Ojibwa communities (70). The impulse to circulate was built into the tradition, and it was expected that a group would pass a drum along to another group—moving geographically in a clockwise direction—a number of years after receiving one (70–71, 88–89). In Vennum’s 1982 account of the Drum Dance, the process of passing the dance on to other groups involved the gifting of a drum, a large instrument like the one used in the powwow. Other elements were also passed on, including instructions regarding the ceremonies, information about the roles involved in them, and the songs to be learned. Vennum writes that being taught songs “is a mandatory part of a Drum presentation [i.e., the giving of the drum to a new community]” and that “members of the larger [intertribal] Drum community  continue to consult each other to ensure the preservation of the repertoire” (95). This was necessary in part because the words of the songs were often in an  unfamiliar language. Vennum explains that the giving of a Drum was expected to be reciprocated through a generous counter-gift, part of which was given at the moment the drum was received and part some time afterward. A final example of a musical practice that connects different communities and tribes is the powwow, to return to the subject matter at the opening of this chapter. As mentioned there, the contemporary powwow draws extensively on elements from Plains culture, something especially evident in the use of the Plains-style song form (ABB) and a drum similar to the one employed in the Dance Drum just discussed. Notwithstanding these specificities, the powwow has been adopted across the US and Canada, even in areas where dancing and singing traditions are very different. This means that dancers who have learned one of the core powwow styles (and drum groups that have a good repertoire of songs) can participate in powwows around the continent. The powwow is thus an intertribal practice through and through, welcoming anyone who is attuned to the relevant styles. This said, powwows also acknowledge regional and tribal differences. The largest regional differences are those between “northern” and “southern” powwows, with northern powwows occurring for the most part in the northern US and in Canada, and southern ones generally occurring south of the Kansas– Oklahoma border (Browner 2002:3). Musically, northern and southern events are distinguished by singing style: with some exceptions, singing at southern

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powwows tends to be in a lower register than at Northern powwows; there are also specific differences in how the ABB song form is treated (see Browner 2002:74–82). Powwows have aspects that are specific to the tribes and Indigenous communities that host them, with singing, dancing, and protocol varying from place to place. Tara Browner shows that differences in the physical arrangement of space at the Northern powwow—for instance, the placement of the drum— reflect distinct Lakota and Ojibwe priorities and understandings (2002:95–99). Writing against the idea that powwows erase tribal specificities, she says I am not implying the nonexistence of a larger, overarching “Indian” identity or that “Indian-ness” as a concept is not celebrated at pow-wows. For most Native people, however . . . tribal identity comes first, Indian identity second, and national identity (American or Canadian) third. (2002:3) Meanwhile, in the essays in Clyde Ellis et al.’s edited collection, Powwow (2005), it is evident that powwows have been shaped by not only group-specific customs, but also the particular experiences of those groups under colonialism. In short, these gatherings express community-specific responses to racism, oppression, and disenfranchisement. As this suggests, intertribal music does not necessarily mean the end of the existence of Indigenous differences. A closer look reveals practices that are particular to specific tribes, and traces of particular histories of oppression and resistance.

Larger Imaginaries A final set of relationships involve “imaginaries”—groups so large and so widely dispersed that it is not possible to know all of their members. These groups are called imaginaries not because they are make believe or nonexistent, but rather because interaction with them involves an orientation to people one has never met and never will (see Anderson 1991). Imaginaries come into being thanks to mass mediation: when musicians release singles and albums, perform on the radio, or publish sheet music, they presume the existence of imaginaries and help bring them into being. Importantly, such imaginaries are plural: however much I imagine I am addressing “everyone” in releasing a new recording, in ways subtle and overt (for instance, through the language of the lyrics) I privilege a particular audience. Similarly, audiences understand themselves to belong—or not—to certain imaginaries more than others, and they have a general sense of whether or not recordings or broadcasts are for them (consider whether or not you feel invited by titles such as The Most Relaxing Classical Album in the World . . . Ever! or Now That’s What I Call Ibiza or Bluebell Polka: Greatest Hits of Jimmy Shand). It is of course more complicated than this, not least because “listening in” is always a possibility, and because we do not always have a choice about what kind

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of music we hear. But musical imaginaries can nevertheless be conceptualized in terms of the kinds of audiences mass-mediated music specifies (Diamond 2011), by asking “Who does this music/musician seem to address?” or “With whom does this music/musician seem to seek a connection?” Such an approach identifies how musicians acknowledge and initiate relationships, including to specific Indigenous groups, to intertribal audiences, to national or international publics, and to the land and its other-than-human inhabitants (see Robinson 2019). One place to start, following elements of a method outlined by Beverley Diamond (2011), is by considering how musicians deploy language, musical style, and collaboration. Beginning with language, is the music in an Indigenous or a settler language (or indeed more than one)? Alternatively, does it contain vocables, or is it entirely instrumental? All of these elements may suggest something about the audience being hailed. Moving on to style, is the music in a recognizable Indigenous or settler genre? If so, does it incorporate distinctive elements from other styles? In cases where elements from more than one style are present, which of them “frames” and which are “framed”? (For instance, is this a rock song that incorporates some powwow drumming, or a powwow song that makes a brief allusion to a well-known rock song?) Such stylistic elements also suggest something about the persons the musicians are addressing. Finally, so far as collaboration is concerned, who contributes to the performance and which communities might they be understood to represent? Who was involved in financing or producing the recording or broadcast? Which people and institutions (radio stations, record labels, artistic managers) help carry these performances to audiences? A number of Indigenous musicians have successfully built audiences that include both Native Americans and settlers. In the realm of popular music these include Buffy Sainte-Marie (Cree, Figure 12.11), Robbie Robertson (Mohawk), Ulali (a group with several Tuscarora members over the years), Kashtin (Montagnais), and Susan Aglukark (Inuit). Still others have established names for themselves in jazz, including Jim Pepper (Creek and Kaw), and various forms of classical/art music, including Dawn Avery (Mohawk), Louis W. Ballard (Cherokee and Quapaw), Raven Chacon (Diné), and Brent Michael Davids (Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohican Indians). Some musicians have sought both to address a wide audience and to build collaborations with other Native American musicians. Robbie Robertson’s albums Music for the Native Americans (1994) and Contact from the Underworld of Red Boy (1998) were notable for bringing together Indigenous musicians from  across the continent (see Diamond 2011, Scales 2013). More recently, Ottawa electronic musicians A Tribe Called Red—Ehren “Bear Witness” Thomas (Cayuga) and Tim “2oolman” Hill (Mohawk)—produced We Are the Haluci Nation, an album bringing together Indigenous collaborators from the  United States, Canada, and Europe. Among the participants are three powwow drum groups (Northern Voice, Black Bear, and Chippewa Travellers) and several other musicians including Jennifer Kreisberg (Tuscarora), Tanya Tagaq (Inuit), Lido Pimienta (Wayuu), and Maxida Märak (Sámi). African

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Buffy Sainte-Marie poses for a portrait at 2018 Juno’s Gala Awards Dinner on March 25th, 2018 in Vancouver, BC. Source: Evaan Kheraj/Contour/ Getty Images. JOIK Traditionally unaccompanied vocal practice of the Sámi that establishes and develops relationships between the singer and their environment, including humans, ideas, and non-human components. Characterized by a distinctive vocal sound, highly ornamented, and featuring extensive use of glottal stops. GLOTTAL STOP A consonant formed by the audible release of the airstream after complete closure of the glottis.

American rapper Yasiin Bey (also known as Mos Def) is also a contributor. The recording is a conscious exercise in building alliances between Indigenous musicians from different tribes, countries, and continents, making connections to non-Indigenous communities as well (on Indigenous musical alliances see Diamond 2011, Woloshyn 2016). Listening Guide 12.4 explores one of the tracks that epitomizes this approach, “Eanan,” featuring the aforementioned Maxida Märak (Figure 12.12). As a performer, Märak has worked in a number of popular styles, including rap. Here, however, she employs joiking, a traditional sung form of the Sámi people, an Indigenous group whose traditional territories are in northern areas of Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia. Joiks are relatively short pieces, traditionally sung solo and unaccompanied. Some consist only of vocables and others contain words (Lüderwaldt and Köhn, 2013). They have traditionally addressed animals, persons, and aspects of nature; thus, one might “joik” a friend or family member, evoking them in music. They are characterized by a distinctive vocal sound, highly ornamented and featuring extensive use of glottal stops. (This is the sound created when you check or restart the flow of air through your vocal cords. Try saying the words “to a” and notice the break you hear and feel between the two vowels. This is a glottal stop.) Sami musicians have increasingly integrated joiking in popular styles (Lüderwaldt and Köhn 2013), and in a number of ways, “Eanan” could be heard

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Maxida Märak at Riddu Ridˉdˉu 2019. Source: Kimberli Mäkäräinen/CC/Wikimedia Commons.

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LISTENING GUIDE 12.4

A TRIBE CALLED RED FEATURING MAXIDA MÄRAK, “EANAN”

LISTEN

TIME

MUSICAL EVENTS

0:00

A chord sequence is heard in two synthesizer parts; one plays sustained notes in a lower register and the other repeated chords higher up. This is repeated at 0:12, during which the higher of the two parts fades out.

0:23

The remaining synthesizer part moves through the chord sequence again, this time accompanied by an electronic handclap sound and a short sample of Märak’s voice. This comes to a halt at 0:36 with a sound that evokes a vinyl record being stopped.

0:36

Märak performs the beginning of the joik, which comprises four phrases (starting at 0:36, 0:41, 0:47, and 0:53, respectively). A fuller instrumental texture is now present: in addition to the synthesizer part and electronic handclap, there is a more complex and prominent percussion part (a kind of electronic snare drum sound), a bass line, and an additional organ-like synthesizer part.

1:00

The remainder of the joik is introduced and immediately repeated (at 1:00 and 1:13 respectively). The synthesizer and bass parts continue, but the accompaniment now incorporates sounds approximating kick drum, crash cymbal, and tom-tom. Another shift in the accompaniment occurs at 1:20: the bass drops out, a snare-drum-like sound replaces the other percussion parts, and a new descending synthesizer part is heard in the upper register. This part of the track also ends with a sound evoking a vinyl record being stopped.

1:25

The track moves into a largely instrumental section. The accompaniment shifts again, now including two independent bass lines (the higher of the two more obviously electronic), electronic versions of kit drum sounds (bass drum, hi hat, crash cymbal), electronic hand claps, repeated synthesizer chords in the middle register, and the short sample of Märak’s voice heard earlier.

1:49

There is a brief break in the music, and then the section continues with much the same set of sounds, although the repeated synthesizer chords in the middle register have dropped out, replaced by the high-register repeated chords heard at the beginning of the piece.

2:13

Close/outro. The bass lines and percussion sounds drop out, and we hear a texture very similar to that at the beginning of the song, with two synthesizer parts, one lower and sustained, the other higher and rhythmic, playing the same sequence of chords heard at the opening.

as a downtempo electronic dance music track. It is much more metrically regular than many older joiks, and the contrasts between two of the sections evoke the distinction between verse and chorus you might find in a pop song (compare 0:36–1:00 and 1:00–1:25). At the same time, the vocal material is clearly a joik, employing vocables, an ornamented melody line, and other characteristic aspects of the style. Earlier, I suggested that in answering the question “Who does this music seem to address?” one might consider language, style, and collaboration, and it seems fitting to apply this approach to “Eanan” and the album from which it comes. So far as language is concerned, the joik in “Eanan” consists entirely of vocables. This material is not tied to the language of any particular listenership, and in this respect seems well suited to an endeavor that brings together participants from many different backgrounds (i.e. the We Are the Halluci Nation

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album). At the same time, these are the kinds of vocables heard in Sámi joiking, and very different from those that might be encountered in North American Indigenous styles including powwow song. They instantiate a connection to a very particular way of singing. Stylistically, it could be argued that either joik or electronic dance music is the dominant style in “Eanan.” Whatever the case, the album as a whole is clearly a record of electronic music that incorporates elements of traditional Indigenous styles, rather than vice versa. More broadly, while explicitly addressing an Indigenous public, We Are the Halluci Nation also hails non-Indigenous listeners. In fact, “Electric PowWow Drum,” a single from A Tribe Called Red’s previous album, received extensive international exposure (including in a television ad for the English Premier League, a multibillion-dollar soccer league). Finally, with respect to collaboration, the process of creating We Are the Halluci Nation involved Indigenous artists from different communities, countries, and continents, as well as non-Indigenous participants. In these respects and others, the music seems directed toward both Native and non-Native listeners who are supportive of contemporary Indigenous concerns. When I asked A Tribe Called Red for feedback on this chapter, they told me that, while their musical practice is primarily directed towards Indigenous peoples, it welcomes non-Indigenous listeners as well.

REVIEW CHAPTER RESOURCES

SUMMARY This chapter has considered only a few of the Indigenous musics of North America. It has looked at some of the expressive resources of traditional musics, including the voice-and-percussion texture and asymmetrical repetition form deployed in powwow singing and the interlocking patterns and varied vocal sounds used in Inuit throat singing. The chapter has also reflected on the consequences of colonialism for Indigenous musics—not only the suppression of sacred songs, dances, and ceremonies and the interruption (through residential schooling and child removal) of cultural transmission, but also new indigenous practices (including the Ghost Dance and the powwow) that emerged during colonialism and efforts to revive traditional practices in its wake. It has additionally explored how music articulates relationships: with fellow musicians and listeners, with persons and other-than-human persons, with known interlocutors and imagined audiences. Throughout, although there has been some discussion of practices of the past, the focus has been on the contemporaneity of Indigenous musics, and it is in part for this reason that two of the listening guides focus on relatively recent examples of popular music. Indigenous musics and musicians exist in the present, addressing the consequences of colonialism, including racism, the interruption of the transmission of tradition, and language loss. The chapter has explored a potentially productive way to think about music, namely, by reflecting on the relationships that enable music making, as well as the relationships it acknowledges and seeks to initiate. This approach

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KEY TERMS

Indigenous powwow asymmetrical repetition form settler colonialism Ghost Dance web of relations other-than-human persons katajjait / vocal games / throat singing interlock intertribal music making imaginaries Indigenous alliances joik

might be applied fruitfully to almost any of the musical practices discussed in this book. It certainly highlights important aspects of Indigenous musics. For instance, understanding traditional Indigenous musical instruments within what McNally refers to as a “web of relations” (2009:85) suggests why they are something more than mere sound-making implements. Musicians employ these instruments to communicate with spirit beings, and they sometimes have person-to-person relationships with the instruments themselves. Even the materials that make up these instruments frequently come from plants and animals with whom musicians have traditionally had important ties. Similarly, it suggests that one way to understanding contemporary work by Indigenous musicians—on the one hand, efforts to revive languages and musical practices, and on the other, work towards innovative forms of expression—is as a way of reestablishing valued relationships in the aftermath of colonialism. Finally, it hints at one reason why certain stylistic elements—sung vocables, for example— have circulated so widely. These shared musical elements facilitate participation, including across cultural and linguistic boundaries; in this sense, they seem well suited to the pursuit and cultivation of new relations through musical exchange.

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“Speaking to Water, Singing to Stone: Peter Morin, Rebecca Belmore, and the Ontologies of Indigenous Modernity.” In Music and Modernity Among First Peoples of North America, edited by Victoria Lindsay Levine and Dylan Robinson, pp. 220–239. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press; Robinson, Dylan, Kanonhsyonne Janice C. Hill, Armand Garnet Ruffo, Selena Couture, and Lisa Cooke Ravensbergen. 2019. “Rethinking the Practice and Performance of Indigenous Land Acknowledgement.” Canadian Theatre Review 177: 20–30; Scales, Christopher. 2013. “The North American Aboriginal Recording Industry.” The Journal of American Folklore 126 (499): 81–91; Scales, Christopher. 2012. Recording Culture: Powwow Music and the Aboriginal Recording Industry on the Northern Plains. Durham, NC: Duke University Press; Scales, Christopher. 2007.“Powwows, Intertribalism, and the Value of Competition.” Ethnomusicology 51 (1): 1–29; Slingerland, Calum. 2018. “Jeremy Dutcher: ‘Mehcinut.’ “Exclaim! Magazine. February 13, 2018. http://exclaim.ca/music/article/jeremy_ dutcher-mehcinut, accessed July 22, 2019; Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. 2015. Honouring the Truth, Reconciling for the Future: Summary of the Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. Winnipeg: Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada; Vennum, Thomas, Jr. 1982. The Ojibwa Dance Drum: Its History and Construction. Smithsonian Folklife Studies Number 2. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press; Warren, Louis S. 2015. “Wage Work in the sacred Circle: The Ghost Dance as modern religion.” Western Historical Quarterly 46: 141–168; Woloshyn, Alexa. 2016. “A Tribe Called Red’s Halluci Nation: Sonifying Embodied Global Allegiances, Decolonization, and Indigenous Activism.” Intersections 36 (2): 101–110. North American Indigenous Musics Browner, Tara, ed. 2002. Music of the First Nations: Tradition and Innovation in Native North America. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press; Diamond, Beverley. 2008. Native American Music in Eastern North America: Experiencing Music, Expressing Culture. New York: Oxford University Press; Diamond,  Beverley. 2002. “Native American Contemporary Music: The Women.” World of Music 44 (1): 11–39; Hoefnagels, Anna, and Beverley Diamond, eds. 2012. Aboriginal Music in Contemporary Canada. Montreal and Kingston: McGill­ Queen’s University Press; Hammill, Chad. 2012. Songs of Power and Prayer in the Columbia Plateau. Corvallis, OR: Oregon State University Press; Levine, Victoria L. 2014. “Reclaiming Choctaw and Chickasaw Cultural Identity through Music Revival.” In The Oxford Handbook of Music Revival, edited by Caroline Bithell and Juniper Hill, 300–322. New York: Oxford University Press; Levine, Victoria L. 2013. “Powwow.” Grove Music Online. 16 October 2013. http://www-oxfordmusiconline-com.libezproxy.open.ac.uk/ grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo­ 9781561592630-e-1002252169, accessed August 11, 2019; Levine, Victoria and Dylan Robinson, eds. 2019. Music and Modernity Among First Peoples of North America. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press; Perea, John-Carlos. 2014. Intertribal Native American Music in the United States: Experiencing Music, Expressing Culture. New York: Oxford University Press; Samuels, David W. 2004. Putting a Song on Top of It: Expression and Identity on the San Carlos Apache Reservation. Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press; Vander, Judith. 1988. Songprints: The Musical Experience of Five Shoshone Women. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.

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Work on Indigenous Musics outside North America Bigenho, Michelle. 2002. Sounding Indigenous: Authenticity in Bolivian Music Performance. New York: Palgrave Macmillan; Hilder, Thomas R. 2015. Sámi Musical Performance and the Politics of Indigeneity in Northern Europe. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield; Hilder, Thomas, Henry Stobart, and Shzr Ee Tan, eds. 2017. Music, Indigeneity, Digital Media. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press; Magowan, Fiona. 2007. Melodies of Mourning: Music and Emotion in Northern Australia. Oxford: James Currey; Marett, Allan, Linda Barwick, and Lysbeth Ford. 2013. For the Sake of a Song: Wangga Songmen and their Repertories. Sydney: Sydney University Press; Seeger, Anthony. 2013. “Focusing Perspectives and Establishing Boundaries and Power: Why the Suyá/Kïsêdjê Sing for the Whites in the TwentyFirst Century.” Ethnomusicology Forum 22 (3): 362–376; Seeger, Anthony. 2004 [1987]. Why Suyá Sing: A Musical Anthropology of an Amazonian People. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press; Stobart, Henry. 2006. Music and the Poetics of Production in the Bolivian Andes. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate; Tucker, Joshua. 2011. “Permitted Indians

and Popular Music in Contemporary Peru: The Poetics and Politics of Indigenous Performativity.” Ethnomusicology 55 (3): 387–413. Recordings Discussed or Incorporated in This Chapter Canada: Inuit Games and Songs / Chants et Jeux des Inuit. International Music Council. Auvidis / UNESCO / International Institute for Comparative Music Studies and Documentation 8032; Dutcher, Jeremy. 2018. Wolastoqiyik Lintuwakonawa. AAC album from iTunes Music Store. Jeremy Dutcher; Robertson, Robbie and the Red Road Ensemble. 1994. Music for the Native Americans. Capitol Records CDP 7243 8 28295 2 2; Robertson, Robbie and the Red Road Ensemble 1998. Contact from the Underworld of Red Boy. Capitol Records CDP 7243 8 54243 2 8; Tribe Called Red, A. 2016. We Are the Halluci Nation. AAC album from iTunes Store. Radicalized Records; Walking Wolf Singers. 2016. Treaty #1: Volume 3. Walking Wolf Singers; Whitefish Bay Singers. 2016. Aaw’pii 2016. AAC album from iTunes Music Store. Whitefish Bay Singers.

FURTHER LISTENING An immense array of North American Indigenous music is available via streaming or purchased download and on CD. It may therefore be worth focusing on a few valuable resources that may not be immediately apparent. Beginning in the 1940s, the Library of Congress produced a series of recordings of folk music that included twenty releases in the Music of the American Indian series. The recordings can be found in many university library collections; they are also available for purchase as MP3s and CD-Rs from the Library of Congress at www.loc.gov/folklife/folkcat.html. The original liner notes can be consulted at the same address. Smithsonian Folkways (https://folkways.si.edu) has published a range of recordings of Native American music, available from their website as purchased downloads and CDs. There are also at least

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two commercial companies that have large catalogues of music by Indigenous musicians, with powwow and contemporary popular music especially well represented: Canyon Records (http://www. canyonrecords.com/shop/), based in Phoenix, and Sunshine Records (http://www.sunshinerecords.com), based in Winnipeg. A number of Indigenous artists have released albums of popular music on labels that do not specialize in Native American music, including Robbie Robertson, Buffy Sainte-Marie, A Tribe Called Red, and Tanya Tagaq. In 2014, Light in the Attic Records (https://www.lightintheattic.net) released an album surveying early Aboriginal contributions to popular music, Native North America (Vol. 1): Aboriginal Folk, Rock and Country 1966–1985.

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Taylor & Francis Taylor & Francis Group http://taylorandfrancis.com

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MUSIC OF ETHNIC NORTH AMERICA Byron Dueck

MUSIC, ETHNICITY, AND POLITICS IN PUBLIC PERFORMANCE On a cold October day in 2002, the city of Winnipeg in the western Canadian province of Manitoba welcomed Queen Elizabeth II. She was touring the country as the nominal head of state—Canada is, unlike the United States, a constitutional monarchy—to commemorate the fiftieth year of her reign. Two public concerts were organized for the occasion, the first in the afternoon at a park in the city center, the second in the evening on the grounds of the provincial legislative buildings. At the first event, the Queen and Prince Philip strolled through the grounds of the Forks Historic Site at the juncture of the two rivers that meet in the center of the city. The afternoon was devoted to performances by young amateur musicians and celebrated the ethnic diversity of the province. When immigrants began to

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13 pour into Manitoba in the late nineteenth century, they often came in large groups and settled in geographic blocs, inspiring early twentieth-century commentators to remark on a patchwork ethnic “mosaic” in the western provinces. Fittingly, then, the visitors were met on their walk by performers who represented some of these historical communities, including a Ukrainian dance troupe and Mennonite and Icelandic youth choirs. On reaching the shore of the Red River, the royal guests were seated for a short program of performances. A choir of students from the northern port town of Churchill sang the national anthem in French, English, Cree, and Inuktitut (the country’s official languages and two Indigenous ones). A group of young French Canadian women presented an exhibition of folk dancing in the distinctive

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Queen Elizabeth II greets members of a Canadian Indian dance troupe during welcoming ceremonies in Winnipeg. Source: ADRIAN WYLD/AFP/Newscom.

Franco-Manitoban style, the dancers doing an animated “jig” step while moving through intricate ensemble patterns. A high-school dance group performed “Cabaret” from the musical of the same name, and there were speeches from a number of politicians. The program culminated in a performance of Spirit of the Rivers, a work for choir, narrator, dancers, and prerecorded musical accompaniment. The event organizers had clearly put a great deal of thought into how this concluding performance might represent the cultural diversity of the province. Spirit of the Rivers had lyrics in English and French, but also in Cree. The music was in a contemporary Western choral idiom, but the prerecorded accompanying track incorporated a number of prominent elements that suggested Indigenous music: rattle, drum, and a series of highpitched cries of the kind sometimes heard in the powwow singing of the northern plains (see Chapter 12). As the piece moved into an instrumental coda, dancers from various traditions joined in: a group of young ballet dancers occupied the center of the stage, while others representing the province’s Scottish, Irish, Portuguese, Ukrainian, and Afro-Caribbean communities performed behind them. The performance synchronized through music and dance the various social groups that are often held to comprise Canada as a nation. The languages sung corresponded to the three populations that have been most active in negotiating their sovereignty relative to one another throughout the country’s history: anglophones, francophones, and Indigenous people. Meanwhile, diverse dance styles represented other settler groups. In short, the event brought together members of the communities whose interrelationships have long been the subject of national political discussions. (Political philosopher Will Kymlicka, for instance, describes the historical development of Canada as involving “the federation of three distinct national groups (English, French, and Aboriginals)” supplemented by a fourth, “polyethnic” population of immigrants [1995: 12–13]). Dance and song made the national mosaic visible and national polyphony audible. And yet a second welcoming concert, held at the provincial legislative grounds later that day, occasioned a much less consonant manifestation of national coexistence. In the period leading up to the royal visit, spokespeople from a number of First Nations groups had voiced concerns about the federal government’s failure to live up to the obligations outlined in the treaties signed with Indigenous communities. The living conditions in these communities, which were generally much poorer than anywhere else in the province, were a particularly sharp grievance, as was recently proposed legislation understood to

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threaten Indigenous sovereignty. First Nations leaders asked to meet with the queen during her visit, but their request was refused. Following this, a number of them announced that, having been denied a voice in the planning of the welcoming ceremonies, they would organize their own greeting. And thus it was that on the day of the queen’s arrival, a group of protesters, including a number of prominent Manitoban Indigenous leaders, marched to the legislative grounds, where the second concert was to take place. They made their way down Salter Street, a north–south artery that travels through the North End and Central neighborhoods, where there are significant numbers of Indigenous residents, to the provincial legislative grounds, the symbolic center of the city and province. The procession was headed by a drum group whose members sang songs in the Northern Plains style (see Chapter 12). On arriving at the legislative grounds, where thousands of people were gathering to enjoy the concert and the following fireworks, the protesters, still led by the drum group, moved towards the roadway where the queen’s vehicle was to arrive. Meanwhile the event was getting underway. In contrast to the afternoon program, it gave pride of place to professional adult performers, including dancers from the Royal Winnipeg Ballet and new-age singer and harpist Loreena McKennitt. The drum group sang throughout, right in the middle of the rest of the audience. This didn’t sit well with some of the people trying to listen to the “official” performance, and they began angrily shouting at the protesters. I began to worry that things would take a bad turn. Members of the police came to speak to the drum group, urging them to move back, but they nonetheless continued to sing. Toward the end of the concert, the Queen arrived, and the protesters momentarily pressed closer to the road to greet her with another song. Having welcomed her as promised, they moved back and away from the stage. As fireworks lit up the sky and the orchestra played Handel’s Music for the Royal Fireworks, they gathered one last time near a war memorial north of the legislative grounds to sing a few more songs.

UNITY, DIVERSITY, AND DIFFERENCE IN NORTH AMERICAN MUSIC As this account suggests, music is an important part of North American social and political life, and often an essential element at moments of celebration and solemnity. But what is particularly North American in this account? Certainly, one distinguishing factor is the nature of the cultural diversity on display. In Canada and the United States, Indigenous residents comprise a statistical minority, whereas the great majority of the inhabitants are immigrants and descendants of immigrants—or, distinct from this, descendants of slaves who were forcibly taken from their lands of origin. This diverse population is, moreover, continually being supplemented by new arrivals. Accordingly, much of the music and dance that people regard as their own has origins in other places, or emerged because such practices were elaborated and exchanged by the new inhabitants of North America.

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As the chapters in this book show, there are many other ethnically diverse parts of the world, and countries with significant immigrant or immigrantdescended populations. But North American social relations and musical life reflect a particularly long-standing series of encounters between original Indigenous inhabitants, long-resident non-Indigenous populations, and newer arrivals. Musical dynamics have for centuries involved negotiations between newcomers and older communities, and the expression of multiple, potentially conflicting, identities and affiliations. Thus, some ninety years before the royal visit described previously, in the same city, the annual industrial exposition held a “Foreign Night” to welcome members of various recently established immigrant communities. Over the course of the evening, a band played patriotic songs from France, Germany, Russia, Italy, and Iceland to an audience of appreciative foreign-born Winnipeggers. At the conclusion of the event, probably as a way of suggesting where the deepest loyalties of this cosmopolitan audience ought to lie, a picture of the reigning monarch, George V, was created in fire (Manitoba Free Press, July 15, 1911, pp. 1, 14). Moreover, such events are not unique to Canada: festivals celebrating ethnic heritage are also widespread across the United States. Musical performances of ethnicity also play an important role in North American expressions of political ideals. On days of national celebration, North Americans often affirm concepts of national unity in diversity. Bright costumes, sounds, and dances are brought together, and the eyes and ears of the public witness a variegated nation emerge as the sum of ethnic difference. At the same time, as the opening vignette suggests, performances of music and dance may also reveal divisions and tensions, or advance alternative social and political visions. The 2002 welcoming ceremonies for Elizabeth II affirmed, from one perspective, a unified ideal, but they also demonstrated the misgivings of some groups. The two contrasting welcomes—one claiming to represent the province, the other its First Nations inhabitants—demonstrated in a dramatic way the limits of the government’s ability to represent its constituent populations, musically and otherwise. They also suggested that the relationship between ethnicity, nationality, and various other forms of affiliation is rarely simple or straightforward.

THEMES IN NORTH AMERICAN MUSIC This chapter examines music in North America, paying special attention to how it helps to organize and enrich social life. We will look at a variety of musical genres on this excursion, including children’s singing games, ballads, fiddling, dance music, gospel singing, blues, and jazz. Several broad themes will accompany us as well. We have already seen how music asserts ethnic differences, and how musical performances make political relationships between groups audible and visible. We will also explore how music shapes experiences of passing time and of changing social states and relationships; investigate how communities maintain distinct and particular musical traditions even as they

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borrow musical elements from others; and consider musical phenomena that seem, by contrast, to be shared across many boundaries, whether of community, ethnic group, or region. We will then spend some time examining the special contribution of African American music. Finally, we bring our excursions to a close by considering how music is conceptualized. Three broader questions underlie these investigations. The first concerns difference and similarity. Many North American ethnic, religious, regional, and community groups have their own unique musical styles and practices. At the same time, certain widespread elements play a significant (which is not to say unproblematic) role in shaping North American musical life, even across social boundaries. These include Christianity, the legacy of slavery, economic structures such as labor specialization and capitalism, and widely circulating musical forms. One challenge for this chapter (and for the study of music more generally) involves accounting for these widely distributed aspects of North American musical experience, while also recognizing the ways they are complicated and challenged by ethnic, religious, and regional particularities and local practice. A second broad question has to do with the differences between professional and nonprofessional musicians, and between everyday musical activity and more extraordinary moments of performance. Consider the performances by the schoolchildren at the afternoon welcoming ceremony previously described. To prepare for such events, “ordinary” children have to spend long hours practicing on their own and rehearsing with colleagues in classrooms, community halls, church basements, and other spaces of assembly. Calendars have to be coordinated and money spent on travel and outfits. Heightened moments of performance are made possible by much longer musical engagements with particular communities. And thus ethnicity is not experienced solely in moments such as the one just considered. It is also lived in everyday interactions that prioritize certain groups of people, specific ways of interacting, and particular musical activities. A third broad question involves the concept of performance, broadly conceived: what do musical acts accomplish? Here again, it is useful to refer back to the opening vignette. Ritual festivity in this case presented national unity from a certain perspective—–but from another it made apparent deep differences of opinion about the government’s claim to represent certain constituencies. Ethnic music and dance were not simply “symbolic” expressions of unity or diversity here. They actively made these abstractions concrete—– or, from another perspective, failed to do so. The performance of Spirit of the Rivers not only represented unity but actively integrated participants in collective activity. Conversely, the singing protest at the evening concert did not simply symbolize Indigenous distinctiveness, but rather actively produced it. In launching a welcome that competed with the one on the main stage, the protesters brought their political concerns into being in a way that would not otherwise have been audible.

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SOUNDLY ORGANIZED TIME The winter holiday season in North America is distinguished from other, more ordinary times of the year by music above all else. On outdoor speakers, on the radio, and especially in stores and shopping malls, pop songs celebrate snow, reunions with loved ones, the giving of gifts, and a certain jolly old elf. Many of these songs were composed in the 1930s and 1940s and resemble other Tin Pan Alley tunes from that era: they have catchy, singable melodies and make frequent use of the 32-bar AABA form (“Santa Claus Is Coming to Town” and “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” for example). Alternating with the pop songs are Christmas carols and hymns that make explicit reference to the birth of Jesus and its theological implications. These are, predictably, especially prevalent at the church services and devotional events that lead up to Christmas and on the day itself. Other elements of the annually transformed soundscape are pieces from the world of art music: here an excerpt from Handel’s Messiah, there a piece from Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker. Yet the seeming ubiquity of Christmas music masks a North American musical life that is anything but unified. Those who observe Christmas do so through widely varying repertories: songs, melodies, lyrics, and performance styles differ from community to community and ethnic group to ethnic group. Not all Christians even observe holidays at the same time: Old Calendar Orthodox Christians, for instance, celebrate Christmas in early January. And as the success of Adam Sandler’s “The Chanukah Song” suggests, there are many who do not observe Christmas, whose year is structured around different celebrations and solemnities, and who may feel a sense of distance from these annual musical transformations. Music shapes the experience of passing time in a number of ways: human societies around the world experience daily, monthly, and yearly cycles in part through the music associated with points along them. In Chapter 11, for example, you saw how Bahamians mark the Christmas season and the start of the New Year with a festival called junkanoo, celebrated through music, dance, costuming, and extraordinary forms of behavior. Similar ways of organizing time are evident in North America, and as might be expected given the diversity of the continent, social groups establish commonalities and differences in part through distinctive ways of structuring the calendar. Ethnicity is expressed in part through distinctive musical ways of organizing time, in both everyday ways and more festive ones. Let’s explore a few of these.

Liturgical Cycles The cultural organization of time is perhaps most evident in religious liturgies, where music, chant, and sacred readings articulate daily, weekly, and annual cycles. Sacred time is organized on a weekly basis in a number of traditions: Christian churches privilege Sunday as a day of worship, Jewish congregations meet on the Sabbath (from sunset on Friday to sunset on Saturday), and

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Muslim congregational prayer occurs on Fridays. In all three of these traditions, worship incorporates the reading, recitation, or singing of special texts. Not all of these practices are considered to be “music” by practitioners (see Chapter 3). In most cases, however, the texts are delivered using some form of heightened speech (an intoned or cantillated vocal delivery in some cases, and song in others). Sacred liturgies may also articulate daily cycles. Some Christian traditions observe the Office (based on the canonical hours), a set of daily worship services in which certain prayers, readings, and chants are performed at fixed times: matins in the morning and vespers in the evening, for instance. The Islamic call to prayer, heard five times a day, is another example. At a more mundane level, the largest and loudest musical instruments in many cities are the bells in church steeples. Their hourly or even quarter-hourly pealing might be heard to do the ongoing work of sacralizing passing time, albeit in a manner that has become so familiar it can go almost unnoticed. Occasional controversies over the public broadcast of the Islamic call to prayer sometimes ignore the pealing of church bells as an even more prevalent example of how religion shapes the public soundscape. Liturgy also shapes the organization of the year. For instance, the Christian year begins with Advent (the four Sundays preceding Christmas) and progresses through the celebration of the Nativity to Epiphany. After a period of “ordinary time” comes the second major period of special observance, beginning with Lent, reaching a peak during Easter celebrations, and moving through to Pentecost. These events are associated with particular kinds of music, and many hymnals (books containing worship songs) have sections devoted to Advent, Christmas, and Easter. And as the opening of this section suggests, some of these songs—Christmas carols, most notably—are heard well outside the confines of liturgical practice. In Jewish and Islamic practice, too, congregations and communities mark the passing of the year through ritual, moving through sequences of holy days and associated observances. In Judaism, the most important events are the High Holy Days: Rosh Hashanah (the New Year Festival) and Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement), which arrive in autumn. The central holiday in Islam is the month of Ramadan, which occurs in the ninth month of the lunar year (and accordingly moves several days earlier each solar year). In both Jewish and Islamic practice, these events are observed in part through special assemblies and the recitation of special texts. Although musical articulations of time are most extensively connected to liturgical practice, there are also more secular manifestations. Some are connected to the standardized work week that holds for many North Americans (although this work week, too, has its origins in the religious calendar). For example, special radio programs of talk and music accompany morning and evening commutes. On Friday and Saturday nights some radio stations play nightclub-like dance mixes, acknowledging the arrival of the weekend and its pleasures. Music seems to help mark distinctions between work and leisure. Again, as in the case of sacred music, sounds do not simply reflect the social

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OFFICE Organized to correspond to the canonical hours, the Office (also called the Divine Hours) is a set of daily worship services in which certain prayers, readings, and chants are performed at fixed times. The services include matins, vespers, and compline, among others, and the practice is generally associated with Catholic, Orthodox Christian, and Anglican/Episcopal traditions, though other traditions include these services in their worship as well.

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Rabbi Moshe Wilansky of Chabad of Maine blows the shofar before the start of a Rosh Hashanah service at the Italian Heritage Center in Portland. Source: Portland Press Herald/Getty Images.

division of time but rather actively help to shape it: North Americans’ work and leisure are experienced through the sounds and silences associated with them. Music is coordinated with temporal cycles and religious structures in societies around the world, although rarely in the same ways. North American society is distinctive in part because of the great variety of ways of organizing temporality. Yet this diversity should not obscure certain dominating influences. The prevalence of Christmas carols and church bells in public spaces, mentioned earlier, attests to the significance of Christianity in shaping experiences of North American temporality. As this suggests, the elements of musical culture that impact on nearly everyone’s experiences are not necessarily “everyone’s music.”

Music and Age Categories If the daily, weekly, and yearly rounds are organized by music, so too is the life cycle. Certain genres of music are associated with social categories, including age and gender. Of these, children’s music is perhaps the most readily distinguished. In North America, there are significant bodies of repertory that are closely associated with children—especially, but not only, girls—of elementary school age. The performances of “Miss Sue from Alabama” present fragments of everyday life for children in the New York of the 1970s and perhaps today,  too:  mama, father, brother, and a new baby; the obscure world of adult  life; locations both familiar (the elevator and its floors) and far away (Alabama). There are hints of simmering sibling antagonism (just what is being sent down the elevator in this song?). Present too are many of the elements Kyra Gaunt (2006) identifies in her book on African American girls’ games: quotations from popular culture and above all a playful, musical physicality. What is also highlighted—in the differences between this pair of examples— is the diversity of such games. Edet describes finding ten different versions of another song, “Here We Go Willoughby,” in an eight-block radius. Children’s games can differ from playground to playground and community to community, reflecting locality, but also the creative work of young innovators and improvisers. Other forms of musical activity tend to be associated with certain social categories as well, although this is rarely in an exclusive way. Young people invest immense amounts of energy learning (for example) songs from musicals, rock guitar solos, and repertoire for high school bands and choirs. Some musical activities are more closely associated with some gender identities

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LISTENING GUIDE 13.1

“MISS SUE FROM ALABAMA”

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Recorded by Edna Smith Edet in New York City

T

HESE GAME SONGS were recorded in New York, probably in the 1970s. In performances of the songs, according to the notes of the recordist, Edna Smith Edet, the children move in a circle and perform actions that are coordinated with the words. In the first version of “Miss Sue from Alabama,” they move their hands to the words “chicka boom,” move their feet on “tic, tac, toe,” and “waddle and shake shoulders on “boom tick a wally wally.” In the second version, which emerges from the first, they mime “curl,” “toy,” “wrap,” and “down,” stopping all motion on “stop.” The circle game ends with the children tickling each other. [0:00] Miss Sue from Alabama (1)

[0:51] Miss Sue from Alabama (2)

Miss Sue (clap clap), Miss Sue (clap clap), Miss Sue from Alabama; Now let’s have a party, Chicka boom, chicka boom, Chicka boom boom boom.

Miss Sue, Miss Sue, Miss Sue from Alabama,

[0:13] Now let’s have a tic tac toe, A tic, a tac, a tic tac toe. [0:19] Now Mama’s in the kitchen Peeling white potatoes, Father in the alley Drinking white ladle [?White Label?], Brother in the [playpen], Waiting for the clock to go, Boom tick tock, boom tick a wally wally

[0:57] [Now let’s,] My mother had a baby And father’s going crazy. But if it’s a girl, I give it a curl And if it’s a boy, I give it a toy, Wrap it up in toilet paper Send it down the elevator [1:19] First floor, stop, ticking over, Second floor, stop, think it over, Third floor, you better watch out, ‘Cause S T O P spells stop.

than others, although this is subject to contestation, especially when there are perceptions of systematic exclusion. Certain kinds of dancing are sometimes linked with categories around age and couplehood: paired adults often take up couple dancing in later life—for instance, learning ballroom dancing or Chicago stepping—while younger singles are more likely to dance apart. But such generalities are complicated by all sorts of variations, including around ethnicity, region, and class. For some, youthful musical experiences do involve individuated dancing, and adulthood and partnership are experienced in part through learning to dance in pairs. But for others, couple dances may be the very form in which youthful good times are experienced.

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Music and Rites of Passage Music is not only connected to particular stages of life, but also to ritual undertakings that mark and effect movements from one stage of social life to another. Through these rites of passage, communities imbue the life cycle with meaning in a way similar to how they organize the passing of time through liturgy. Birth rites—including many circumcisions and baptisms—commemorate the moments when new persons join communities; funerary rites—wakes, funerals, viewings, and memorial services—mark departures. Other rites of passage accompany and affirm transformations from childhood to adolescence and adolescence to adulthood, as well as various stages of educational achievement: for instance, bar and bat mitzvahs, quinceañeras, confirmations, and various graduations. Still others perform marriages. Music, of course, plays an important role at many such events. Take, for instance, wedding ceremonies. In the late 1980s and early 1990s I occasionally accompanied weddings at a Mennonite church in a small town in western Canada. Observant Mennonites are Christians who tend to practice adult baptism, nonresistance (e.g., refusing to do military service), and, in many cases, a wariness of ideas and practices deemed to be too worldly. The rejection of worldliness has had musical implications: in some Mennonite churches instruments have been disallowed. The church where I played was relatively liberal in this respect, however, and, in addition to the piano, there were amplified guitars and even a drum set. Weddings made especially extensive use of instrumental music. At the opening of a service, my job was to perform pleasant music—nothing too showy or harmonically unusual—as guests were shown to their seats. Once everybody was in place, the bridal party processed in, often to an arrangement of Pachelbel’s Canon in D. The length of the processional was typically worked out the night before the wedding, so that there would be exactly enough music to get the parents, bridesmaids, groomsmen, and groom down the aisle to the front of the church. There was no telling, however, whether nerves or mistakes would change the speed of the procession on the actual day of the wedding, so I had to be prepared to cut things short. The entrance of the bride required special music, and I typically picked this with her well in advance. During the service itself, the congregation sometimes sang a hymn, and there was often a song on the theme of love, marriage, or both performed as a solo by someone known to the couple. After the pronouncement of marriage, I played a recessional as the couple exited. This last, obviously, had to sound grand and joyful, and it was usually showier than what I played at other points. Music served a number of purposes at the ceremony. It underscored the seriousness and consequentiality of the event, and it perhaps also demonstrated the taste of the bridal couple and their families. This said, it was in no way the most important element of the service. It was not acceptable for musicians to draw too much attention to themselves, and the music had to be timed correctly to accompany the movements of the participants into the sanctuary and out of it. In fact, there were only two moments when the music was the primary focus

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of attention: during the congregational hymn and the solo song. At both of these moments, the texts sung expressed important beliefs presumably shared by the bridal party and the assembled witnesses: concerning, for instance, the love between God and humanity, or the loving relationship between the members of a married couple. All in all, the services I accompanied were probably similar to many other North American Christian weddings, standing in a reasonably close relationship to the continental mainstream. In other ways they were distinct. For instance, the ceremonies were typically followed by a reception, but rarely by a dance. Many people in the community and the church disapproved of dancing and drinking, and while a DJ and an open bar were an important part of wedding receptions in nearby towns, the majority of the members of the congregation I played for eschewed them (those who wanted them typically held the reception in a neighboring town). By excluding drinking and dance from weddings, the congregation actively distanced itself from certain kinds of “worldly” behavior. But to characterize this simply as a withdrawal from the rest of the world would be to simplify matters, since there was clear engagement with that world in other respects (including the use of the piano, amplified instruments, and music that drew on pop precedents). Evident rather was a kind of selective boundary-making and a selective engagement with the world outside the community. The place of music in the wedding ceremonies I played for cannot be generalized to all of North America—it is rooted in a specific place and time. Neighboring communities celebrated weddings in different ways, depending on their own cultural and religious particularities. Neither is ritual practice historically stable. When I worked as a pianist in the 1980s and 1990s, the law only recognized weddings between men and women: today of course it is possible for same-sex couples to wed in both Canada and the United States. This has opened up possibilities for new elaborations of ritual musical practice. A quick perusal of wedding videos online suggests not only change but continuity. Music continues to play processional and recessional roles in many ceremonies: two women walk down the aisle to Pachelbel’s Canon in one video; in another, a chorus sings “San Francisco” as a postlude at a wedding between two men in that city in 2008 (the year a ban on marriages between partners of the same sex was overthrown in California). As this suggests, not only dramatic legal transformations but unremarkable forms of musical continuity shape North American ritual life. To sum up, North American identities are mediated by musical practices that organize—and effect transitions between—time and stages of life. Christian and English-speaking musical traditions may enjoy particular dominance in these respects, but they are in no way universal. Finally, music mediates identity not only at moments of solemnity and festivity, but also during the everyday stretches these punctuate.

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MUSICAL PARTICULARITY AND HISTORICAL CONTINUITY Many members of non-Indigenous North American ethnic groups have a special affection for musical practices perceived to connect them to their ancestors’ homelands. However, these practices are often quite different from the ones practiced in those home countries. In many cases, they have changed in ways that suit the new North American context. In other instances, they have been replaced or supplemented by new kinds of music that draw on old and new influences alike. Notwithstanding musical transformations, and appropriation of sounds and instruments from other communities, there often remains a strong sense in these communities of ownership—of “our music.” This complicated relationship to “traditional music” is explored in the following examples.

Anglo-American Ballads EXPLORE Anglo-American Ballad

Clarence Ashley first recorded “The House Carpenter” for Columbia Records in 1930 (Smith 1952: 3). The performance is an example of American music from Appalachia, the highlands that extend from Pennsylvania to Alabama. It is a ballad: a song that tells a story. The straightforwardness of the musical elements reinforces the centrality of that story: the song has a simple strophic form in which all of the verses are set to the same repeated melody, and Ashley’s banjo accompaniment ticks along in the background, rarely drawing attention to itself (Listening Guide 13.2 features this ballad).

Banjo player, guitarist, and singer Clarence Ashley on stage at the Newport Folk Festival in Rhode Island. Source: The Estate of David Gahr/Getty Images.

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LISTENING GUIDE 13.2

“THE HOUSE CARPENTER”

LISTEN

Clarence Ashley, vocals and banjo The House Carpenter

1. “Well met, well met,” said an old true love, “Well met, well met,” said he. “I’m just returning from the salt, salt sea And it’s all for the love of thee.”

2. “Come in, come in my old true love, And have a seat with me. It’s been three fourths of a long, long year Since together we have been.”

3. “Well I can’t come in or I can’t sit down,

4. “[Now I saw] I could have married a king’s daughter dear. I’m sure she’d have married me. But I’ve forsaken her crowns of gold

For I haven’t but a moment’s time. They say you are married to a house carpenter And your heart will never be mine.” 5. “Now will you forsaken your house carpenter And go along with me? I’ll take you where the grass grows green On the banks of the deep blue sea.”

And it’s all for the love of thee.” 6. She picked up her little babe, And kisses gave it three, And said, “Stay right here, my darling little babe And keep your papa company.”

7. Well, they hadn’t been on ship but about two weeks, I’m sure it was not three, And his true love began to weep and mourn And he [???] most bitterly

8. Says, “Are you weeping for my silver or my gold,” Says, “Are you weeping for my [store] Are you weeping for that house carpenter Whose face you never see any more?”

9. “No, it’s I’m not a-weeping for your silver or your gold, Or neither for your [store]. I am weeping for my darling little babe

10. Well, they hadn’t been on ship but about three weeks, I’m sure it was not four, And they sprung a leak in the bottom of the ship And it sunk for to rise no more.

Whose face I’ll never see any more.”

This song is a version of a ballad for which there is printed evidence dating back to the seventeenth century. It seems especially close to a variant first published in London around 1785, entitled “The Distressed Ship Carpenter” (Burrison 1967: 271–272). Compare the first two verses of the following ballad with the first and fourth of the previous. continued

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The Distressed Ship Carpenter

1. Well met, well met, my own true Love Long time I have been seeking thee, I am lately come from the salt, salt Sea, And all for the Sake, Love, of thee.

2. I might have had a King’s Daughter,

And fain she would have married me,

But I’ve forsaken all her Crowns of Gold,

And all for the Sake, Love, of thee.

3. If you might have had a King’s Daughter, I think you much to blame, I would not for Five Hundred Pounds, That my Husband should hear the same.

4. For my Husband is a Carpenter,

And a young Ship Carpenter is he,

And by him I have a little Son,

Or else, Love, I’d go along with thee.

“The House Carpenter” seems to have originated in England as a song called “The Distressed Ship Carpenter”; it was brought to North America sometime between the late seventeenth and early nineteenth centuries by immigrants from Great Britain, Northern Ireland, or both. It proliferated in the North American context, and regionally differentiated versions of the song emerged in Newfoundland, New England, the Midwest, the West, and especially Appalachia (Burrison 1967: 282, Gardner-Medwin 1971: 426). In fact, this particular ballad seems to have flourished much more widely in North America than on its island of origin (Burrison 1967). As the presence of several versions suggests, the song was not simply preserved in North American communities, but also transformed. For instance, the ship carpenter in the British version of the song has become a house carpenter in the Appalachian one. The change seems to acknowledge aspects of the new North American context: ship carpenters were rarer in Appalachia than in Britain, whereas house carpenters were well known (Gardner-Medwin 1971: 421) The instrument employed on the recording reveals something even more telling about the song’s new home. Clarence Ashley, a White Appalachian, accompanies himself on the banjo, which has its roots in an instrument of African origin, brought to the Americas by slaves (Epstein 1975). Banjo-type instruments are documented amongst Caribbean Blacks in the late seventeenth century and African Americans by the middle of the eighteenth (ibid.). They were initially played by Black musicians but later adopted by Whites, initially it seems in the course of local music making, and later in the context of minstrelsy (see below). Ashley’s use of the banjo points to the social and musical history of the United States, where during and after slavery, Blacks and Whites shared certain instruments and repertories, and where aspects of Black musical aesthetics were appropriated as elements of White style. As work by Alan Jabbour and others suggests (Jabbour 2001, Epstein 2003, Wells 2003), much of the instrumental music that today is widely associated in the popular imagination with Whites was also historically played by Black musicians, as is evidenced by the fact that many American fiddle tunes employ complex rhythmic syncopations that suggest the influence of African musical traditions.

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Tecnobanda and Duranguense: Other Styles with Complex Histories The more recent past offers further examples of musical practices that build on practices from home while integrating new or borrowed elements. The 1990s and 2000s saw a surge in the popularity of a number of musical styles on Spanish-language radio stations in the United States—–including tecnobanda and música duranguense and the related quebradita and pasito duranguense dance crazes (see Hutchinson 2007, Simonett 2001). In the new musical genres, singers performed in close vocal harmony, in alternation with melodic fills by brass, reed, and electronic keyboard instruments, and dramatic bursts of sound from the kit drum and tambora (a combined bass drum and cymbal, sometimes called the tamborón). Much of the music made use of dance rhythms—including polka, waltz, and cumbia—that are found in many places around the world, but that were distinct from those prominent in the mainstream forms of electronic dance music being marketed to North Americans at the time. Further, singers and the instrumentalists accompanying them sometimes performed on what some listeners would consider the “sharp” (high) or “flat” (low) side of the notes. Given that some of this music came to prominence at a moment when producers of English-language popular music were embracing electronic methods of pitch correction to avoid doing just this, the music stood out markedly. Thus through language, instrumentation, dance rhythms, and tuning, tecnobanda and duranguense elaborated a working-class Mexican American sound that stood in notable contrast to the anglophone popular musics that otherwise dominated the soundscapes of American cities at the time. Certain elements of tecnobanda and duranguense can be traced to rural Mexican musical traditions of longer standing. The more recent genres can be understood in part as updated and electrified versions of village banda (band) music from the northwestern Mexican state of Sinaloa, as Helena Simonett (2001) and Sydney Hutchinson (2007) explain. Like banda music, they incorporated wind and brass instruments, as well as the tamborón and snare drum, adding to these electric guitar and electronic keyboards. But a closer look at banda and the newer genres reveals a history that is more complex than that of traditional rural Mexican genres being taken northward. First, banda itself emerged in a context of border crossing and musical borrowing. Musicians, instruments, and musical styles have long moved back and forth between the northern Mexican states and Texas, and there are close musical connections between the Spanish-speaking communities on both sides of the border (Peña 1985). Moreover, the polka and waltz rhythms that are common in banda and related genres circulated internationally in the nineteenth century, and their popularity in Texas and northern Mexico seems to have been due in part to the presence of German immigrants in those areas. These immigrants brought dances and instruments—particularly the accordion—with them when they settled, making an important impact on the music culture of the border area (Hutchinson 2007: 27).

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EXPLORE Tecnobanda TECNOBANDA A popular dance music derived from blending the instruments and repetory of traditional banda ensembles (brass bands) with electronic instruments. MÚSICA DURANGUENSE A popular dance music that developed in Chicago. A variant of technoband, the musical style is derived from blending banda with electronic instruments. It is notable for its emphasis on percussion lines and for the generally faster tempos at which the repertory is performed. The accompanyingdance is characterized by western attire and a typical dance step, called pasito, derived from the traditional dancing in Durango, Mexico. Duranguense is popular in both Mexico and the United States. QUEBRADITA A dance craze, accompanied by technobanda ensembles and privileging cumbia dances, which became especially popular in Los Angeles, northern Mexico, and throughout the Southwest. Characterizes by western attire, hat tricks, and flips.

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Second, duranguense as a style emerged in Chicago rather than in Durango, led by the ensemble Grupo Montéz de Durango. The style incorporates some elements that can be found in music and dance from Durango and evidences the influence of previous Mexican popular styles. In other ways it is innovative, however; for instance, women musicians contributed on a previously unprecedented scale. As in the case of “The House Carpenter,” the model of ethnic communities preserving older traditions in a new country does not seem adequate here. Communities borrow instruments and stylistic elements from one another, they adapt musical practices to suit new social circumstances, and the resulting transformations sometimes double back to impact musical practices in countries of origin. Not all practices undergo dramatic developments and transformations; nor do all musicians appropriate elements from neighboring music cultures on arrival in North America. In some instances older repertories continue to be practiced, often in similar circumstances to those in which they originated, and within communities that have retained strict boundaries. Yet even in such situations, music making tends to reflect a new North American context. The Hutterites are a Protestant group whose members live communally, abide by strict guidelines concerning comportment and dress, speak a relatively rare Central European language, and maintain a conservative musical tradition. Hutterites tend to avoid musical instruments and songs on secular subjects (Wulz 2002), yet they occasionally borrow songs and melodies from other communities, and they engage in discussions about introducing new musical practices. Even in conservative communities, it would seem, the maintenance of tradition involves, at some level, an acknowledgment of the new musical environment. Sometimes this means borrowing music from neighbors, and sometimes it means explicit rejections of their musical practices.

PARTICULAR AND GENERAL MUSICAL PRACTICES The foregoing accounts highlight two seemingly opposed processes. On the one hand, ethnic groups, regions, and communities continually differentiate themselves by musical means. On the other, they appropriate musical instruments, sounds and practices from one another. As we’ve seen, the music of White Appalachians in the 1930s incorporated not only British ballads but also African American instruments. Meanwhile, tecnobanda, duranguense, and village banda music drew on musical elements with a German provenance. Importantly, members of these communities have felt a strong connection to these musics, notwithstanding the clear influence of music from outside these groups (Bohlman 2008). This section looks at a related issue, namely how musical practices both connect and distinguish ethnic groups. Put another way, it considers both the generality (widespreadness) and particularity (ethnical or regional specificity) of musical style. It focuses especially on North American fiddle traditions,

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String band playing at a Saturday night dance with a kitty for contributions, Tulare migrant camp, California. Source: Everett Collection Historical/Alamy Stock Photo.

where a number of regional styles are distinguishable from broader national and international ones. Fiddle music from Cape Breton in the eastern Canadian province of Nova Scotia is often accompanied on the piano in a unique syncopated style. The strathspey, a dance tune of Scottish origin in quadruple time, is particularly prominent, as are patterns of melodic embellishment borrowed from bagpipe traditions. In Quebec and in some Canadian Indigenous communities, meanwhile, fiddlers perform rhythmic “clogging” patterns with their feet as they play. And the fiddle style of the “upper South” in the United States is characterized by a distinctive bowing style that reflects the influence of African American musicians (Jabbour 2001). These are just a few of the particularities that distinguish certain regional and ethnic styles of North American fiddling. At the same, time, some musical characteristics are widely distributed across many North American fiddling styles. Two of these are evident in Dwight Lamb’s performance of “Rocky Road to Jordan” (the subject of the next listening guide): AABB form and common-practice harmony. Lamb is an American fiddler and accordionist of partial Danish descent. His musical repertory was shaped by both family connections and engagement with mass media—his maternal grandfather was an accordionist and his father was a fiddler—but he also learned tunes by listening to musicians who performed on the radio (Lamb 1999). His repertory demonstrates a very wide array of influences—the fiddlers in his circle played Danish, German, Scottish, American, and Canadian fiddle tunes—but it also

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STRATHSPEY A dance tune, associated with Scotland, in 4/4 meter. Characterized rhythmically by dotted rhythms and “Scotch snaps” (in which a short note, arriving on a strong beat, is followed by a longer note).

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LISTENING GUIDE 13.3

“ROCKY ROAD TO JORDAN”

LISTEN

Dwight Lamb, fiddle; Lynn Holsclaw, guitar

R

“

OCKY ROAD TO JORDAN” consists of two alternating sections. The first begins in a lower register and lasts until about [0:17]. At that point, the second section begins, marked by a shift into a higher register. The melodic material in both the first and second parts is repeated: for example, [0:09–0:17] is a repetition of [0:00–0:09]. For this reason, the tune is said to be in AABB form. This AABB structure is regulated by the underlying pulse. If you count along with the music (which moves along at around 120 beats per minute), you should be able to hear that there are exactly 16 beats in each A and each B, for a total of 64 beats across a single iteration of the whole AABB pattern. In 2/4 meter (two beats per measure, or bar) these 64 beats translate to 32 measures or bars. The 32-bar AABB dance form is found across North America, as are a number of close variations of it. There are other ways of structuring fiddle music, and in certain fiddling traditions the AABB form can be treated very freely, but it is nevertheless very widely practiced. TIME

SECTION

0:00

A Section.

0:09

A Section repeated.

0:17

B Section.

0:25

B Section repeated.

0:33

A Section.

0:41

A Section repeated.

0:49

B Section.

0:57

B Section repeated.

1:05

A Section.

1:13

A Section repeated.

1:21

B Section.

1:29

B Section repeated.

1:37

A Section.

The guitar part highlights another widely distributed stylistic element: the use of common-practice harmony. The guitarist plays a series of chords that support the melody in the fiddle. Each of the chords is made up of three notes drawn from the seven-note major scale. Many musicians would know the chords as D major, named after the first note in the D major scale; G major, named after the fourth note; and A major, named after the fifth. The chords can also be designated as I, IV, and V, respectively, using a system of roman numerals that allows analysis to be made across a range of pieces and musical styles. Harmonic structure in the guitar accompaniment to “Rocky Road to Jordan” (simplified)

A section (repeated) B section (repeated)

Bar 1 I I

Bar 2 I I

Bar 3 V V

Bar 4 V V

Bar 5 I I

Bar 6 IV IV

Bar 7 V V

Bar 8 I I

continued

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Harmonies in the key of D major

The piece is very clearly in dialogue with the common-practice approach to harmony that informs many other North American musical styles. Common-practice music is built on an opposition between chords I and V, and one of its most characteristic harmonic patterns involves movement from I to V and back to I. Two versions of that characteristic pattern are audible in Section A of “Rocky Road to Jordan,” one in each four-bar half. The first half moves from I to V (I–I–V–V), where it is interrupted; the second half articulates the full pattern, moving from I to V to I via IV (I–IV–V–I).

evidences the centrality across many of these repertories of certain formal and harmonic patterns. The formal structures (e.g. AABB) and harmonic patterns (e.g. I–IV–V–I) used across many styles of fiddle music often reinforce one another. Experienced musicians are aware of such correspondences, in some cases probably unconsciously. This awareness helps fiddlers learn new tunes and remember old ones, and it allows guitarists to accompany tunes they have not heard before. As long as a tune follows a standard form and stands in dialogue with common harmonic practice, musicians can slot relevant musical material into appropriate places within the structure. The match may not always be exact—and in “Rocky Road,” there is sometimes a little tension between the guitar chords and the fiddle melody—but these structures help make everyday music making easier. Indeed, they do so across a great many North American idioms, including not only fiddling, gospel song, country music, and some forms of the blues and jazz, but also genres such as duranguense. There are many other possibilities for harmonization. Many tunes require a wider range of chords than those used in “Rocky Road to Jordan,” and many have “modal” melodies that are not easily accompanied using common-practice harmony (including other tunes played by Dwight Lamb). However, many of these alternatives are themselves musical commonplaces, known to and practiced by musicians across North America. My point is that, although there is considerable regional diversity in North American fiddling, and although there are no North American musical universals, there do seem to be musical practices—including the formal and harmonic patterns just discussed—that are employed widely across the continent. Accounts of music making need somehow to acknowledge both these dominant, generalized practices and that they are not the only possibilities. They also need to consider how and why some styles and practices have come to positions of seeming ubiquity.

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AFRICAN AMERICAN CONTRIBUTIONS TO NORTH AMERICAN MUSIC EXPLORE The Blues and Tin Pan Alley

One of the most characteristic aspects of North American—and especially US— music is the central place in it of African American musics and musicians. This is not to say that Black musics have not also made significant contributions in other countries. It is rather that African Americans, despite being demographically in the minority in the United States—and subject to slavery and later legalized forms of discrimination—have played a central part in shaping the country’s traditional, popular, and art musics. Further, during the long twentieth century of US global influence in matters economic, political, and musical, African American musics have exerted an unprecedented influence on the rest of the world. Many of the genres that have had a global impact during this period came into existence thanks to African Americans, including ragtime, blues, jazz, rhythm and blues, rock and roll, soul, funk, disco, hip-hop, and electronic dance music. Other North American musical practices would be unimaginable in their present forms without the influence of African American music and musicians: these include country music and bluegrass, the Broadway musical, and art (i.e. classical) music. The immense significance of African American musics might be considered from two perspectives. In the first place, these musics have spoken to and for African Americans themselves, including as a way of expressing collective experience. Second, these musics have also spoken to listeners and practitioners outside of African American communities, although these audiences have not always heard it sympathetically or with full understanding, and have often appropriated the music without consideration for the persons and communities from which it comes.

Expressing Collective Experience and Resistance EXPLORE African American Spirituals

Millions of Africans were forcibly taken across the Atlantic Ocean to the Americas during the centuries in which the slave trade was legal. With them they brought a number of musical practices and technologies that survived despite the crushing circumstances of slavery. Dena Epstein (1975) has suggested that louder African wind and percussion instruments were regarded with suspicion by slave owners, and that for this reason quieter instruments such as the banjo (and the fiddle) became particularly important among African Americans. But it is in the realm of musical structures rather than instruments that key African retentions are most evident. Many characteristics of sub-Saharan African music are present in African American music, including cyclical forms, interlocking parts, dense timbres, and musical divisions into core and elaboration parts. So it is that even as African American musics make use of a wide variety of structures of European origin, they have transformed these to bring them into line with an African American aesthetic. These have, in turn, been incorporated in North American music more generally.

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Early accounts suggest that music played an important role in the collective expression of the experiences of slave life. Epstein’s research points to an array of musical practices, including work songs, sacred music, and music for socializing and dancing on days of rest. Music expressed sorrow, it protested the conditions of slavery, and it expressed hopes for a better life. Early accounts make it clear, too, that music was useful as a means of resistance, both overt and covert. Drumming, singing, and dancing accompanied an uprising that occurred in Stono, South Carolina in 1739 (Epstein 2003), in which slaves fought for freedom from their oppressors. And song often enabled the expression of sentiments and the passing of information that would have been dangerous to convey in speech (Maultsby 2011). African American music was not strictly separate from other forms of American music, however, but stood in complex relationships of exchange. Black fiddlers were particularly common in early American life, for instance, and they appear to have accompanied the dances of both Blacks and Whites using Anglo-Celtic tunes and genres (see Wells 2003). Whites borrowed music and dance they understood to come from Black practice; thus a description of Virginia life published in 1776 remarked, “Towards the close of an evening, when the company are pretty well tired with country-dances, it is usual to dance jigs; a practice originally borrowed . . . from the Negroes” (Epstein 2003: 121). Moreover, the complex syncopation frequently found in American fiddle music seems to have been an African American innovation that was appropriated by Whites and then spread across the continent. In fact, African American music became an object of considerable fascination for White Americans. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the music became the object of ambivalent fascination, for there existed simultaneously a love for African American music and a refusal to respect the people who made it. This was most evident in the phenomenon of minstrelsy, which emerged around the middle of the nineteenth century. In minstrel shows, White actors and musicians blackened their faces with cork to play roles as African Americans. They played instruments commonly used by Blacks and made music that drew on African American performance practices, but their representations of Blackness consisted of distorted caricatures. Minstrelsy was immensely widespread, and continued in various forms well into the twentieth century. Whites appropriated Black music, giving it a prominent place in their expressive culture, even as they distanced themselves from Black people by means of mockery and stereotype.

African American Music: From Emancipation to Today In the decades following Emancipation (1865), Black music continued to offer possibilities for collective expression and action even as it held an enduring fascination for non-Blacks. New technologies—beginning with newspapers and other print media, then recording and radio, and finally the Internet—helped spread local musical traditions to new audiences. Many forms of Black music

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became more prominent and more widely dispersed as a result. A few examples will illustrate this point.

SACRED MUSIC

EXPLORE Blues

Listen to “Precious Lord, Take My Hand” as performed by the singers of the First Independent Holy Church of God—Unity—Prayer from Marion, Alabama, the subject of the next listening guide. Frederic Ramsey, who recorded the song in 1954, described the church as a tiny congregation (“more than eight persons”) that met every Wednesday evening in the front room of the cabin of church elder Effie Hall (Ramsey 1962). Both the music and lyrics of the song are striking. The singing is propelled by the insistent rhythmic accompaniment of a bass drum, tambourine, and guitar, the latter played almost like a percussion instrument in its own right. In dramatic contrast, the lyrics project despondency (“I am tired, I am weak, I am worn”) and plead for divine help. As the lyrics of “Precious Lord, Take My Hand” suggest, African American religious observance and sacred song often focused on life’s difficulties (see Maultsby 2011). These tended to be considerable in an era when Blacks faced not only poverty, illness, crime, and the uncertainties of love, but also the ongoing consequences of slavery and the crushing effects of legalized racism. In these circumstances, gospel song offered opportunities for collective reflection upon shared circumstances, for mutual affirmation, encouragement, and support, and for expressions of solidarity. This in part helps to explain the quick dissemination of Dorsey’s song, which had reached even tiny congregations like the one in Marion, Alabama some two decades after it was first published. The emerging gospel music movement preserved many valued elements of African American musical and religious practice. For instance, Dorsey’s gospel songs were notated in a style that left room for improvisation and free extension, in keeping with African American performance practice (Maultsby 2011). Perhaps not surprisingly, the melody of the performance you have just heard differs from the published version in a manner that suggests local elaboration. Songs like the foregoing circulated through print and, later, by means of radio and recordings. In this way, they connected local communities and congregations to a broader, continental group of African American musical practitioners. Put another way, the dissemination of musical publications, and their performance from week to week in local congregations, helped to build a Black American musical public, distinguished from the Euro-American public not only by a history of slavery and experiences of racism, but also by the creative extension of shared musical practices. This is not to suggest any sort of strict insularity, however. In fact, Dorsey’s “Precious Lord, Take My Hand” became one of the most widely known gospel songs of the twentieth century, thanks in part to recordings by Mahalia Jackson and Elvis Presley, made just a few years after the one you have heard.

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LISTENING GUIDE 13.4

“PRECIOUS LORD, TAKE MY HAND”

LISTEN

Elder Effie Hall and congregation of First Independent Holy Church of God—Unity—Prayer. With Annie L. Fitts, Elma Sawyer, Jennie Jackson, and Brother Williams. Recorded Marion, Alabama, 15 April 1954

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LAVES AND FREE BLACKS seem to have begun to adopt Christianity widely in the nineteenth century (Epstein 1963) and, as they did so, they adapted it in ways that suited African American sociability and aesthetics. For instance, in the realm of worship, African American congregations tended not to practice the staider forms of observance characteristic in many other Christian traditions, rather incorporating elements such as rhythmic movement and spontaneous spoken and sung expression (Burnim 2001). Worship became a way of expressing and affirming the shared African heritage of participants, shaped by the experience of slavery and the encounter with Christianity. African Americans adopted Christianity, but in doing so they transformed it into something that was their own. The early decades of the twentieth century saw many African Americans move from rural southern contexts to urban northern ones. Coinciding with this Great Migration to the cities of the north was the emergence, in the 1930s, of a dynamic form of gospel music that fused Black gospel hymns, elements of secular popular music, and a spontaneous, unconstrained performance style (Burnim 2001). Thomas A. Dorsey, a former blues and jazz musician who moved from Atlanta to Chicago during World War I (Oliver 2011), was a key figure in this development. It was he who composed the song, following the death of his first wife in 1932. TIME

SECTION

0:00–0:06

Introduction

0:07–0:28

Chorus: Notice the prominent voice of the female leader and also the percussion that is added to the accompaniment as the singing begins.

0:29–0:49

Verse 1: See if you can hear the way that the guitar serves more percussive than harmonic functions here. There are a few moments when the chord implied by the melody is not performed on the guitar, for example at [0:37–0:39] and again at [0:46–0:47]. But the strumming pattern remains consistent and insistent throughout, driving the singers through the verse.

0:49–1:09

Chorus: Now that you’re hearing the chorus again, listen carefully to how the whole performance hangs together, with percussion and guitar driving the singers through each section of the song.

1:10–1:29

Verse 2: Now turn your attention to the subtle differences you can hear in each singer’s approach to the melody. Some singers are adding harmony, others are embellishing the melody in their own way. You should get the distinct impression of a spontaneous and partially improvised rendition of a song well known by all the participants.

1:30–2:10

Chorus: Repeated twice here for emphasis as the song comes to an end.

2:10–2:23

Conclusion: Listen for the informal way that the guitarist brings the song to an end here.

SECULAR MUSIC Listen to “Matchbox Blues” by the Texas blues musician Blind Lemon Jefferson, the subject of the next listening guide. This is an example of rural blues, a style

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Blind Lemon Jefferson. Source: GAB Archive / Redferns/Getty Images.

that appears to have come into being in the southern United States in the early twentieth century. Paul Oliver (2011) suggests that the blues drew on the solo vocal style of post-Emancipation work songs and on musical elements of Black ballads, and that the earliest blues probably circulated in the repertories of traveling musicians known as “songsters.” Jefferson’s lyrics suggest areas of similarity and contrast with sacred music. On the one hand, the blues, like gospel music, was a genre that allowed singers and listeners to reflect on unhappy circumstances. On the other, the blues was more amenable than gospel music to discussions of earthly love, sexuality, money, and the various ways they intersect—in terms both euphemistic (“If she flag my train, papa Lemon’s going to let her ride”) and direct (“Seems like my heart going break”). And while this example paints a picture of strained relationships between the sexes from a man’s point of view, these relationships were also explored by women blues singers. Although there are notable differences between the subject matter treated in sacred and secular songs, it is important not to draw too strict an opposition between them. In fact, the same musicians were often active in both areas: as we saw, Thomas Dorsey was a blues singer before he became a composer of gospel music, and Blind Lemon Jefferson sang and recorded sacred songs alongside blues numbers. Moreover, both repertoires played an important part in the work of building a Black musical public, circulating through print, broadcasts, and recordings, and connecting local, particularized practices to a broader imagined community. As noted earlier, Black musics including the blues have not had solely Black  listenerships, or remained entirely Black practices: others have been  captivated by these musics, contributed to their histories, and benefitted financially from them. Black popular genres have appealed to wider audiences for many reasons: the frank discussions of love and money in blues lyrics, for instance, address subjects of wide concern. Black popular genres have probably also been subject to the ambivalent imitation evident in the history of minstrelsy (an enthusiasm for musics that, while enjoyed, could nevertheless be dismissed as “someone else’s”). This said, ongoing interventions by Black musicians and critics continue to point non-Black North Americans toward more respectful engagement with these musics and the communities from which they come. Changes in the respect accorded to Black music and musicians are especially evident in the history of jazz. Perhaps the most iconic musicians

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LISTENING GUIDE 13.5

“MATCHBOX BLUES”

455

LISTEN

Blind Lemon Jefferson Recorded: Chicago, c. Apr. 1927

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OLLOWING A BRIEF instrumental introduction, you should be able to hear that the song moves through seven verses. Each of these verses comprises two rhyming lines, the first sung twice and the second only once. The same harmonic progression supports each verse, Jefferson elaborating it in creative ways from iteration to iteration. The tonic chord, I, accompanies the first statement of the first line. In the second statement of that line, the harmony moves to the subdominant, chord IV, for a time, and then back to the tonic. The final line moves to the dominant, chord V, and then back to the tonic. The structure of the song’s verses can be sketched as follows, using as an example the fourth verse (1:27–1:48), in which the harmonic progression is more audible than in some others: I can’t count the times I stole away and cried; Tonic (I) Can’t count the time I stole away and cried; Subdominant (IV) Sugar the blues ain’t on me, but things ain’t going on right. Dominant (V)

Tonic (I) Tonic (I)

This formal and harmonic structure is well established and might be thought of as the basic pattern elaborated in many other blues songs. It is important to note, however, that Jefferson frequently breaks away from it in other performances (see Evans 2000), as do many other blues performers. This recording was made using the acoustic equipment of the day, and existing copies tend to be well-worn. It is therefore difficult to transcribe the lyrics with complete certainty. The following transcription attempts to capture what is actually sung, but there is a chance that some words are inaccurate, or that you may hear something differently! I sat there wondering: will a matchbox hold my clothes? I sat there wondering: will a matchbox hold my clothes? I ain’t got so many matches, but I got so far to go. I said, “Fair brown, who may your manager be? Oh, mama, who may your manager be? We’ve asked so many questions; can’t you make arrangements for me?” I got a girl across town: she crochet all the time; I got a girl across town: she crochets all the time; Mama if you don’t quit crocheting, you going lose your mind. I can’t count the times I stole away and cried; Can’t count the time I stole away and cried; Sugar the blues ain’t on me, but things ain’t going on right. If you want your lover, you better pin him to your side; I say, if you want your baby, pin her to your side; continued

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If she flag my train, papa Lemon’s going to let her ride. Ain’t seen my good gal in three long weeks today; Ain’t seen my good gal in three long weeks today; Lord it’s been so long, seems like my heart going break. Excuse me mama for knocking on your door; Well, excuse me mama for knocking on your door; If my mind don’t change, I’ll never knock here no more.

Dizzy Gillespie plays his trumpet during a jam session. Source: Allan Grant/Getty Images.

in this respect are those associated with the bebop movement. Bebop, emerging in the 1940s, was a demanding style that required great musical facility and flexibility. Musicians improvised at extremely fast tempos and extended preexisting musical and harmonic forms—including blues patterns—by means of complex harmonic progressions. Although jazz musicians of previous eras had earned renown as artists, it was bebop that definitively won jazz recognition as art music. As George Lewis (1996) argues, its complexities seem to have spurred developments in other traditions of art music, including a new emphasis on indeterminacy and improvisation. As a complex, cutting-edge practice in which Black musicians played a particularly prominent role, and which emerged at a moment when Blacks were still regularly denied the same rights as White Americans, bebop made a powerful argument for equality. Although bebop innovators were by and large African American, the audience for the music extended well beyond that community. Moreover, the language of bebop was soon widely adopted by non-Black musicians, and the style is now a central component of the training of young jazz musicians. Here again, the movement of music between social groups and across social boundaries is evident. Jazz—speaking broadly here, and not simply about bebop—incorporates fundamental African retentions, including collective improvisation, and it integrates elements of older African American traditions, most notably the blues. At the same time, it has been a site for collaborations between jazz performers of many backgrounds, and has seen important contributions from non-Black and non-American musicians. It is at once a fundamentally African American practice and one that has shaped music making across North America and the globe. In this sense it epitomizes the central role of African American musics and musicians in North American music.

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NORTH AMERICAN MUSICAL CONCEPTS I often ask students in my world music classes to make a list of the songs they can sing. The respondents tend to fall into two groups, one smaller and one larger. The smaller group is made up of singers—sometimes including music students—who know a number of songs by heart. The larger group consists of people who claim to know few or no songs; “I know a bit, but not all the words,” is a common response. Almost everyone understands me to be asking whether they know any “real” songs—pop tunes, jazz standards, art songs. Only when I ask whether they know the national anthem or “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” does it turn out the larger group of students possesses a sung repertory after all: children’s games, lullabies, religious music, “Ninety-nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall” . . . Responses to that exercise suggest a number of things about how music is conceptualized in North America. First, it tends to be understood as something done by professional or specialist artists. Second, it is typically imagined to be something that circulates publicly. Music learned from intimates—schoolmates, parents, grade school teachers—is less likely to spring to mind than music available through a streaming service, sold as sheet music, or performed in concert. Third, music tends to be understood as “music for music’s sake” rather than something associated with specific functions (learning the alphabet, soothing a crying child, worshipping). This chapter has sought to balance out these commonplace understandings of music by incorporating examples of everyday kinds of music performed by non-specialists. To this end, in addition to music made by professional musicians, I have looked at congregational worship, children’s music, and music of welcome and protest. There are a number of reasons why North Americans often think of music in the ways listed above (keep in mind I am suggesting that this is a particularly common way to think of music, not the only one!). First, North American society is highly specialized economically, and this professionalization extends to the musical world. Music is widely perceived to be the purview of artists who devote the majority of their efforts to it. Second, North American society is capitalist, and the work of musicians is often understood as a commodity—a good or service available to the public by the unit or the hour. It follows that music is frequently conceived as something you purchase from iTunes or Amazon, buy a ticket for, or hear between ads on a streaming service. It is perhaps easy to understand how lullabies and children’s games—which circulate in the alternative economies of the home and playground—come to mind a little later. In short, North Americans often understand music as a set of commodities produced by specialists. These two aspects of music are loosely associated with distinct ways of valuing it: in terms of its financial success and its artistic excellence (see Bourdieu 1993). These ways of valuing are not always commensurable, and you may already be familiar with some of the tensions that arise around them in discussions of music. When an underground ensemble starts to court a mainstream audience, concerns are often voiced that they will lose their artistic integrity. Critics complain that, in seeking to fill concert halls,

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INDETERMINACY A term used to describe a compositional technique, increasingly common in Western art music composed after World War Two, in which elements of the composition are left to chance or the preference of the performer.

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symphony orchestras rely too much on old favorites, shirking their artistic duty to expand their listeners’ horizons. Lovers of old-time music express concern that fiddlers are abandoning local styles and taking up virtuosic national ones in order to win contests and cultivate professional careers (for a discussion of how local styles are defended see Goertzen 1996). Looking at the conflict from the other side, it is sometimes alleged that art music is too rarified to be of any value to a general audience; its failure as a commodity is deemed a symptom of an inability to communicate, and therefore both predictable and deserved. Again, these kinds of arguments exemplify the tensions that arise in a context where both commercial and artistic success are valued. But to devote too much space to the tensions between art and commerce is potentially to ignore two other important issues. The first is that music extends beyond the worlds of art and commerce, however dominant these may be. A culinary analogy might be helpful here. The existence of fast-food chains and high-end restaurants does not change the fact that people still cook at home—or that they garden, fish, and hunt. As this chapter has illustrated, music continues to play a role in the intimacies of family life, the playground, and the community. It acknowledges the passing of the year, assists in rites of passage, coordinates playground games, puts babies to sleep, teaches the alphabet, and enables expressions of solidarity. The second has to do with the diversity of North American music. Concepts of artistic and commercial value stand in complex and contradictory relationships, not only to one another, but also to ethnic, regional, and community priorities. They need to be understood, not as universal ways of appraising music, but rather as two particularly powerful ways of valuing among many.

SUMMARY REVIEW CHAPTER RESOURCES

As we have seen, music helps to give meaning to the passing of time, assisting in the cultural work that vests the daily, weekly, and yearly cycles with significance, and in the rituals that effect transitions between stages of the life cycle. Just as it helps to do the work of shaping temporality, it plays a part in other kinds of organization and differentiation. It integrates the efforts of persons and groups (whether under the banner of a nation or some other form of affiliation) and it distinguishes communities, ethnic groups, regions, and nations from one another. Clearly, some kinds of differentiation are more problematic than others, especially those imposed from outside by powerful forces, as the legacies of colonialism, slavery, and minstrelsy illustrate. On the other hand, many North American ethnic groups actively pursue cultural and musical paths that distinguish them from one another. In the process of considering differentiation, some interesting complications are evident. First, many North American groups have taken elements of their own musical practices from other groups, as the use of the banjo by Appalachian Whites and the presence of German dance rhythms in Mexican-American popular music indicate. Nevertheless, these musics are often closely associated

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with their practitioners, by insiders and outsiders alike. Second, despite extensive local and regional variation, widely generalized musical practices can be identified: for instance common-practice harmony, or the AABB dance form. Third, some musics seem to have been particularly appealing to people and communities from outside the originating group, as the extraordinarily broad circulation of African American musics shows. Finally, many of our examples have suggested a close connection between music, ethnicity, performance, and the everyday. North American diversity is particularly evident during heightened moments of solemnity and celebration— as for instance during the welcoming ceremonies described at the opening of this chapter. But it also involves day-to-day activity, and the ongoing work of musicians both ordinary and extraordinary.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Works Cited and Consulted Bohlman, Philip V., “Ethnic North America,” Bruno Nettl et al., Excursions in World Music, 5th ed. (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2008); Bourdieu, Pierre, The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Literature (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993); Boyer, Horace Clarence, “Black Gospel Music,” Harry Eskew et al., “Gospel music,” Grove Music Online, Oxford Music Online (accessed February 17, 2011); Burnim, Mellonee V., “Religious Music,” pp. 624–636, “African American Musics,” Ellen Koskoff, The United States and Canada, The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music, Vol. 3 (New York: Garland Publishing Company, 2001); Burrison, John,“‘James Harris’ Britain Since Child,” The Journal of American Folklore 80 (1967): 271–284; Clayton, Martin, Rebecca Sager, and Udo Will, “In Time with the Music: The Concept of Entrainment and its Significance for Ethnomusicology,” ESEM Counterpoint 1(2007): 3–75; Edet, Edna Smith, Songs for Children from New York City, Folkways 07858, liner notes (1978); Epstein, Dena J., “Slave Music in the United States before 1860: A Survey of Sources (Part 1),” Notes 20(2) (1963): 195–212; Epstein, Dena J., “The Folk Banjo: A Documentary History,” Ethnomusicology 19(3) (1975): 347– 371; Epstein, Dena J., Sinful Tunes and Spirituals: Black Folk Music to the Civil War (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2003); Evans, David, “Musical Innovation in the Blues of Blind Lemon Jefferson,” Black Music Research Journal 20(1) (2000): 83–116; Gardner-Medwin, Alisoun, “The Ancestry of ‘The House-Carpenter’: A Study of the Family History of the American Forms of Child 243,” The Journal of American Folklore 84 (1971): 414–427; Gaunt, Kyra, The Games Black Girls Play: Learning the Ropes from Double-Dutch to Hip-Hop (New York: New York University Press, 2006); Gibbon, John Murray, Canadian Mosaic: The Making of a Northern Nation (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1938); Goertzen, Chris, “Balancing Local and National Approaches at American Fiddle Contests,” American Music 14(3) (1996): 352–381; Govenar, Alan, “Blind Lemon Jefferson: The Myth and the Man,” Black Music Research Journal 20(1) (2000): 7–21; Hutchinson, Sydney, From Quebradita to Duranguense: Dance in Mexican American Youth Culture (Tucson, AZ: The University of Arizona Press, 2007); Jabbour, Alan, “Fiddle Tunes of the Old Frontier,” lecture delivered as the Joseph Schick Lecture at Indiana State

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KEY TERMS

32-bar song form Anglo-American ballad Bebop Indeterminacy Liturgical cycle Minstrelsy Monophony Música duranguense Office Quebradita Ritual Strathspey Tecnobanda Rural blues

University, December 6, 2001, accessed online www.alanjabbour. com/Fiddle_Tunes_of_the_Old_Frontier_Schick.pdf (17 February 2011); Kymlicka, Will, Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995); Lamb, Dwight, liner notes to Dwight Lamb: Joseph Won a Coated Fiddle and Other Fiddle and Accordion Tunes from the Great Plains, Rounder CD 0429 (1999); Lewis, George E., “Improvised Music after 1950: Afrological and Eurological Perspectives,” Black Music Research Journal 16(1) (1996): 91–122; Maultsby, Portia K., “African American,” Richard Crawford et al., “United States of America,” Grove Music Online, Oxford Music Online (accessed February 17, 2011); Oliver, Paul, “Blues,” Grove Music Online, Oxford Music Online (accessed February 17, 2011); Peña, Manuel. 1985. The Texas-Mexican Conjunto: History of a Working-Class Music (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press); Ramsey, Frederic, Jr., Music from the South, Vol. 9, Songs and Worship, Folkways FW02658, liner notes (1962); Simonett, Helena, Banda: Mexican Musical Life Across Borders (Hanover, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2001); Smith, Harry, Anthology of American Folk Music, Smithsonian Folkways Recordings SFW 40090, liner notes (1952); Southern, Eileen, The Music of Black Americans: A History, 3rd ed. (New York: W.W. Norton, 1983); Turino, Thomas, Music as Social Life: The Politics of Participation (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2008); Wells, Paul F., “Fiddling as an Avenue of Black–White Musical Interchange,” Black Music Research Journal 23(1/2) (2003): 135–147; Wulz, Helmut, “Musical Life among the Canadian Hutterites,” Philip V. Bohlman and Otto Holzapfel, eds., Land Without Nightingales: Music in the Making of German-America (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin, 2002). General Works on North American Music Barbeau, Marius, and Edward Sapir, Folk Songs of French Canada (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1925); Crawford, Richard, The American Musical Landscape (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1993); Diamond, Beverley, and Robert Witmer, eds., Canadian Music: Issues of Hegemony and Identity (Toronto: Canadian Scholars’ Press, 1994); Hamm, Charles, Yesterdays: Popular Song in America (New York: W.W. Norton, 1979); Hamm, Charles, Music in the New

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World (New York: W.W. Norton, 1983); Koskoff, Ellen, The United States and Canada, The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music, Vol. 3 (New York: Garland Publishing, 2001); Kallmann, Helmut, Gilles Potvin, and Kenneth Winters, eds., Encyclopedia of Music in Canada, 2nd ed. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992); a more recent online edition is available at www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/ index.cfm?PgNm=EMCSubjects&Params=U2; Laforte, Conrad, Le Catalogue de la chanson folklorique française, 6 volumes (Quebec City: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 1977–87); Lornell, Kip, and Anne K. Rasmussen, eds., Musics of Multicultural America (London: Schirmer Books, 1997); McGee, Timothy J., The Music of Canada, 2nd ed. (New York: W.W. Norton, 1985). African American Music Berliner, Paul, Thinking in Jazz: The Infinite Art of Improvisation (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1994); Butler, Melvin L., “Musical Style and Experience in a Brooklyn Pentecostal Church: An ‘Insider’s’ Perspective,” Current Musicology 70 (2000): 33–60; Floyd, Samuel A., The Power of Black Music: Interpreting Its History from Africa to the United States (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995); Gioia, Ted, The History of Jazz (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997); Hinson, Glenn, Fire in My Bones: Transcendence and the Holy Spirit in African American Gospel (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999); Keil, Charles, Urban Blues, 2nd ed. (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1991); Monson, Ingrid, Saying Something: Jazz Improvisation and Interaction (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1996). Asian Music in North America Reyes, Adelaida, Songs of the Caged, Songs of the Free: Music and the Vietnamese Refugee Experience (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1999); Wong, Deborah Anne, Speak it Louder: Asian Americans Making Music (New York: Routledge, 2004); Zheng, Su, Claiming Diaspora: Music, Transnationalism, and Cultural Politics in Asian/Chinese America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). Latino and Hispanic Music Boggs, Vernon, Salsiology: AfroCuban Music and the Evolution of Salsa in New York City (New York: Greenwood Press, 1992); Ragland, Cathy, Música Norteña: Mexican Migrants Creating a Nation between Nations (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2009); Roberts, John Storm, The Latin Tinge: The Impact of Latin American Music on the United States, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999); Sheehy, Daniel, Mariachi Music in America: Experiencing Music, Expressing Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005). Music of European Ethnic Groups in North America Bronson, Bertrand, The Singing Tradition of Child’s Popular Ballads (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976); Bohlman, Philip V., and Doris J. Dyen, “Becoming Ethnic in Southwestern Pennsylvania,” paper given at the annual meeting of the American Folklore Society in October 1985, Cincinnati; Bohlman, Philip V., and Otto Holzapfel, eds., Land Without Nightingales: Music in the Making of German-

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America (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin, 2002); Johnson, Aili Kolehmainen, “Finnish Labor Songs from Northern Michigan,” Michigan History 31(3) (1947): 331–343; Klassen, Doreen, Singing Mennonite: Low German Songs Among the Mennonites (Winnipeg: The University of Manitoba Press, 1989); Klymasz, Robert B., “‘Sounds You Never Before Heard’: Ukrainian  Country Music in Canada,” Ethnomusicology 16(3) (1972): 372–380; Lomax, Alan, The Folk Songs of North America in the English Language (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1960); Lorenzkowski, Barbara, Sounds of Ethnicity: Listening to German North America 1850–1914 (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2010); Miller, Rebecca S., “Irish Traditional and Popular Music in New York City: Identity and Social Change, 1930–1975,” Ronald H. Bayor and Timothy J. Meagher, eds., The New York Irish (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press); Quigley, Colin, “Catching Rhymes: Generative Musical Processes in the Compositions of a French Newfoundland Fiddler,” Ethnomusicology 37(2) (1993): 155–200; Savaglio, Paula, “Polka Bands and Choral Groups: The Musical Self-Representation of Polish Americans in Detroit,” Ethnomusicology 40(1) (1996): 35–47; Slobin, Mark, Tenement Songs: The Popular Music of the Jewish Immigrants (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1982). Music and Multiculturalism Greenhill, Pauline, “Backyard World/ Canadian Culture: Looking at Festival Agendas,” Canadian University Music Review 19(2) (1999): 37–46; Peterson, Marina, Sound, Space, and the City: Civic Performance in Downtown Los Angeles (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010); Cantwell, Robert, Ethnomimesis: Folklife and the Representation of Culture (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1993). Sacred Music in North America Bohlman, Philip V., Edith Blumhofer, and Maria Chow, eds., Music in American Religious Experience (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006); Shelemay, Kay K., “Music in the American Synagogue: A Case Study from Houston,” Jack Wertheimer, ed., The American Synagogue: A Sanctuary Transformed (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1986); Summit, Jeffrey, How Shall We Sing? Music and Identity in Contemporary Jewish Worship (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000); Titon, Jeff Todd, Powerhouse for God: Speech, Chant, and Song in an Appalachian Baptist Church (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1988). Monographs Focusing on Specific Genres Faulkner, Robert R., and Howard S. Becker, “Do You Know . . .?” The Jazz Repertoire in Action (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2009); Fox, Aaron A., Real Country: Music and Language in Working-Class Culture (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004); Averill, Gage, Four Parts, No Waiting: A Social History of American Barbershop Harmony (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003); Mitchell, Gillian, The North American Folk Music Revival: Nation and Identity in the United States and Canada, 1945–1980 (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2007); Wood, Roger, Texas Zydeco (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2006).

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GLOSSARY

A capella (Africa). Without instrumental accompaniment. Abhinaya (South Asia). Gestural inter­ pretation of text in dance. Aesthetics (Europe). The philosophy of artistic beauty. Afoxê (Latin America). A secular mani­ festation of candomblé, connected to carnival and performed on the streets. Afrobeat (Africa). A style of popular music incorporating elements of African music and jazz, soul, and funk. Agogô (Latin America). Double bell of West African origin, also used in Brazil. Agrarian bureaucracy (Korea). A term used to describe the social structure of pre-20th century Korea and China, denoting a complex hierarchy of farming classes, administrative classes, elites, and various outcastes. Aguê (Latin America). A gourd rattle of West African origin containing cowries, pebbles, or dry seeds and with a net covering to which additional noise makers are fixed. Akía (Latin America). An individually owned and sung song of the Suyá Indians of Brazil. Alam Melayu (Maritime Southeast Asia). Meaning “the Malay World,” and the term for the traditional homeland of the Malay people, which straddles the nation-states of Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, and Brunei. Alap (South Asia). The opening section of a raag, which is improvised in free rhythm. Angklung (Maritime Southeast Asia). A kind of pitched bamboo rattle used in gamelan angklung. Animism (Japan) (Korea). A religion that holds that material things are possessed of spirits. Anthem (Europe). A song officially adopted by an organization, school, or

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nation designed to inspire pride, often through communal choral perfor­ mance. Anthology (Europe). A published collec­ tion that is curated by an editor. Anupallavi (South Asia). Second section of kriti or other Carnatic song form. Arab-Andalusian music (Middle East and North Africa). Refers to a number of related art music traditions of North Africa that trace their origins to the Islamic courts of medieval Spain. Arabesk (Europe) (Middle East and North Africa). A popular music form of twentieth-century Turkey that drew heavily on Arab aesthetics. Debates about the value of the genre often reflected tensions about the place of Turkey between east and west. Asli (Maritime Southeast Asia). Generic word for Malay heritage that, in a musical context, refers to both a highly melismatic Malay traditional song featuring pantuns and a traditional Malay ensemble. Atabaques (Latin America). Drums of West African origin, used in Brazilian candomblé music. Austronesian (Maritime South­ east Asia).  A large group of various peoples spread across Taiwan, the Malay Peninsula, Island Southeast Asia, Micronesia, coastal New Guinea, Island Melanesia, Polynesia, and Madagascar, and who speak Austrone­ sian languages. Aymara (Latin America). Indigenous Andean language, second-largest indigenous ethnic group in the Andean region. Bajo sexto (Latin America). A twelvestring guitar used in Mexican norteño music. Balungan (Maritime Southeast Asia). Skeletal melody in Javanese music.

Banda Sinaloense (Latin America). Brass bands developed in the Mexican State of Sinaloa and playing a wide range of traditional Mexican repertory. Bandoneón (Latin America). A type of concertina commonly associated with tango music and particularly popular in Argentina and Uruguay. Bangsawan (Maritime Southeast Asia). Late nineteenth- and early twentiethcentury musical theater genre popular throughout the Malay World. Banjars (Maritime Southeast Asia). Balinese neighborhood associations that organize cultural activities, house instruments, and provide practice space. Bansuri (South Asia). Hindustani flute. Baqqashot (Middle East and North Africa). Hebrew songs sung during night vigils of Sephardic Jews. Bauls (South Asia). A community of itin­ erant musicians in West Bengal and Bangladesh who preach tolerance and oneness through music and dance. Bedhaya (Maritime Southeast Asia). Sacred court dance of Java. Bendıˉr (Middle East and North Africa). Handheld circular frame drum, often with snares. Berava (South Asia). The caste of Sinhala Buddhist drummers, dancers, and ritualists in Sri Lanka who perform all-night rituals to protect and heal communities. Bhajan (Caribbean). Hindu devotional song. Bhangra (South Asia). Pop music of the South Asian diaspora combining aspects of hip-hop, trance, and remix techniques with a traditional folk dance music from the state of Punjab. Bharata Natyam (South Asia). Major dance style in South India, derived from the dance of the devadasis.

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GLOSSARY

Bianzhong (China and Taiwan). Bronze bells from ancient China (Zhou dynasty 1046–256 bce). Outer surface of bell is struck in one of two places to produce sound, thus defined as either chime or clapperless bells. Biwa (Japan). A pear-shaped lute with four strings and four frets. Bomba (Latin America). An Afro-Puerto Rican music and dance complex. Bon-odori (Japan). A style of communal dance, often held at festivals during the obon season. Bonang (Maritime Southeast Asia). Multi-octave bronze instrument responsible for elaboration in Javanese gamelan. Bongo Flava (Africa). A style in dialogue with hip-hop that developed in Tanzania during the 1990s. Additional influences are incorporated from reggae, R&B, afrobeat, dancehall, and traditional Tanzanian styles such as taarab and dansi. Boogaloo (Latin America). A musical genre envisioned as a crossover between Latin and North American popular musics and actively pursued during the 1960s. Brahmin (South Asia). The highest varna, or caste, in Indian society. Bugaku (Japan). Gagaku repertoire accompanying dance. Bunraku (Japan). A classical form of puppet theater in Japan, founded in  Osaka in the early seventeenth century. Cabaret (Europe). A music theater tradition that usually brings music and theater together in a place where food and drink can be consumed. Cadenza (Europe). A virtuoso passage inserted at the end of a concerto move­ ment. Caja (Latin America). A large, indige­ nous snare drum used to accompany pinkillu ensembles. Also the name of a Colombian drum. Call and response (Africa) (Europe). Musical phrases that alternate between two different performers or performing groups in such a way that

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it sounds like one group is answering the other. Campus Folk Songs (China and Taiwan). Musical genre that emerged on University campuses across Taiwan throughout the 1960s. Social and musical movement directly engaged with youth responses to local and international politics. Inspired by American folk and American Rock music genres. Canboulay (Caribbean). Processions that commemorated the harvesting of burnt cane fields before emancipation. Candombe (Latin America). An Afro-Uruguayan music and dance complex. Candomblé (Latin America). An Afro-Brazilian religion heavily involving West African religious beliefs and musical practices. Canonization (Korea). The selection from a broad range of musical prac­ tices of a core of sanctioned pieces. Capitalist (China and Taiwan). Persons, ideas, policies that support, practice, reinforce, etc. a Capitalist system. Deemed anti-revolutionary within many CCP movements, especially during the Cultural Revolution. Cariso (Caribbean). Traditional French creole song. Early form of calypso, often employing insulting or satirical lyrics. Carnatic (South Asia). In music, refer­ ring to South Indian music style. Carnaval (Eng. carnival) (Europe). The festivities that accompany the weeks leading up to Lent in Catholic communities. Cavaquinho (Latin America). A small, four string instrument belonging to the guitar family and used in Brazilian choro music. CCP (China and Taiwan). Commonly used English abbreviation for Communist Party of China. Alternate abbreviation is CPC. Founded in 1921 and serves as single-ruling party of mainland China since 1949. Çeng (Middle East and North Africa). Classical Turkish harp.

Champeta (Latin America). An Afro-Colombian popular music asso­ ciated particularly with the címarron (maroon) village of Palenque de San Basilio and centered in the city of Cartagena. Changga (Korea). A turn-of-the-20th­ century genre with origins in Western folk songs and Christian hymns, modally similar to the music of central and southeastern Korea. Chanson (Europe). Popular French-lan­ guage song that emphasizes the rhythm of the French language and is often accompanied by guitar or small jazz ensemble. Charanam (South Asia). Last of three sections in Carnatic kriti or other song form. Chiang Kai Shek (1987–1975) (China and Taiwan). KMT leader of ROC (1928–1975) first on mainland China and later on the island of Taiwan. Chicha (Latin America). A popular music mixing Andean musics like wayno with the sounds of cumbia and rock music. Chime (Europe). A tune played on bells, or the sound a bell makes. Chindon-ya (Japan). Japanese sonic proxy advertisement practice, con­ sisting of colorfully dressed musicians who roam through the neighborhoods to publicize a client’s business. Choro (Latin America). An instrumental Brazilian form of popular music. Chorus (Europe). Anything sung by many people at once. Chowtal (Caribbean). A form of folk music associated with phagwa (holi) in Trinidad and having roots in Indian (Bhojpuri) folk music. Chutney-soca (Caribbean). Popular music style of Trinidad that combines elements of two earlier styles, soca and chutney. Cinquillo (Caribbean). A rhythmic cell common throughout the Caribbean, containing five separate articulations and organized into a long-short-long­ short-long pattern. Colonialism (Africa) (Caribbean). A structure of conquest and control

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GLOSSARY

in which one country gains political power over another through economic, social, and cultural exploitation, usually in pursuit of natural resources. Colotomic structure (Maritime South­ east Asia). The marking of fixed beats within the metric structure of a musical piece by particular instru­ ments; in gamelan music these include gong, kenong, kempul, and ketuk. Compadrito (Latin America). A stere­ otypical character in the early history of tango. A male of modest means who makes do, both within and outside of the law, managing life with flair. Comparsa (Latin America). The name given to the entire group of candombe revelers, including dancers, masquer­ aders, and drummers. Compás (Latin America). Within Mexican traditional musics a rhythmic gesture, spread across two equal halves, that shifts the accent patterns to create syncopation. Concerto (Europe). An instrumental work that maintains a distinction between the ensemble and soloist. Conductor (Europe). The leader of a symphony, in charge of rehearsing the ensemble and coordinating it during live performance. Does not play an instrument. Congolese Rumba (Africa). A popular genre of dance music which originated in the Congo basin during the 1940s, deriving from Cuban son. The style gained popularity throughout Africa during the 1960s and 1970s. Container rattle (Indigenous North America). Hollow containers filled with small, hard objects that make noise when they strike the sides of the containers. Conventillos (Latin America). Tene­ ments around Buenos Aires. Copla (Caribbean). An Iberian-derived verse form with four octosyllabic lines per stanza. Corrido (Latin America). Mexican ballads usually on historical or topical themes using the copla text form.

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Counter-revolutionary (China and Taiwan). Any person or thing deemed in opposition to the revolution. Indi­ viduals not supporting the revolution in word, spirit, or deed were labelled as counter-revolutionary (fangeming), suffering serious consequences. Cultural Imperialism (China and Taiwan). A form of imperialism with an emphasis on culture (including a wide range of social norms, traditions, language, music, art, etc.) in which a politically and/or economically domi­ nant group imposes standards of their culture upon another group in oppres­ sive, ethnocentric ways to advance the power and influence of the dominant group. Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) (China and Taiwan). A ten-year period of intense political campaigns led by Mao Zedong and the CCP to rapidly transform mainland China into a Socialist society through revolution. Though many initiatives came before and after this ten-year period, the Cultural Revolution is known for the extreme attempts to rid China of Capi­ talism and traditional ideology and practice through sociopolitical reform. Cumbia (Latin America). A Colombian traditional music combining Amerin­ dian, African, and European musical ideas and instruments. It has, since the middle of the twentieth century, also become an internationally important popular music. Currulao (Latin America). Afro-Colom­ bian, Afro-Ecuadorian dance in the Pacific Coast region in which marimba is featured. Dabke (Middle East and North Africa). Popular folk dance of the eastern Arab region. Dalits (South Asia). The politi­ cally correct name for the formally “untouchable” community called the Paraiyars, who traditionally performed the parai frame drum at funerals in South India and Sri Lanka. Dangdut (Maritime Southeast Asia). Popular Indonesian musical style that

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combines Western rock and Indian film music influences. Darbu¯ka (Middle East and North Africa). A goblet-shaped drum. Dastgah (Middle East and North Africa). Melodic mode in Persia/Iran. Décima (Caribbean). An Iberianderived, octosyllabic verse form with ten octosyllabic lines per stanza. The rhyming scheme is ABBAACCDDC. Devadasi (South Asia). Traditionally, a woman who was wed to a deity and danced for the deity in Hindu temples. Dhalang (Maritime Southeast Asia). Master puppeteer of the Javanese shadow-puppet play (wayang kulit). Dhikr (Middle East and North Africa). A Sufi devotional practice involving the chanting of names of God. Diaspora (Caribbean) (China and Taiwan) (Europe). A group of people who have been forcibly displaced from their traditional homeland or point of origin. Within Asian Diasporas the term is currently also used to refer to concentrated communities of ethni­ cally Asian groups living outside of their ancestral homeland, though not exclusively through forced displace­ ment. Dizi (China and Taiwan). Transverse flute, most commonly made of bamboo. Many variations of flutes exist for different regions, musical genres, and ranges. Additional mokong hole is covered by a dimo bamboo membrane providing a unique timbre. Djembe (Africa). A kind of goblet drum played with bare hands, originally from West Africa. Dondang sayang (Maritime Southeast Asia). Meaning “Love Song,” this genre is often associated with the Straits Chinese (also known as the Baba-Nonya). Eduppu (South Asia). The beginning of a phrase in Carnatic music used as a cadence for improvisations. Electronic dance music (Europe). A large umbrella category that encom­ passes music genres dominantly produced electronically and played

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GLOSSARY

back by DJs in clubs and at raves and festivals. Enculturation (China and Taiwan). The process of learning the culture of which you are a member. Includes both direct and indirect instruction, observation, and experience. Enka (Japan). Japanese popular music genre, known for melodramatic songs often about love, loss, and yearning, which took root in the 1960s and 1970s. Epic poetry (Europe). Orally trans­ mitted narrative song, often recited by experts known as bards to honor their mastery. Erhu (China and Taiwan). Two stringed bowed lute. Bow is played between the two strings. Hollow resonator box is covered by snake skin providing a unique timbre. Additionally, there is no fingerboard, allowing for a wide range of expression. Ethnographic fieldwork (China and Taiwan). Methodology employed by ethnomusicologists to conduct orig­ inal research and analysis to describe and better understand some aspect of people making music. Applies methods and theories of Cultural Anthropology with music as its focus. European Union (Europe). A political and economic union in which some, but not all European nations belong, founded 1958. Its policies aim to enable the free movement of people, goods, services, and capital across its member states. Eurovision Song Contest (Europe). An annual televised media event in which three-minute performance acts from European nations compete against each other. This popular music competition, founded in 1956, stages nationalism and flamboyant perfor­ mances and attracts animated discus­ sion among fans and critics alike. Experimental music (Europe). A broad term that encompasses various musical practices that radically oppose tradi­ tional musical institutions, aesthetics, and models of composition.

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Extended techniques (Europe). A term that refers to new ways of making music on traditional instruments, often those performance techniques developed in the twentieth and twen­ ty-first centuries. Fado (Europe). A Portuguese vocal and dance genre, oriented around the poetic interplay between words and music by a solo singer. Famously developed in Lisbon, where it was historically associated with marginal­ ized neighborhoods. Fasil (Middle East and North Africa). Multi-sectional organizational scheme for a performance of Turkish art music, featuring melodic modal unity and rhythmic modal diversity. Field recording (Europe). A recording made as part of the ethnographic research process. Historically “field­ work” required that a scholar travel to a distant site, but contemporary field recordings can be made wherever the researcher is studying music making or sound in culture. Filmigit (South Asia). Popular songs composed for Indian films. Five-line staff notation (China and Taiwan). Music notation system that includes five lines and four spaces to indicate scale degrees. Folk song (Europe). A term developed to refer to songs that had no specific authorship or were understood to be collectively authored over time. Forró (Latin America). A NortheastBrazilian traditional music that has, since the middle years of the twen­ tieth century, also found expression as popular music. Frame drum (Indigenous North America). Found across North America, frame drums are wide in diameter and shallow in depth; some are single-sided and others doublesided. Gagaku (Japan). Japanese court orches­ tral music. Gaita (Latin America). A duct flute, played in gendered pairs. The female gaita hembra has six holes and the

male gaita macho is made with two holes. The gaita is an integral part of the traditional Colombian cumbia ensemble. Gambus (Maritime Southeast Asia). A type of Islamic song having Arabic influence; the name of the plucked lute used to accompany this song. Gamelan Gong Kebyar (Maritime Southeast Asia). A modern type of Balinese music and the dance it accom­ panies, which is noted for its virtuosic and unpredictable playing style. Gamelan (Maritime Southeast Asia). An ensemble of instruments such as those found in Indonesia. Gangsa (Maritime Southeast Asia). Gendèr-type instruments used in gamelan gong-kebyar. Gasba (Middle East and North Africa). ˙ end-blown flute of North Africa, An associated with early Algerian raï. Gaucho (Latin America). Residents of the South American pampas and particularly important to the national imaginations of Argentina, Uruguay, and Chile. A term roughly equivalent to the North American cowboy. Geisha ( Japan). Female entertainers versed in traditional art of music, dance, and singing. Gendang (Maritime Southeast Asia). Barrel-shaped Malay drums. Genocide (Europe). The systematic action to destroy a people based on their ethnicity, race, religion, or race. Gharana (South Asia). A lineage of professional musicians in India who trace their heritage through certain guru-shishya relationships, and usually associated with a particular city. Ghazal (Maritime Southeast Asia) (South Asia). A form of poetry associated with Perso-Arabic Muslim culture enthu­ siastically taken up by Urdu speakers in North India and Pakistan, where it is often sung. In Maritime Southeast Asia, a Malay musical genre named after this South Asian poetic tradition. Ghost Dance (Indigenous North America). A ceremonial dance, with associated songs, that sought to hasten

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GLOSSARY

the coming of a new world of natural abundance. Gisaeng (Korea). A class of female professionals, many of whom were professional entertainers who were foundational in the history of Korean traditional music. Glottal stop (Indigenous North America). A consonant formed by the audible release of the airstream after complete closure of the glottis. Gong ageng (Maritime Southeast Asia). Large hanging gong; the most impor­ tant instrument in a Javanese gamelan and core of the colotomic foundation. Gong Chime (Maritime Southeast Asia). Term used to describe “pot gongs” of different shapes, sizes, and pitches with a raised knob in the middle, and struck with a beater. Gong (Maritime Southeast Asia). Typi­ cally a hammered bronze cymbal, suspended, and hit with a mallet. Gongan (Maritime Southeast Asia). The time between gong ageng strikes; can be thought of as a section of music that is typically repeated. Grime (Europe). A genre of popular music in the UK that has strong influ­ ences from North American hip-hop and Jamaican dancehall. Known for its rapid emceeing, quick pulse, and elec­ tronic sound. Griot (Africa). A generic French word introduced by Europeans to describe social roles that have specific names in indigenous languages. Gu (China and Taiwan). Generic term for drum. Wide variation within this larger family of drums depending on geo-cultural region, ethnic commu­ nity, and musical genre. Guacharaca (Latin America). A wooden scraper played with a fork consisting of many wire prongs mounted into a wooden handle. Part of the traditional Colombian vallenato ensemble. Guellal (Middle East and North Africa). Goblet-shaped drum of Algeria, asso­ ciated with early Algerian raï. Gugak (Korea). “National music,” a neologism generally used to describe

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music officially sanctioned as Korean traditional music. Guiro (Caribbean). A rattle made out of a vegetable gourd. Guitarrón (Latin America). In Mexico, a large acoustic bass guitar with a convex back. Gumbrıˉ (Middle East and North Africa). Three-stringed lute used in Tunisian stambeli. Guqin (China and Taiwan). Plucked seven string zither with a continued history dating back to 200 bce. Asso­ ciated with Chinese scholars and lite­ rati of elite social and political status including Confucius. Guru (South Asia). A term for “master teacher” that is prominent especially in the teaching of musical instruments. Gu¯she (Middle East and North Africa). Melodic phrases that constitute the main musical pieces of the Persian dastgah. Gusle (Europe). A single-stringed bowed instrument cultivated in south­ eastern Europe that is similar in shape to a lute. Guzheng (China and Taiwan). Plucked zither with movable bridges. Contem­ porary guzheng with 24 nylon wrapped steel strings. Gwangdae (Korea). Professional male entertainers omnipresent in the musical landscape of 19th-century Korea. Hadra (Middle East and North Africa). ˙ The ˙ musical ritual ceremony of Sufis in North Africa. Han (Korea). A complex emotional cluster often translated as “resentful sorrow.” Thought by many to be essen­ tially Korean, and by many others to be the product of modern, postcolonial efforts to create a “Korean” essence. Harmonium (Maritime Southeast Asia) (Southeast Asia). Portable reed organ, with a single keyboard and a handoperated bellows; of European origin, but used widely in parts of Maritime Southeast Asia and in the sacred and semiclassical musics of Pakistan and North India.

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Heterophony (Japan). A musical texture in which two or more performers play the same melody, but with individual variations in time and ornamentation. Hichiriki (Japan). A double-reed gagaku instrument similar to an oboe but much shorter and with a bigger reed. Highlife (Africa). A form of urban-pop­ ular dance-band music of Ghana; also played in Nigeria and elsewhere in West Africa. Hindustani (South Asia). In music, refer­ ring to North Indian musical style. Hispaniola (Caribbean). The name of the large Caribbean island shared by the modern nation-states of Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Hocket (Latin America). Interlocking pitches between two or more sound sources to create a single melody or part. Hoklo or Hokkien (China and Taiwan). Taiwanese Hokkien make up the majority of peoples on Taiwan today (roughly 75). Primarily families with origins in Southern Fujian province of mainland China that started to immigrate to Taiwan as early as the 1600s. Hulusi (China and Taiwan). Gourd free reed flute typically with one or two drone pipes. Played vertically and originating in variation across different ethnic minority groups in southwestern China and bordering nations. Increasing popularity and appearance across different geo-cul­ tural, ethnic, and musical traditions in 20th and 21st century China. Huqin (China and Taiwan). Larger family of bowed string instruments including erhu and jinghu. Idiophone (Caribbean). Scientific term for all instruments whose bodies vibrate as the principal method of sound-production, including rattles and many other percussion instru­ ments. Imperialism (Africa). The political framework in which one nation seeks to exert power over another through direct or indirect seizure of geographic,

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GLOSSARY

political, and cultural territories; the foundation for colonialism. Imperialist (China and Taiwan). Persons, ideas, policies that support, practice, reinforce, etc. Imperialism. Deemed anti-revolutionary within many CCP movements, especially during the Cultural Revolution. Incomplete repetition (Indigenous North America). A way of referring to the assymetrical repetition common in the ABB structure of powwow songs, where the long B section is heard twice, but not the shorter A section. Indeterminacy (North America). A term used to describe a compositional technique, increasingly common in Western art music composed after World War II, in which elements of the composition are left to chance or the preference of the performer. Jaliscan Harp (Latin America). A wooden, 36-string, diatonically tuned harp using nylon strings. Was once the primary bass instrument in Mariachi ensembles but has been replaced by the more flexible guitarrón. Jangdan (Korea). Rhythmic patterns that underlay Korean traditional music. Japanoise (Japan). Experimental under­ ground phenomenon from Japan with extreme aesthetics, which gained international recognition in the 1990s through transnational circulation of recordings. Jeongak (Korea). “Proper music,” a broad category which encompasses the music of the traditional upper classes. Jhala (South Asia). The concluding section of instrumental improvisation following jor in Hindustani music during which the performer makes lively and fast rhythmic patterns on the drone strings of an instrument. Jiangnan Sizhu (China and Taiwan). Folk music tradition from the Jiangnan region (southern Jiangsu and northern Zhejiang provinces) that combines silk (si) and bamboo (zhu) instruments. Jianpu (China and Taiwan). System of musical notation that uses Arabic numbers to represent scale degrees.

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Simplified version of musical nota­ tion requiring little training. Borrows many rhythmic and other articulations from five-line staff notation in modi­ fied form. Also referred to as cipher notation. Jinghu (China and Taiwan). Smallest and highest pitched bowed lute in the huqin family used in Jingju (Beijing Opera). Jingju (China and Taiwan). Opera theater commonly referred to in English as Beijing Opera due to the affiliation with the capital city of Beijing (formerly known in English as Peking). One of the many traditions of opera theater found across China. Jo-ha-kyu¯ (Japan). A musico-aesthetic principle of gagaku that governs the structural progression of a piece, or a complex suite. Joget (Maritime Southeast Asia). A lively dance form associated with old Malacca that is performed at weddings and social functions. Joik (Europe) (Indigenous North America). Traditionally unaccompa­ nied vocal practice of the Sámi that establishes and develops relationships between the singer and their envi­ ronment, including humans, ideas, and non-human components. Char­ acterized by a distinctive vocal sound, highly ornamented, and featuring extensive use of glottal stops. Jor (South Asia). The section of Hindu­ stani instrumental performance that follows alap and introduces a pulse. Jùjú (Africa). A form of Nigerian popular music associated with the Yoruba that combines electric instruments with indigenous drums and percussion. Junkanoo (Caribbean). A Bahamian festival, celebrated on Boxing Day (December 26) and New Year’s Day and including music, costume arts, and dance. Kabuki (Japan). A form of Japanese classical theater that features highly stylized song, dance, music, elaborate costume, and makeup, which devel­ oped in the Edo period (1603–1868).

Kacha¯ shıˉ (Japan). A type of Okinawan dance, often done to a fast tempo section of songs. Kakko (Japan).A small barrel drum placed on a stand and struck with an elongated drumstick; featured in gagaku. Kamanja (Middle East and North Africa). Middle Eastern fiddle (kemençe in Turkish). Kamuy yukar (Japan). Epic tales which are stories told from the perspective of gods and interspersed with non-lexical imitations of animals or other nonhumans Kamuy (Japan). Ainu deities; Ainu epic tales are called kamuy yukar. Kangen (Japan). Purely instrumental repertoire within gagaku. Katajjait (Indigenous North America). Vocal games traditionally played by Inuit women and making use of an immense array of vocal sounds, some created while inhaling and some while exhaling, some voiced and some unvoiced. Kecak (Maritime Southeast Asia). A type of dance drama accompanied by a large male chorus that chants rhythmically, while dancers stream into the perfor­ mance area depicting Ramayana char­ acters; usually performed for tourists. Kena (quena) (Latin America). An indigenous Andean end-notched flute of pre-Columbian origin with six top finger holes and one back hole. Klasik (South Asia). The classical music of Afghanistan, founded by Hindustani musicians from hereditary Muslim families who moved from North India to Kabul in the nineteenth century. KMT (China and Taiwan). Commonly used English abbreviation for Kuomintang (also Guomindang) Nationalist Party currently based in Taipei. Major political party founded in 1919 in mainland China until defeated by CCP in 1949. Komagaku (Japan). Music and dance of Korean origin in the gagaku repertoire Kompang (Maritime Southeast Asia). A type of a circular, single-sided, frame drum widely used in Malay music.

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GLOSSARY

Kora (Africa). A twenty-one-string bridge harp played by Mande jalolu. Kotekan (Maritime Southeast Asia). Often virtuosic and rapid interlocking rhythms important within gamelan kebyar performances and consisting of two parts (a lower part and a higher part) played on two separate instru­ ments. Generally, multiple pairs of instruments are simultaneously involved in performing kotekan. Koto (Japan). A thirteen-stringed zither with movable bridges. It is Japan’s main zither. Kraton (Maritime Southeast Asia). Java­ nese royal court. Kriti (South Asia). The major song type of Carnatic music, divided into three parts: pallavi, anupallavi, and charanam. Kulintang (Maritime Southeast Asia). Gong chime tradition of the Philip­ pines and associated with the island of Mondanao. Kunkunshıˉ (Japan). Notational system used for sanshin in Okinawa. Liminality (Korea). The quality of being on the threshold between states of being, characterized by loosening of social structure and the possibility of transformations such as healing and initiation. Living tones (Korea). Experimentalist Kim Jin-I’s term for describing how pitches in Korean music are not fixed, but alive—moving up and down, undergoing dynamic and timbral transformations. Llamada (Latin America). The name given to the drum ensembles featured in Uruguayan candombe. Log drum (Indigenous North America). These drums were historically constructed by hollowing out a log and fitting the cylinder with one or two drumskins. Smaller log drums tend to be played by one person, but larger ones may be played by several people at once. Lunar New Year (China and Taiwan). The beginning of the Lunar Calendar, a system based on the cycles of the moon. A major holiday of the Lunar

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Calendar and observed across many communities in East and Southeast Asia and in Asian Diasporic communi­ ties. Also referred to as Spring Festival. Lunfardo (Latin America). A particular approach to language (slang) that developed in the tenements of late nineteenth- and early twentiethcentury Buenos Aires. Associated with early tango. Luo (China and Taiwan). Generic term for Chinese gong. Name, construction, size, and style will vary across geo­ cultural regions, ethnic groups, and musical traditions. Many are known for either ascending or descending tone such as the gongs used in Jingju Peking Opera. Ma’lu¯f (Middle East and North Africa). The Arab-Andalusian art music of Tunisia. Mak Yong (Maritime Southeast Asia). Malay dance-drama form associated with the northern state of Kelantan. Makam (Europe). The system of melody types used in Turkish classical and folk music. Makam (Middle East and North Africa). Melodic mode in Turkey. Malambo (Latin America). A form of Argentine improvised male dance competition important to the early development of tango. Malays (Maritime Southeast Asia). Ethnic group that emerged along the coasts and rivers of what are today known as Sumatra (Indonesia), the Malay Peninsula (Malaysia), the Riau islands (Indonesia), Singapore, and Borneo (an island now divided between the countries of Malaysia, Indonesia, and Brunei). Mao Zedong (1893–1976) (China and Taiwan). Chairman of the CCP from 1949 until his death. Involved with CCP from early days of its foundation and was the most influential Chinese politician and leader in post-1949 China. Maqa¯ m (Middle East and North Africa). Melodic mode in the eastern Arab world.

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Mariachi (Latin America). Ensemble type originally from Jalisco, Mexico, consisting of two or more violins, vihuela, guitarrón, two trumpets, and various guitars. Marimba (Latin American). Wooden keyed xylophone, originally from Africa, widely popular in Latin America. Marímbula (Caribbean). A large box lamellaphone used as a bass instrument in a variety of Caribbean ensembles. Mawwa¯ l (Middle East and North Africa). Solo vocal improvisation in the Arab world, usually involving the singing of a piece of poetry. Melodic modes (e.g., maqa¯ m) (Middle East and North Africa). Named musical scales that have conventions for how the pitches are used in perfor­ mance and may be associated with particular moods or extramusical asso­ ciations. Mental Colonization (Africa). The internalized attitude of ethnic or cultural inferiority felt by people as a consequence of colonization. Merengue (Caribbean). Popular dance music of the Dominican Republic. Mestizo (Latin America). A relative term referring to people and a social identity involving the blending of European and Amerindian beliefs and cultural practices. Although in the past used as a racial category, it now more accurately denotes the variable incorporation of Iberian (Spanish and Portuguese) and indigenous cultural heritages. Métropole (Caribbean). From Metrop­ olis, or “mother city.” Also used for any colonizing “mother country.” Mevlevi (Middle East and North Africa). Turkish Sufi order in which a whirling dance and the preservation of Ottoman classical music play important roles. Milonga (Latin America). A style of song popular in the more rural areas of the Rio de la Plata region and influential during the early development of tango. Minyoˉ (Japan). “Folk songs,” referring to vernacular folk songs with no known

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468

GLOSSARY

individual composer. Closely related to regional (and particularly rural) origins. Minyo (Korea). “Folk song,” a term invented in Japan as a literal trans­ lation of the German volkslied, and adopted into Korean musicological discourse in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Modern Chinese orchestra (China and Taiwan). A neo-traditional musical ensemble of traditional Chinese instruments that developed throughout the twentieth century inside and outside of mainland China. Modelled on both Chinese Jiangnan Sizhu (silk and bamboo) and Western symphony orchestra traditions. Montuno (Caribbean) (Latin America). A term designating both the improv­ isatory call-and-response section of a Cuban rumba or son performance (and, later on, the same section within salsa performances) and the technique of arpeggiating chords on the piano. Montuno (Latin America). A term designating both the improvisatory call-and-response section of a Cuban rumba or son performance (and, later on, the same section within salsa performances) and the technique of arpeggiating chords on the piano. Movement (Europe). A section of a larger musical work in Western Art music. Mridangam (South Asia). Doubleheaded, barrel-shaped drum in Carnatic music. Mukkuri (Japan). Traditional Ainu instrument; a mouth harp made of bamboo. Música Duranguense (North America). A popular dance music that developed in Chicago. A variant of tecnobanda, the musical style is derived from blending banda with electronic instru­ ments. Notable for its emphasis on percussion lines and for the generally faster tempos at which the repertory is performed. The accompanying dance is characterized by western attire and a typical dance step, called pasito,

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derived from the traditional dancing in Durango, Mexico. Duranguense is popular in both Mexico and the United States. Musica mizrahit (Middle East and ˙ A late twentiethNorth Africa). century popular music genre of Israel, associated with working-class immi­ grants from Middle Eastern countries. Mu¯sıˉqa¯ (Middle East and North Africa). Music, but refers mainly to secular and instrumental musical traditions and the object of study for Middle Eastern music theorists (Persian: Mu¯sıˉqıˉ). Muʾadhdhin (Turk. Muezzin) (Middle East and North Africa). The person responsible for intoning the call to prayer (adha¯n; Turk. Azan) five times per day in Islamic communities. Naqqara¯ t (Middle East and North Africa). Small kettledrums in North Africa. Na¯ qu¯s (Middle East and North Africa). General term for metallic idiophones in the Middle East and North Africa; in Moroccan Berber music they may be played on found metal objects. Nation-state (Europe). A sovereign political entity that is centrally organ­ ized and in which the majority of the population shares a common iden­ tity (whether historical, cultural, or ethnic). Natyasastra (South Asia). An early trea­ tise on the performing arts attributed to Bharata and concerned with music, dance, theater, and drama. Na¯ y (Middle East and North Africa). End-blown flute used throughout the Middle East and North Africa. Neoliberal Capitalism (Africa). An economic model based on the unlim­ ited and unequal amassing of wealth, and emphasizing deregulation of industry, companies, and private inves­ tors. The widespread adoption of this model has resulted in the transfer of power from the public to private sectors, and has necessitated the crea­ tion of a network of economic, polit­ ical, and cultural processes in order to hold this system together.

Niraval (South Asia). A type of improv­ isation in Carnatic music that retains the text and its rhythmic articulation but alters the pitches of the melody. Noh (Japan). A form of Japanese classical drama with music and dance, which originally developed in the early four­ teenth century. Noraebang (Korea). Korean karaoke, private rooms where people gather to sing songs to the accompaniment of a song machine. Nortec (Latin America). A popular music centered in Tijuana that combines sonic markers of Mexican traditional ensembles (including bandas sinalo­ enses and norteño groups) with elec­ tronica (especially techno). Norteño (Latin America). Dance bands originally associated with northern Mexico and southern Texas, featuring three-row button accordion, bajo sexto (12-string guitar), bass, and drums. Obeah (Caribbean). Bahamian folk belief and practice derived from African religious models and concerned with controlling and deploying powers in service of both good (i.e., healing) and evil (i.e., vengeance). Obon (Japan). Japanese annual custom of honoring the spirits of the dead, based on syncretic amalgamation of indige­ nous ancestral worship and Buddhism. Odious debt (Africa). In economic theory, the practice of canceling national debt incurred by dictators. In practice, these nations often continue to carry the load of debt so as to not diminish their international standing. Often, colonizing nations claimed colonies had accrued debts during colonization that needed to be repaid after independence, thus reinforcing a cycle of economic dependence. Office (Divine Hours) (North America). Organized to correspond to the canon­ ical hours, the Office (also called the Divine Hours) is a set of daily worship services in which certain prayers, read­ ings, and chants are performed at fixed times. The services include matins, vespers, and compline, among others,

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GLOSSARY

and the practice is generally associated with Catholic, Orthodox Christian, and Anglican/Episcopal traditions, though other traditions include these services in their worship as well. Oito baixos (Latin America). An eightbass accordion used in Brazilian forró ensembles. Ongaku (Japan). Japanese word refer­ ring to the concept “music” today. Historically, the word denoted music from China, and later was readopted to refer to Western music. Oral history (Europe). The systematic process of recording interviews with people to gain insight into and study their everyday lives. Orientalism (China and Taiwan). Tradi­ tion, practice, and perspective of (primarily) 18th- and 19th-century Western European scholars inter­ ested in studying and/or imitating people and culture outside of Western Europe. Implicated in colonialist bias and ethnocentric approaches, the result is misrepresentation of people and culture and assumed superiority of the Western European peoples and traditions. Contemporary implications include the continued exotification, misrepresentation, exploitation, and invisibility of people and culture. Orisha (Caribbean): A spirit understood as one of the manifestations of God within Yoruba and Yoruba-derived religious practice. Orixa (Latin America). A spirit or deity in the Yoruba religion of Nigeria. Ornaments (Europe). Brief musical embellishments. Orquesta típica (Latin America). A mixed ensemble of European instru­ ments and indigenous Andean flutes. Ostinato (Caribbean). A repeated or cyclical melody or rhythmic pattern. Pabasa (Maritime Southeast Asia). In the Philippines, the public chanting of the narrative of the Passion of Christ, which is read during Holy Week. Palenquero (Latin America). A creole language, developed in Colombia, and mixing Spanish with Bantú.

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Pallavi (South Asia). The opening section of a Carnatic song form. Pandeiro (Latin America). A frame drum used in a variety of Brazilian musical genres. Pansori (Korea). Solo epic story-singing with barrel drum (buk) accompani­ ment. Pantun (Maritime Southeast Asia). A kind of improvised sung poetry performed as couplets or quatrains, which can be sung on its own or within certain musical genres. Pathet (Maritime Southeast Asia). Particular ways of emphasizing certain pitches within slendro and pelog in Javanese music. Pelog (Maritime Southeast Asia). The heptatonic tuning system of Javanese music. Pentatonic (Latin America). Having five pitches. Pesrev (Middle East and North Africa). ˙ Instrumental prelude in Turkish art music. Pífano (Latin America). A small flute, similar to a piccolo, often used in traditional Brazilian forró ensembles. Pinkillu (Aymara, pinkullu, Quechua) (Latin America). Andean vertical duct flute usually made of cane, but also of wood in some regions. Pipa (China and Taiwan). Four string plucked pear shaped lute; contemporary instrument typically has 29–31 frets. Variations of the Pipa date back to Qin Dynasty (221–207 bce) and commonly referenced in historical documents in the Tang Dynasty (618–907 ad.) Pitu (Latin America). Andean cane sideblown flute. Piyyut (Middle East and North Africa). Jewish liturgical poem, often sung. Plena (Latin America). A Puerto Rican folk song style associated with political and social protest and accompanied by frame drums and scrapers. Polyphonic singing (Europe). Choral music in which all of the distinctive vocal melodies have equal importance. Polyphony (Japan). A musical texture in which two or more independent

469

melodic lines are played simultane­ ously to create a coherent whole. Potlatch (Indigenous North America). A ceremony once common among the peoples of the North Pacific Coast, held to exhibit personal wealth and family status, and often commemo­ rating important events in the life of the host (i.e., marriage, death, birth of a child, etc.). Potlatch ceremonies usually included a feast and the giving of gifts. Powwow (Indigenous North America). Native North American gather­ ings at which participants perform in a number of specific dance styles, accompanied by drum song. PRC (China and Taiwan). Abbreviation for the People’s Republic of China. Pungmul (Korea). Farmers’ percus­ sion and dance bands ubiquitous throughout traditional Korea, and adopted by postcolonial protest move­ ments. Punta Rock (Caribbean). Popular music style developed by the Garifuna, featuring call-and-response vocals and a rich percussion accompaniment derived from traditional punta music. Puyuma (also known as Pinuyumayan) (China and Taiwan). One of sixteen officially recognized indigenous groups on the island of Taiwan. Qafla (Middle East and North Africa). Melodic cadence that marks the end of a section in Arab music. Qa¯ nu¯n (Middle East and North Africa). Plucked zither (spelled kanun in Turkey). Qasıˉda (Middle East and North Africa). A˙ vocal piece based on classical Arabic poetic form of the same name. Qawwali (South Asia). A genre of Sufi Muslim music popular throughout North India and Pakistan, that uses harmonium and tabla, involving the singing of Persian poems called ghazals. Qira¯ʾ (Middle East and North Africa). Recitation of the Qur’an. Quadrille (Caribbean). A dance, orig­ inating in Europe and adapted to

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470

GLOSSARY

Caribbean contexts. It was histori­ cally performed by couples arranged in a square formation and following a series of set dance figures. Quebradita (North America). A dance craze, accompanied by tecnobanda ensembles and privileging cumbia dances, which became especially popular in Los Angeles, northern Mexico, and throughout the South­ west. Characterized by western attire, hat tricks, and flips. Quechua (Latin America). The most widespread indigenous Andean language; the state language of the Inca, largest indigenous ethnic group in the Andes. Qur’an (Middle East and North Africa). The holy book of Islam, considered the word of God. Raga (South Asia). The melodic frame­ work for Hindustani classical music (spelled “ragam” in Carnatic tradition) that includes a scale in ascending and descending versions, its predominant pitch, certain standard melodic frag­ ments, and even non-musical elements like certain moods (rasa), deities, and images. Ragam-tanam-pallavi (South Asia). A form of Carnatic music that favors improvisation. Raï (Middle East and North Africa). A late twentieth-century popular music form of Algeria, Morocco, and the North African diaspora in France. Rake ’n’ Scrape (Caribbean). A tradi­ tional Bahamian music, usually played on accordion, saw, and goatskin drum. Ranchera (Latin America). A Mexican song genre with rural and working-class associations. Rasa (South Asia). The aesthetic “flavor” or feeling connoted by a raga or other artistic expression. Reba¯ b (Middle East and North Africa). Upright fiddle of one or two strings. Rebana (Maritime Southeast Asia). In Malaysia, refers to the instruments (of varying sizes) that make up a family of  frame drums including the kompang.

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Remix (Europe). A recording made of previous recordings in new config­ urations and, frequently, employing substantial editorial intervention. Rhythmic modes (e.g., ıˉqa¯ ʿ) (Middle East and North Africa). Named rhythmic patterns played in repeated cycles; they have conventions for how they are played and may be associated with particular moods or extramusical associations. Riqq (Middle East and North Africa). Middle Eastern tambourine. ROC (China and Taiwan). Abbreviation for the Republic of China. Roma (Europe). Transnational commu­ nities of people pejoratively referred to as Gypsies; active participants in Europe throughout history and across the continent. Romantic era (China and Taiwan). Particular style of Western classical art music of nineteenth century Europe. Part of a larger intellectual and artistic movement. Rough beauty (Korea). Percussionist and improviser Kim Dong-Won’s term for the stylized roughness—raspy timbres, irregular instrument construction, and so on—intentional gestures toward nature and materiality that pervade much of Korean traditional music. Ruan (China and Taiwan). Generic term referring to a plucked lute with fretted neck and four strings. Typically a round body, though instrument will vary in size, musical range, etc. depending on geo-cultural region, ethnic group, and musical tradition. Rumba (Caribbean). Cuban dance form that developed at the end of the nine­ teenth century. The typical Rumba ensemble consists of a lead vocalist, a chorus, clave, palitos, and congas. Rways (Middle East and North Africa). Traditionally itinerant musicians of the Berber communities of Morocco. Ryu¯kyu¯ Kingdom (Japan). An inde­ pendent kingdom that ruled Ryu¯kyu¯ islands (some of which comprise present day Okinawa Prefecture) from the 15th to 19th century.

Saba¯ (Middle East and North Africa). ˙ Melodic mode in North Africa. Sabar drums (Africa). A traditional instrument of Serer origin, and impor­ tant within Senegal and the Gambia. Salsa (Latin America). A style of popular Latin dance music. Sam (South Asia). The first beat in a taal. Sama¯ ʾ (Middle East and North Africa). The act of listening, associated particularly with Sufism. Samba (Latin America). The most important Brazilian musical genre, often associated with Carnival in Rio but performed in other rural and urban contexts. Sámi (Europe). Circumpolar peoples, living in northern Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia, whose musical practices in Europe mix indigenous and modern sounds. Samulnori (Korea). A new genre of percussion music for stage perfor­ mance derived from the farmers’ band traditions and the traditions of namsa­ dang travelling entertainers. Sanjo (Korea). Originally suites of improvisations for solo instrument with hourglass drum (janggo) accom­ paniment based on rhythmic patterns of generally accelerating tempo; now generally notated and played rote. Sanshin (Japan). Okinawan threestringed lute instrument, with its roots in China. Santoor (South Asia). A hammered dulcimer associated with the folk music of the Kashmir region. It is historically related to the Persian santur. Santur (South Asia). A Kashmiri hammered dulcimer now used in Hindustani music. Sarangi (South Asia). A short-necked fiddle used in Hindustani music. Sarod (South Asia). A fretless, plucked string instrument of Hindustani music originally coming from Afghanistan. Saron (Maritime Southeast Asia). A type of Indonesian instrument having thick bronze slab keys lying over a trough resonator.

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GLOSSARY

Sebene (Africa). The Sebene is a kind of instrumental bridge typically executed on the electric guitar and is a char­ acteristic element of the Congolese rumba. Sertão (Latin America). A region within Northeastern Brazil. Sesquialtera (Latin America). The combination/juxtaposition of duple and triple rhythmic patterns, both simultaneously in different instru­ mental parts, or sequentially in the same part, hemiola. Shamanism (Korea). Typically a form of animism in which ritual special­ ists channel and manage complex pantheons of spirits and their place in the material world. Shamisen (Japan). A three-stringed plucked chordophone. Shaoshan (China and Taiwan). Revered birthplace of Mao Zedong. Referenced in political propaganda of CCP as the birth of Chinese Communism due to its affiliation with Mao Zedong and as an important base during foundational years of CCP. Sheet music (Europe). Unbound printed music that is under twenty pages and, often, available for commercial purchase. Shintoˉ (Japan). Japanese indigenous faith  that reveres gods that are believed to inhabit all things in the natural world. Shishya (South Asia). A term for pupil, typically used to describe the teach­ er-student relationship in Hindustani music (guru-shishya). Shoˉ (Japan). A mouth organ. Shogunate System (Japan). Japanese system of feudal governance under a military leader (shogun), which lasted from 1600 to 1868. Shqa¯ shiq (Middle East and North Africa). Metal clappers used in Tuni­ sian stambeli. Shtetl (Europe). A small town in Eastern Europe before the Holocaust with a majority Jewish population. Siku (Latin America). Andean instrument consisting of different lengths of reed

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or cane tubes, lashed together, each tuned to a specific note. The performer blows across the top of a cane to make it sound. The siku is a double-row panpipe, divided between two players, the pitch row alternating between the two rows. Simsimiyya (Middle East and North Africa). Five-stringed lyre, used primarily in Egypt and Yemen. Sinawi (Korea). A genre of simultaneous improvisation modeled after the music of shamanist ritual, particularly of Southwestern Korea. Sinminyo (Korea). “New folk song,” an early 20th-century genre that combined quasi-traditional Korean melodies with Western instrumenta­ tion and harmonies. Sitar (South Asia). Primary plucked string instrument of Hindustani music. Site-specific composition (Europe). A work designed to be performed and experienced in a specific location. Can be in- or outdoors. Slendro (Maritime Southeast Asia). The pentatonic tuning system of Javanese music. Smudging (Indigenous North America). An act of purification in which one washes oneself with the smoke of a smoldering medicinal plant, typically sage. Social Position (China and Taiwan). How one is related to others in their society in relation to others, most notably social status and systems of power. An individual’s positioning is relational and will thus change in different contexts and settings. Socialist Realism (China and Taiwan). A Marxist theory of utilizing liter­ ature and arts (including music) for Socialist revolution. An emphasis on positive  and uplifting portrayals of Socialist society typically developed for the purpose of educating the masses. Soundwalk (China and Taiwan). A close and intentional listening to the aural environment of a particular place. Including, but not exclusively, music.

471

Ssikkim gut (Korea). A ritual dedicated to assisting a recently deceased spirit in moving on to its next life. Stambeˉlıˉ (Middle East and North ˙ Africa). A healing trance music developed by people of sub-Saharan heritage in Tunisia. Steel band (Caribbean). A band composed of oil drums that have been “tuned” to play a range of pitches. Strathspey (North America). A dance tune, associated with Scotland, in 4/4 meter. Characterized rhythmically by dotted rhythms and “Scotch snaps” (in which a short note, arriving on a strong beat, is followed by a longer note). Sufism (Middle East and North Africa) (South Asia). Form of Islamic worship involving communal ritual ceremonies featuring participatory practices such as singing, chanting, music, and dance. Suspension rattle (Indigenous North America). These rattles produce sound through objects strung closely enough together to strike one another when the rattle is moved. Suyá (Latin America). Amazonian indig­ enous community of Brazil. Symphony (Europe). An extended work for a European orchestra. Syncretism (Latin America). A term, used within religious studies, to describe processes of mixture between religious traditions. Taan (South Asia). A rapid and florid improvised melodic passage in Hindu­ stani music. Taarab (Africa). A music genre popular in Tanzania and Kenya. It is influenced by the musical traditions of the African Great Lakes, North Africa, the Middle East, and the Indian subcontinent. Tabla (South Asia). A pair of drums used in Hindustani music. Taiko (Japan). General term to refer to traditional drums in Japan. Tajwıˉd (Middle East and North Africa). Style of reciting the Qur’an based on principles of maqa¯m. Takht (Middle East and North Africa). Small traditional ensemble in the Arab

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472

GLOSSARY

world, typically including the ‘u¯d, na¯y, kamanja, and riqq. Tala (South Asia). The metric framework or system of beat cycles in Hindustani musics (“talam” in Carnatic tradition). Tama drum (Africa). The tama is a “talking drum,” or a drum whose pitch can be regulated. The player puts the tama under one shoulder and beats the tama with a curved stick held in the other hand. Similar instruments are found throughout Tamboo bamboo band (Caribbean). Bamboo percussion band that accom­ panied cariso songs during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centu­ ries. Tambor alegre (Latin America). The improvisational drum within a tradi­ tional cumbia ensemble. Tambor llamador (Latin America). The “calling” drum within a traditional cumbia ensemble, it plays a very steady rhythm, helping the other instruments to orient themselves around that beat. Tambora (Latin America). The bass drum in a traditional cumbia ensemble. Also identifies the bass drum in banda sinaloense. Tango-canción (Latin America). A form of tango music designed to be listened to instead of danced. Tango (Latin America).A form of popular dance music developed primarily in Buenos Aires and the greater Río de la Plata region. Taqsıˉm (Middle East and North Africa). Solo instrumental improvisation. Ta¯ r (Middle East and North Africa). ˙ North African tambourine. Tarab (Middle East and North Africa). ˙ Heightened state of emotion or musical enchantment associated with listening to traditional Arab music. Tarıˉqa (Middle East and North Africa). ˙ A Sufi order (lit. “path” or “way”). Tarka (Latin America). An Andean wooden duct flute. Tarola (Latin America). The snare drum in the banda sinaloense ensemble. Techno-tourism (Europe). The travel industry that is fueled by the popularity

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of live experiences, especially in clubs or at multi-day festivals, of electronic dance music. Tecnobanda (North America). A Popular dance music derived from blending the instruments and repertory of tradi­ tional banda ensembles (brass bands) with electronic instruments. Teuroteu (Korea). Korean pop balladry which originated in colonial-era Japa­ nese popular music, but changed to express the struggles of colonial and post-colonial Korean life. The Trinity (South Asia). Three foun­ dational composers of Carnatic music: Tyagaraja (1767–1847), Muthuswami Dikshitar (1775–1835), and Syama Sastri (1762–1827). Tihai (South Asia). A formulaic cadential pattern, normally repeated three times with calculated rests between each statement so that the performance ends on sam. Timbre (China and Taiwan). The quality of sound. What gives a musical instru­ ment its unique identity, especially as compared to other instruments. Toˉ gaku (Japan). Music and dance of Chinese origin in the gagaku reper­ toire. Tonkori (Japan). Traditional Ainu instru­ ment; three- or five-stringed zither that is held vertically and plucked with fingers. Traditionalization (Korea). The trans­ formation of modern music to make it resemble older musical forms. Traditionesque (Korea). Describes cultural practices that reference tradi­ tion but maintain a flexible relation­ ship to the past and its forms. Trikala (South Asia). A type of Carnatic improvisation in which the durational values of the notes in a phrase or piece are systematically augmented or diminished. Troubadour (Europe). Historically a lyric poet from southern France who performed their music in song, in contemporary usage it conjures a romantic notion of the wandering artist or minstrel.

– ‘Ud (Middle East and North Africa). Plucked lute of the Middle East, usually with four to six pairs of strings. Urumi Melam (South Asia). A drum ensemble in Malaysia and Singapore that plays fast, brash music to accom­ pany Hindu devotees undergoing penance in Hindu festivals. Ustad (South Asia). A Muslim teacher. Usul (Middle East and North Africa). Rhythmic mode in Turkish music. Vallenato (Latin America). A traditional music of Colombia that has also found expression as popular music since the middle of the twentieth century. Varna (South Asia). Division of society in Indian culture, sometimes trans­ lated as “caste.” Vedas (South Asia). The ancient texts of Hinduism, traditionally recited by Brahmins and passed down by them orally. Veena (South Asia). Primary plucked string instrument of Carnatic music. Vihuela (Latin America). In Mexico, a small five-string guitar variant with a convex back, used for percussive strumming. Villancicos (Latin America). A form of polyphonic song, either secular or sacred, important to the development of Latin American art music from the  late fifteenth to the eighteenth century. Violão (Latin America). Tenor guitar used in early Brazilian choro ensem­ bles. Vocables (China and Taiwan). Nonsemantic syllables that are sung. Waishengren (China and Taiwan). Term referring to KMT military personnel and their families in Taiwan who left mainland China as a result of defeat by CCP in 1949. Literally, “outer prov­ ince person.” Wali Sanga (Maritime Southeast Asia). Nine Sufi saints, revered for their role in spreading Islam throughout Java. Wankara (Latin America). Sometimes called bombos, these large, doubleheaded drums are used to accompany siku ensembles.

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GLOSSARY

Wasla (Middle East and North Africa). ˙ Multi-sectional organizational scheme for a performance of eastern Arab music, featuring melodic modal unity and rhythmic modal diversity. Waulking song (Europe). A song sung, frequently by women, while beating wool to make tweed. Wayang kulit (Maritime Southeast Asia). Indonesian shadow play accompanied with gamelan music. Wayno, or huayno (Latin America). The most widespread Andean mestizo song-dance genre in Peru, also performed by some indigenous musi­ cians. The song texts are strophic, and the tunes comprise short sections in forms such as AABB. Waynos are in duple meter with a rhythmic feel varying between an eighth and-two­ sixteenth-note figure and an eighthnote triplet. Westernization (China and Taiwan).

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A sweeping term for the adoption of Western European cultures outside of Europe. Most frequently one part of processes of colonization and cultural imperialism. Westernization (Korea). The variously voluntary and involuntary processes by which so-called non-Western cultures and societies adopt their versions of the qualities of “The West.” Wushi (China and Taiwan). Lion dance tradition of dancers animating a lion costume with percussion accompa­ niment (most typically large drum, gong, and cymbals). Considered good luck and bearers of good fortune, the lion dance is traditionally performed at Lunar New Year celebrations and other festive gatherings such as weddings, rituals, business openings, etc. Yangqin (China and Taiwan). Hammered dulcimer struck with bamboo beaters.

473

Tuned in chromatic scale allowing for versatility in cross-cultural musical exchanges. Most commonly attributed to Iranian santur. Yuanzhumin (China and Taiwan). English transliteration of Chinese term for Indigenous peoples of Taiwan. Literally, “original-residing-people”. Zabumba (Latin America). The drum used in traditional Brazilian forró ensembles. Zapin (Maritime Southeast Asia). An Arab-influenced dance popular throughout the Malay World. Zhangu (China and Taiwan). A style of battle or war drumming. The style that informs Song Kun Traditional Arts originates from southern China’s Guangdong region. Zouk (Caribbean). Popular music style of the French Antilles, popularized in the 1980s by the band Kassav’.

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INDEX

Note: Page numbers in italic refer to Musical Examples for Guided Listening; Page numbers in bold refer to photographs, maps or illustrations; and Page numbers in bold italic refer to Boxes Aapiichii Daaniigamowaa (powwow song) 402–403, 404, 413

Aborigines, Australia 11

a capella groups 4

Adhia, Ojas 25

aesthetics 12–13, 14, 294

Afghanistan 23, 43–45, 78; Taliban

44–45, 78, 215

Africa 255–260, 261–263, 264–267,

273–274

African American music 5, 450–452,

454, 456; bebop 456; blues music

453–454; gospel music 1–2, 3, 4, 5,

452; improvisation 452, 456; jazz

454, 456; Matchbox Blues 453, 454,

455–456; Precious Lord, Take My

Hand 452, 453

African music 5, 254–255, 256, 260–261,

263–265, 267–271, 272–273, 274–275,

280, 282, 285; instruments 263, 274,

281, 349, 450

African women 279–280, 284–285

Afrobeat 270, 272–273, 281

Afro-Caribbean communities 5

Afro-Colombian music 324–325;

champeta 322–323, 324, 325,

326–327, 328

ah∙wash (Berbers festival music) 88

Ainu people, Japan 180–181, 208; Ainu

music 181, 182–183, 184

alam Melayu (Malay world) 222–223,

224, 225

alap (Hindustani music) 28

alapanam (Carnatic music) 33

Algeria 85–87, 88

Al-Kindi 72

Alternative for Germany 318–319

Altimet 230

Amerindians 329–330, 337, 345, 384;

Aymara people 337–338; Suyá people

338–339

Amrith, Sunil 233

9781138359369_ROMMEN_NETTL_World_Music.indd 474

Ancient Man (rake ’n’ scrape singer) 362–363, 366

Andalusia 60

Anerezz ouala nekhnou (Better to Break

than Bend) (Berber music) 88

angklung (Balinese gamelan) 250

animist cosmology, Ainu people

180–181

anthologies 302

anupallavi (second verse) (Carnatic

music) 33

Apartheid, South Africa 4, 5

Arab-Andalusian music, Tunisia 60

arabesk (Turkish music) 83, 84, 312

Arab music 68, 71, 81; t∙arab 72, 77,

79–80 Arab Spring protest movements 89–91 Argentina 331; tango 331–332, 333, 334

Arirang (Korean film, 1926) 138

Arirang (Korean music) 137–139,

139–140, 163

Arirang Festival, North Korea 171

Armed Forces Network Korea 166

art music 3, 69, 80, 456, 458; Latin

American 339–340; Western 10, 11,

161–162

Ashkenazi Jews, Israel 85

Ashley, Clarence 442, 443, 444

asli (Malay heritage) 228–229

atabaques (candomblé drums), Latin

America 344

Atilla the Hun 376

Austronesians 230

avaz (Persian music) 71

A v Chuzhoho Sokola (harvest song) 311

Awadi, Didier 259, 274–275, 276, 278;

Oser inventer l’avenir 258, 258–259;

Presidents d’Afrique album 274–275,

276, 277, 278, 279

Aymara (Amerindian people), Latin America 337–338

Azad, Arvind Kumar 31

Aznavour, Charles 312, 313

Bad Girls (video, M.I.A.) 53

Bae Il-dong (pansori singer) 150, 151,

152

Bahamas 360–361, 363, 381, 387;

junkanoo 381–382, 387, 436; obeah

363, 365; Rake ’n’ Scrape festival

360–362, 363, 365–366, 398

Bahamian music 366, 369, 394; calypsos

369–370, 374; goombay 369–370;

rake ’n’ scrape 362–363, 364–365,

366, 368, 369

baila (Sri Lankan music) 49

Baily, John 43, 44, 45

Balasaraswati, Tanjore 37

Bali 221, 246–247, 250–251 bali, Sri Lanka 47

Balinese gamelan 236, 247, 250, 252;

instruments 247, 249; music 247,

248–249, 249–250

Band Aid (1984) 266–267 banda music 445

bandoneón (concertina), Latin America

332

Bangladesh 21, 22, 45–46, 233

bangsawan (Malay music) 39,

225–226

banjo 444

Banning of Records, The (calypso) 376

Banturiti (kriti, Tyagaraja) 34–35 baqqashot (Hebrew songs) 81

Basho¯, Matsuo 205–206, 208

Bastiansz, Wally 49

Bataks, Indonesia 230–231 Batsin bu dünya (Turkish arabesk) 84

Bauls (itinerant musicians) 45–46 Baul Sangeet (Baul music) 46

Bautista, Julius 231, 232

Beatles 19, 27, 32

bebop (African American music) 456

03/09/20 1:09 PM

INDEX

bedhaya (sacred dance) (Javanese gamelan) 244, 245 Bedouin poetry 71–72 Beethoven, Ludwig van 297–298 behavior 15–16, 97 Belafonte, Harry 374 Belize, Caribbean 385 Bengal 23, 45–46 berava, Sri Lanka 47, 48 Berbers, North Africa 72, 87–89 bhangra (diasporic music) 19, 53 Bharata Natyam (Indian Dance) 37 Bhosle, Asha 40 Big Ben, UK 291, 293, 294, 295, 296, 299 biguine (dance band music), French Antilles 382–383 Bi Kidude (Fatuma Binti Barka) 284–285 Black President see Fela Kuti (Nigerian musician) Blind Boys of Alabama (African American gospel group) 1–2, 3, 4, 5 blues music (African American music) 453–454; Matchbox Blues 453, 454, 455–456 Bohlman, Philip V. 65 Bollywood (Indian film industry) 23, 39–40, 227 bonang (pot-gongs) (Javanese gamelan) 241 bon-odori (folk dance), Japan 190, 191–193, 194, 195 boogaloo 335, 336 Book of Songs, The (kita¯b al-agha¯nˉı), Islamic Empire 64 Born Under Punches (Kidjo, 2016) 281–282 Bouazizi, Mohamed 90 Brahmins, India 24 Brandenburg Gate, Berlin, Germany 317, 318 brass bands 301 Brazil 49, 340, 344, 350–351; candomblé 344–345; choro ensembles 350; forró 350, 351, 352 British Empire 292, 293–294 Browner, Tara 421 Brunei 235 Buddhism 19, 21, 46, 47–48, 99; music 21, 23, 47 Bugis group (Sulawesi group) 234

9781138359369_ROMMEN_NETTL_World_Music.indd 475

Bunga (Flower) (Noor Ayu Fatini) 230 Burkina Faso 277–278 Byl, Julia 230–231 Cálkko-Niillas (Pirttijärvi, 2002) 306, 308 call and response 281 calypsos 7, 372–373, 376; Bahamas 369–370, 374; Edward VIII 374; New York 374, 375; No, Doctor, No 372–373; Trinidad 371, 373, 375–376 campus folk songs, Taiwan 118 Canada 430–432; Caribana, Toronto 393, 394; ethnic music 430–432, 435; fiddle music 447; Foreign Night,Winnipeg 434; Indigenous children 407; Indigenous peoples 400–401, 405, 406, 432–433; powwow club, Winnipeg 400–401, 402, 403, 404–405, 407 canboulays (carnival processions), Trinidad 370 candombe, Uruguay 342–343 candomblé, Brazil 344–345 Caresser, Lord 374 Caribana, Toronto, Canada 393, 394 Caribbean 50, 367–369, 382–387, 391, 393–394, 396, 398 Caribbean music 366, 367, 368, 369–371, 381, 391, 393–395, 396, 397, 398; see also Bahamian music; calypsos; Dominican Republic; French Antilles; rumba (Cuban dance); steel bands; Trinidad Cari Hiburan (Malay music) 225 cariso (French creole song), Trinidad 370, 371 Carnatic music, South India 20, 25, 31, 32–33, 34–35; improvisation 33, 36; instruments 33, 35–36 caste system (varna), India 24, 37 Cat Island festival see Rake ’n’ Scrape festival, Bahamas Caymmi, Dorival 351 ceremonial dancing, Indigenous 406–407, 410, 419–420 Chakraborty, Kaushiki 25 champeta (Afro-Colombian dance music) 322–323, 324, 325, 326–327, 328 changga (Korean music) 163 chanson 311, 312

475

charanam (final, long verse) (Carnatic music) 33 Chen Chun-bin 117, 118, 119–120 Chen Jiebing (erhu musician) 99, 100–101, 102, 103, 104 Chernobyl Atomic Energy Station disaster, Ukraine 309–310 Chiang Kai Shek (CKS) Memorial Hall, Taiwan 122, 123, 124 children’s music, North America 438, 439 China, People’s Republic of (PRC) 94–95, 96, 97, 98, 99–100, 109, 134, 135; Cultural Revolution 98, 99, 100, 102, 103, 104; modern Chinese orchestra 98, 105–106, 128 chindon-ya (street advertisement band), Japan 174–178, 208 Chinese language 94–95, 116 Chinese music 94, 96, 99–100, 103, 104–106, 128, 149; court music 153; Dance of the Golden Snake 99, 100, 104, 106, 107, 108; The East is Red 102, 103; March of the Volunteers 104; Shaoshan 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 128 Chinese Music Ensemble, United States 98, 104, 106–107, 108 Chornobyl Songs Project: Living Culture from a Lost World (2015) 310–311 choro ensembles, Brazil 350 chowtal (folk music), Trinidad 397 Christian music 23, 81, 436, 437 chutney (folk music), Trinidad 389, 390 chutney-soca, Trinidad 389 Civil Rights Movement, United States 4, 5 cleansing funeral ritual (ssikkim gut), Southwest Korea 144–145, 146 coal mining, Japan 193, 194, 195 Coke Studio 23, 49–50 Colombia 336, 354; cumbia 353–354; vallenato 349–350 colonialism 4–5, 278, 329, 381, 405, 407, 410, 425 colotomic structure 239, 240 Columbia World Library of Folk and Primitive Music (1955) 303 Compaoré, Blaise 278 composition 6–8, 10 conceptions, musical 16, 97–98 Congo 275–276, 276, 281–282

03/09/20 1:09 PM

476

INDEX

Consangración de Cariña (merengue) 392–393 Consuelate Como Yo (rumba) 378–380 container rattles (Indigenous

instrument) 412

Cortijo y su Combo, Puerto Rico 335–336 court music: China 153; Japan 195–197,

198–200, 200–201; Korea 151,

153–154

Cuban music 336, 377, 380; rumba 376,

377, 378–380, 380–381

Cultural Properties system, Korea 137,

145, 147

Cultural Revolution, China 98, 99, 100,

102, 103, 104

culture 12–13, 116, 149; Ainu people

180–181

cumbia (Latin American music)

353–354, 355–356, 356

currulao (Latin American dance) 340,

341–342, 342

Currulao Bambuco (Latin American music) 341–342 Da’an Park, Taiwan 125, 126

Dalits (untouchables), India 24, 37–38,

51

dance 3, 15; India 32, 33, 36, 37; North

Africa 58–59, 60, 61

Dance of the Golden Snake (Chinese

music) 99, 100, 104, 106, 107, 108

dangdut (Indonesia) 13, 227–228, 252

Dasa, Purandara 32

dastgah 68–69, 71

Decimus, George 383

Democratic People’s Republic of Korea see North Korea (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) Densmore, Frances 413, 414

devadasis 36–37 Devi, Rukmini 37

Diamond, Beverley 422

diasporas 19, 50–51, 53

difference 4, 6, 12

Dikshitar, Muthuswami 32

Distressed Ship Carpenter, The (North

America music) 444

Dominican Republic 390–391, 392–393 dondang sayang (Love Song), Southeast

Asia 229

9781138359369_ROMMEN_NETTL_World_Music.indd 476

Fado 311, 312

Fakir, Lanon 46

Family Islands, Bahamas 360–361

Fang Yunqing 112, 114–115, 116

Fania Records 336

fasil (Turkish music) 68, 69

fas∙l, Iraq 68

Fela Kuti (Nigerian musician) 270–272,

272–273 Eanan (Indigenous music) 423–424, 424, fiddle music: Canada 447; North America 446–447, 448–449, 449

425

East Asia 94–95, 116, 130, 133, 134, 162, filmigit (film song), India 39

Fjellheim, Frode (Sámi musician) 309

174

flutes 299

East Indians, Trinidad 388–389, 390

folk music 302, 303; Japan 190, 191–193,

East is Red, The (Chinese music) 102,

194, 195; Korea 138, 163; Taiwan 118;

103

Trinidad 389, 390, 397

ecstatic shamanism (Korean music) 140,

Foreign Night, Winnipeg, Canada 434

141–142, 145

forró, Brazil 350, 351, 352

Edet, Edna Smith 438

frame drums (Indigenous instrument)

Edward VIII (calypso) 374

411

Egypt 75, 90–91

French Antilles 13, 382–384

ektara (one-string) (Baul music) 46

Fuego de Cumbia (Latin American

El Choclo (tango) 333

music) 355–356 electronic dance music 315–316

El Général 89–90

gagaku (Japanese court music) 195–197, Elizabeth Tower, UK 291–292,

198–200, 200–201

295, 296

gagyageum studios, Korea 148

Ellis, Alexander John 14

gamelan (gong-chime orchestra) 9,

enka (Japanese music) 164

222, 235, 236–240; see also Balinese

Ensemble (Presidents d’Afrique album,

gamelan; Javanese gamelan

Awadi, 2010) 275, 276

gamelan belaganjur (Balinese gamelan)

Epstein, Dena 450, 451

250

erhu (two-stringed bowed lute), China

gamelan degung (Javanese gamelan) 245

98, 102, 103

gamelan gong kebyar (to flare up)

Essam, Ramy 90, 91

(Balinese gamelan) 247, 248–249, Etenraku (Japanese court music)

198–200 249–250

ethnic music: Canada 430–432, 435;

game songs (children’s music) 438, 439

North America 434, 435, 442,

Garifuna (Garinagu) people, Caribbean

458–459

384–387

ethnography 9

gäta bera (drum), Sri Lanka 48, 49

ethnomusicologists 2, 14, 15–16, 46,

Gaunt, Kyra 438

116, 117, 120

Gencebay, Orhan 84

ethnomusicology 4, 9, 10, 14, 16, 47

genocide 313

Europe 292–293, 294, 296, 301–302,

Geowi-ui kkum (A Goose’s Dream)

306, 313–316, 317–319 (South Korean music) 167–168 European music 297–299, 302–305, Germany 315, 317–319 311–312, 314–316, 319, 339

Ghannıˉlıˉ Shwaya Shwaya (Sing to Me a European Union 292, 293, 314

Little) 78, 79–80

EXIT Festival, Serbia 315

gharanas (musical lineages) 20–21, 25,

exoticism 3

27

Expensive Shit (Nigerian music) 271

ghatam (clay pot) (Carnatic music) 35

Dorsey, Thomas A. 452, 453, 454

Do They Know It’s Christmas? (Band

Aid, 1984) 266

dream time 11

Drum Dance (Indigenous dance) 420

Dub Ainu Band (Ainu music), Japan 181,

182–183

Dutcher, Jeremy 408, 409, 409–410

03/09/20 1:09 PM

INDEX

ghazals (poetry form) (Malay music) 40, 42, 225 Ghost Dance (Indigenous dance) 406, 407, 410, 419–420 Gillespie, Dizzy 456 Girl, Woman, Other (Evaristo, 2019) 296, 297 Glory to Hong Kong 96 gong ageng (Balinese gamelan) 247 gong ageng (Javanese gamelan) 240, 243 gong chime orchestras see Balinese gamelan; gamelan (gong-chime orchestra); Javanese gamelan Gonzaga, Luiz 351 goombay (Bahamian music) 369–370 gospel music (African American music) 2, 4, 452; Blind Boys of Alabama 1–2, 3, 4, 5 Greene, Oliver 385 griot 268, 269 gu¯she melodies 69 Guilbault, Jocelyne 383 gumbrıˉ (three-stringed lute) 74 Gutiérrez de Padilla, Juan 339 Guy, Nancy 109 h∙ad∙ra (Sufi music) 57–60, 74 haiku, Japan 205–206, 208 Halbouni, Manaf 318 Hall, Stuart 396 han (resentful sorrow) (Korean music) 150–151 Ha-perah∙ Begani (Israeli music) 85 harmonium (hand-pumped reed organ) 30–31, 224 heavy metal music 212–214, 216 Hebrides Islands 304–306 Hebrides Suite, The (Lane, 2013) 305–306 Herder, Johann Gottfried 302 Hidalgo, Gutierre Fernandez 339 Hindu devotional drumming see urumi melams Hinduism 21, 51, 246 Hindustani music, North India 11, 16, 20, 25–31, 32, 33, 40, 43, 46; improvisation 11, 33; instruments 28–31; raga 11, 27–28, 29; tala 11, 28 Hindu temple music 23 hip-hop 229–230, 274–275, 278 Hiroshima Peace Bell, Japan 206, 207, 208

9781138359369_ROMMEN_NETTL_World_Music.indd 477

Hiroshima Peace Memorial, Japan 206–208, 207 Hiyami Kachi Bushi (Let’s rise up! Let’s go for it!) (Okinawan song) 188–189, 189, 190 Hokkaidö, Japan 179, 180–181 Hollywood films 264–265 Home Forever (Taiwan film) 117, 119–120 Hong Kong 96, 97, 106, 128 House Carpenter, The (North American music) 442, 443, 444 Hugo, Victor 261–262 Huimangga/Song of Hope/These Troubled Times (Korean music) 163 Hutterites, North America 446 Ibarra, Susie 251 idiophones (steel pans) 374–375 imaginaries 421–422 improvisation 33, 41–42; African American 452, 456; Carnatic 33, 36; Hindustani 11, 33; Korean 92, 137, 145, 147, 148, 155; Middle East 69, 71–72, 92; North Africa 71–72, 92; South Korea 148; Southwest Korea 145, 146, 147, 148 Independence Cha Cha (Kabasele) 276 India 18–19, 20, 21, 22–23, 24, 233; Bollywood 23, 39–40, 227; dance 32, 33, 36, 37; devadasis 36–37; diasporas 53; music 19–20, 22, 24–25, 46 Indian Tamils 50–51 Indigenous cultures 116–118, 120; Taiwan 98, 120, 128 Indigenous music 98, 120, 405, 406, 407, 408, 409–410, 422–423; Ghost Dance 406, 407, 410, 419–420; instruments 410–413, 426; Katajjait 416, 417–418; Mehcinut 408, 409; North American 413–414, 415–416, 418–419, 425–426; powwow songs 401, 402–403, 404, 410, 411, 413–414, 415–416; We Are the Halluci Nation 422, 425 Indigenous peoples 408–409, 418, 421; Canada 400–401, 405, 406, 407, 432–433; children 407; North American 404–405, 415, 419, 434; Southeast Asia 232–233; Taiwan 98, 109, 116, 117; United States 405, 433

477

Indonesia 212, 221, 224, 227, 230–231, 234, 235; heavy metal music 213–214; Islam 214–215 Infante, Pedro 347 Insooni (Korean soul singer) 167 instruments see musical instruments instruments classification 14–15 Inuit throat singing 8, 425 ıˉqa¯’ (usul) (Turkish music) 66–67, 70 Irama, Rhoma (Oma Irama) 227 Iran 71 Irha¯l! (Get Out!), Egypt 91 ‘I¯sa¯wiyya ritual, Tunisia 57–60, 61–62, 75 isicathamiya 3–4, 5 Islam 21, 40, 64, 65, 73, 74, 77, 214–215, 437; music 78, 80, 223–224 Islamic Empire 63, 64 Island Boy (Bahamian music) 394 Israel 65, 85 Iyomante (Ainu religious ceremony), Japan 180 Jainism 21 Jamaican music 395, 396–397 Jankowsky, Rich 215 Japan 135, 174, 176, 177, 179, 180, 190–191, 200, 205, 208–209; Ainu people 180–181, 182–183, 184, 208; coal mining 193, 194, 195; haiku 205–206, 208; Hiroshima Peace Bell 206, 207, 208; Hiroshima Peace Memorial Ceremony 207, 207–208; Korea 134, 135; obon rituals 190, 191, 206; religion 180, 190–191; Ryu¯kyu¯ Kingdom 184–185; sanjo 148; Southeast Asia 235 Japanese language 205 Japanese music 149, 163, 174–176, 178–179, 197–198, 208–209; bon­ odori 190, 191–193, 194, 195; chindon-ya 174–178, 208; gagaku 195–197, 198–200, 200–201; Japanoise 201–205; military bands 176–177; Noise artists 203, 204; Tanko¯ Bushi 192–193, 192–195 Japanoise (Japanese music) 201–205 Java 221, 238, 246, 247; tuning systems 238–239, 240

03/09/20 1:09 PM

478

INDEX

Javanese gamelan 7–8, 236–237, 252; gamelan instruments 240–241, 243; music 238–241, 241, 242–243, 243–246 jazz (African American music) 454, 456 Jefferson, Blind Lemon 453, 454, 455–456 Jeongseon Arirang (Korean music) 138, 139 Jeritan Batinku (My Inner Scream) (Ramlee, 1962) 227 Jewish music 66, 81, 82, 83 jhaptal (Hindustani music) 11 Jiangnan Sizhu (Silk and Bamboo) (Chinese music) 107 Jim Crow laws, United States 4 joget (dance form) (Malay music) 224–225 Joglekar, Ajay 25 joiks (vocal practice) (Sámi people) 306–309, 423, 424–425 Jokowi (Joko Widodo) 212, 213–214, 215, 216, 220 Judaism 436, 437 Jugni (Bollywood film, 2011) 39 junkanoo (festival), Bahamas 381–382, 387, 436 Kahn, Joel 234 kalenda (stick-fighting), Trinidad 370 Kandyan Dance, Sri Lanka 48 Kassav’ (French Antilles band) 383–384 Katajjait (vocal games) (Indigenous music) 416, 417–418 Kecak dance, Bali 250ph, 251 kempyang (gong chime) (Javanese instrument) 241 kenong (pot-gongs) (Javanese instrument) 240 Kerbaj, Mazen 301 ketawan pieces (Javanese gamelan) 242–243 kethuk (pot-gong) (Javanese instrument) 241 Khan, Ali Akbar 26, 27 Khan, Baba Allaudin 26–27 Khan, Nusrat Fateh Ali 21, 42 Khan, Sawan 50 Khusrao, Amir 40 Kidjo, Angélique 281–282, 282, 284 Kim Il Sung 170

9781138359369_ROMMEN_NETTL_World_Music.indd 478

Kim Jang-hoon (South Korean musician) 167–168 Klasik (Afghanistan music) 43–44 kompang (Malay frame drum) 217, 218, 219–220 Konkon (Ainu music), Japan 182–183 Korea 130, 132–137, 144, 145, 166, 172; shamanism 140–143, 145; Western art music 161–162 Korean culture 133, 135, 140; South Korea 136 Korean music 130–132, 134, 135, 137–138, 140–141, 143, 147, 166–167, 172; Arirang 137–139, 139–140, 163; changga 163; court music 151, 153–154; ecstatic shamanism 141, 142–143, 145; han 150–151; improvisation 92, 137, 145, 147, 148, 155; Jeongseon Arirang 138, 139; pansori 149–151, 152; popular music 162–163, 164, 165, 166, 167–168, 172; pungmul 156–158, 159, 160; pungnyu 154–155; royal rituals 154, 155; samulnori 158–159, 160, 161; sanjo 147, 148; sinawi 146–148; teuroteu 164, 165, 166 kotekan (interlocking rhythms) (Balinese gamelan) 249 K-pop (Korea) 13, 166, 167 Kraftwerk 315, 316 Krash Krozz 229 Krishna, T.M. 36 kriti (Carnatic music) 33, 34–35 kulintang (gong chime orchestra), Philippines 237 Kulthu¯m, Umm 77–78, 79 Kunst, Jaap 239 Labor Day Carnival, New York 393, 394 Ladysmith Black Mambazo (South African vocal group) 1–2, 3–4, 5 La Malaguena (mariachi ensemble) 348 Lamb, Dwight 447, 448–449 Lane, Cathy 304–306 La patrie ou la morte (Presidents d’Afrique album, Awadi, 2010) 277, 278 Lassido Boys (Cat Island band) 363 Latin America 328–330, 350, 354; Aymara people 337–338; Suyá people 338–339 Latin American music 325, 327–328,

330, 335–336, 337–340, 345, 351, 357, 394–395; art music 339–340; cumbia 353–354, 355–356, 356; currulao 340, 341–342, 342; forró 350–352; instruments 332, 337, 340, 342–345, 346–347, 349, 350, 351, 353; nortec 352–353; rumba 376, 377, 378–380, 380–381; salsa 335, 336, 394; tango 331–335, 333; vallenato 349–350; wayno 347–349 Lema, Ray 268 Levine, Victoria 414 Lewis, George 456 Limbak, Wayan 251 Linda (musica mizrah∙it), Israel 85 lion dance (wushi) drumming 98, 110, 111, 112–113, 114, 116, 128 lion dances 110–111, 114 Lion King, The (film, 1994) 265–266 living tones (Korean music) 147 llamadas (candombe drums) 342–343 log drums (Indigenous instrument) 411, 412 Lomax, Alan 303–304, 306 London 295–297; Notting Hill Carnival 393, 394 Lord, Alfred 302 Louis Riel (opera, Somer) 416 Love Alone (Bahamian calypso) 369 Lui Baozhong 100, 101, 102, 103 Lumumba, Patrice 275, 276 Maathai, Wangari 279–280 Maceda, José 251 McNally, Michael 415, 426 McPhee, Colin 251 Madrid, Alejandro 352 makam (Turkish music) 83–84, 311 Makeba, Miriam (South African singer) 269–270 Mak Yong (Malay dance-drama) 228 Malay films 226, 227 Malay music 220, 222, 223–225, 228–229; bangsawan 39, 225–226; Cari Hiburan 225; dangdut 227–228; instruments 217, 218, 219–220, 223, 224 Malays 222–223, 230, 234 Malaysia 218, 221, 222, 224, 229–230, 233, 234, 235; Orchestra of Ethnic Chinese 106; urumi melams 51, 52 ma’lu¯f, Tunisia 60

03/09/20 1:09 PM

INDEX

Mama Africa see Makeba, Miriam (South African singer) Mangeshkar, Lata 39–40 Mao Zedong 99, 101–102, 103 maqa¯ms, North Africa 7, 66, 72, 77 Märak, Maxida 423, 424 March of the Volunteers (Chinese music) 104 Marewrew (Ainu music), Japan 184 mariachi ensemble, Mexico 346–347, 348 marimba (Latin American instuments) 340 Marx, Karl 159 Matchbox Blues (African American music) 453, 454, 455–456 Matoub, Lounès 88, 89 mawwa¯l (vocal improvisation) 71 Maya Arulpragasam (M.I.A.) 20, 52–53 Mehcinut (Death Chant) (Indigenous music) 408, 409 melodic modes 66, 67, 68–69 Mennonites, North America 440, 441 merengue, Dominican Republic 390–391, 392–393 Merriam, Alan 14, 15, 16, 97 Merzbow (Japanoise musician) 201 mestizaje 328, 345–349 Mevlevi (Whirling Dervishes) (Sufi order), Turkey 75–76, 83 Mexico 340, 352, 445, 446; cumbia 353, 356; mariachi ensemble 346–347, 348; nortec 352–353 Middle East 21, 40, 63–65 Middle East music 25, 66, 69, 72, 80, 81, 83, 91–92; improvisation 69, 71–72, 92; melodic modes 66, 67, 68–69; rhythmic modes 68, 70 Mighty Sparrow 373, 374; No, Doctor, No 372–373, 374 military bands, Japan 176–177 minstrelsy, North America 451 Miss Sue from Alabama (children’s music) 438, 439 mobility 312–313, 314–315 modal systems 27–28 mode 27 modern Chinese orchestra 98, 105–106, 128 Morehead, John Motley 288–290 Morocco 82, 83, 88

9781138359369_ROMMEN_NETTL_World_Music.indd 479

Moshe, Haim 85 movements 10, 314–315 mridangam (drum) (Carnatic music) 35 Mrs. Dalloway (Woolf, 1925) 295, 296, 297 mugam (dance in shaman’s clothing), Korea 143 Mughale-Azam (The Emperor of the Mughals) (Bollywood film, 1960) 39 Müren, Zeki 312 music 6–10, 13–14, 76–77, 148–149, 159, 294–295, 297, 302, 440, 457–458 música duranguense (dance music), North America 445, 446 musical contexts 5, 8, 10 musical difference 4, 5 musical elements 7–8, 9–10, 11, 14–16 musical healing practices 69, 72–73 musical instruments 74, 299–301; Africa 263, 274, 281, 349, 450; Balinese gamelan 247, 249; Caribbean 368, 396, 397; Carnatic music 33, 35–36; China 98, 99, 103, 105; Chinese Music Ensemble 107; gamelan 237–240; Hindustani 28–31; idiophones 374–375; Indigenous peoples 410–413, 426; Japan 175, 176, 177, 186–188, 197; Javanese gamelan 240–241, 243; Korea 144; Latin America 332, 337, 340, 342–345, 346–347, 349, 350, 351, 353; Malay 217, 218, 219–220, 223, 224; Middle East 65; North America 444, 445; Qawwali 42; rumba 377; Sri Lanka 48–49; Sufi music 42, 58, 60; Trinidad 370–371 musical materials 8, 10–11 musical practices 3, 5 musical sameness 4 musical tourism 314 musica mizrah∙it, Israel 83, 84–85 music industry 3 Mwana, Tshala 285 na’at (Qawwali) 41–42 Nadi Singapura 217–218, 220 Naluwan song (Puyuma song), Taiwan 118, 119–120 Namakula, Halima 284 nasyid (Malaysian Islamic singing) 223–224

479

National Gugak Center, South Korea 136–137 Nattiez, Jean-Jacques 416 Natyasastra, India 24 Naughtius Maximus 229 Nazam Pribumi, Malay 219–220 Nazi Germany 314 Ndod’emnyama (Beware Verwoerd) (South African music) 269, 270 Nettl, Bruno 6, 9–10, 11, 13, 14, 117, 414 Neuman, Daniel 27 New York, United States 335, 336; calypsos 374, 375; Labor Day Carnival 393, 394; salsa 335, 394 Nie Er 104–105, 107 Nigeria 283–284 Nigerian music 270–271, 283; Fela Kuti 270–272, 272–273; Water No Get Enemy 271; Zombie 271, 272–273 Ninth Symphony (Beethoven, 1825) 298 Niyabinghi drumming (Jamaican music) 396–397 Nneka (Nigerian singer) 283, 284 No, Doctor, No (calypso) 372–373, 374 Noise artists (Japanese music) 203, 204 nortec, Mexico 352–353 North Africa 56, 57–60, 63–65; Berbers 72, 87–89; dance 58–59, 60, 61 North African music 66, 72, 73–74, 91–92; improvisation 71–72, 92; Jewish music 81, 82, 83; maqa¯ms 7, 66, 72, 77; melodic modes 66, 67, 68–69; rhythmic modes 68, 70 North American music 434–435, 437–439, 441, 445–447, 457, 458–459; African American 450–452, 454, 459; children’s 438, 439; Christmas music 436; ethnic music 434, 435, 442, 458–459; fiddle music 446–447, 448–449, 449; instruments 444, 445; wedding ceremonies 440–441 North India 11, 40; see also Hindustani music, North India North Korea (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) 132–133, 135, 136, 166, 169–170, 172; music 169, 170–172 notation, written 6–7 Notoprojo, K.P.H. 244

03/09/20 1:09 PM

480

INDEX

Notting Hill Carnival, London 393, 394

nurthi (Sri Lankan music) 39

obeah (Bahamian folk belief) 363, 365

obon rituals, Japan 190, 191, 206

Ode to Joy (Beethoven, 1825) 298

Okinawa, Japan 180, 184–186, 189, 190

Oliver, Paul 454

Once in a Lifetime (Kidjo, 2016) 281

ongaku (music) (Japanese music) 178,

197, 204–205 ooga booga music 264–265 Ophie and the Websites (rake ’n’ scrape group) 363

oral traditions 7

Oran, Algeria 86

orkès Melayu (Malay orchestra) 226,

227

Orpheus McAdoo 5

Oser inventer l’avenir (Dare to Invent

the Future) (Awadi, 2010) 258,

258–259

otherness 3

Ottoman Empire 64–65, 81, 313–314;

music 69, 75–76

Oud player 8

pabasa (reading), Philippines 231–232 pahata rata beraya (drum), Sri Lanka 48–49

Pakistan 23, 45; Qawwali 21, 23, 40

Palenque de San Basilio 324, 325

Palestine 65

pallavi (refrain) (Carnatic music) 33

Panjabi MC 19, 53

Panorama Festival (steel bands) 375, 376

pansori (epic story-singing), Korea

149–151, 152

pantum (Malay sung poetry) 228, 229

parai (frame drum) 38

Paraiyars, India 37–38

Parry, Milman 302

Parsi theatre 39

Parveen, Abida 42

Pena, Lula 311, 312

People’s Republic of China (PRC) see

China, People’s Republic of (PRC)

periods 10

Peru 347–349, 356

pes∙rev 69, 70

Philippines 231–232, 235

phrases 10

9781138359369_ROMMEN_NETTL_World_Music.indd 480

Piazzolla, Astor 334

pieces 10

pipa (4-string plucked lute), China 99

Pirttijärvi, Ulla (Sámi musician) 306,

307–308, 308

Poetic Ammo 229

popular music 303; Afghanistan 43;

Korea 162–163, 164, 165, 166,

167–168, 172; South Korea 167–168,

172; Sri Lanka 49

Portuguese music 311

Powers, Harold 27

powwow club, Winnipeg, Canada

400–401, 402, 403, 404–405, 407

powwow dances 401, 402, 403, 414, 415,

419; Drum Dance 420; Ghost Dance

406, 407, 410, 419–420

powwows (Native North American

gatherings) 401–402, 410, 420–421;

instruments 400, 411; songs 401,

402–403, 404, 410, 411, 413–414,

415–416, 420–421

PRC (People’s Republic of China) see China, People’s Republic of (PRC) Precious Lord, Take My Hand (African

American music) 452, 453

Presidents d’Afrique (African Presidents)

(album, Awadi, 2010) 274–275, 276,

277, 278, 279

Prypiat, Ukraine 309–310 Puerto Rico 335–336 pungmul (wind objects) (Korean music)

156–158, 159, 160

pungnyu (wind and stream) (Korean music) 154–155 Punjab 50, 53

punta (Garifuna music) 385, 386

punta rock (Garifuna music) 385–386 Puyum (Pinuyumayan) community,

Taiwan 98, 116

Puyuma song (Taiwan music) 117, 118,

119–120

qas∙ıˉda (Arab music) 71

Qawwali (Sufi music) 23, 40–41, 41,

41–42, 42; Pakistan 21, 23, 40

quebradita (dance), North

America 445

Qur’an 9, 80–81 Racy, Ali Jihad 77

ragam (Carnatic music) 33

ragam-tanam-pallavi (Carnatic music) 33

raga (raag) (Hindustani music) 11,

27–28, 29

Rahman, A.R. 19

raï (Algerian music) 85–87

rake ’n’ scrape (Bahamian music)

362–363, 364–365, 366, 368, 369

Rake ’n’ Scrape festival, Bahamas

360–362, 363, 365–366, 398

Ramlee, P. 226, 227

Rastafarianism, Jamaica 396–397

rattles (Indigenous instrument) 412

Rayes Lebled (Head of State) 89–90, 91

reba¯b (two-stringed fiddle) 72

recycling, Taiwan 124–125, 126

Regev, Motti 85

reggae (Jamaican music) 395

religion 3, 11, 436–437; Caribbean

367–368, 396; Japan 180, 190–191;

Korea 134–135; Middle East 81;

Qur’an 9, 80–81; South Asia 21;

Southeast Asia 234; Trinidad 388

Remain in Light (album, Kidjo, 2016)

281–282, 282

Remain in Light (album, Talking Heads,

1980) 280–281

Remitti, Shaykha 86

Republic of China (ROC) see Taiwan

(Republic of China, ROC) Return to Your Roots / Mama Africa (Towers) 323, 326–327

Reynolds, Dwight 72

rhythmic modes 68, 70

Riduan 228

rites of passage 440

Roberts, Jonathan 245–246

Robinson, Dylan 415–416

ROC (Republic of China) see Taiwan

(Republic of China, ROC)

rock songs 10

Rock Star (Bollywood film, 2011) 39

Rocky Road to Jordan (fiddle music),

North America 447, 448–449

Rodriguez, Arsenio 336

Rommen, Timothy 97

Roseman, Marina 232

Rouget, Gilbert 159

rough beauty (Korean music) 147, 152

royal rituals, Korea 154, 155

rumba (Cuban dance) 376, 377,

378–380, 380–381 Ryu¯kyu¯ Kingdom, Japan 184–185

03/09/20 1:09 PM

INDEX

S∙abıˉ (North African music) 66 Sachs, Curt 14 sacred music 16, 23, 437; African American 452, 453; Bahamas 365; Caribbean 396, 397 sadir (Indian dance) 37 S∙afıˉ al-Dıˉn Urmawıˉ 66 salsa 335, 336; New York 335, 394 sameness 4, 6, 13 Sámi people 306–307, 309; joiks 306–309, 423, 424–425 samulnori (four things play) (Korean music) 158–159, 160, 161 Sangare, Oumou 284 sanghyang dances, Bali 246–247 sanjo, Korea 147, 148 Sankara, Thomas 277–278, 279 sanshin (three-stringed lute), Japan 186–188 Santiniketan (Visva-Bharati University) 46 santoor (hammered dulcimer) 30 sarangi (bowed instrument) (Hindustani music) 30, 31, 35 sarod (fretless plucked lute) 26, 29–30 saron (bronze bars) (Javanese gamelan) 240, 243 Sarorun-rimse (Ainu women’s crane dance), Japan 181 Sastri, Syama 32 Schade-Poulsen, Marc 87 sections 10 Seeger, Anthony 339 Seko, Mobutu Sese 275 Sène, Yandé Codou 274–275 Senegal 278 Seopyeonje (Western style) (Korean film, 1993) 151 Seoul Central Mosque, South Korea 168–169 Seroussi, Edwin 85 settler colonialism 405, 406 Sewol Ferry disaster (South Korea, 2014) 167 shamanism: Korea 140–143, 145; South Korea 140, 141, 143; Southwest Korea 144–145, 146 Shankar, Anoushka (sitar player) 11 Shankar, Ravi 27 Shaoshan (Chinese music) 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 128

9781138359369_ROMMEN_NETTL_World_Music.indd 481

Sheeran, Anne 22 Showroom Dummies (Trans Europe Express) (Kraftwerk, 1977) 316, 317 shqa¯shiq (metal clappers) 74 Sıˉdıˉ Ben ‘I¯sa¯ 60–61 Sikhism 21, 53 siku ensembles (Latin America music) 337–338 Simon, Paul 268 sinawi, Southwest Korea 146–148 Singapore 94–95, 216, 220, 221, 233, 234, 235; Orchestra of Ethnic Chinese 106; urumi melams 51, 52 sinminyo (new folk song) (Korean music) 138, 163 Sıˉrat BanıˉHila¯l (epic poem) 71–72 sitars (plucked lute) 19, 28–29, 31, 33 Siva, Joe 229 slave trade 5 Smokey 278 soccer culture, Korea 132 social inequality 4 social justice 5 social position 97 Solju (Finland band) 308 Somers, Harry 416 Sonevytsky, Maria 310 Song Jiankun 111–112, 114, 116 Song Kun Traditional Arts, Taiwan 111–112, 112–113, 114, 116 Song of Shimcheong (Korean film, 1993) 151, 152 Song of the Moccasin Game (d) (powwow song) 413 Songs of the Land of Israel (shirei erets Yisrael) 85 Soul is Heavy (album, Nneka, 2012) 283–284 sounds 14–15, 16, 97, 128 soundwalks 120, 127; Taipei 120, 121–125, 127, 127–128 South Africa 4, 5 South African music 269–270; Ladysmith Black Mambazo 1–2, 3–4, 5; Ndod’emnyama 269, 270; throat singing 8 South Asia 10, 18–20, 21, 22–23, 40, 233; diaspora 50–51, 53; music 22, 23–24, 36, 53 Southeast Asia 10, 212, 214–215, 216, 220–222, 230, 232–234, 252

481

southern plantation economy 5 South India 32, 36; dance 32, 36, 37; see also Carnatic music, South India South Korea 130, 132–133, 135–136, 166, 168–169, 172; shamanism 140, 141, 143 South Korean music 136–137, 155, 157–158, 160, 166; Geowi-ui kkum 167–168; improvisation 148; popular music 167–168, 172; Western art music 162 Southwest Korea 143–144; improvisation 145, 146, 147, 148; shamanism 144–145, 146; sinawi 146–148 Soviet Union 309–310, 314 Spies, Walter 251 Spiller, Henry 238 Spirit of the Rivers 432, 435 spirit possession 73–74 Sri Lanka 22, 46–49, 52, 53; Buddhism 46, 47–48; music 22, 39, 46–49 st∙arnbe¯lıˉ, Tunisia 73, 74 steel bands 374, 375, 376; Trinidad 374, 375, 376 Stokes, Martin 14, 84 Stormzy (British rapper) 314 storytelling 277, 278, 309, 363 strathspey (fiddle music), Canada 447 string bands, Trinidad 371 Stuempfle, Stephen 375 St. Vincent, Caribbean 384 Subbulakshmi, M.S. 38 sub-Saharan Africa 254, 450 Sufi music 21, 56, 62, 69, 75; h∙ad∙ra 57–60, 74; Qawwali 21, 23, 40–41, 41, 41–42, 42 Sufi orders 74–75, 83 Sufism 21, 40, 60 Sumi (Puyuma singer) 117, 118, 119, 120 sung poetry 71–72 suspension rattle (Indigenous instrument) 412 Suyá (Amerindian people), Latin America 338–339 Swedenburg, Ted 87 Symonette, George 369, 374 symphony orchestra 299 Synergie des femmes pour les victimes des violences sexuelles 280 Syria 91

03/09/20 1:09 PM

482

INDEX

Tabaamrant, Fatima 88, 89

tabla (two bowl-shaped drums) 11, 28,

31, 224

Tagalog, Philippines 231

Tagore, Rabindranath 46

Taipei, Taiwan 98–99, 109, 121;

soundwalk 120, 121–125, 127,

127–128 Taira Shinsuke 188, 189–190 Taiwan (Republic of China, ROC) 94–95, 96, 97, 98–99, 108–110,

120–121, 122, 125, 128; Indigenous

peoples 109, 116, 117, 120; National

Orchestra 106

Taiwan music 118; campus folk songs 118; Puyuma song 117, 118, 119–120

tajwıˉd (Qur’an recitation) 80–81

taksim (Turkish music) 71

tala (taal) (Hindustani music) 11, 27, 28,

30

Taliban, Afghanistan 44–45, 78, 215

tamboo bamboo bands, Trinidad

370–371

Tamil music 32, 50; urumi melams 51,

52, 233

Tamil Music Movement 32

Tanabe Hisao 197–198, 200

Tanboura 91

tango 331–335, 333

Tanko¯ Bushi (Coalmine Song), Japan

192–193, 192–195 tanpura (drone instrument) (Hindustani instrument) 30

tan-singing, Trinidad 389

taqsıˉm (Arab music) 71

t∙arab (musical enchantment) (Arab

music) 72, 77, 79–80

Tassa drumming, Trinidad 397

techno-tourism 315

tecnobanda (dance music), North

America 445

Temiar (Indigenous people), Malaysia

232–233

teuroteu (trot) (Korean music) 164, 165,

166

Thaipusam (Hindu festival) 51–52

Thames (London river) 295–296

thavil (drum) (Carnatic music) 35

Theravada Buddhism, Sri Lanka 47

Thillana Mohanambal (Tamil film, 1968)

39

Thirakwa, Ahmed Jan 27

9781138359369_ROMMEN_NETTL_World_Music.indd 482

throat singing 8, 425

time 10–11, 159–160

Times Table (rake ’n’ scrape) 364–365

Timor-Leste 235

Tobas (Batak group), Indonesia 231

tong gita (acoustic guitar) (South

Korean music) 166

Too Phat 230

Towers, Louis 322–324, 325

tradition 116

trance healing ceremony, Tunisia 75

Trans Europe Express (Kraftwerk, 1977)

316, 316–317

Treaty #1 (powwow song) 403

Tribe Called Red, A (Indigenous

musicians) 422, 423, 424, 425

Trinidad 370–371, 373, 376–377,

388–390; calypsos 371, 373, 375–376;

sacred music 397; steel bands 374,

375, 376

Trinidad All Steel Percussion Orchestra 375

Trinity, The (Carnatic music) 32

Trujillo, Rafael 391

Trumpet Concerto (Hadyn, 1796)

299–301, 300

trumpets 299, 301

Tse-Hsiung Lin 109

Tsui Ying-fai 105

tuning systems 7–8; Javanese music

238–239, 240

Tunisia 56, 57–60, 73, 74, 75, 89–90;

‘I¯sa¯wiyya ritual 57–60, 61–62, 75

Turino, Thomas 337

Turkey 83–84; music 66, 68, 71, 81,

83–84, 311, 312

Tyagaraja 32, 34–35

Vedas, India 24, 294

veena (plucked instrument) (Carnatic

music) 33

Venezuela 336

Vennum, Thomas 420

violins 35–36, 299

Virginia Jubilee Singers 5

Virolle, Marie 86

Vives, Carlos 349–350 vocal music 8, 71, 425; joiks 306–309,

423, 424–425; Katajjait 416,

417–418

voice 97

von Hornbostel, Erich M. 14

Wainaina, Binyavanga 263

Walls Will Fall: The 49 Trumpets of

Jericho (Kerbaj, 2018) 301

Wanduta (Indigenous person) 407

was∙la (Arab music) 68

water drums (Indigenous instrument) 411–412 Water No Get Enemy (Nigerian music)

271

waulking songs, Hebrides Islands 304,

306

wayang kulit (shadow puppetry) (Javanese gamelan) 243–244 wayno (huayno), Peru 347–349 We Are the Halluci Nation (Indigenous

music) 422, 425

wedding ceremonies, North America 440–441 Weintraub, Andrew 226, 252

West Africa 5

Western art music 10, 11, 161–162,

297

Westminster Quarters (bell chimes)

Umbrella Movement, Hong Kong 96

290–291, 291, 292, 293, 295

University of North Carolina 288–290,

Where Once Were Whales (The

294, 295; bells 288–289, 290, 295

Hebrides Suite, 2013) 305

untouchables, India 24, 37–38, 51

Wicked Aura 216

urbanization 350, 351–352, 354

Williams, Eric 388

Uruguay 342–343

Winnipeg, Canada 400–401, 405, 407,

urumi (drum) 51

430–433, 434, 435

urumi melams 52; Malaysia 51, 52;

Women in Liberia Mass Action for

Singapore 51, 52; Tamil music 51, 52,

Peace 279, 280

233

Wood, Vivian Nina Michelle 387

usul (Turkish music) 66–67, 70

World Cup soundscape, Korea 130–132,

133

vallenato (Latin American music), World Music 2, 3, 5–6, 13

Colombia 349–350 world musics 3, 9, 16

03/09/20 1:09 PM

INDEX

yak bera, Sri Lanka 49

yak tovils, Sri Lanka 47

Yamanouchi Seihin 188, 190

yangqin (hammered dulcimer), China 99

Yefremov, Yevren 310

Yi Bo-mi (South Korean music)

167–168, 172

9781138359369_ROMMEN_NETTL_World_Music.indd 483

Yogi B 229–230

Yucatan Opera, Mexico 340

Zahir, Ahmad 43, 44

Zalani, Riduan 216–217, 218–219, 220,

221

zapin (dance form) (Malay music) 225

483

Zimmer, Hans 265

Ziporyn, Evan 251

Zombie (Nigerian music) 271,

272–273 zouk (French Antilles) 13, 383

03/09/20 1:09 PM

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