music culture

CHAPTER 1 •

Thinking about Music

if you can speak you can sing; if you can walk you can dance. (Zimbabwean Shona proverb)

People make music meaningful and useful in their lives. That statement encapsulates much of what ethnomusicologists are interested in and offers a framing perspective for many ways of thinking both about peo- ple and about music all over the world. In this chapter I shall explore each word in the statement with two purposes in mind: to suggest new ways you might think about music that you regularly hear, and to begin to expand your musical horizon. I shall also begin by speaking briefly about the dissemination of music and the ways it is taught and learned, because what you think about music has been influenced by how you have learned it.

PEOPLE

Music Makers. Who makes music in our familiar world? Music mak- ers are individuals and groups, adults and children, female and male, amateurs and professionals. They are people who make music only for themselves, such as shower singers or secretly-sing-along-with-the- radio types, and they are performers, people who make music pur- posefully for others. They are people who make music because they are required to and people who do so simply from desire. Some music mak- ers study seriously, while others are content to make music however they can, without special effort.

To think about music makers globally, you might ask whether music makers are regarded in any particular way in a particular place. At one end of a spectrum, some societies expect people who make music to

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be specialists, born into the role or endowed with a special capacity. At the other end of that spectrum, in some societies it is assumed that the practice of music is a human capacity and that all people will express themselves musically as a normal part of life. Particularly in situations where orality is a viable mode for transmission of knowl- edge (teaching by sounding), being a musician-or reciter, as in figure 1.1-is an option for visually impaired individuals. in figure 1.1 a sighted sheikh, in company with two blind reciters, participates in a performance of Qur'anic recitation in Egypt. There, where the aurality of the tradition (learning by hearing) has been culturally affirmed, becoming a reciter -has been a potential profession for blind men. Through a long period of premodem Japanese history, blind players of shamisen and koto (Fig. 1.2) held a governmentally sanctioned monopology on performing and teaching of orally transmitted reper-

tories for their instruments.

FIGURE 1.1 Egyptian reciter. Multiple reciters of the Qur' an, accompanied by friends and relatives, participate in a performance at a gathering in Egypt-possibly the opening of a conference. That the illustrious Sheikh Mustafa Ismail is taking his tum (probably last in the program due to his eminence) is ascertained by the positioning of one (sometimes it is both) hand to his face while reciting-a custom for which Kristina Nelson could find no consistent explanation but which undoubtedly helps the reciter focus and better hear his own voice. (Photo by Kristina Nelson)

Thinking about Music c:sa 3

FIGURE 1.2 Japanese sankyoku ensemble F . (koto), Satomi Fukami (syamisen/ h . . rom left to nght: Keiko Nosaka (Courtesy of Keiko Nosaka) s armsen), Kozan Sato (syakuhati/shakuhachi).

Local terminology is a clue to the ideas held about music makers.

Shortly after arriving in Sofia in 19 on Mount Vitosha in the Sho ( h 69, I to~k a bus to a nearby village a subgroup of Bulgarians wi~ : "~o~e") _region, home to cal culture. My goal was to

I:::: gwstic dialect and musi-. . meet some village · · .

ictionary and limited B 1 . mus1C1ans. Usmg my d u ganan, I asked peopl . th vill they could introduce me to . if ~ m e age square

woman helpfully pointed rrie in s;m~_muz~kantt ("musicians"). One ~ho played trumpet and then aske~ if~ection of ~e home of a man m~ a women's vocal group that she bel:ould be mterested in hear- pnsed me for two reasons Fir t h ged to. Her response sur- " musician" as referring to. sos , s e seehmed to understand the word . meone w O play d w instrument not a traditi" . e a estem musical ' ona 1 one like th ·d Se seem to understand th t if I , . e gat a. cond, she didn't I a was mterested in " · · ,,

would also be interested m· "s· " mus1c1ans, then mgers.

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My first attempt at fieldwork was teaching me what ethnomusicol- ogists know generally, namely, that different cultures have different ways of thinking about and categorizing music and musical behaviors. (Timothy Rice, in his book in this series on Bulgaria (2004: 29).

When you hear or use the word "musician," to what sort of music maker are you referring? Most students in my courses respond to that ques- tion with an impression that is clearly derived from the sphere of Western classical music. In this volume, however, I use the word musi- cian more generically, to cover all people who experience music as a practice (figure 1.3a, 1.3b, 1.3c).

Many questions that can be asked about musicians reveal insights about their musical and social worlds. Who makes music with whom? Who learns music from whom? Who is permitted to be .a teacher? Who can perform where? Who can perform for whom? Is anyone prohibited from making some particular type of music, and if so, why? Who plays which instrument, and why? Do musicians have high cultural status (i.e., is their music-making highly valued by a group)? Do musicians have high social status (i.e., a prominent ranking in the society)?

ACTIVIT Y 1.1 Make an inventory of music makers in your individual context, includingfriends andfamily members. Don't forget to include yourself, if you make music. Then, for each per- son, consider whether or not you would categorize him or her as "a musician" and why or why not. Also, use your list to con- sider the questions posed in the previous paragraph that particu- larly interest you.

. Listeners. When I speak about people making music meaningful and useful in their lives, I include people who "just" listen. They are, after all, most of the world's musically involved population. Listeners, like musicians, are consumers of music. They are the audience to whom per- formers cater-patrons who are willing to pay to hear performances and buy recordings.

Answers to questions about listeners reveal a great deal about the musi- cal context in which they live. Do they prefer to listen alone, or is listening a social activity? Is it more expensive to listen to one kind of music than

(3b:. Sakar Khan Manganiyar playing azi:ia1cha. Hamira village, Rajasthan

India. (Photo by Shalini Ayyagari) ,

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1.3c: Man"ka Kuzma, Director ef Choruses, University ef California Berkeley. (Photo by Peg Skorpinsk;/

6 oS<> THINKING MUSICALLY

. t mean for the listener? Are certain ~es another, and if so, what ~ioes th~ . f music? Is a listening audience of listeners associated with_c~rtambe~f o~ membership? Does a listening restricted by gender ?r r~ligiousti between performer and listener? context foster immediate mterac on

. or disa ree with this· statement: A~TIYITY 1.~ _Agd:~rent firom ghearing music. Be prepared Listening to music is !11' . • to give reasons for your opinion.

MUSIC d' at the edge of a body of water,

In Terms of So~nd. I am ~t~::entle lapping and heavy cras~g the ripples soundmg altern:J electric saws are punctuating the .air. waves. Nearby, hammers . . and singing a variety of songs are Above me, soaring ~d difpmg d cooin doves. The wind whistles goldfinches and mockingbir;s~e dista!ce. In this wonderful so_und- across the land. Car horns to hm C any of that be called music? scape there is melody and rhyt . an

ACTIVITY 1.3 To begin thinking i:nusicall:nti:\t:~~ d Conduct some field research: taking pen pd p d

soun . . t the soundscape aroun you an you, listen for ten minute~: motorc cle roaring by, a cluster of keep a record. Any sound ie whirring of an elevator's people laughing, sounds of nture,,f if a passing motorist, the appr?ach, the selection on ;o::ao t~h: sounds you hear must be music you choose to play.. ll Yz "music " Articulate how you what you would automat1ca y ca . . .

. and what ts not music. distinguish between w h a t is

' . . ? Th ethnomusicologist John Blacking defined

In fact, what IS m~sic. e d" ( 7), but suggest 197 1 that we take that it as "humanly organized so~ . c" is not only a thing-a category of statement one step farther. .;si -but also a process. Every ~own organized sound, or composi ons . thei·r creative imaginations to

· th world exercises 1 group_ of peop e. in e a that is different from the way they orga- orgaruze sound m some w y d f . tion of music exists for all human nize sound fthor spdeechfini .. ~o~:~ :u: are culturally specific. cultures. Ra er, e

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Calling Something "Music." The ancient Greek word for "music" was adopted into the Arabic language as musiqa, but in the Islamic world view, it has been used in a more specific way. The mellifluous recitation of the sacred Qur'an (CD track 1-1, Fig.1.1), which many non-Muslim lis- teners have called "musk," is not considered musiqa; musiqa is a category encompassing genres (that is, types of music) that may elicit negative associations of secular musical practice. Furthermore, the imperative of avoiding inappropriate juxtapositions of the human and the divine has led to a conceptual categorization in Muslim societies that distinguishes between music, on the one hand, and forms of melodic religious expres- sion, on the other hand. Thus, the melodic recitation of the Qur'an is not considered to be music (Marcus 2007: 94). Clearly, just because something sounds like music to me, I have no right to insist that it is ''music" to someone else. It is the local or even personal idea that counts.

In fact, having a word for a particular aesthetic category of organized sound that I as an individual think of as "music" is by no means uni- versal. In Bali, as in many places, the concept of "music" is context spe- cific. Rather than a single category called "music," types of instrumental ensembles, repertoires (groups of pieces that are linked in some way), and vocal practices are each named and associated with the specific functions that it fulfills (Gold 2005: 2). Neither does a single one of the hundreds of First Nation Native American groups have a word for "music." In these groups' opinion, the word "music" as a noun creates a category apart from other things; it fails to convey the processes of social action, for example, or of the integration of traditional knowledge and modem knowledge and the relationships that singing and drumming embody in many Native American contexts (Diamond 2008).

Likewise, sociologist Christopher Small has taken the position that music is not a thing at all but an activity, something that people do. Ethnomusicologists generally concur. He calls doing music "musick- ing": "to music is to take part, in any capacity, in a musical performance, whether by performing, by listening, by rehearsing or practicing, by providing material for performance (what is called composing), or by dancing" (1998: 9). He sometimes-and I always would-extends musicking to all the activities about which I wrote above under "People."

Aesthetic Values in Music. If I, in my American culture, use the expression "that's music to my ears," you will know that I have heard something I want to hear, or in terms of sound, something beau- tiful. Consensus about desirable quality of vocal sound is behind

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exclamations such as, "Oh, I don't have a good voice," or "Doesn't she have a wonderful voice!" Ideas about beauty are one aspect of a set of artistic values referred to as aesthetics-in this case, music aes- thetics. However, aesthetic values are not necessarily shared, even within one society.

ACTIVITY 1.4 Select one recording in your collection/playlist that you really like, and then find a different version of the same song that you r~ally don't like. Articulate the reason(s) for your aesthetic judgement. Vocal quality? Something else?

While individual ethnomusicologists have personal ideas about musical beauty in terms of the quality of the sound (timbre) that is cultivated, it is a tenet of our field that we will keep our ears and minds open and respect the fact that many timbres are considered beautiful.

Aesthetic ideals are also manifested in the ideas about the relation- ship between the musical selection and the way a performer is expected to treat it. For many types of music, the ideal is that a composition will be reproduced intact. That is the case with many genres of European art music, for instance, wherein a composition is expected to be per- formed with a high level of technical proficiency, coupled with artistic expressivity that does not change the musical material. In contrast, the aesthetic process involved in most popular music not only permits, but expects, artists to render pieces in distinctive ways.

The aesthetic ideal of some kind of change in performance is found in untold numbers of musics. In an ensemble rendition of a familiar tune in many amateur music traditions in China, each performer may "add flowers" by embellishing and varying the melody, thus shaping a collecting "sound" that is inclusive of personal styles and voices (CD track 1-2). In a similar manner, Irish musicians practice and discuss the aesthetic of never playing a tune the same way twice, keeping its melodic identity intact, but playing subtle variations each time around. They embellish their playing with ornaments and small melodic or rhythmic variations that make each repetition of a tune slightly differ-

ent (CD track 1-3). If, as in Christopher Small's terms, musicking articulates ideals of

human relationships, then the aesthetic preference for the content of

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Thinking about Musi~ = 9

both music and dance of the West African K wonderful example (Stone 2005) Sh pelle peoples provides a are highly valued· Kpelle d . ort segments (facets) that interlock · ' ance movements · f tightly orchestrated steps for inst In consist. o short, quick,

short rhythmic atte ' ance. much African drummm short rhythmic p~ttemsrns are repeated in close coordination with oth!;

. , as an example from CD tr k l-4 d I t ts the process of interlocking th h ac emonstrates. music"; the musical experience is a esosc· olrt se~ents that creates "the

1a experience.

ACTIVITY 1.5 B th' · . icon in th . Yi. zs time you have been directed by the CD

e margins to isten to multiple m · 1 l introductory note I told ou th t usica ex amp e~. In my pies deeply inte;rated Jth th: you wou~d {nd the musicalexam- many of them several times 1:J:::na~~ t at I would return to understanding of them will a;cumulate ;:;u:~rt 1::;e;m and yfiour you to start a written record of each occurrence . e now or a page in a notebook allotted to each track or a ts:a~; ;ra:; ~a!f computer file should suffice M k h . 0 rac s zn a

identijy_ing title and cu/tu,; for aea:t sef :C1::J !J'::d ~~~ber ~nd under zt each time I ,r, lt'!JOrmatzon ·ust made . Tf!_Jer you to the track. For instance I have

~he conten; ~;zGnt,abo~t andaesthetic preference that is exp;essed by ~ ianacan ance drummi ICD k

record it, under the track numb . ng I trac 1-4). To < and the point made. I refer to ;~i;~~a!~le, e~ter the page number different points. again on P· 92 to make

. For many people, the highest value of · · IS, its expressive capacity Alth h music is placed on affect, that remember vividly the feelings ;;g f;a;Y Y:ars have passed, I still and the American national anthe we I e up m ~e as I heard "Taps" in the military cemetery in Mani::: : ;to_o~ ';Ith other countrymen after President Kennedy w ' . e hilippmes, where I was just dents put it "It is mus1·c thast assakssmated in 1963. As one of my stu-

, a ma es me want t d only reminds me of times I have felt . o ~ce, or feel. It not feel emotions" (Lynd B emotions, but It prompts me to

· sey rown 2001) y · move our hearts, minds, and bodies. . es, music has the power to

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c6o d Lucia Comnes: "I feel that the youth in my com-

Stu ~nt re drawn to this music [reggae] and culture becaus_e

:~;'~ib;ating. We are about to inherit this monst_er tha: ;s . . luding the government, the educational y -

our sochiety-kinfic the media the capitalist philosophy, the tem t e wor orce, ' d . if the t h ology the developed civilization, the estructt~n o e:rt~, the 'inequality, the separating illus'.ons of rao_:I ift:~ ism, ageism, homophobia, etc. _and the list ~o~s onWhe; the find this overwhelming, confusing, and terrifying.

·t· -at home and at school are not strong or secure, commum 1es d l place

or another place that speaks to us eep y, a we yearn fi R ulture pro-

t~::/;~~;fo;~:n~;:~::::i~~:;e:;ie a:~:;u~h.t togetht \ h music music coming from the heart, speaktn? to t e t roug .r th p'eo,nle music that is alive and encouraging, Jul- power OJ e r ' . ,, 1) filling and in the spirit of celebratwn (200 .

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MEANING f thinkin about people and music in

Having briefly_spoken_of ;ay: othat "Peo~le make music meaningful and the main premise of this c ap er . and use That music is mean-

. h . 1· "I now turn to mearung . d useful m t eir ives, t debates have ensue over ingful, no one do~bts. ~owe:r~~~;al materials themselves or is whether the mearung resides e for some particular reason. ascribed to musical materials_ br ~o~~: music played by a brass band Is there something really m~rti;a: ;:ssociation we have learned? Does as an army marches by, or is . ·t something else such as lov- a lullaby really put a child t~t!~oo::;~re rest? With most ethnomu- ing attention that lulls the c l ke music meaningful, whether

. I think the latter- peop e ma sico 1 ogists'. . . . ·ct · mmunally agreed upon. that meaning is mdivi ua 1 or co

. Melod set to words constitutes much Music and Textu~l Meaning: p rhals it is because just about every- of the world's ~usical ~epertorre~trument. Perhaps it is because of the one can sing, with or without ~ ressivity of a text. In the Baroque capacity of music to heighten e exp . c composers used what was period (c. 1600-1750 c.E.) ofEuropean musi '

Thinking about Music c.s:o 11

called "word painting" to heighten expressivity in quite literal ways- a falling melody on the word morire (to die), for instance. Blues singers in America improvise expressively to elicit even more meaning from already meaningful texts.

In the Polynesian region of the Pacific Ocean, so highy valued is oral poetry that music is logogenic (i.e., word-oriented rather than melody- oriented). Such delight is taken in complex metaphors and indirect ref- erences that the song text serves as a kind of process by which listeners become linked in interpretive communities that appreciate the mean- ing and purpose of the text. Thus, in music-making, the words must be clear (Moulin in Diettrich, Moulin and Webb: 2011: 10-11).

Another reason for singing texts is the license it gives musicians to say something not permitted in ordinary speech. A great deal ·of covert and overt political protest has been delivered in song. In "Calypso Freedom," Sweet Honey in the Rock reminds listeners of the necessity of the civil rights movement of the 1960s while renewing the protest in 1989 with new text set to an old song.

ACTIVITY 1.6 Find songs ef political protest. You can easily find "Calypso Freedom" on the Internet, and that's a good place to start. Look for others, as well. For one, transcribe the lyrics and then listen to the musical setting. Try to figure out if the musi- cians use the music in any purposeful way to deliver the message of the text.

Through the ages narrators have told their tales musically. The Texas- Mexican corrido is a genre that has proved to be an effective avenue for protest, as well as a narrative. "The Ballad of Cesar Chavez" (figure 1.4, CD track 1-5) relates an important event in American history: the march of that famed Mexican American leader in the struggle for rights for migrant farmworkers. In spring 1965 the first major strike against grape growers took the form of a march from Delano, California, to the state's capital, Sacramento, to meet with then-Governor Edmund "Pat" Brown. Because of the religious orientation of Mexican culture, the march became a nexus of the religious tradition of pilgrimage and the con- temporary form of demonstration. You can follow the route of the demonstrators on a map of California and on CD track 1-6 hear

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El Corrido de Cesar Chavez En un d{a siete de marzo Jueves santo en la mafiana, sali6 Cesar de Delano - componiendo una campana.

Compaiieros campesinos este va a ser un ejemplo esta marcha la llevamos hasta mero Sacramento.

Cuando llegamos a Fresno Toda la gente gritaba y que viva Cesar Chavez y la gente que llevaba.

Nos despedimos de Fresno nos despedimos con fe para llegar muy contentos hasta el pueblo de Merced.

The Ballad of Cesar Chavez On the seventh day of Marc~ Good Thursday in the morning Cesar left Delano Organizing a campaign .

Companion farmers This is going to be an example This (protest) march we'll take To Sacramento itself.

When we arrived in Fresno All the people chanted Long live Cesar Chavez . And the people that accompany him.

We bid good-bye to Fresno We bid good-bye with faith So we would arrive contented To the town of Merced.

We are almost in Stockton Sunlight is almost gone

But the people shouted Keep on with lots of faith.

k When we arrived at ~to~ ton The mariachis were singing Long live Cesar Chavez And the Virgin of Guadalupe.

Ya vamos llegando a Stockton ya mero la luz s_e Jue pero mi gente gritaba sigan con bastante fe.

Cuando llegamos a Stockton los mariachis nos ca~taban que viva Cesar Chavez y la Virgen que llevaba. , Ch , ez " Texas-Mexican corrido.

"Th Ballad of Cesar av · s· c rridos FIGURE 1.4 Song text: e . cia and Pablo and Juanita Saludado ing o

From Las Voces de los Campesiuos : franasco Ga; d with permission from the Center for the Study ( k d Their Union . Repro uce about the Farm Wor ers an h UCLA FMSC-1.)

1 of Comparative Folklore and Myt o ogy,

em in Stockton. . . who gree t e d th h

mariachis, the sort of mus1c1ans allude to the Virgin Mary, as s e References to the lad~ of G~ad~lu~:exico, the Basilica of the ~ady of . nshrined at a maior shrine in f l the personal experience of 1s e t then we can ee Guadalupe. In song tex , ' oppressed people. . that link music to text for the expr~-

Among the nar:ative genr~s usical drama is perhaps the sing e sion and heightening of meaning, m

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Thinking about Music, = 13

best example. In Balinese theater the nexus between music and the nar- rative, both in terms of mood and action, is so close and so familiar to audiences that the dramatic meaning is automatically remembered when the same musical material occurs without words in a nontheatri- cal context (Gold 2005).·

We might assume that a sung text is meant to be understood. Not necessarily so! Even when a Central Javanese gamelan (ensemble) includes vocalists, the text they sing may not be immediately intelligi- ble. Not only do their voices blend into the greater ensemble sound, but the poems are usually in old Javanese language that few listeners know (CD track 1-7; figure 1.5). For the few who can understand, the mean- ing lies both in the text itself and in the singing of it; for the less knowledgeable, the meaning lies in the recognition that an· old text is being sung, in the assurance that tradition continues.

Sometimes melody is sung to text that is not linguistically meaning- ful-syllables such as "fa la la" in English carols that ethnomusicolo- gists refer to as vocables. You might hear people use the phrase "meaningless syllables" for such text, but ethnomusicologists no longer

FIGURE 1.5 Central Javanese gamelan playing for wayang kulit (/carlzcr pup- pet play). (Photo by Kathleen Karn)

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do so. Syllables assumed to be meaningless have been found upon fur- ther investigation to be archaic language, or mystically meaningful. It also sometimes happens that singers will use linguistically meaning- ful words as vocables, choosing words for their sound or rhythmic quality rather than for their meaning (Diamond 2008: 108, citing Sam Kronk). Thus, the text of CD track 1-8 consists entirely of vocables. The "Blue Horse Special" was taught to the singer John-Carlos Perea (Mescalero Apache, Irish, German, Chicano) by Barney Hoehner (Hunkpapa and Sihasapa) who used the song for powwow social danc- ing but also in other contexts, including wakes and honorings. Perea considers one of the beautiful aspects of a vocable song to be that very multifunctionality, wherein the song can accumulate meaning with every new singing (Perea, personal communication, 2011). For this recording, he paced the song slowly, as a way of honoring ethnomu- sicologist David McAllester, whose work with Navajo music has been inspiring. The closest approximation of the vocables in this song that Perea could give is:

Hey ya hey ya hey ya hey ya hey ha hey yo Hey ya hey ya hey ya ha hey yo.

For a comparison of this version of the song with a version using hand drum, you can find one sung by John-Carlos Perea for Paul Winter on a 2007 Grammy-award winning Crestone album (http://itunes.apple.com/ us/ album/ crestone/ id270770361).

Vocables are practical in the texts of powwow songs, in which par- ticipants may speak dozens of different Native American languages. Sometimes there are lexically meaningful words known by the singers who nevertheless may choose to sing the song with vocables (Diamond 2008).

The opposite of texted song without linguistic meaning is program music-instrumental music without a text that is treated as if it had one. With its many narrative g~nres and operatic styles, Chinese music, even instrumental music, is very text-oriented. A title such as "Plum Blossoms" is subject to interpretation, but each instrumentalist may express it differently. The "text" is not in the musical sound but in the musicians' and listeners' meaningful interpretations of the title.

Music as Text. In a subtle pairing of melody and text, the singer of the Alha epic in North India might deliver the bravado words of a war- rior to the familiar melody of a woman's song genre. The bravado words are a text certainly, but so is the musical commentary on his womanly

Thinking about Music, = 15

personality. Such subtlety requires a knowledgeable audience to be understood.

As that example illustrates, music can acquire meaning from the sit- uation in which it is made or heard and then become a kind of text in itself. Its meaning is then "situated." My favorite theory about the rea- son that we continue to hate or love (if not get stuck in) the popular music of our teenage year.s is that it is situated: we absorbed that music when we were experiencing love and other emotions intensely as ado- lescents. It is not only the style of the music that stays with us, but also the embedded memory of the meaning it had at that crucial time in our lives.

I can think of another important instance of situated music as text. "We Shall Overcome" has a text, but even the melody alqne came to be so closely associated with demonstrations that we do not have to hear any text to understand its meaning. That song also provides an illustration of how one song can assume new meanings, assume new functions, and mark different identities. In her book, Music in America, in this series, Adelaida Reyes tracks this. "We Shall Overcome" was originally a Christian church hymn; C. A. Tindley, who became ~erica's first important African American gospel songwriter, had written it for his congregation. In the 1960s, it was adopted by the civil rights movement and became an anthem associated in the minds of the nation with the African American struggle for equality and freedom from discrimination.

Reyes recounts her experience of an American Thanksgiving Day cel- ebration in Oxford (United Kingdom) in 1996 to illustrate further how the symbolism of even such a clearly situated song as "We Shall Overcome" may undergo transformation- with shifting senses of" com- munity" and meaning to individuals as well as to a community.

In the presence of other Americans and guests from the local and international community (mostly Europeans and Africans), one Anglo-American after another stood up to describe their connection to the Pilgrims. Then an African American began to sing "We Shall Overcome." Immediately, the other guests who knew the song joined in. In no time, the one voice had become a rousing chorus.

I hazard to guess that when he began, the singer had intended the song to call attention to his difference from the earlier speakers and to the fact that, though American, he, as an African American, had no connection to the Pilgrims. As the other Americans joined in, the song assumed new meaning. The emphasis shifted from

16 o;:, THINKING MUSICALLY

the difference that the African American singer was signaling to the shared meanings that "We Shall Overcome" has for all Americans. Finally, as the non-American guests added their voices, the scope of the song's meaning expanded beyond the boundaries of one national ideology. The non-Americans may just have been joining in on a party activity. But they may also have been expressing sol- idarity with the African American individual who initiated the singing in the narrow context of that Thanksgiving celebration. Alternatively, they may have been expressing solidarity with what he stood for in the wider context of racism and universal human rights (Reyes 2005: 56).

While the meaning of "We Shall Overcome" was initially expressed through the text of the song, music entirely without text can be equally meaningful to those who know how to "read" it. In his book on music in Bulgaria, Tim Rice writes on the politics of wedding music, which, in the communist era, had become significant musically and econom- ically (2004). Besides the brilliance of the instrumentalists, he recounts, people's increasing dissatisfaction with the communist government also contributed to the enormous popularity of wedding music. The government had created problems for itself in the 1980s by instituting draconian measures against the Turks and Roma (also known as gyp- sies, figure 1.6), Bulgaria's Muslim minorities. Apparently fearing that these minorities had grown so large in number that they might begin to demand cultural autonomy, the government decided to solve the problem by symbolically erasing them and their culture from the national consciousness. This included banning all forms of "oriental" public cultural display, including the playing of Roma forms of music and dance that Bulgarian cultural officials began to claim that all these practices, including much of what was popular about wedding music, were aggressively antistate. At one level, wedding music was antis- tate simply because it operat~d in an economic sphere largely beyond state control. But in the highly charged political environment in Bulgaria in the late 1980s, wedding music, with its emphasis on impro- visation, and especially forms of improvisation that broke the bounds of traditional practice (Rice 2001), could be interpreted as an iconic representation of the individual freedom Bulgarians increasingly sought in the political arena. It also provided a new "structure of feel- ing" (Williams 1977) that allowed people to experience some release and relief within an otherwise repressive and restrictive society (Williams 1977).

Thinking about Music .,,,., 17

FIGURE 1 6 B f · .. . u rganan Roma musiaans Mladen M. l k . . Rom clarinet player and unknown d· . a a av, a bnlliant Bulgarian

' accor iomst p 1 ay virt · lifi d . (Photo from video by Timothy Rice, 1988.) uosic, amp l e wedding music.

CNTond~YNast T:aveler (CNT), interviewing artist Yo Yo Ma· C - ou said that your tri t th K lah . ·

in 1993 h d . p O e a an [Desert in South AfricaJ c ange your

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virtuoso

cir~~:=:~~~ d

Chinese cellist an. d ~ oes a ushman have to say to a Ma· ar . . . . , vice versa? 1

in ! r;~!ce~d dan~ing fo~ ho~s people playing for the hunt £ 0 -sty e music, with ence was more powerful th~ ~rarer, anthin~ for, art. That experi- a "Wh os any g I ve done I asked

woman, y do you do this?" She said "It . . . " How cool is th t? Th , , gives us meaning.

CNT: How did it :ffect ;~:;s good a reason as any to do something.

Ma: It changed my per ti f . cep on o art. It was no longer about high t 1 ow art, medium art. I realized that doesn't m tt ar'

(Conde Nast Traveler, May 2007: 42) a er.

18 = THINKING MUSICALLY

USE

Although the meaning and the use of music are inseparable, thinking specifically about use permits us to focus on people's intentions. People make music useful in so many ways that one can think of-socially, as a mode of interaction or to create a romantic mood; politically, to con- trol or unite; spiritually, for sacred expression and worship; economi- cally, to make a living; medically, for soothing or healing; and so many more ways.

I have asked many people about the place of music in their lives. Many have replied: "Oh, I'm not interested in music at all.11 Then they admit regularly listenjng to music in their cars, occasionally going to a performance, dancing on a date, exercising with an iPod, or otherwise putting music into their lives. This they may categorize as enjoyment, as entertainment rather than musical activity. However they regard it, they are making music useful.

Untold numbers of people make a living from music-from paid per- formers to students employed in music libraries and record shops. Students in one of my courses had these comments to make: "Involvement in music looks good on a college application; that's a sta- tus function, a statement of self-worth." "Music helps me understand other people and their actions, to place myself in another_ pe~son' s shoes.11

"It's a stress reliever. 11 "It quiets my anger and otherwise rmproves my mood." "Music helps me focus while doing repetitive tasks." "I remem- ber things through song.11 "I use music to escape from ch~o~!" . One of the most significant uses to which people put music 1S to express an identity. Performers do this to establish an individual identity as a musician, of course, but music can also be emblematic of a group-a col- lege, as in a school song; a heritage group, as in the P?lish polka or ~e blues; a nationality, as in a national anthem. The mearung of such music is highly situated and useful for purposes ranging from contestation to solidarity. My favorite example is "We Are Family," which was adop~ed by the 1979 Pittsburgh Pirates baseball team for the purpose of ~ting fans in song. In a contrasting use, it is entertainingly employed for irony in the feature film The Birdcage, when the conservative senator character and his family, unrecognizable in drag, are generously escorted out incog- nito through a gay nightclub, past the hovering press, as patr~ns dance obliviously and joyfully. One day as I waited on campus for a nde home, I heard "We Are Family" blasting forth from the open patio of the UC Berkeley Haas School of Business, where it was being used to send a meaningful message at an alumni fund-raising event. Identity was shifted

Thinking about Music , = 19

to "man and fellow man" when the song was adopted in 2001 as the theme for the founding of the post-9/11 We Are Family Foundation, "a non profit dedicated to the vision of a global family by creating and sup- porting programs that inspire and educate the next generation about respect, understanding, and cultural diversity-while striving to solve some of our biggest global problems at the same time"· (www.weare- familyfoundation.org). Addressed to the young, a music video posted on the foundation's website features over 100 "beloved TV characters" singing for harmony to children in schools throughout the United States and beyond.

In the United States, the assertion of black ethnicity and African roots through music has been extremely effective sociopolitically. So effec- tive, in fact, that some Americans of Asian descent have modeled their political musical activity on that of African Americans. Without a shared musical heritage, Japanese American and Chinese American musicians joined the world of jazz performance in the 1970s, thereby lifting that powerful African American musical voice in the assertion of their Asian American identity and rights. Influenced in the 1970s by the black power movement in the United States and Rastafarianism in Jamaica, black ethnicity became a major sociopolitical issue in Brazil. Music groups endorsed the ideology of the 1940s and 1950s that is still called "negri- tude;" their songs evoked their African ancestry and the "black is beau- tiful" theme, but also raised quite vehemently the questions of racism and its resulting socioeconomic injustices (Gerard Behague, personal communication, 2001).

However, music can easily be experienced as utterly decontextu- alized-divorced from its time and place, cut off from its original makers, meanings, and uses as musicians collect sounds from all over the world to create, as the singer Marc Anthony put it, "world music in a Long Island basement11 (Buia 2001: 10). We can no longer assume that ethnic musical materials will serve as markers of par- ticular ethnic identities, for example. Such globally shared music is constantly recontextualized by those who listen to it, given new meanings, and made to perform new as well as the same old func- tions- a process that some ethnomusicologists call glocalization (global localization). Other musical boundaries are being super- seded as well. Senses of musical ownership are routinely challenged by sampling and online filesharing. Boundaries between musical genres such as jazz, rock, and classical are routinely breached. The creative process continues as music and music making become what people want them to be.

20 = THINKING MUSICALLY

ACTIVITY 1. 7 Return to the piece of music you chose for Activity 1. 4 and consider whether you can discern the aesthetic values that underlie it. Reflect on emotional stimulations, asso- dations, and memories it invokes for you, to think about its mean- ings and the ways it has been useful for you as an. individual, or for a group to which you belong. Prepare a statement on which you might base a contribution to class discussion.

TRANSMISSION OF MUSICAL KNOWLEDGE

Three words prevail in writing about music to name the processes by which musical knowledge is passed among people: "dissemination," "circulation," and "transmission." The first two have been used increas- ingly since the burgeoning of popular music studies in the 1980s; I shall return to them later in the book. "Transmission" is a well-worn word that has mostly been used for one of the most crucial factors for music anywhere-the process by which musical knowledge is taught and learned. Here I focus on transmission and multiple means-tactile, oral, and visual-by which music might be transmitted.

If you have ever taken partner-dance lessons, you know that tactile communication of the movements is important. In her book on music

. in Bali in this series, Lisa Gold describes how, in coaching the remark- ably young dancer of the legong style (always female), the teacher stands behind and manipulates the student's arms and body while singing the sequence of movements, indicating the melody and drum pattern, and counting out the steps (figure 1.7). In this way, the stud.ent learns the entire sequence by feel while integrating it with the music. Tactile trans- mission can also help in learning to play an instrument; I remember my piano teacher putting his han~ over mine on the keys to demonstrate how I should shift my hand to play in another register.

With regard to oral means by which music is transmitted, in ethno- musicology we have become increasingly careful to distinguish between oral and aural transmission: oral transmission takes the perspective of the teacher and implies interaction between the teacher and the learner, while aural transmission takes the perspective of the learner, who hears the music through some aural source.

"Written" is the remaining mode of transmission that is usually acknowledged, implying the use of music notation. That is but one mode

Thinking about Music , = 21

FIGURE 1. 7 Tactile transmission of le d Master teacher I Nyoman Cen·t 'th d gon~ ance and coordination with music. · ,ft a Wt stu ent Ni Made A s

i h

is o en conveyed as the teacher firm{ h ld h yu ept an. A strong energy a knee into the arch of the back h ohs { e arms and hands of the student, puts dynamic power and element of s~ :s: : e _ead, smac~ an elbow up to convey the the teacher holds or touches the st:!'ae t t ' '. ~a~ is :o essential to Balinese dance. Ulhen of energy; for the student it is about ts: out technique but also a transmission and comment by Emiko Saraswati Susilo) earning ow your teacher feels something. (Photo

of visual._ · · uansm1ss1on, however An th . b . learned to play an instrument b . wa~ ~r IS o s~1:7ation; how many have ~an be taught and learned from ;aintin ~g h::icians! ~o, a great deal ious types of resources obtainable o~ , POn dgraJ:'hs, film, and the var-

e. e ay m a term when I was

22 = THINKING MUSICALLY

teaching Music of Japan and had just finished the segment on the lmJ:>erial gagaku music (CD track 1-9, Fig. 1.S), a student cam~ to me beanng a hichiriki-a plastic imitation, but nevertheless a repli~a of ~e doub~e- reed aerophone in the gagaku ensemble. He had bought 1t ?nline, he said, and had come to ask if I might show him how to play 1t. Once I had recovered from surprise at that initiative, I replied regretfully that no, I could not help. Another student who had come along, who happened to be an oboe (double-reed aerophone) player, offered to try to ~elp. Later, I learned that she had found the Japanese instrument totally different and couldn't help. Not to worry, said the determined hichiriki player,"! fo~d a manual with video online and I am playing it." I will return to this point about sources for learning at the end of the chapter.

Important to be understood from the outset of this sectio~, however, is that there are different views about whether or not musical knowl- edge should be shared and, if so, under what condi~ons. My teachers of North India's music, for instance, related to me instances of other teachers who would transmit certain knowledge only to students from their families. In her book on First Nations peoples, Beverley Diamond informs us that there are currently different views about whether Indigenous beliefs, songs, and customs (including those that constitute "musical knowledge") should be shared with outsiders-b~th membe~s of other tribes or nations and non-Native Americans. Feeling the pain of being misrepresented by outsiders over and over again, and, some

(

FIGURE 1.8 Japanese Gagaku ensemble. From left to right: ~ront row: s~~k~, taiko, kakko; middle, kotos, ryiiteki, hichiriki, biwas; rear, ryutekis, h1chmkis, shos. Members of the Tenri University Gagaku Ensemble. (Courtesy of Koji Sato)

Thinking about Music , = 23

believe that nothing should be shared, that Native American knowl- edge should be accessible only to the Native American community from which it came. In Diamond's experience, that was not the majority view, although she considers it to be an understandable one. It's not that knowledge is secret, but-rather that those who are entrusted with knowl- edge must know how it should be used.

Oral and Aural Transmission. Most music is learned aurally-both by intentional listening and by osmosis, that is, by absorbing what we hear around us. This was already the case before the early twentieth century, when radio and recordings expanded the potential material that was available for learning. The oral mass media of all sorts are with- o~! doubt the single greatest teaching force, playing an enormously sig- nificant role in the transmission of musical knowledge.

Where music is taught primarily by oral transmission, the teacher plafs. a significant role, as a repository of knowledge and technique, the md1v1dual responsible for musical quality, and often a guide in life (as the Indian guru is). The availability of recordings can change the degree of dependence of a pupil on a teacher, as well as the degree of control a. teacher has over musical knowledge, but personal instruction pro- vides a qualitatively different learning experience. Student-teacher rela- tionships vary greatly. Particularly where music is being transmitted orally, b~t _within a written tradition as well, a teacher might or might not be willing to make verbal explanations, preferring instead that the student listen, watch, and do.

A student, Nontapat Nimityongskul, remarked to me, "There are two main ways we can keep music. One is to write it down. The other is to know it in your heart." Nontapat raises an issue concerning oral and aural versus written transmission. Will music learned aurally be remembered and preserved? Quite possibly it will fade from memory, unless one or all ?f three conditions exist. The first and most necessary condition is that one mtends to remember the music precisely as learned. This is a matter of personal or group motivation. The motivation would exist, for example, when there is a fear that incorrect rendering will cause some disaster. ~~ secon? condition is a system for learning the music so thoroughly

that 1t is not ~ely to be forgotten. The most evidently successful such sys- tem was devised for the chanting of religious texts that have survived in Hindu Indian culture since the Vedic period (roughly 1500-500 B.C.E.). Without any reference to written materials, the chants have been trans- mitted from Brahrnin priests to young Brahrnin boys through untold num- bers of generations. The teaching priest has his pupils learn the sacred text,

24 = THINKING MUSICALLY

using a well-worked-out memorization technique: a set of named pat- terns that recombine in various ways the words of each sentenc~ of the text. In these patterns, the text is repeated and repeated until truly

absorbed.

ACTIVITY t .8 Test this method by which Vedic recitation is learned. It involves treating each word in a sentence as . a separate entity-to which I am giving a letter. By repeating two · of the p_at- terns try memorizing this unfamiliar sentence: "The gods gave birth to the goddess of speech spoken by animals in all forms· " • To get started, write out the sentence. Below ~ach word assign a letter in

alphabetical order, as in, The gods gave birth to ...

a b C d e ...

• Speak (don't write!) the words of the sentence in each of the patterns. h Keep repeating each pattern until it comes easily, then move to t e

next pattern. krama pattern: ab / be / cd / de / etc., to the end of the sentence. mala pattern: ab / ba / ab I be I cb I be I cd I de I cd I de I ed I

de I etc.

• Create your own pattern, and do the sentence with it as well. ~en you are comfortable with that one, you might well have memonzed

~~~- . • Try to speak the sentence from memory-just as a sentence. Did

the method work for you?

The third condition is a system of reinforce~ent_: a system that assures that memory of the music will be period1cal~y rene':e~. "Oldies" radio broadcasts perform this function; recurring music m a religious calendrical cycle does as well, such as c~rols . sung at Christmas or prayers chanted at Pa~sov~r. In some _s1~ati~ns, the responsibility for reinforcing memories 1s taken by mstitut10ns. In Java (Indonesia), musicians at the royal courts hold rehearsals

Thinking about Music, = 25

expressly to maintain musical compositions and choreographies that are transmitted mainly through oral tradition (CD track 1-7). Referring to something written is another way to renew the memory periodically.

The best way to maintain musical memory is to have a sound record- ing available, for so much is excluded from even the most comprehensive system of notation--sensual vocal production that is characteristic of a style, for instance. Preservation was an unintended achievement of the recording industry when it began to record all kinds of musics in the 1890' s as a way to sell the new machines. Using that technology, ethnomusicol- ogists, folklorists, and some anthropologists have been motivated to pre- serve the world's musical treasures, and there are now numerous sound archives around the globe. Touching stories circulate about groups whose traditional music no longer exists for some reason- radical change from international influence, memory loss where no system of reinforcement was in place, or loss of interest on the part of successive generations-but recovery and revival is possible through recordings that someone deposited in an archive.

Visual Transmission in the Form of Notation. The nature of a nota- tion system depends on the purpose people intend it to serve, and numerous types are in use around the world. If any musician wants to write a brief reminder of music already held in memory, a mini- malist notation will suffice, recording only the musician's choice of crucial information. If the minimalist information that is recorded gives a performer instructions on how to play the music-what to do on an instrument to sound out the music-it is called prescriptive notation. For a xylophone player, for instance, if the notation tells him or her which key to hit, that is prescriptive notation. If a com- poser or other musician wants to document how the music should "sound," it is called descriptive notation. That is the intention of Western staff notation.

Prescriptive notation for stringed and some historic keyboard instruments (often called tablature) gives technical instruction to players-where to place their fingers on a stringed instrument and perhaps more. Whereas there are any number of such systems that could illustrate this notation, I chose the historic notation for the qin (pronounced "chin" with a rising tone, figure 1.9), a Chinese zither-type instrument (CD track 1-10). Like other tablature-type notations, it is intended to transmit performing instructions. Reproduced in figure 1.10 is the beginning of a piece, "Flowing

26 = THINKING MUSICALLY

Water." To read Chinese-language texts, start at the right side of the page and follow the characters in each column, from top to bottom. In figure 1.10, the title of the piece, "Flowing Water," is written at the top of the far right column, and the label for section one is given in the next column toward the left. The musical notation begins at the top of the third column, toward the middle of the page. Basically, the notation specifies left- and right-hand playing techniques and the strings on which they are to be executed. Figure 1.11 shows the Chinese numbers used to indicate the six strings of the instrument. Figure 1.12 shows the right-hand techniques specified in the first column of notation of the piece. Figure 1.13 shows you how indi- cations of playing techniques and string numbers are combined in the first three characters of the piece.

ACTIVITY 1. 9 Your first task is to locate the string numbers in the characters. Fig. 1.11 gives you those numbers. Try copy- ing those numbers to give you a visual feel for them.

In Fig. 1.10, count to column 5 (from right to left). To get you started, I'll give you the string numbers in the first five char- acters ef column 5, from the top down: 3 & 4, 2, 3, 4, 3. Now try to identify the string numbers in the large characters for the whole of column 3 from the right, that is, from the beginning ef the piece. (Small characters written to the right in a column refer to an action to be taken qfter the main notes have been articulated.)

As you can see, the numbers are embedded within the charac- ters, surrounded by indications ef playing techniques. Using Figure 1. 12 and 1. 13 as a guide for those in column 3, you can see how the player is instructed to play each pitch.

Once you understand what the notation is giving you, try copying the first column of melody to experience the flow of it.

Most important, think about what this notation does and does not tell you. Each time this notation would be used, the player would render it according to his own dapu, a process of realiz- ing the notation in sound. This notation is prescriptive, rather than descriptive.

Thinking about Music , = 27

-··- ~~- .. .. ..... - .. ~ ..

FIGURE 1. 9 Chinese gin. (C.,,me,J, ,,f L'CLA EI ·

. . I 11101111tsicology Ard1i11es}

28 csa THINKING MUSICALL y

Numbers indicate the string(s) on which the technique is executed.

--- 1 .,,,,. 2

---..it ~

.,,,. 3 -_.. ·-- v3J 4 ft 5 ~--~ 6 ~'

FIGURE 1.11 Ha11)

Clzinese numbers. (Chart by Ja11 c Chiu, Viet Ng,,ycn, and Pamela

At the beginning of the piece (column 3 from the right in Figure I. I 0), these right-hand techniques are required.

'1 Middle finger pulls the string. f Thumb pulls string with nail.

~ Thumb pushes the string and comes to rest against the next string without sounding it.

e "Chord" from two simultaneous -r techniques r Index finger pushes string with tip of fingernail, twice in succession.

FIGURE 1.12 R (r.fu-ha11d gin ra lrniqucs (Chan by Jolu, Gr();c/1witz)

~ Middle finger pulls string 1 .

fr. ~ Thumb pulls string 6 with nails.

ft:. ' Thumb pushes string 6. FIGURE 1.13 Technique.s and stri11g numbers co111bi11ed i11 gin 11otatio11 /Chart by John Groschwirz)

30 o.s:o THINKING MUSICALLY

Notation is a kind of access to information. Whereas in an orally transmitted musical tradition the teacher controls whether or not a pupil may learn something, writing the music down makes it mo_re accessible to greater numbers of people. Unlike ~ Western music, where all voices and instruments use staff notation (though a few instruments, notably guitar and hip-hop turntable, ~se ~pecialized tab- latures) in Japan each traditional instrument has its_ o:111 system of notation. Standardized notation assumes that the music is to be shared among the general music-reading public, whereas the Japanese system is tailored to in-group exclusivity.

The five-line staff notation system is so detailed that it requires a lit- eracy that is specifically musical. With colo~alism, how~ver, its u~e was disseminated so widely in the world that it now consti~tes a ~d. of international musical language. Because learning some of _its ~asic pr~- ciples can be of great help as a tool for musical co~urocatio~, I ?ive a brief guide here. An explanatory list of a few basic elements is given in figure 1.14, and others ~re added in figu~; 1.15, a sa~ple of Western notation featuring a portion of the song Aloha Oe, composed by Queen Liliuokalani of Hawaii (1838-1917).

An adage often voiced by one of my former teachers, Mantle Hood, is one I endorse: "A written tradition is only as strong as the oral tra- dition that supports it." If you have tried to read ~y notati~n system without some further verbal explanation and hearing what is notated, you can recognize that to be true. In the en?, an int~~lay betw~n the oral/ aural and written processes for learrung music is the reality for

most musicians. In this chapter I have introduced briefly the interests of ethn~musi-

cologists in exploring how people all over the globe learn music a:rid make it meaningful and useful in their lives. Instruments through which people make music are the subject of chapter 2. .

Before going there, however, I wa~t you to thmk about o~e m~r~ basic question. At the beginning of this chapter, concepts of musi~ in general were explored. But w~:3-t about "the music'.' or, ~~ is frequently said, "the music itself -TMI? W~at. con~tltut~s the music itself-the ubiquitous TMI?" asked music historian Nich~las Mathew in a class I observed. He was speaking to the assumption of many of his students that the notated piece or the single record- ing (think MP3 file) is TMI. "But is it?" he queried and wrot~ across the board: Composer, performer, audience. Demonstratmg the importance of the question, he showed us a clip from the 1947 fea- ture film Song of Love. In the scene, the flambuoyant and fabulously

Thinking about Music , o.s:o 31

1. The basic unit is a staff of five lines ( ); staves meant to be read simultaneously are joined by a vertical line at the left margin.

2. Individual musical sounds are represented by notes. .J J 3. Pitch is indicated by placing notes both on staff lines and in spaces

between staff lines. I~ J J d I F I · 4. Melodic contour is visible: Even if pitches cannot be identified

the rising and falling of the pitches can be followed. ' 5. When multiple musical parts are intended to be sounded together,

they are aligned vertically. 6. Rhythm is shown by altering the appearance of notes. "Black"

notes (with filled-in noteheads) are of shorter duration than "white" notes. A flag on the stem ( ~) attached to a note shortens the duration. Additional time on the pitch is indicated by a dot after the note. For example:

J = 1 count J~ = 1/2 count (half-counts are often linked by a beam n) J = 1.5 counts J = 2 counts J = 3 counts

7. Meter (grouping of counts) is shown by vertical lines called bar lines. The space between two bar lines is called a measure. (In "Aloha Oe" each measure consists of four counts.) See chapter 3.

FIGURE 1.14 Basic Guideline to Western Steff Notation

fam~us n!neteenth-century performer-composer, Franz Liszt, was playmg his transcription for piano of composer Robert Schumann's romantic "Widmung" ("Dedication") that he had written for his ?eloved wife Clar.a, who_ sat listening in the intimate salon gather- ing. _The se_lect, elite a1:1dienc~ applauded Liszt's bombastically vir- ~osic version of the piece with the sort of admiring adulation that Liszt hoped to receive from the transcriptions he made of other com- poser~' compositions; the audience valued virtuosity, and he gave them Just that. A~ other guests wandered off, Clara sat at the piano an~ played the piece as her husband had intended it to be-a quiet, lyrically tender love song. Before we could see Liszt's reaction in the film, Math~w brought the showing to an end. It was up to the stu- dents to thmk about what "the music" was in that instance. Their

32 """ THINKING MUSICALLY

AL.OHAOE. Tempo:

Moderate speed SONG and CHORUS.

I Composed by H.R.H. LILIUOKAL.ANI ·- ~ : "~'--e.~-;: ·. -&1; ·~ '~~~ . =~ -~1g;;1 . . Dynamic markings:

crescendo, decrescendo

Three staves linked

Two staves played on same

instrument (here, piano)

-

i~~~~~~.~~·- ~¥.~~~~~§ T~~~·...., V "lil<o," p~.; A·. hi. hi le· hu - • -.; uk~

FIGURE 1.15 Dales)

liko," Dit A - -hi - hi le - hu - a dts Thais ''liko.'.' The A - . hi - hi le . hu . a of the vale .

- . ---. .. Copyright 1884 by UUUOKALANL

,-,· t I

Tie End of section

,j "Al h O " (with the assistance of Joseph Five-line staff '!otation o O a e.

f d the audience all con- conclusion: the c~~posers~ t~:J'a:r ~r:;::i:in wasn't any one thing. tributed to w~at the mus1cf h" b k I turn ~o thinking about music

In the ensuing chapters o t is oo , . t (m· eluding 2 · d oted to mstrumen s

in ad~itional W:aystr.uCmheanptt)erbot~ in et:rms of ideas about them and in the voice as an ms ,

Thinking about Music = 33

terms of ways in which they are used in musical practices. Chapters 3, 4, and 5 focus on three basic parameters of musical content-time, pitch and structure-as musicians have used them creatively. As in this introductory chapter, I have drawn examples from a variety of musics from around the world. In Chapter 6 I return to thinking about music through issues that ethnomusicologists have found to be important as they have studied many different musics and that authors of the case study volumes of this Global Music Series address at greater length. In some senses, Chapter 6 comes full circle back to this introductory chapter, to pull some things together. Chapter 7 guides you to musical investigations of your own. As I said in my "Note to Readers" (pp. xxiv), by the time you finish this book that is about the infinitely creative imagination of humankind, you will have experienced something that intrigues you or moves you, but in any case, causes you to think more deeply about music.