Music, Global History, and Postcoloniality

Music, Global History, and Postcoloniality
Author(s): Johann Kroier

Source: International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music, Vol. 43, No. 1 (JUNE
2012), pp. 139-186
Published by: Croatian Musicological Society
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J. Kroier:
Music,
Global
History,
I
and
Postcoloniality |
Music,
Global
History,
and
Postcoloniality
|
IRASM 43
(2012)
1: 139-186
Johann Kroier
Schwedter Str. 250
D-10119
Berlin, Germany
E-mail:
Kroier@mailbox.tu-berlin.de
UDC: 78.01:78.06
Original
Scientific
Paper
Izvorni znanstveni rad
Received:
July 28,
2011
Primljeno:
28.
srpnja
2011.
Accepted: April 14,
2012
Prihvaceno: 14.
travnja
2012.
Abstract
-
Resume
In the last decades the
|
economic realities of
globali-
|
zation have stimulated within
|
the social sciences a turn
towards a new
conception
of
global history
that tries to
explore
the
pre-histories
of
current
globalization. Togeth-
er with the advent of
postco-
lonial
theory
this
implies
also
a
challenge
for the
concepts
of music
history
still in use
by
the
pertinent disciplines.
Starting
with a reconsidera-
tion of recent discussions
within
ethnomusicology
on
world music and
globaliza-
tion,
this
essay
tries to sketch
the
possibilities
of a 'historical
turn' for a new kind of cosmo-
politan musicology by
contextualizing
ethnomusico-
logy
with
respect
to its histor-
ic
source,
the
"objectivation
of
music" initiated
by
Herrmann
von Helmholtz.
Keywords:
Global
history

postcoloniality

world music

globali-
zation

ethnomusicolo-
gy

Hermann Helm-
holtz

musical culture

sociology
of music
I
Curiosity
is a vice that has been
stigmatized
in turn I
by Christianity philosophy,
and even
by
a certain
f
conception
of science. . .
However,
I like the
word;
it
suggests something quite
different;
it evokes
care;
it evokes the care one takes of what exists and what
might
exist;
a
sharpened
sense of
reality,
but one that
is never immobilized before
it;
a readiness to find
what surrounds us
strange
and
odd;
a certain deter-
mination to throw off familiar
ways
of
thought
and to
look at the same
things
in a different
way;
a
passion
for
seizing
what is
happening
now and what is
disap-
pearing;
a lack of
respect
for the traditional hierarchies
of what is
important
and fundamental.
-
Michel Foucault
(The
Masked
Philosopher)
The
history
of American
popular
music in the 20th
century
can
yield
a distinctive
understanding
of the
great
transformation we have
recently
become obli-
ged
to call
globalization
It can
complicate
the economic
logics
that have been
employed
to define those
complex processes.
It can
disrupt
the
over-simple
his-
torical
periodization
that has been
provided
for
them so
far,
and it can
suggest
useful if unorthodox
139
IRASM 43
(2012) * '
1: 139-186 I
|
J'
and
*rier;
Music Global
History,
* '
|
and
Postcoloniality
ideas as to what the cultural and indeed the
political
forms of that
globalization may
be and become in the future.
-
Paul
Gilroy
1. Globalization and World Music: A Dead End?
From a historical
point
of view so-called world music is a rather recent
phenomenon.
When
musicologists
started in the 20th
century
to
explore
the
musics1 of
non-European people,
it seemed almost
impossible
that these could
become an
everyday-commodity.
Their
apparent strangeness
made them
largely
indigestible
for the
distributing
media and institutions of music. Still
during
the
seventies most critics of the dominance and
expansion
of western culture indus-
tries
implicitly
assumed that its
power
would
automatically
be based on the
stylistic hegemony
of Western
popular
music. The
ruling
counter-discourse of
culture critics and
ethnomusicologists
was focused on the
possible disappearance
of
global diversity
in music. This was not
only
a scientific
problem:
the loss of
sources
necessary
for
writing
of a worldwide music
history;
at the same time it
was also an ethical
problem:
the loss of
arguments against
Eurocentrism. It was
part
of a humanist mission to
spread
the
insight
into the
relativity
of cultural
values. Music as a learned
system
of cultural
practices
was an
outstanding example
for the
incomparability
of tastes.
Learning
to
appreciate
some sort of non-Euro-
pean
music was seen as a
key experience
that could
trigger
the
process
of intercul-
tural
understanding.
Meanwhile the situation has
changed drastically,
at least in
part.2
The
digital
media revolution seems to have shrunk the scale of
strangeness
to the same extent
as the distances in
global
communication. The
easy
and fast
accessibility
of
any
kind of music in the Internet has
deep consequences
for the
general parameters
of
cultural
perception.
You can call this
phenomenon
the
play-list syndrome:
the
forced
comparability
of
incomparable styles,
the
complete
de-contextualization of
music and its
perceptual reshaping
in a standardized media format. The
post-
modern listener of the 21st
century jumps through
the
global landscape
of music
in the same
way
he is
zapping
between television channels
(Fabbri, 57-60).
His
identification with
specific styles
and tastes is in dissolution while he
incorporates
the most weird and exotic
examples
of music into his
play-list.
He
enjoys
the full
1
For the
plural
in musics in contrast to die Musik see
Bohlman,
25-26.
2
My
somehow
impressionistic diagnosis
is not
only
based on
personal
observation,
but follows
Steven Feld's
diagnosis
of
increasing
sonic
virtuality (159-160)
and tries to estimate the
possible
consequences
of a
phenomenon
labeled
postmusics by Jody
Berland
(2008)
for the
reception
of
potential
world music. It is aimed here as a
counterweight
to the
prevailing
discourses on music and
place,
and the
prevailing
criticism of the
globalization
of music in terms of
economics,
power,
culture
imperialism
and
exoticism,
and
certainly
needs further elaboration.
140
J. Kroier: Music Global
History,
I
|RASM 43
(2012)
1: 139-186
and
Postcoloniality |
freedom of cultural
relativity
and
develops
an
ever-changing cosmopolitan
pattern
of musical
preferences.
Aesthetic tolerance with
respect
to the
strange
and
unusual has become a matter of audio
mastering
-
or of the mood of the listener.
The anarchic fun of border
jumping
has become the antidote to the dictate of the
canons as well as to that of cultural
imperialism.
It leads into the
global
mash
up
as the musical
gesamtkunstwerk
of international network
society.
Nevertheless,
not
only
the culture critic
may
feel
uneasy
with this
play-list
syndrome. Everyone
who has the
privilege
to know more about the
historical,
cultural and
political
circumstances of music can be baffled when he sees and
hears an
experienced
internet user combine the
seemingly incompatible:
the most
authentic with the most
inauthentic3,
the
daringly
artistic with the excessive-
ly
commercialist,
the
politically engaged
with the
bluntly
conformist. The
ignorance
with
regard
to the
respective
contexts of music
may
result in bizarre
revaluations and creative
misinterpretations.
The
play-list
listener
may
have his
pleasure
in
understanding tragic things
as
funny,
or
parodies
as serious. His unit
of reference is the audio file as a
surprise bag
that fell out of time and
space.
His
cosmopolitan
taste manifests an aesthetic tolerance without
exactly knowing
what it is that he tolerates. In this
way
he exercises a
power
that doesn't hurt
anybody
but the heart of the musical connoisseur. This
power
seems
innocent,
but
it
deeply
affects the aesthetic
dignity
of music.4
Apparently
this
power
cannot be criticized in the same
way
as the
power
of
the
global
music
industry.
The
plea
for a
historically
informed
listening5
is here
as valuable as elsewhere. But
my
aim here is not to
give
advice to the
listener;
instead I want to look for the
consequences
that the aforementioned shift of
perception
has for the
scholarly
reflection on music. We can
argue
that
paradig-
matic shifts on the material level are
producing paradigmatic
shifts on the scien-
tific level. It
was,
for
example,
the factual
process
of neo-liberal
globalization
that
had a
heavy impact
on the
development
of a
global approach
in
history (Cooper
31).
The
widening
of horizons
migrated through
the
subsystems
of
society
and
made it
possible
to reformulate the
geographic range
of research. In this sense we
can look for a
starting point
from which it is
possible
to formulate an
adequate
concept
of music that counters the
arbitrary
structure of
play-list listening.
But
first of all I want to use this
starting point
to
recapitulate
the debate on
globaliza-
tion and world music that has been
going
on since the end of the
eighties.
3
If the
concept
of
authenticity
is
today generally
considered as
problematic (see Stauth),
this also
reflects
changed patterns
of cultural
consumptions
associated with
post-modernity.
Here it is used as
metaphor
for the
particular
attitude of
postcolonial
music in contrast to its commercial-minded imita-
tions. For a discussion of different views on
authenticity
in music see
Schippers,
41-60.
4
To a certain extent his
may
be seen
simply
as a result of commodification.
My argument
is that
in the
digital
realm due to the lack of material
packing,
the
easy handling
of
big
amounts of
data,
and
the existence of
freely
accessible
repertoires
the de-contextualization of music has taken a
step
further.
The
corresponding
consumer attitude
might
be called
post-exotism.
5
Corresponding
to a
practice
of
historically
informed
performances
see
Baker,
442.
141
IRASM 43
(2012) * '
1: 139-186 I
|
and
X
îer;
M^sic Global
History,
* '
|
and
Postcoloniality
Remarkable is the neat historic
parallelism
in the ascent of both terms to
public
discourse. Globalization entered as catchword that covers different no-
tions: in its
descriptive
sense it is related to the
widening
of international
exchange
of
people, goods
and
knowledge.
This
process, mainly
a
consequence
of
changes
in the
technologies
of
transport
and
communication,
concerns all levels of
society
and raises
questions
of cultural
change
and
identity.
On the other hand the term
was linked from the
beginning
to the normative
concept
of neo-liberalism:
put
simply,
the idea that the best
thing
for the world's future would be the unlimited
expansion
and
deregulation
of
capitalist
markets. This neo-liberal attitude
gained
its
credibility
not least from the fact that it distanced itself from the older norma-
tive model of modernization with its cultural Eurocentrism.
Following
its as-
sumptions, development happens
more or less
spontaneously
if
only
the forces
of the market are set free.6
The term
world
music,
which was coined in 1987 for
promotional
use,7
certainly
shares the historical circumstances behind the first notion of
globaliza-
tion. Its
premise
was the accelerated communication between
metropolis
and
peripheries
in the context of decolonization and media revolution.
World music
was a movement in a rather abstract sense. I am inclined to see it as a sort of deal:
the
promise
for third world artists to
get
a worldwide audience was
paid by
their
adaptation
to the customs of international music business. The
ideology
that each
party
would
get
its fair share from this deal was
accompanied by
the
philan-
thropic propagation
of
cosmopolitanism
and multiculturalism. The
good
conscience of this artificial movement was based on the
assumption,
that its
positive
effects would in the end overcome its concessions to the
capitalist
music
industry (see Hutnyk,
19-49;
Murphy).
It is not
surprising
that this world music movement became a
provocation
and
challenge
for
ethnomusicology,
a
discipline up
to then oriented towards the
terms folklore and traditional music. Martin Stokes in 2003
published
a
revealing summary
of the debate.
Following
his line of
thought
there can be
identified two
opposed
two
approaches:8
the one includes world music in its
critique
of
globalization;
it sees it in the vein to differentiation of
target groups
typical
of
post-fordist
economies and
interprets
it as some sort of a new form of
cultural
imperialism.
The other
approach
stresses the innovative
aspects
of
cultural
globalization.
It
highlights hybridity
as a new form of
authenticity
and
stresses the local as a field of reactive
adaptation
to
globalization. Diasporic
musics
as the outcome of international
migration, following
their own
dynamics
of
6
1 am
polarizing
here a differentiation elaborated in detail
by Cooper
in order to distance
myself
from the normative
implications.
See also Friedman.
7
Feld
claims,
that the term was introduced
by
academics as
early
as the 1960s
(190).
8
1 am
including
here
arguments
of a more recent
critique
of world music
by Taylor,
and
Krims,
94-103.
142
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and
Postcoloniality |
syncretism
and
particularism,
are
replacing
the older models of more or less closed
cultures as units of reference. While the first
approach
focuses on the
unequal
distribution of
power,
the second discovers
productive
forces in the dissolution of
national cultures. As Stokes
writes,
an
opposition
between
global
and
local,
system
and
agency, pessimism
and
optimism, top-down
and
bottom-up approaches
to
globalization,
and Marxian and liberal has thus been inscribed
firmly
in the ethno-
musicological approach
to
globalization
from the
beginning (Stokes 50).
At least in
part
this schism can be related to shifts within the critical theories
of
global development (see Kapoor).
It reflects the shift from older theories of
dependency
to a bundle of newer
approaches usually
labeled as
postcolonial.
The Marxist
top-down approach
was
challenged by
voices from the
periphery,
which
protested against
their
passive
role in the then
dominating dependency
model. With the focus on
asymmetrical power
relations
important aspects
of
agency
are
put
aside;
the cultural
changes
on the
global periphery
are
unequivo-
cally qualified
as
losses,
while
attempts
to overcome the limits of isolated
(sub-)cultures
are seen
only
as
corrupting
influences. So the model of
dependency
seems to be too coarse to seize
realities,
which are
very
concrete for a
perspective
radically
centered on the
standpoint
of the
global periphery.
This strain of
thought
will be elaborated later in this text. For the moment it
shows that there is no
easy
conciliation of
postcolonial arguments
with the
hyper-
sociological critique
of
globalization.
As a result of
this,
world music must be
seen as based on a bundle of
complex
interactions which include mechanics of
adaptation
as well as
strategies
of
resistance,
hegemonic
forces as well as subver-
sive
influences,
the dissolution of cultural
meanings
as well as the creation of new
ones. Musical
globalization comprises
not
only
effects of the economic
power
of
Western music
industries;
it includes at the same time cultural
exchanges
between
the
powerless
themselves,
and the
possibility
to articulate
counter-hegemonic
means of
expression beyond
the level of local cultures. With the assertion that
global
relations are determined
by
Western
domination,
there comes too often an
attitude of alternativelessness.
Nevertheless,
this underestimates that
reality
might yet
be the alternative: not the un-reflected
product
of submission under the
rule of
global
culture
industries,
but the
only historically possible
deflection from
it. So the unidirectional
pattern
of international
exploitation
is
complemented
and
countered
by
a rather
complicated pattern
of communication.9
The debate on world music
may
be seen
today
as
partly
obsolete. It was
formulated with
regard
to the
expansive phase
of the world music
phenomenon,
which seems to be over now. This
period
was characterized
by
the
marketing
of
compact
discs as its basic
commodity
and the
promotion
of
live-performances
9
See the
corresponding
contributions in Ziff et
al.,
Palumbo-Luo et
al.,
Featherstone et al.
(1999).
143
IRASM 43
* (2012) '
1: 139-186 I
I
1
and
îer; Mîc,
Global
History,
* '
I
and
Postcoloniality
within the international concert circuit.10
By
now the
general strategy
of the music
industry
has
changed
in a
significant way
as a
consequence
of the
ongoing digital
revolution. With the
Internet,
not
only
the conditions for the
global
distribution
of music have
changed drastically.
The economic interests involved are increas-
ingly operating
in
ways
different from the classical model of
capitalist entrepre-
neurship.
Meanwhile the industrial
strategies comprise
the
far-reaching acquisi-
tion of
copyrights,
the
promotional freezing
of the succession of
fashions,
and the
sellout at
dumping prices
of
unprofitable
sectors. In
particular,
the
general juridi-
fication of the music business has created new frontlines in economic
power
relations,
which follow the factual limits of transnational
corporations
to execute
their
acquired rights
on intellectual
property (Laing 315-319).
In this
context,
world music
may
become a minor field of interest and can be
subject
to a
regime
of market stratification. Culture industries are
profit-sensitive
but
culture-blind,
so that their
primal target groups
will remain the new
aspiring
classes of metro-
politan
consumer
societies,
independently
of their cultural affinities. In the course
of
this,
world music
may appear
as
replaceable
and fall back into sub-markets off-
screen of a broader
public
interest.
Apparently
the critical
analysis
of the
global
culture
industry
has to be redone
at least
every
ten
years.
Nevertheless,
the world music
phenomenon
has estab-
lished itself within the music
history
of the last
century.
The
possibility
to think
about music
globally
is an achievement that has its effects not
only
on the
practice
of music and on the
ways
of its
marketing
but also on our
concepts
for scientific
reflection. The world music debate can be seen as a
step
in the
process
of what
Ulrich Beck has called reflexive
modernity.

Yet,
in 2003 Martin Stokes stated a
massive trend to mediate the
opposing positions (Stokes, 50).
The
seemingly
incompatible approaches
which are both critical of the culture
imperialism
underlying
recent
globalization
lead
only
to a dead end if we
suppose
an
unchanging principle
at work.
However,
this misses the
dynamic
character of
globalization.
With the flexibilization of market mechanisms the critics are also
challenged
to think in time. The
play-list syndrome,
the commercial sellout of
certain
genres
of world music and the
persistence
of
regional bootleg
markets
indicate the
imponderability
of cultural and economic
developments
in a
global-
ized world. What I want to
suggest
here is that we must
comprehend
the contrast-
ing
views as
part
of a wider dialectic that itself is in constant
change.
It would be
naive to
forget
that all transnational
corporations
are
acting
in
strategic ways,
and
it would be naive also to consider their
power
as unlimited.
Although globaliza-
tion is
working
on the
gradient
of
global
economic
inequality,
it leaves
inequality
of cultural
prestige
untouched as a field that can be influenced much more
easily.
With the
emergence
of
non-profit
movements in the
Internet,
not
only
the
10
On
pre-Internet strategies
of flexible
specialization
see
Shapiro
et al.
144
History,
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and
Postcoloniality |
mechanics of
public
success have
changed considerably.
The dissolution of the
borders between
advertising
and content has created a vast
array
of tactical
options
far from the conventional mode of
commodity marketing.
The task will be
ongoing
to
analyze
the current trends and fluctuations of
musical
creativity
and
power
relations in the
globalized
world;
but the
speed
of
change
makes it to
easy
to
forget
that the cultural material involved is embedded
into
history.11
Music
gets
its cultural
meaning
from its
past,
even if the listener
does not know it. The short term calculations of the versatile
global players
and
the short term
memory
of the internet user are the
signs
of a time that deracinates
music in a
way
that
might
lead to its cultural de-valorization. It is not about
replacing
an old
pessimistic
attitude with a new one. It is about the
acknowledge-
ment of the semiotic level of
global power
relations.
Understanding
music's
message correctly
is the
only practical
alternative to the lament about
inequality:
if we cannot
help
the
poor
artist,
we can
help
the misunderstood one. This is no
excuse for
exploitation
but a
plea against
one-sided
epistemological
materialism.
Only
the streams of music can
eventually
flow faster than the streams of
global
capital,
and the
power
of music is based not
only
on its
saleability
but also on its
capacity
to include or to exclude. We have to consider the
ever-changing
habits of
musical
perception,
as we have to remind of their relation to
knowledge.
It is also the
ruling concept
of
history
that associates
European modernity
with
dynamic change
and assumes for the rest of the world more or less an
ahistorical
existence,
unless
proven
otherwise. In this
way,
it
joins
the timeless-
ness of the
postmodern
mode of
perception
and
reproduces
the
stereotype
of the
unconscious culturedness of the cultural other.
History
in this sense is
insepa-
rable from the idea of a master narrative that allows alternative histories
only
in a
locally
limited
range.
So the
methodological
turn into a
global history
is not
only
a
consequence
of recent
globalization,
and neither
only
a reaction to
postcolonial
critique.
It is also a result of historical
self-reflexivity
in
deconstructing
the
assumptions
of Western
superiority
and Eurocentrism in
history (Conrad
2002;
Conrad
2007).
To
apply
this shift on the
history
of music12 is a task that tran-
scends the discussion of
globalization
and world music
by
far. It
comprises
the
social context as well as the music itself. In the same
way
as the real extent of
global exchanges
in culture has to be
revealed,
the histories of
peripheral
musics
have to be taken into consideration. The discussion of
globalization
and world
music will not be a dead end if it leads into a two-sided
history
of musical
global-
ization. To this end it is
necessary
to re-evaluate the
conceptual parameters
of
tradition and
creativity,
custom and
art,
text and
sub-text,
exclusivity
and
11
In so far as
comparative musicology/ethnomusicology
is
occupied
with recorded
music,
it can
also be seen as
responsible
for
mediating
the historical
understanding
accessible
through
these
sources,
and for
propagating
the cultural values inherent in the recorded
history
of musics.
12
This task has
already
been taken
up;
see Radano et
al.,
Born et
al., Scott,
Taylor.
145
.RS. 43
(2012)
,= 1MM
|
HM^
inclusivity.
Music in its
global
dimension maintains a
tight relationship
to dialectic
processes
of
change
and reactive
adaptation.
These
processes
have formed the
prehistory
of world
music,
which can now become our
topic
of interest.
2. The Postcolonial13
Challenge
The world music movement
certainly
did not come out of nowhere. If we
follow its stream
upwards
we
may
encounter
pioneers
like Indian film
music,
American exotica
music,
South- African
jazz,
Afro-Cuban
Jazz,
Hawaiian steel
guitar
music or the
global
charisma of artists like
Harry
Belafonte,
Carmen
Miranda and Don
Azpiazu.
We meet a
grey
zone between curious exoticism and
modernist
departure,
between naive imitations and clever
crossovers,
between
ambassadorial self-consciousness and trans-cultural entertainment. If we focus
on the culture industrial
aspects,
we
might
detect half-bred
fakes,
dull
stereotypes
or even
involuntary parodies;
but if we concentrate on the innovative side of the
phenomenon,
we can see its historical rootedness in a
postcolonial
context. In all
cases,
it is in some
way
a
by-product
of
postcolonial
search for
identity.
The
impulse
to create
hybrid
means of
expression
or to
step
towards new audiences
originates
in a historical situation of
change.
It is the dismissal of the colonial
past
and the vision of new
possibilities,
the commonness of
migration
and the search
for mediation between local affiliation and a culture of
cosmopolitanism,
which
drives the
development
of cultural border
crossings.
When after the Second World War the
process
of decolonization reached its fi-
nal
phase,
the
question
of
postcolonial
identities became
urgent.
Yet since the twen-
ties
metropolises
like Paris had become centers of critical reflection and cultural
inventiveness that attracted the
upcoming
intellectual elites of the former colonies.14
Then,
in the
progressive
climate of the
1960s,
the
impetus
of the American civil
rights
and black
power
movements,
political
dreams of a third
way
and the emer-
gence
of nonconformist
youth
cultures formed the
background
for the creation of
new
styles
like
funk, Chicano-rock, Afro-beat,
reggae
or
tropicalismo,15
that
played
a
catalytic
role in the evolution of world music. Their wide
reaching
circulation
13
In the Americas the term decolonial is
preferred
and refers there to a
deeper
historical
range.
14
Wendl et al.
(2006) give
a rich documentation of artistic movements but this is
unfortunately
not related to
postcolonial
discourses from the
Anglophonic
world.
15
Tropicalismo
was to
incorporate
two
contradictory
attitudes:
one,
our
approval
of the version
of the Western
enterprise
offered
by
American
pop
and mass
culture,
including
our
recognition,
that
even the most naive attraction to that version is a
healthy impulse;
and, two,
our
rejection
of
capitula-
tion to the narrow interests of dominant
groups,
whether at home or
internationally.
It was also the
attempt
to face
up
to the
apparent
coincidence,
in this
tropical country,
of a countercultural wave
emerging
at the same time as the
vogue
in authoritarian
regimes. (Veloso, 7).
146
History,
I
|RASM 43
(2012)
1: 139-186
and
Postcoloniality |
and resonance met the worldwide sensibilities of the time for cultural liberation and
rejuvenation.
The
slogan
do
your
own
thing
was the common denominator that
linked the various cultural movements in an anti-colonial vein.
Meanwhile it was the institutional
surrounding
of rock music with its
partly
practiced programmatic openness
to
global
trends that determined the
perception
of these musical movements.16 The
proud
assertions of new identities and the subtle
transformations of ethnic materials were drowned
by
the
ubiquitous symbolism
of the electric
guitar
and the technical
appeal
of
amplifiers.
The
project
of
hybrid
autonomies in a
postcolonial
world was
increasingly
hidden behind a rock-centered
concept
of
popular
music. To understand the world music
complex just
as an
appendix
to international
pop
business is
misleading
insofar as its
political
context
is
pushed
aside. It was a sort of
globalization
that concerned the idea of
independ-
ence that
preceded
the
globalization
fostered
by
the music
industry.
The
global
network of
postcolonial
buds had served as a mutual reference of
respect
and
inspi-
ration in an era that
experienced history positively
as movement in the
spirit
of
internationalism. It should not be
forgotten
that what was later transformed into
world music
got
the label
popular
not least because it distanced itself from the
strongly
nationalist affinities inherent in the
concept
of folklore.17
So behind the
globalizing strategies
as well as behind the surface of ethnic
otherness
appears
a different
reality.
Its
entry
into academic discourses is an achieve-
ment associated with the advent of
postcolonial thinking.
This
thinking
is not
only
about the deconstruction of Eurocentric narratives but revaluates
experiences
until
then excluded from
history.
Its
political project
is to decolonize theories about
society
and culture and to correct the habitual biases of
perception
stabilized
during
the
period
of incontestable
dependency.
Its
critique goes beyond
the one of
power
relations and concerns the
impact
of these relations on the structure of Western
knowledge.
To this
end,
it must consider the blank
pages
of
history neglected by
colonialist
historiography.
It has to reconstruct the mutilated voices of the
subaltern,
missing
in the dominant
picture
of
global society.
Their difference has become
radical since it was
long enough
dismissed as moribund and thus to be
neglected by
the
ruling gaze.
Nevertheless,
the submission of the colonial
subject
was never a
total
one,
although
this was assumed as normative in colonial
thinking.
The formal
liberation of this
subject changed
the role of its difference and revealed the subtext
of resistance silenced
by
the colonial discourse.
The
challenge
of
postcolonial theory
forces a rethink of the
parameters
of
human
equality
as well as difference. It leads to the destruction of essentialist
assumptions,
which have created their own realities that remained for a
long
time
16
During
the 1960s
Rolling
Stone
magazine
covered various
styles
that later would be labeled
world
music,
but it
changed
its
policy
some
years
later to become a
straight rock/pop magazine.
17
See the contributions of Biddle and
Knights,
and
John O'Flynrt
in Biddle et al.
147
IRASM 43
(2012) * '
1: 139-186 I
I
and
J'
*ert
Music Global
History,
* '
I
and
Postcoloniality
unreflected within the academic
system.18
The
postcolonial challenge
contains not
only
an ethical
issue;
its
epistemological consequence
will be the
reworking
of
concepts
and the
readjusting
of
significances.
For the cultural
study
of music it
demands a threefold task:
first,
to reconsider the
sociological presumptions
that
have become
commonplace
in the scientific treatment of music
beyond
the
territory
of Western art
music;
what was
usually taught
as basic
knowledge
about
folk and
popular
merits a re-examination in the
light
of
postcolonial critique.19
Secondly,
it should become a scientific rule to mistrust the
completeness
of historical
sources;
it affords some
courage
to dismiss the idea of secured
knowledge
until the
dimension of the omissions is clear. And
thirdly,
the existence of a
postcolonial
music must be taken into
consideration;
the
concepts
of modernization and West-
ernization are not sufficient to understand the
meaning
of a music that was created
in the
spirit
of
postcolonial
liberation and
identitary
transformation.
Paul
Gilroy
with his
groundbreaking
work The Black Atlantic
(1993),
conceived
for the first time a
postcolonial theory
that
gave
music its
place.
It dismembers the
general concept
of black music into a
complex diasporic system
characterized
by
hidden
resistance,
strategic adaptation, paradoxical identity
formation,
mutual
encouragement
and fluid cultural transfers.
Gilroy
not
only
sketches the
geo-
graphic
frame of
history
to the breadth of transatlantic relations which cover the
range
of
Europe,
Africa and the
Americas;
he sets the historic scratch at the
point
of slave
emancipation
to evaluate the
post-slavery
situation of re-enforced racial
imagination
and its
identitary consequences,
characterized
by
W. E. B. Du Bois as
double consciousness. It is
important
to note the shift from the older schools of
Afro- American studies to the deconstructivist
theory suggested by Gilroy.
In
avoiding any
essentialism of culture he describes blackness and Africanness
in their ambivalence of
myth
and
authenticity,
or of racist
ascription
and cultural
resource. His
theory
is not about cultures and their contact or
spontaneous
creolization but about uncertain
identities,
far-reaching misunderstandings
and
self-fulfilling prophecies.
So the black Atlantic is at the same time an overlooked
cultural unit as well as a set of avoidable and unavoidable
projections
and
expec-
tations. Black music in its
postcolonial, post-emancipation
context is intrinsi-
cally political
since it cannot abstain from
articulating
a
significant
attitude
towards its social role in a racist
society.20
18
Edward Said's Orientalism had a
deep impact
on the
de-essentializing
of
concepts
of
culture,
race,
religion
etc. and
prepared
the shift to a kind of a
dynamic
border
thinking
within world-
historical
approaches (Samman 279-281).
19
Agawu,
124. The
power
of
linguistically
fixed
categories
was demonstrated
exemplarily by
David Brackett with
respect
to African- American
popular
music.
20
[T]he
musics involved in a
widely-defined
black Atlantic
history
and the disenchanted
politi-
cal culture that
accompanies
it;
can be
appreciated
in a
variety
of
ways:
not
just
for their
creativity,
emotional force and artistic and technical innovations but
politically
and
philosophically.
Above
all,
they
can be valuated for their
conspicuous power
with which
they
have
repeatedly
articulated the
148
History,
I
|RASM 43
(2012) * '
1: 139-186
and
Postcoloniality |
* '
Gilroy's theory
of
afro-modernity
has freed the
study
of African- American
music from a dual
trap:
from the
wrong
alternative between a folklorist search for
African retentions and the
integrationist subsumption
under an
emergent
national
culture. His eccentric
standpoint
affiliated with the Caribbean
diasporic
culture of
Great Britain
gives way
to a wider
understanding
of solidarities and
differences,
sources and identifications that interact in the
process
of cultural
change.
It has far
reaching consequences
for the
conceptual
treatment of African derived music under
the conditions of modernization or
diaspora.
The
path opened up by Gilroy
was
followed
by
several scholars in the United States who started to
question
the well-
established narratives on Afro-American music.21 It has influenced the critical
semiotic
study
of the
history
of blackface
minstrelsy
as well as elaborate
analyses
of
the construction of race in black music. It made it
possible
to rewrite the
early
history
of
jazz
in
way
that revaluates its artistic contribution with reference to its
social
creativity
in a situation of delicate transformation of racialized
patterns;
thereby
it shifts the
range
of
perception
towards musical
practices
and traditions
up
to then
neglected
and deconstructs the discourses of
purity
and
authenticity
established
by
white
jazz
critics. And
finally,
the fence that had been erected between
the
study
of African- American music in the United States and the field of its Latin-
American and Caribbean relatives has been broken
up (e.g. Brennan).
This fence
had existed for a
long
time to further what was called the assimilation of the
negro
in a national
frame,
since the
struggle
for civil
rights
was bonded to historic
arguments
that made it a
struggle
of black citizens of the United States. This
politi-
cal context had been a serious obstacle for
recognizing
the
analogies,
differences
and interactions of North- American
jazz
with its Afro-Latin
counterparts.
It is
especially interesting
to
re-conceptualize
the
understanding
of
jazz
under
a
postcolonial signature.
This allows a differentiated view of
jazz
as a dual
phenomenon
that was not
necessarily
understood in the same
way by
black and
by
white audiences. It is involved in a
process
of construction and diffusion of
identity
that
plays
on different levels. There is its
significance
for blacks in the
US;
there is the issue of its
recognition
as American
music;
and there is its interna-
tional radiation as an abstract model for a
liberated,
modern and self-determined
practice
of music. This differentiation is not
only
obscured
by
the usual treatment
within the framework of American national
history;
it is
equally hampered by
national sensibilities of other countries that are reluctant to admit the influence of
jazz.
What the
global
view reveals here is not so much culture
imperialism
but a
neo- African internationalism that worked even
beyond
the borders of racial lines.
In the same
way jazz
had assimilated in its
original phase inspirations
from
possibility
of better worlds
against
the
existing
miseries,
raciological
terrors and routine
wrongs
of
capitalist exploitation.

(Gilroy 2003, 59)
21
See
publications by
Nicholas M.
Evans,
W.T. Lhamon
Jr., Ingrid
Monson,
Ronald
Radano,
Bruce
Boyd
Raeburn,
Guthrie P.
Ramsey Jr., John Szwed,
Alexander G.
Weheliye,
and others.
149
IRASM 43
x (2012) '
Is 139-186 I
|
J'
and
*er:
Postcoloniality
^slc
Global
History,
x '
|
and
Postcoloniality
outside the
US,
it later became an
inspirational
force for autonomous musical
developments
in the
Caribbean,
Latin America and Africa. The black Atlantic
clearly
is a
product
of racial
imagination,
but at the same time it
gave way
to
clandestine
exchange
of ideas and local movements for cultural
emancipation.
Meanwhile even the doctrine of African music's fundamental otherness came
under attack.22 Kofi
Agawu
in his
startling
book
Representing African
Music has
shown how
ethnomusicology
was from its
beginnings
fixed on difference. The
expectation
to find in Africa a kind of music
completely strange
to
European
ears
has
automatically
created its outcome. The self-attributed role of the researcher
who claims to understand this
strange
music and to be able to reveal its true
value has become an
epistemological pitfall
that results in selective
perception.
Agawu's
criticism,
which follows
partly
the
spirit
of Edward Said's Orientalism
,
deconstructs African music as a
concept
that has more to do with
European
projections
than with
empirism.
It is based on
generalizations
that fit the differen-
tial bias inherent in the researchers
philanthropic
attitude. This bias was also
responsible
for the until
recently prevailing neglect
of
popular
music in the
scholarly
literature on African music
(Agawu, 117-50),
which was based on the
axiomatic
juxtaposition
of traditional and
popular
music. As
long
as the
profes-
sional ethos of the
ethnomusicologist implied
the
protection
of traditional music
from
Westernizing
influences,
it seemed
impossible
to
give
credit to
genres appar-
ently
linked to Western
modernity.
In the
meantime,
the
delayed paradigmatic
turn has
brought
ethnomusicol-
ogy
into an absurd
exigency:
the
difficulty
to
explain
to
disciplinary
outsiders
why
the scientific interest has shifted from traditional to
popular
music. How is it
that research funds are
spent
to
study
the most trivial and
ephemeral
musical
expressions
instead of
helping
to save the
disappearing
testimonies of
dying-out
cultures? The established discourse on traditional music had delivered
comfortable
justifications,
as
long
as it
specialized
in
precious
artifacts that fit
the
concepts
of culture favored
by
Western museums. It is this
seemingly
infallible
purist approach
that strikes back now and
brings ethnomusicology
into trouble
of
legitimation.
In this
way,
the obsession with difference has created a
conceptual
vacuum that leaves scientific interest on a
shrinking
ice floe where no
arguments
are available
concerning
the
apparently
less traditional.
Instead of
deploring
this situation I'd
suggest
to
carry
on
Agawu's critique
to
connect it with the
critique
of
globalization.
For a
long
time the scientific weakness
of the
concept
of
popular
music has been
commonplace.
It is in use for
merely
practical
reasons which are nurtured
by
a bundle of dubious evidences: the
impact
of electronic
media,
the existence of
historically young
national
styles,
the obvious
distance with
regard
to tradition and the connection with
globalization.
The idea
22
See also
Scherzinger,
Kidula.
150
History,
I
IRASM 43
(2012)
1: 139-186
and
Postcoloniality |
of
popular
music seems so
overwhelmingly self-explanatory
that it is
easy
to
miss its crucial defect of construction: the uncontrolled
mingling
of
sociological
and historical
arguments.
There is no scientific need to evoke the term
popular
music for
things
that can be
qualified
as
postcolonial, post-traditional,
trans-
ethnic, urban, modern,
contemporary,
neo-African, recreational,
or the like.
Globalization also
pertains
to words and
ideas,
and the notion of the
popular
has
brought
about the
globalization
of a
wrong
evidence that was molded after the
model of Western mass culture. So the
concept
of
popular
music is
involuntarily
tied to an outdated
theory
of modernization and seems to confirm the unavoidable
triumph
of the Western
type
of cultural stratification. The
people implied
in
popular
is inherited from the
European
national state of the nineteenth
century
and its
destiny
is assumed to follow the usual
way
of
globalization.
But the
postco-
lonial realities
suggest
a
completely
different
sociology:
one of
multiple
identities,
ethnic
restructuring,
unstable class
formation,
imagined
communities and
transnational networks. The
people
of non-Western
popular
music is a
people
in
transition;
the
power
of the Western discourses lies in their
presumption
to know
where this transition has to
go.
These discourses are not
only patronizing
the
postcolonial subject;
at the same time
they
miss the
point
that in a
postcolonial
situation the notion of
popularity may acquire
a
depth
of
political symbolism
and
charismatic
empathy unimaginable
in an industrialized Western context.
The
postcolonial challenge may
seem incidental as
long
as matters of the
global
are
delegated
to a
minoritary group
of
specialists
within the academic
system.
But the factual wave caused
by globalization
won't
stop
at the doors of
university.
Its not
only
in the United States where students and scholars with non-
white or
non-European background
are
reclaiming
a serious discussion of
postco-
lonial
positions
that is
apt
to shake the
conceptual
fundaments of academic music
departments.
Even in
Germany postcolonial theory enjoys
a
lively
interest
among
the
younger generation,
which
promises
to have
long-term consequences
also for
musicology.23
It is not
arbitrary
that until now there has existed
hardly any point
of contact: the traditional
target group
of
musicological reasoning
not
only
is
imbued with the values of Western
music;
it
intuitively
identifies with them in the
confidence of
having privileged
access to
knowledge
about music. So the
ethnomusicologists
are
trapped easily
on a one-sided frontline of
arguing
and are
unprepared
if a
partner
from a
peripheral standpoint
enters into
dialogue.
The
politics
of
disciplinary
allotment follow their own
logic, especially
when the
category
of art is involved.
Therefore,
the first task is to rewind the whole
story
of the Western interest in the musics of the world.
23
In
Germany
the first
programmatic suggestions
were made
by
Martin Greve
(1998, 226-29).
151
'
(2012.
i. 139-i.e
I ^SSi?1063'
3. From
Comparative Musicology
to
Ethnomusicology
The
potential knowledge
about music tends towards the infinite. On the other
hand the main
application
of such
knowledge
is the
making
of music
-
but this is
something
different than scientific
proof
of that
knowledge.
What remains is
just
the work of
interpretation,
which
historically
was a
passion
of the educated music
amateur. These are not
good
conditions for the
development
of a serious scientific
discourse. The field of music is determined
by
its irreducible
plurality:
it seems
like a cosmos of different
languages,
which are more or less untranslatable into
each other. In contrast to
this,
the
language
of science refers to universal
meanings.
It is
generally
considered that science is
objective
while music is
subjective.
Music involves matters of taste and differences in the human
capacity
for
analytic
hearing.
Musical notation is the
only
tool for
objectivation,
but is
only
of limited
scientific value.
The above
generalizations
are less
general
than
they may
seem.
They
are
subject
to a
major
factor of
relativity: historicity.
We have to
keep
in mind that
music is
profoundly
embedded into
history,
and so is
musicology.
To
speak
about
musical
knowledge
in such a liberal and distanced
way
is
clearly
an achievement
of Western
postmodernity.
Musical discourses are linked to their
place
in time
and
space
in a
way
that exceeds the
methodological
limitations of
perspective
usually
discussed in the social sciences. This
problem
has seduced some scholars
into
evoking
an
apocalyptical
scenario of
complete
relativism. I don't think that
such a
pessimistic
attitude is an unavoidable
consequence
of the
present
state of
knowledge
for a
thinking
centered on
history, enlightenment
and
critique.
Such
thinking might
detect within music
history
a
playground
of fruitful
misconcep-
tions,
of
pseudo-scientific
ideas that
pushed creativity
forward. Great music
doesn't need to be
scientifically
correct. Errors can crate
respectable
results,
but
nevertheless
they
can be identified as errors. This is all the more
important
if there
are outdated ethnocentric
prejudices
involved
-
beyond
the reflex of
quick
excul-
pation by
means of discourses of Western self-accusation.
Here is not the
place
to reconstruct the
contradictory history
of
Enlighten-
ment as far as it concerns music.24 It is sufficient to
presuppose
that as it
progressed
the
paradigms
of
rationality
and human
equality
underwent a
unique entangle-
ment that became crucial for the
history
of
European
music. The historical asso-
ciation of music with the mathematical sciences had left behind a
problematic
heritage
of self-conscious
dogmatism.
So older
pleas
for
global
tolerance and a
cosmopolitism
of
respect
remained without effect until the
ruling
discourses of
cultural
supremacy
were
challenged by
the hard sciences. It was Hermann von
Helmholtz who tried to
develop
a new
understanding
of music's basic materials
24
This is the
subject
of a
project
in
preparation.
152
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and
Postcoloniality |
in accordance with modern
physics.
His
achievement,
called the
objectivation
of
music
by
Matthias
Rieger,
was to abstract from the
culturally shaped categories
solidified in musical
terminology. Starting
with acoustics he deconstructed the
myth
of a
special
human
sensory organ
for
European
music and
equated
musical
sounds with sounds of different
origin
as
objects
of
perception. Broadly speaking,
he reduced musical aesthetics to the
relationship
between vibrations and their
decoding by
the human ear. Helmholtz's efforts to
give musicology
a renewed
foundation in the natural sciences can be seen as a
delayed impulse
of
Enlighten-
ment: the effort to discover the real
rationality
behind the
apparent functioning
of musical
perception.
Therefore he tried to
expand
his mechanistic
approach
as
far as
possible
into the
sphere
of
psychology
and labeled it
Ton-Physiologie.
With Helmholtz the
historically
first
attempt
was undertaken to treat music
apart
of normative aesthetics. The deductive inclination of traditional music the-
ory
was
replaced by
an inductive method of
experiment. Up
to then the
empirical
resolution of musical research was tied to the
elementary
units of
practical
music
like tones and notes.
Only
in the second half of the 19th
century
did it become
imaginable
to
replace
this coarse
grid
with a finer one
represented by
the
concept
of sound. This
approach
was a
prerequisite
for a kind of
objectivation
that could
result in a more
general
idea of music:
theoretically
it was suitable for
any
kind of
music,
independent
of its
origin.
It is worth
noting
that it was the exact sciences
that served here the
goals
of cultural relativism. This
happened again
when Alex-
ander Ellis introduced his cent-scale for microtonal measurement to be able to
quantify
the differences between the tonal
systems
of different cultures. Far from
any empathic crossing
of cultural borders it was the refinement of
quantitative
analysis
that
gave way
for a
broadening
of the horizon of
perception concerning
the
global
realities of music. It was the
temporary suspension
of matters of cultural
value and the radicalization of the mathematical bias of
European
music that
historically preceded
the
understanding
of music as culture. The Eurocentric
fiction of an
objective
music accessible to scientific measurement seems to have
been a
necessary stage
in the
development
towards a dismissal of Eurocentrism.
Helmholtz's scientific achievements were not
really
welcomed
by
the
musicological
establishment of his time
(Rieger, 142-44).
Instead
they
should form
the basis for the foundation of
comparative musicology by
his
disciples
Curt Sachs
und Erich Moritz von
Hornbostel,
together
with the advent of the
phonograph
as
a new tool for research. The
phonograph
was the definitive materialization of the
idea of an
objective
ear: it didn't care at all about
musicality.
In fact its techno-
logical
evolution was related much more to
phonetics
than to
musicology.
At that
time the
revolutionary potential
of sound
recording
for the
study
of music was far
from
being
evident and rewarded an extra effort of
discovery.
In Berlin it was the
phonographic
collection of
spoken
word
recordings
for
linguistic
use that
inspired
the
project
of a first recorded
survey
of the musics of the world: the
legendary
Berlin
Phonogram
Archive established
by
Hornbostel and Carl
Stumpf
in 1899.
153
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1
and
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History,
* 1
I
and
Postcoloniality
This collection was the cornerstone for an evolution that
finally
resulted in
Ethnomusicology
as well as in world music. But in the
beginning
the
curiosity
for
global
music was the
privilege
of a few dedicated
specialists,
because of the
poor
quality
of sound
reproduction
alone. To
analyze
the
noisy
and narrow sound of a
phonograph
roll was a
job
that
required
an amount of sonic
imagination
that was
likely
to counteract the
objectivizing
effects of the medium.
The
technology
of sound
recording opened up
a
completely
new
range
of
empirical
data;
but the
question
was,
to which kind of
knowledge
these data could
attribute? The
young discipline
of
comparative musicology
suffered from the lack
of an
adequate
culture
theory
that could transcend the
European scope.
So almost
inevitably
it fell under the influence of the
paradigm
of evolutionism. It seemed
obvious to
interpret
differences in the construction and
style
of music as
stages
of
a universal
history
-
an idea which existed
yet long
before the 19th
century.
Together
with the success of the
evolutionary
model in
biology
and its
adaptation
for
anthropology,
it furnished a model of
thought
that could
process
the
widening
of the
global
horizon in accordance with the idea of
European superiority.
The
quest
for the
origins
of music
got
a new
signification
under the conditions of
evolution
theory.
This
theory
was understood as a
promise
to look into the
past
of
European
music
by studying
the musics of the world.
So,
the music of the
primitives,
which was considered
up
to then as
negligible
for a
history
of the
arts,
became at least an
object
of scientific interest.
It would be unfair to attribute to
early comparative musicology
an over-
whelming
desire to
prove European superiority.25 Considering
its
objects ranged
from
European
folk music to the music of Oriental and Asian
high
cultures,
the
data were much too diverse to
suggest
a unilinear evolution from the archaic to
the elaborate. It was more an attitude of
showing
that
primitives
are not so
stupid
as
they may
seem that
emerged
from these
comparative
studies. Their music was
understood as a
key
to the soul of
humanity
and as a
sign
of the universal inven-
tiveness of mankind. The issue of real
comparison
was not so
urgent
as
long
as the
available data were so scarce that scientific conclusions could
hardly
be
justified
on a solid
methodological
basis. The
project
of
comparative
research was more or
less
delegated
to the
future,
where it has remained until
today.
For the moment
the
problem
of
understanding
such
disparate
modes of
expressions
that were not
predicted by
Western
musicology
offered
enough occupation.
The
problem
with
the evolutionist
approach
was not so much one of racist
hubris,
but situated on a
different level.
First,
this
approach
was
only possible
under the
assumption
that
the studied musics were
part
of ahistorical cultures. It would have been useless to
speculate
about the
beginnings
of music without the
presumption
that
primitive
25
In Great Britain the
history
of
early ethnomusicological
discourses was somewhat different
(see Zon).
154
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and
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cultures were survivals of earlier
stages
of the evolution of mankind.
Secondly,
this
direction of research
implied
a
preference
for the remote
past
as well as for
pure
cultures. The idea of a
global history
understood in a
retrospective way
backwards
from the
present
was far off the
ruling
currents of
thinking.
So it
happened
that a
good
deal of musical
phenomena
that would seem
today
invaluable for under-
standing
the recent
past
could
completely escape
the interest of
early comparative
musicology
and remained undocumented. Historians of the black Atlantic for
example
will there
hardly
find much valuable information
there,
since
comparative
musicology
lacked
any paradigm
to
qualify
the musical outcome of this cultural
complex
as testimonies of scientific
importance.
Comparative musicology's
connection with colonialism was rather loose in
comparison
to the
beginnings
of
anthropology
and the
museological
collection of
artifacts,
since at that time
non-European
music involved
hardly any
material
interests. The
global
view of the
discipline
was more
positivist
than
imperialistic.
It
had to
manage
a field full of unusual discoveries and
surprises,
and had difficulties
coming up
with
appropriate questions
that could be
scientifically
answered. Unlike
biology
-
and unlike musical instruments
-
music itself resisted
any classificatory
approach.
So the
only promising strategy
of research was to start with
empirically
observable similarities: to
compare
isolated traits and to
identify
their distribution
within
geographic space.
This
methodological
stance
temporarily synchronized
with the diffusionist school of
Ethnology.
It was
mainly
the German branch known as Kulturkreislehre that stimulated this direction of
inquiry (see Schneider):
to reconstruct
large-scale
movements of cultural
diffusion,
which could reveal
processes
of
migration
and contact. But the
paradigm
of the
Kulturkreis remained a short-lived
enterprise.
It suffered from several
specula-
tive flaws. Not
only
did it
imply
a
sociologically unspecified
idea of folk
culture,
which was assumed as the human basis of cultural
transfers;
it also referred to a
rather
vague
historical frame that couldn't
easily
be
brought
into accordance with
the results of
historiography.
But most
important,
the idea of the Kulturkreis was
speculatively presupposing
the existence of identifiable centers of invention and
was thus committed
exclusively
to a
monogenetic theory
of cultural
creativity.
Nonetheless the shift from evolutionism to diffusionism rescued
comparative
musicology
from
biologist analogies
and redirected it
temporarily
towards
history.
The
comparative approach
was detached from hierarchical models of cultural
progress
and fitted into an
analytical
framework of time and
space.
With this
early spatial
turn the
discipline
undertook a
sidestep
that
kept
it
away
for a
while from the
gravitation
towards racism. An
important question
was
opened up
again:
how could a
comparative approach
deal with difference? Was there
any
correlation between differences
concerning
music and the differences of the
humans that made the music? Could archaic music be
interpreted
as an
expres-
sion of a
primitive
mind? Such
questions,
albeit not
being
theorized,
were
underlying
the
exploration
of music on a
global
level. The idea of a musical
history
155
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(2012)
1.
|
HW
of
progress
was a
suggestive temptation
that was
questioned only by examples
of
factual
incomparability,
which led to the conclusion that music is different
per
se.
It shouldn't be
forgotten
that at this time the
parallel development
of
atonality
in
contemporary
art music was
challenging
the traditional
concept
of
European
music from within.
Simultaneously
the current of
primitivism
was notorious in
the visual arts and
accidentally leaping
over into
composed
music. So for
example
the
composer
Carl Orff had consulted the
comparative musicologist
Curt Sachs
for his
pedagogical project
of a reformed
elementary
music education
(Elste,
15-
16).
This
project
which resulted in the use of
pentatonics
as a means to introduce
children into
music,
may
be seen as rather
ambiguous today:
on the one hand it
adopted principles
of non-Western music as suitable for the education of Euro-
pean
children;
on the other hand it was based on the idea of an
analogy
between
phylogenetic
and
ontogenetic
evolution,
an idea that not
only may
seem too
speculative nowadays
but also involves a
good
deal of evolutionist
thinking.
The
actual success of Orff 's
pedagogical project may
be seen as a confirmation of the
underlying theory;
but
equally
it can be
interpreted
as a
sign
of the universal
human
capacity
to
empathically apprehend
whatever
system
of music. In
any
case,
the historical dimension was
pushed
aside in favor of an aesthetic of timeless
archaism that
could,
in its monumental
version,
easily join
the
mythological
preoccupation
of German Nazism.
There were several factors that
kept early comparative musicology away
from
history:
it was its methodical foundation on the
very
new
technology
of sound
recording
which enforced a
synchronic perspective
as the
only
serious alternative
to
risky speculations
about the
past;
it was the
strong
institutional
monopoly
of
Western
musicology
on the
concept
of
history;
and it was the
impulse
towards an
objectivation
of music advanced
by
Hermann von
Helmholtz,
which favored
empirical
methods to distance itself
scientifically
from the aesthetic
presumptions
of
European musicology.
What remained for a
global history
of
music,
tended to be
imagined
in a remote and diffuse
past,
while the idea of the historical
significance
of the
present
for the future was reduced to the
gesture
of
conserving
the last testi-
monies of
dying-out
cultures.
Finally,
it was also the affiliation of the
remaining part
of German
to theories of race
during
Nazism,
which
contributed to the
discrediting
of the diachronic
approach.
Meanwhile the scholars who had
emigrated
from
Germany
to the USA fell
under the influence of American Cultural
Anthropology.
At the same time
they
had
to
adapt
to the new scientific
context,
which was influenced
by
the
surrounding
of
a multi-ethnic
society.
Their involvement as teachers with a
younger generation
of
researchers resulted
finally
in the foundation of
Ethnomusicology.
It was
specially
the
anthropological concept
of culture which offered now a much more
appropriate
frame for the
study
of
non-European
musics. It enabled the
complete discarding
evolutionism and offered a model to
interpret
such musics in their own terms and
with reference to a
system
of cultural
meanings empirically
accessible
through
156
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and
Postcoloniality |
ethnography.
This
concept
of culture was not
only largely
detached from associa-
tions with
high
culture but also much more individualized than the macro-theories
of
large-scale
cultural
regions
or the
highly generalizing
Kulturkreislehre. It
implied
a rather
exemplary approach,
which,
far from
postulating
the
complete
autonomy
of cultural
systems,
tried to
study
the context of music in its whole
depth
within a
locally
limited
range.
The method of
Ethnomusicology
as outlined
by
Alan
P.
Merriam,
Mantle
Hood,
Bruno Nettl and
others,
was an
interdisciplinary
one that
should
integrate disciplines
like
sociology, linguistics,
dance
research,
the
study
of
religion
and oral literature. It was centered on the
uniqueness, functionality,
and
immanent
plausibility
of
music;
to understand music in this
way
its
many
relations
to the whole
complex
of a
particular
culture had to be considered in order to
empathically grasp
its own aesthetics.26
By
and
large Ethnomusicology
is dedicated to an ethos of cultural
pluralism.
It
appreciates
difference as richness and
continuously
recalls the
mutuality
of
cultural
strangeness. Incidentally,
the interest in
comparison
is in decline since it
lacks a
comparative
method that could fit the
pluralistic
stance. The
paradigm
of
music and culture seems to exclude
any
music and music
paradigm.
With the
liberation from Eurocentric
preoccupations
there remains
apparently
no mean-
ingful question
that could be answered
by
a
comparative approach.
In a world
consisting
of a
multiplicity
of ethnocentric views in need of mutual
respect
and
cultural
negotiation,
it is worthless to insist on similarities and differences
except
perhaps
for a
pre-scientific
kind of intercultural communication. It is the ambition
of scientific
self-reflexivity
that results in a
preference
for a dichotomic model of
Western versus non-Western
culture;
this is not at least due to a critical aim. It
counters attitudes of cultural
imperialism
and confronts
European
self-indul-
gence
with its other. To this end it can also be a
revealing experience trying
to
learn to
play
the music from another culture. The
practical experience
of
bloody
practicing
and amateurish mischief can be a
remedy
to Eurocentric hubris and a
means for the education of future
cosmopolites.27
4. Historical Turn?
Of course this is a rather one-sided
portrait
of
ethnomusicology
that
ignores
important
trends of the last decades. Musical
phenomena
associated with
diasporic
cultures28,
urban
subcultures,
migration,
acculturation/ transculturation,
hybridity,
26
Recently ethnomusicology's preoccupation
with the social context was criticized
by
Martin
Scherzinger
in favor of a
higher
consideration of a formal
analysis
of music
(10-20).
27
Appreciation
of cultural
diversity
as a
goal
of a multicultural education
through
music was
theoretically
elaborated
by Schippers (15-40).
28
An overview of
approaches
to
diasporic
musics was
given by
Slobin.
157
IRASM 43
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1: 139-186
|
andpS
HiSt0rV'
cultural
change
and
transfer,
are current
topics
of research within the recent
past
that all take into account the historical context of
globalization. They bring
the
factor of time back into
ethnomusicology by expanding
the
occupation
with the
ethnographic present
into a
processual understanding
of culture. In a similar
way
for about
twenty years
the habit of
thinking
in terms of closed and timeless
cultures has
given way
to a critical
concept
of
ethnicity.
This
concept
follows a
constructivist strain in two
ways:
it offers a
sociological
model for the
explanation
of the maintenance of cultural
borders;
and it considers the
past
not
only
as a
source of cultural traditions but also as a
temporal
screen for
retrospective projec-
tions that serve to stabilize
present
claims of
identity.
Thus,
the
anthropological
idea of culture has transformed in a
way
that features its
self-generating
and
dynamic aspects.
With
respect
to music this
conceptual
shift in
anthropology questions
some
familiar
patterns
of
legitimacy.
For
ethnomusicologists
the habitual use of the
term musical culture had been a
professional
trademark that defined their
place
within scientific discourses and served as a
protective
shield
against
the rival
concept
of
high
culture with its Eurocentric
implications.
Now,
that musical
culture has become an unstable unit of
reference,
the issue of value arises
again
in confrontation with an
enduring pretension
for
eternally
valid works of art. As
long
as
ethnomusicologists
could
identify
themselves as defenders of cultural
purity against
a
global
wave of Westernization and blunt
global leveling,
their
methodological preference
for static models was backed
by
an ethical mission.
Now
they
have to
reorganize
their
arguments
to validate the
changeable
and
syncretistic
without
losing
the claim for culture that warranted the
meaningful-
ness of the musical
phenomena
under examination. The uncontestable value of
tradition was founded on admiration and
respect
for the
stability
and functional-
ity
of oral
cultures;
their assumed oldness was the
symbolic counterweight
to the
historicity
of
European
literate culture. But if we
accept
that our accessible
knowledge
of the
global past
is
incisively
crossed
by modernity,
the criteria for
judging
the old and the new are in need of re-evaluation. At the same
time,
the
authority
of the
specialist
loses
ground,
as the
object
of his
competence appears
more and more as an
arbitrary curiosity
without connection to the
proceeding
of
cultural
globalization.
It was
particularly
in the USA where
ethnomusicology
was welcomed
by
liberal forces as a
promising freshening-up
of academic structures that could be
apt
for
reforming
encrusted music
departments
and to reconcile
political
claims
for multiculturalism. Meanwhile the
discipline
seems to have
undergone
some
sort of crisis. Its
standing
has become
precarious
with
regard
to its
mediating
position
between artistic and critical discourses within the humanities. It is in
danger
of
getting
lost in an
increasing cleavage
between a factual
pluralism
of
accessibility
and
growing
desires for a restoration of cultural standards and liabil-
ities. The more it
opens up
for
contemporary
discourses of cultural studies and
158
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and
Postcoloniality |
the social sciences the more it risks
being pushed
aside as a
peripheral
sub-branch
of
sociology.
This situation was
problematized exemplarily by
scholars like Ellen
Koskoff
(1999)
and Deborah
Wong (2006)
who had
experienced
the
difficulty
of
introducing ethnomusicology
into institutional
practice. They complained
their
exposure
to
systemic
contradictions and their enforced role as a buffer in the culture
wars
(Wong, 259-63)
of American
society, squeezed
between movements of
identity
politics
and
powerless
with
regard
to the
anti-pluralistic propaganda
of a restor-
ative
high-culture-ism.
So their idealistic identification with
allegedly marginal
cultures seems to result in a
marginalization
of the
discipline
itself.
Apparently ethnomusicology
has a
shortage
of the
convincing arguments
needed in order to not be reduced to a mere movement
among
others. Its human-
istic and multicultural ambitions suffer from a lack of theoretical
support
and its
efforts to reach out and
conceptually bridge
the
gap
to the critical discourses
within the humanities are hard work. The
engagement
with difference leads it
easily
into the offside of
political
controversies and undermines its academic
stand as a serious field of research.
Incidentally
the reflection of the whole context
under discussion seems to drift
irresistibly
towards a
subjective
rhetoric of concern
since it is
hardly
covered
by
the
disciplinary
framework. We
may
ask what is left
from the
project
of an
objectivation
of music
proposed by
von Helmholtz one and
a half centuries
ago.
Is it
just
the defensive
self-pluralization
of a scientific
department
of
minority specialists?
Has
ethnomusicology
no other truth to reveal
than to
continuously
remember of the existence of difference? Or does it need
some sort of turn in the
way
other
disciplines
had to rethink their theoretical
foundations?
I want to
suggest
here that there are historical reasons for that
bumpy
road
from a science with ambitions for exactness
through
a
collecting discipline
under
the influence of
transitory anthropological
macro-theories
up
to a branch of the
humanities that has to
represent
the clear consciousness of the cultural sciences.
These reasons have not
only
to become a matter of
self-reflection;
the
required
way
of self-reflection has to follow a constructivist
path
in order to understand
how the
objects
of research are formed
by historically grown assumptions
and
sociological
oddities of the academic world.
European
music as an
outstanding
example
of cultural Westernness
may appear
as an
opaque power
that
heavily
determines the direction of the
discourses;
but this Westernness can
theoretically
be
analyzed
as a sub-intentional construction
designed by
social forces as well as
the immanent
logics
of music.
Therefore,
the frame of reflection has to be stretched
historically
to include a virtual
standpoint
from which the notorious
dichotomy
in its modern sense isn't
yet
obvious.
The call for
objectivity may
seem outdated but it cannot be dismissed
easily;
it has to be
repositioned
in its historical frame in order to be able to
qualify
the
reach of the
concepts
of music involved. To
properly
define the borders between
objectivity
and
subjectivity
seems to be a task in constant conflict with the amount
159
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1.13MM
|
of artistic
subjectivity,
which in real life is the inevitable foundation of
any
kind of
interest in music. A
musicologist may
be
passionately engaged
for his
music;
but nonetheless his
job
is to abstract his
knowledge
in a
way
that is accessible to a
more
general
scientific
public
not
necessarily sharing
his
special engagement.
Therefore,
he has to
objectivize
not
only
music on its different levels: the
composi-
tion,
the audio
recording,
aesthetic
values,
musical
terminologies,
social
functions,
or artistic
aims,
all
having
their own kind of
reality.
Likewise,
musicology
itself
has to be
objectivized by articulating
its
conceptual
interfaces within a
larger
context of cultural sciences.
However,
for this context the
only imaginable
reference of
objectivity
is
history.
The
concept
of
history necessary
here is not
exactly
the one of traditional
historiography;
it is a
concept
that is
large enough
to include the
opposition
of
Western and non-Western music itself. This means the
systematic
deconstruction
of an outdated model of
thinking
that
opposes people
with
history
to
people

without
history.
The fact that
European
music
historiography
has accumulated
a solid stock of literature while
ethnomusicologists
often
completely
lack
any
sources that
may
reveal to them more than the immediate
past
must not be
confounded with the actual
historicity
of
any
music. The
inequality
of
knowledge
reflects relations of
power,
and the
study
of this
inequality
within a historical
frame has to
complement
the
study
of differences in music itself. A serious
analysis
of the claim for
supremacy
of
European
music will reveal the effects of
power
relations on the level of
linguistics
as well as in the field of cultural
hegemony
and
the
inequality
of social conditions
determining
the
practice
of music.
From here the
way
is
open
to
join
the endeavors for a new
global history.
This
will effect the tentative
replacement
of the
ethnographic
bias for untouched
cultures
by
the
general suspicion
of some sort of
globalization.
It means also the
discarding
of the familiar
concept
of Western
contamination^
which
reproduces
methodologically exactly
the imbalance of
power
it
pretends
to criticize. Instead
we have to assume a
multiplicity
of
actors,
each of them
equipped
with their
historically acquired (or denied)
amount of
power
and cultural resources. Recent
theories about
multiple,
alternative,
global
or
entangled
modernities can offer
here
very
useful
approaches
and
terminologies.29 They
have been taken
up
for the
study
of culture in different
fields,
but
rarely
for music.
They
are suitable to show
that in this field the kind of Western
modernity
which is
experienced by
its former
outsiders
represents
a
significantly
different
reality
than the one which can be
extrapolated
from the bulk of literature on
European
music. The
analysis
of this
difference can disclose the cultural embeddedness of music on both sides
including
misunderstandings,
ethnocentrisms,
shifts of
signification, ignorances, popular
myths,
and theoretical
preoccupations.
So the old
project
of
Ethnomusicology
to
29
Featherstone et al.
(1995),
Bonacker et
al.,
Conrad et al.
(2007).
160
History,
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and
Postcoloniality |
understand music in culture should be transformed
by expanding
it in a
self-reflexive
way
to the
European
as well as to the
global
field. In this
way,
ethno-
musicology
could
escape
the
trap
of
synchronism
and
develop historically
founded and critical
arguments
for whatever culture wars.
This kind of
global history
doesn't refer to the indifferent
globe
of
geography
but to a
socially
constructed one. It is not dedicated to the search for
general
laws
that rule the
world,
nor does it
pretend
to advance a
global theory
of music. It
just
follows the historical traces of a
globalization
the
beginnings
of which
may
fade into the
speculative
dawn of the remote
past.
It considers the narrowness of
music
histories,
which
traditionally
were
obliged
to a
strongly
national orienta-
tion and tries to sketch out the
scope
of the
gaps
between them. It is
specially
the
history
of transcontinental
trade,
colonialism and
slavery
within the
history
of the
last centuries that merits attention as a two-sided
story
whose blank side contains
the accounts of
resistance,
flight, camouflage, syncretism,
or creative
adaptation.
In this
way global history
can fit
postcolonial theory,
which is its
necessary
supplement.
So the
meandering
direction of
research,
which at last
passed
the
paradigm
of
ethnomusicology,
seems to reach a
point
of turn into
history.
Once
again
it is
anthropology
that initiates the
turn,
not
musicology.
There is a
huge
detour from
European
music
history
that
always
has been rather removed from
general history,
through
an
anthropology discovering
the
history
of
globalization up
to an
updated
ethnomusicology stripped
off its obsession for the
ethnographic present
and the
difference of the local. We have to trace this
way
in order to effect the
paradig-
matic turn first to the cultural context and
then,
in another
step
to music.
5.
Reconstructing
the Colonial Context
Of course the colonial context under discussion here can't embrace the whole
world;
it will focus on the Atlantic cadre which is not
only
the author's main field
of
study
but also of
special
interest because of its
impact
on the evolution of inter-
national
pop
music in the 20th
century.30
This case is
exemplary
because it can
reveal the dialectic character of
global power
relations.
Historically
it was the
ambition for white
supremacy
that dominated the narratives in a
way
that
corresponded
the
imagined story
of success of
European imperialism.
But in the
run of time cultural and
political
resistance to this
pattern
of domination has left
a
completely
different
reality
that is not
only
manifest in a massive trend for
musical re- Africanization and the
global
success of
Afro-European hybrids
in
30
An
outstanding
-
albeit controversial
-
attempt
was undertaken
by
Peter van der Merve
yet
in
1989 to trace the
Afro-European origins
of the musical material
fusing
into
twentieth-century popular
music in its full historical
depth.
161
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and
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|
and
Postcoloniality
music;
finally
it has also freed the counter-narrative of a black Atlantic that had
historically ripened
in the shadow of
European hegemony.
Besides,
this dialectic
has infiltrated the
concept
of Western music itself with its contradictions: the idea
of a cultural Westernness of
pure European origin
cultivated in academic
ivory
towers is
increasingly swept away by
a new
conceptual regime
of
globalization
that considers
-
geographically
correct
-
rock'n'roll and
hip-hop
as Western.
Long
before Paul
Gilroy's
it was the
pioneering
work of the
anthropologist
Sidney
Mintz that
prepared
the
ground
for a reconstruction of the colonial context
(1985).
In the meantime
Mintz,
who worked
methodically along
the interface of
anthropology
and
history,
has
acquired
a
reputation
as
godfather
of the new
global
history.
It is
noteworthy
that it was not
theory
but his radical
empirism
that
confronted him with the facts of
globalization (Palmie,
6,
12). Doing
research in the
Caribbean,
Mintz couldn't avoid
registering
the
multiple
connectedness in
space
of
daily
life within the colonial context. This was true not
only
for the white elites but
also for the slaves on the
sugar plantations. They
were not
only
linked to the wide
array
of
culturally
and
linguistically
diverse
people
of Africa that underwent
enslavement.
They
were
economically integrated
in the whole Western
hemisphere
by
the
products
of their work as well as
by
their
patterns
of
consumption.
The whole
complex
of the
sugar economy
was based on a
far-reaching system
of economic
specialization
that condemned suitable
regions
to the
production
of
luxury goods.
Taking
the
European greed
for
sugar
as a
starting point
Mintz was able to show
how Western
modernity
had
penetrated
colonial
reality
in the Caribbean at a time
when it was still
dawning
for a
good part
of the
European people.
The
complex
of colonial
sugar economy
that was established in the 18th
century
and
deeply
industrialized in the 19th had
brought along
a hierarchical
society
that included human work forces from a
variety
of
origins.
The
European
concept
of race is
certainly
the fundamental idea behind this
hierarchy,
but not
exclusively.
The existence of a multi-ethnic slave
population
as well as a multi-
ethnic class of free labor determined a kind of
pseudo-urbanization
that created a
complex system
of attribution and domination. It made an
average
worker of
color well aware of his
particular
role in a differentiated
hierarchy
of
racial,
legal,
and economic
status,
a consciousness that
eventually
could
inspire
him to
join
movements of revolt. The extent of slave
rebellion,
maroonage
and
escape by
suicide was for a
long
time underestimated
by historiography
and merits
placing
in its historical context. For at the latest when the news of the French Revolution
was
spreading
in the colonies the asserted
power
relations came into
danger.
The
following
turmoil that had seized the
political
climate of the whole
region
has
been
portrayed
in a vivid
way
in the novels of the Cuban author and
musicologist
Alejo Carpentier. Carpentier
describes a historical
scenery
full of
hope,
violence,
terror and
absurdity,
which
appears
like a demonic underside of the
European
narrative of
progress (1980, 2004).
162
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and
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and
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Well-informed historical novels
may suggest
virtual
perspectives
of
subjec-
tivity
that can
complete
the
picture
of a
contradictory epoch.31
But to understand
these contradictions
synchronically
and
diachronically
within a framework of
policies,
institutions,
ideologies,
and
ethnicities,
requires
an
analytical approach
to
history
which
puts
culture in the
right place. Beyond
his research devoted to
the social effects of
sugar
as a
key produce
of colonial
economy Sidney
Mintz
together
with Richard Price has tried to
give
a closer outline of social structures
and the conditions and circumstances of cultural communication in the Caribbean
of colonial times. Their meanwhile classic book An
Anthropological Approach
to
the
Afro-American
Past: A Caribbean
Perspective
32
seems to be until now the most
prolific attempt
to reconstruct the colonial context with reference to African-
American cultures in a
systematic way. They
start with
questioning
the usual
anthropological concept
of culture which cannot
[be] applied
without some
distortion to the manifold endowments of those masses of enslaved
individuals,
separated
from their tribal and familial
settings,
who were
transported,
in more
or less
heterogeneous cargoes,
to the New World
(4).
So the
question
is,
which
kind of work
anthropologists
can do in the Caribbean. Mintz and Price
insist,
that the
present
can
[not]
be 'understood'
-
in the sense of
explaining
the
relationships among
different
contemporary
institutional forms
-
without refer-
ence to the
past.
We
suppose
this to be the
case,
whether our interest be in the
European peoples
who
conquered
the world
they
called
'new',
the Indian
peoples
they destroyed
and
subjugated
with
it,
or the African
-
and, later,
Asian
-
peoples
they dragged
into it
(45).
The
sociological
model
put
forward
by
Mintz and Price which considered
cultural
contact,
creolization and the institutionalization of traditions was not
necessarily
welcomed
positively.
33
It was criticized
by
American
Anthropologists
adhering
an Afro-centric strain of
thinking
for
allegedly playing
down the link
to Africa and
overemphasizing
the creative
adaptation
to the new environment.
This
controversy,
which is influenced
by identity politics specific
to the United
States,
cannot be
put easily
aside as
long
there are
powerful
discourses of national
integration
-
not
only
in the USA but for
example
in Cuba too
(compare Moore)
-
that count African- Americans
primarily
as contributors to
emerging
national
cultures of the New World.
However,
contradictory
circumstances can create
contradictory arguments,
and so it would be
equally plausible
to criticize an
attitude of
tutelage
in the
depicting
of African- Americans as tradition-bound and
31
In Cuba this
approach
was followed also
by
the novelas testimonio of
Miguel
Barnet. In the
context of South Asian subaltern studies it was even
suggested
that the historian should turn into a
"creative writer'
(Chaudhuri).
32
Mintz
-
Price, 1976;
it was re-issued in 1992 under the title The Birth
of African-
American Culture
-
An
Anthropological Perspective.
33
For a discussion of that
critique
see Price.
163
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and
^r'er:
Postcoloniality
M.USI.C'
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HlstorV'
x '
I
and
Postcoloniality
immature for
modernity.
This
discussion,
which
partly
results from
differing
regional angles
of
sight
and
exaggerated generalizations,
has to be
pursued by
feeding
it back into
empirical
research. What seems more
important
here is to
uncover another
problem tacitly underlying
that discussion: how can we handle the
fundamental
asymmetry
of
power
involved in the colonial encounter? How can we
handle the fact that the word culture carries different associations when used
with
respect
to
Europeans
than it has in the context of Africanist
anthropology?
The idea of a black Atlantic
suggests
the existence of a white Atlantic as
its
logical complement. Certainly emigrants
from
Europe
were also threatened
by
deracination,
exposed
to the
centrifugal
forces of colonial
society
and confronted
with the
irritating
effects of
early globalization. They
were involved in
differing
solidarities and in the historic
struggle
for
independence
from the
colonizing
motherland. The white
part
of colonial
society
was itself differentiated in
multiple
ways
and
culturally
far from
homogenous.
Nevertheless the colonial
system
was
based on
inequality,
and distributed chances and
opportunities along
a stable
hierarchical
pattern along
the lines of race and
property.
The social
game
of
success and
suppression
followed
rigid
rules without ever
predetermining
the
fate of the individual in an absolute manner. The
systemic
imbalance of
power
between the strata of a colonial
society
becomes most
apparent
in the access to the
field of written
knowledge.
As far as research is
dependent
on written
sources,
it
is
inevitably
in
danger
of
replicating
this
imbalance,
which is mirrored in the
structure of the available documents. We have
always
to consider that the
typical
colonial observer was
unconsciously
tied to a
socially
sanctioned
top-down
scale
of relevance. Because of
this,
Afro-centric
attempts
to
systematically
invert the
dominant
perspective
can
hardly
be discredited even if
they might
fill
gaps
of
proven knowledge
with
speculations.
Unwritten
knowledge
is the last frontier for the
writing
of colonial
history.
This is all the more true for the
history
of music which
additionally
suffers for the
most
part
from the lack of
any
reliable sound
recordings.
But if
-
as Mintz and
Price are
claiming
-
an
anthropological approach
is useless without
history,
there
is no
easy
alternative available to the
hypothetical
reconstruction of the colonial
context,
since it
grounds
not
only ethnographic
results but also reflections on
globalization
and neo- or
post-colonial
conditions. This allows the
readjustment
of the basic
dichotomy
of Western versus non-Western: on an
epistemological
level it transforms into the difference between a
hegemonic metropolitan
world-
view centered on
European
tradition and an
unquestioned
belief in Western
modernity,
and the critical consciousness of a
contradictory reality
that reveals
itself to the observer in a
very
uneven and
ideologically
distorted
way.
On a socio-
logical
level it
signifies
the
cleavage
between a habitual
top-down
view
positively
identifying
with colonial attitudes and hierarchies on one
side,
and the double
consciousness of the colonial
subject
which defends its
dignity
while
facing
a
complex system
of structural devaluation and
exclusion,
on the other. The idea of
164
J. Kroier: Music
and
Global
History,
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and
Postcoloniality |
a
superior
Westernness was
certainly
a
prerequisite
for the colonial
project;
but at
the same
time,
the colonial
enterprise
has detached the
geography
of Westernness
itself from notions of
space
and
implemented
it into a
globalized
cultural
regime
that determinates access to
power
and historic
visibility.
As a
consequence,
also
the methodical
problem
of
comparability
shifts from one of
seemingly incompat-
ible cultures to one of
opposed
worldviews within an
ideological
framework
created
by
colonialism.
So
far,
we have summarized a scientific
approach
that unites
anthropology
with
history
and
interprets
the local in its relation to a
global system
of
exploita-
tion and
exchange,
enforced
migration,
cultural
hegemony,
and the formation of
ambiguous
identities. Now we have to determine in a non-reductionist
way
the
place
of music in this
context,
which has left a
multiplicity
of music histories.
Music isn't
just
like
any part
of culture because it can be seen as
working
like a
system
of communication without fixed referent. This
variability
of
meanings
must be taken into consideration to define the
possible options
of musical
practice
available in a colonial
system.
At the same time music's
immateriality
is a factor
that determines its
mobility
in the
global
context. Music doesn't have to become a
commodity
to be
spread,
and the transmission of musical
knowledge
is not
restricted to institutions of formal instruction.
Indeed,
its role in a world of
global
exchange
and communication is mediated
by capitalist
interests and educational
programs,
but it
goes beyond
that. Music can be seen as
part
of a
system
of
mobilities:
spatial
mobilities of
people,
of
commodities,
and of
ideas;
social
mobilities that can be achieved
through
music;
and the cultural
mobility
to learn
new
repertoires
or to
selectively
borrow from them. This
system
is best under-
stood as driven
by
an
economy
of
hopes,
desires and
pleasures
that act as mobiliz-
ing
forces and
possibly
counteract the
rigidity
of ethnic traditions and social
hierarchies.
Starting
from this
background
even the issue of
identity
can be
addressed anew: now detached from notions of
authenticity,
assertions of
identity
can
appear
as
options among
other
options
that
may
include
strategies
of
appro-
priation, masquerade, parody,
or intentional border
crossing.
Music doesn't remain the same in this
process
of
general
mobilization also
named
modernity.
The
question
arises,
on which level music can be considered as
an
objective entity
It would be
shortsighted
to take musical notation as a marker
of
objectivity.
In the colonial context the notated text of music
gives
no informa-
tion about its intentions
concerning
the above-mentioned
options. Revealing
is
the
problem
advanced
by
Geoff Baker
apropos
the revival of Latin-American
Baroque
music. He
argues
that a
performance practice
that is
only historically
correct,
can be insufficient in consideration of a
potentially
tendentious use of folk
material. More than
that,
an
interpretation
would be
completely misleading
that
takes allusions to
indigenous
or
negro
music as a kind of world music in advance
of the term. He dismisses
any
naive
positivism
with
respect
to these sources and
calls for their critical
reading:
a
historically
informed
performance
of colonial
165
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|
Baroque
music has to take into account that
[a]dhesion
to elite
European
cultural
norms,
whether
directly
or
through
the
mockery
of
alternatives,
was an instru-
ment of
power,
distinction and
identity
formation,
a self-defense mechanism in
the hands of a colonial elite which
sought
to reinforce the social
hierarchy (443-
44).
In this
way
colonial elite music either tries to
literally copy European
music or
it makes use of
non-European
music in a
way
that is able to
prove
the
pattern
of
European superiority.34
The secondhand status of the latter within the written
sources has to be unmasked with all its
ideological implications,
which are not
simply
neutralized
by
the
dignity
of the
composition
as a work of art. Baker's
suggestion
is to
perform
colonial
Baroque
music as a
post-colonial
act
by giving
it what Edward Said has called a
contrapuntal reading (Baker, 446).
This ethical and
epistemological problem
is inherent to
every interpretation
of colonial
music,
be it from the elite or from the subaltern strata of
society.
The
documents
always give
an
incomplete picture
of the unbalanced context that
produced
them
-
be it written
sources,
sound
recordings
or
ethnographic
accounts.
My
own research on Cuban
rumba,
a
music,
which's
origins
can be located
historically
around the
colonial-postcolonial
watershed,
was an
ambiguous
experience
that revealed the
potential
as well as the limitations of an historical
approach.
It showed that the musical environment of rumba offers a vast field for
fruitful
comparisons
that allow the formulation of
plausible hypotheses
on the
cross-fertilization of musical traditions and
genres.
Nevertheless,
the usual
hermeneutic circle of mutual elucidation of text and context was disturbed
by
the
intervention of several biases that
played
on all levels and rendered the
adequate
assessment of sources and information rather difficult.
Concerning
rumba
itself,
these biases can be reduced to a row of
key
discourses
-
a row of
shocking
inco-
herence
-
that deal with African
lasciviousness,
national
integration,
and colonial
subalternity.
What rumba means
through
the lenses of these discourses is alterna-
tively depicted
as an archaic dance of
fertility,
a creolized folklore of the
young
Cuban
nation,
or an informal entertainment of the lowest strata of
society.
Their
historical order follows
roughly
the consecutive
paradigms
of colonial
exotism,
postcolonial
nation
building,
and socialist culture
politics
from below. But in
the Cuban context these discourses
mingle
in an
unsystematic way,
and it is even
hard to believe that
they
all refer to the same
thing (indeed,
what rumba
really
is,
is an
equally complicated question35).
This makes it hard to determine in what
way power
relations are involved.
They
can be found
encrypted
in contradictions between
practices
of exclusion and
ideologies
of
inclusion,
between
purposeful misrepresentation
and
corporate
self-
34
For Latin America
compare Carpentier 1980,
95-104.
35
Historically
there are
plenty
of uses of the term that
apparently
do not refer to the
contempo-
rary understanding.
It is hard to
distinguish
whether these are based on
appropriation,
misunder-
standing, parody,
or
simply
an
unspecified
or
ignorant
use of the name rumba.
166
History,
I
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and
Postcoloniality |
1 '
stylization,
or between
paternalistic
folklorism and
highly
advanced artistic
practices.
Cuban rumba itself contains elements of clandestine resistance to
colonial
power
as well as of social advancement
through appropriation
of
European
values;
it is
charged
as a
symbol
of
unity
but at the same time
culturally
remote from the
mainstream,
since it follows a
rigorous
aesthetic of African
polyrhythm,
too
complex
to be
easily co-opted by
commercial
popular
music. The
peculiar position
rumba maintains within the field of musical
expressions
of
colonial/postcolonial
Cuba becomes clear with contrast to the discourses that are
missing
here. An
ethnomusicologist coming
from abroad
may expect
for
example
discourses of White cultural
disdain,
of Afro-centric
identity, global
success or of
artistic
value,
all of them
topics
that
appeared regularly
in discussions on North-
American
jazz.
But,
interestingly enough,
none of these
topics played
a
major
role
for the discussion of rumba in Cuba. To the
contrary,
rumba was
ignored
or
clandestinely
admired
by
white
elites,
it was based on trans-ethnic
openness,
never cared about the
global
success of its commercial namesake
rhumba,
and
its
breathtaking rhythmic artistry
was
apparently
never
acknowledged by
music
critics as a new art form.
The
comparison brings
forward
significant
differences between two musical
phenomena
with
amazing
historical
parallels
within the wider
postcolonial
field.
They point
to rather different colonial
backgrounds
and racial
regimes
as well as
to distinct histories of
emancipation
and neocolonial
dependence.
In the Cuban
case rumba was
finally
absorbed
by anti-capitalist
culture
politics
that referred
positively
to a
pluralistic
idea of the
people
and refused
polarization along
racial lines. Nevertheless a
postcolonial reading
of rumba can reveal its
place
within a
crypto-colonial
context of fluid class formation and cultural
exchange;
it
can locate it within a
partial public sphere
of subaltern self-consciousness that
escaped
the
ruling
cultural hierarchies and was
subject
to its
silencing by
the
general public
of colonial
society.
The
myth
of a domestic folklore of exotic sensu-
ality
that surrounded rumba
may
be seen as the
compensatory flipside
of a
profound
irritation with the colonial
self-image.
Even the
postcolonial
intellectu-
als that
appreciated
rumba for its Cubanness referred to it on a
symbolic
level that
was closer to its
(benevolent) parodies
in colonial theatre
performances
than it
was to the esoteric rules of rumba as a kind of multi-ethnic
backyard artistry.
So
its
implicit
African aesthetics was
ideologically
neutralized
by
a normative
concept
of creolization. At the same time rumba was
categorically
excluded from
any
association with the
concept
of art
-
an exclusion that seems rather
questionable
in the
light
of
postmodern
aesthetics
-
and instead
stylized
as its
spontaneous
opposite emerging
from the cultural
depths
of a
creolizing
folk.
So the
place
of Cuban rumba within discourses of difference remains
ambiguous.
On the one hand its
uniqueness
as an
Afro-European hybrid
is
symbolically integrated
into an
emerging
model of a
postcolonial identity
of
nation. On the other hand the real difference of rumba is
kept
out of
sight
and left
167
IRASM 43
(2012)
1: 139-186
|
untouched and
unexplained
in the
foggy
realms of lower class culture. What can
be
presumed beyond
as a
potentially objective reality
is a
complex
musical
practice
without
theory
that
implicitly
articulates an unverbalized ethos of cultural
openness
and counter-cultural
dignity.
Rumba
may
be seen as a musical art that
is based on an attitude of
proud
understatement;
an art determined
by
a minimal-
ist use of
instruments,
that made it
apt
for
vagrancy
and immune to
persecution;
an art that cultivates a
style
of advanced
rhythmic sophistication
and
virtuosity
that is
hardly
accessible to the musical
capacities
of members of
European
middle
and
upper
class;
an art that celebrates its
autonomy by imposing
its own rules and
conventions that
grant
the tacit
power
to exclude and to include. In that
way
difference is here the absolute and
purposeful
difference of a secret
language.
But
at the same
time,
difference is denied
demonstratively by
a musical
technique
of
collage
that
brings together
material from the most diverse traditions in a
way
that converts
diversity creatively
into
charming
aesthetic tensions. The distance
with
respect
to musical values of
European origin
is an intentional but a controlled
one: not as a
sign
of
separatism
but as a means to
develop mastery
in rumba as a
field of silent
superiority
of the subaltern.
Moreover,
rumba's latent
appeal
to the
exoticist and erotic
curiosity
of white audiences is
part
of the
equation
of
power
in
which the
practitioners
of rumba were
defending
their
dignity.
This
sketchy interpretation
of Cuban rumba as seen from a radical
postcolo-
nial
perspective
shows that the usual
opposition
of
integration
versus resistance
is not sufficient as a scale of measurement. To
give
rumba a
contrapuntal reading
means here to
decipher
its cumulative
history
of
specialization
and
borrowing
as
a
catalogue
of creative
adaptations
to a mobilized social environment
-
a
history
that had started with the re-creation of communal dances in the slave barracks of
colonial
society.
It includes the
establishing
of
regulating stylistic
conventions as
a
platform
for individual
competition,
the
strategic appropriation
of certain vocal
techniques
of
European origin,
and the selective
exploitation
of the available
techniques
and traditions of African music. In a
contrapuntal reading,
white
ignorance
of a
largely unintelligible
artistic
practice
of low social status is
confronted with an attitude of stoic wisdom and self-control that balances on the
edge
between submission and
revolt;
the attributed
image
of a mild
compromise
formula is confronted with the
reality
of a
radically idiosyncratic practice.
The historical
message
of rumba seems to be concentrated in this
special
attitude,
an attitude that was articulated in face of a colonial context. This context
was not
only responsible
for the social distribution of
possibilities
for musical
activity;
at the same time it
provided
an environment of acoustic
transparency
that allowed some
passive knowledge
of the music to
pass
over between different
groups
of
society.
We can assume that the historic founders and
promoters
of
rumba were well aware of a wide
range
of
styles
and
genres
of
Spanish
colonial
music as well as of African traditions that were
locally
conserved.
They profited
from cultural movements for Black advancement and from African based
family
168
J. Kroier:
Music,
Global
History,
I
|ra$M 43
(2012)
1s 139-186
and
Postcoloniality |
networks of musicians
-
institutions that were characteristic of Cuban
colonial/
postcolonial society. Beyond
this,
it is not certain if
they
were not aware of musical
phenomena
on a
global
scale like North- American
jazz
or the multi-ethnic folklore
groups
that were established
by many postcolonial
states. We have to mistrust the
suggestions
of
ignorance, naivety
and
spontaneous
creation that were associated
with the
image
of the illiterate and black musician. A
historically
informed under-
standing
of Cuban rumba has to dismiss its one-dimensional
comparison
with
good-natured
folk music or archaic tribal
music; instead,
it has to take into
consideration the existence of actors
who,
albeit
mostly
illiterate,
were
capable
of
articulating
themselves
through
cultural alliances and a self-conscious
policy
of
difference.
6.
Contextualizing
Music
Theory
So far the
impression might
arise that I want to
replace ethnomusicology
with
postcolonial
music studies. But this would be a short circuit.
Rather,
I wanted to
show that a historical
perspective
in
ethnomusicology
leads
straight
to
postcolo-
nial
theory,
a
theory
that on its
part
is
bringing
back the
global
view. The
postulate
of an disconnectedness of
separate
cultures has to be differentiated into its role as
an
epistemological
model and its
empirical
content,
which can
appear
in the form
of
exclusion,
ethnicity
or
style.
Such border
drawing
attitudes
-
or their
contrary
-
refer to a set of
historical,
cultural and
political knowledge
that must be
hypothetically
assumed for each actor. The colonial context has inscribed vast
discrepancies
and
inequalities
in the structure of this
knowledge, dependent
on
the
respective position
within the
hierarchy
of
power.
The task of a science
worthy
of the
heritage
of
is not
only
to reconstruct this
knowledge,
but also to make sense of it within a broader horizon of
understanding.
The
question may legitimately
be asked if there is a
general concept
of music available
that is valid for Latin- American
Baroque
as well as for Cuban rumba.
The
project
of
postcolonial critique
as
put
forward
by
Said,
Chakrabarty
and
others was not intended as a new
specialization
but as a method for the revision
of Eurocentric narratives. So not
only ethnomusicology
but also
musicology
is
concerned
by
the invitation to de-center or
provincialize Europe (Chakrabarty).
What this means has still
largely
to be
explored.
In
any
case it seems not as
easy
as in the social sciences to establish critical counter discourses.
European
music is
not
just
an instrument of
domination,
neither is it an
ideology
that
simply
needs
to be
enlightened.
Its
composers
were far from
being
concerned with
questions
of
European superiority,
but rather involved in the
historically unique development
of an art that stands
apart
from
practical necessity
and
interests,
and creates its
own realm of
expression
and
meaning. European
music was
historically
devel-
oped
out of a
theory
of
harmony,
not one of
race,
although
it remains an interest-
169
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(2012) x '
1: 139-186 I
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and
^r'er;
Music'
global
History,
x '
|
and
Postcoloniality
ing point
to reflect about structural
analogies
of both.36 The
European
achieve-
ments of
counterpoint
and elaborate formal
structuring
are hard to
deny,
and
even the existence of a colonial music of
European origin proves
little,
since its
role in the
proper history
of music is
only marginal (Carpentier
1980,
102).
The
relationship
between
European
dominance in an
imperial
sense and the
dominance of
European
music is not a causal
one,
nor one of direct
mirroring.
On
the
European
side it is mediated
by
scientific,
technological
and
political
domi-
nance,
while music itself is
justified by
theoretical,
historical and aesthetic
discourses.
Nevertheless,
on the
part
of the colonial
subject European
dominance
is
experienced
in a holistic
way:
in the form of
institutions,
prohibitions,
coercion,
education,
moral admonition and racist disdain. The colonial
subject
encounters
European
music as a
practice
detached from its discursive
founding
and
integrated
in the structure of
power through
the institutions of
military
and church and the
exclusion from
spaces
of culture and entertainment of the elite. On the other hand
the music of
powerless European emigrants might escape
connotations with
European
dominance and can become the
starting point
for
processes
of creoliza-
tion or transculturation.
So the
object
of
postcolonial critique
is a double-faceted and
composite
one.
If the
perceptions
of difference seen from both sides
appear
as
incompatible,
this
hardly
follows a law of music. It is the combination of
sociological
and
ideological
factors,
of social biases and aesthetic
sensibilities,
of institutional
power
structures
and narratives of
identity,
that form
together
what in the end reads as claim for
the
superiority
of
European
music. It is common
practice
to criticize social
inequalities
and
discriminating concepts
of
man;
but the
potential
hubris
implicit
in the cultural
complex
of Western music is not
easy
to detect. Faced with a
massive bulk of
musicological
literature
yet
untouched
by any postcolonial
temptations,
the first task of a critical
approach
will be to deconstruct this cultural
complex
into its
parts:
to decartelize the interwoven discourses of musical
practice,
history,
aesthetics,
psychology,
and music
theory,
that
ground
the
legitimation
of
European
music.
European musicology
is itself
part
of a
European
culture of music
-
a fact that
is innocent in a
moral,
but crucial in an
epistemological
sense. It cannot
easily
be
detached from its
special place
within this
culture,
which is located between
science and
art,
or between sound and
language.
But
ultimately
it doesn't
escape
the
expectation
to
produce
statements of scientific
validity.
Therefore,
the call to
qualify
the
existing pretensions
of
validity
within a
cosmopolitan
frame is not
only
a
political
matter of
satisfying
the claims of
postcolonial
intellectuals and
ethnic minorities. The
project
of a
global history
of music seen
through
a
post-
colonial lens
-
which is our main
topic
here
-
is
taking place
in the
footsteps
of a
36
This idea was
put
forward
tentatively by Christopher Height (2003).
170
History,
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and
Postcoloniality |
respective
revision of
history,
and
struggles
with
practical problems
that will be
discussed
subsequently
in this article.
Concerning
the aesthetics of
music,
the de-
centering
is
prepared by ethnomusicology,
which has
produced
valuable results
that are
waiting
for further
theorizing.
If we
try
now to
put history
and aesthetics
aside for a
moment,
there remain two
major
fields
suspicious
of a
questionable
validity
in the
global range:
music
psychology,
and music
theory.
Are there
psychological
laws for the
perception
of music that work for
any
kind of music
and
independently
of the cultural and educational
background?
Is there a
potential
music
theory
that can be
applied
to all musics of the world?
The
topic
of an intercultural
psychology
of music seems to be rather
precari-
ous,
especially
in the USA.
Regarding
some of the latest results of a music
psychology claiming
to be scientific and
yet
is still fixed on Mozart as the most
representative example
of music for
experimental
use,
one
might
wonder if there
has ever been
any
contact with
departments
for
ethnomusicology
or multicultural
music education. But this is an issue that should be directed back to intense
debate.37
Instead,
I want to take
up
the
question
of music
theory,
a
point
that came
recently
under discussion in the field of music education.
Ironically,
matters of
theory
are
appearing
here as
urgent
in a field
intimately
tied to
practice.
This
provokes arguments
on a
pragmatic
level,
which are oriented towards a best
practice
model of an
appropriate
balance of
disciplines.
The
attempt
to unite
Western-based music
theory
with a
global perspective
on music
may
result here
in a dilemma between a
pluralism
of music theories that continues the
othering
of discrete musical
cultures,
and a
synthetic approach
that focuses on similarities
in order to match the
requirements
of a
musically globalized
world. A
practice-
oriented
theory
of
global
music was
put
forward for
example by
Bonnie C. Wade
(2004);
it follows an
elementary approach
based on the
key
role of musical instru-
ments and the
parameters
of
time,
pitch,
and
structure,
that can serve as a useful
framework for the
acquisition
of a basic
understanding
of music that is
largely
independent
from a
specific
cultural bias. Since the circular
logic
of hermeneutics
concerns
both,
the
practical
and the scientific
attempts
to understand
music,
this
can be in
any
case a
prerequisite
for the
development
of a
cosmopolitan perspec-
tive on music. But
nevertheless,
the issue of music
theory
merits treatment on a
strictly
scientific level as well.
Mark
Hijleh recently pointed
to the
right
direction when he noted that the
kind of music
theory,
as
traditionally taught
in most
undergraduate
curricula
today,
does not even match the current state of music in the West . . .
(99).
It is not
only
the
practice
of
composed
music in the
European
strain
during
the twentieth
century
that has time and
again provocatively
contradicted all the rules and
doctrines of established music
theory
-
not to
speak
of
improvised
or sub-cultural
37
The issue of a cultural turn for music
psychology
is discussed in Allesch and Krakauer.
171
IRASM 43
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and
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Postcoloniality
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f
lobal
Hlstory'
1 '
|
and
Postcoloniality
music. We should remember the last
chapters
of Carl Dahlhaus's
encyclopaedic
history
of music
theory
in which he
unmistakably
follows the constructivist turn
in
musicology
initiated
by
Hermann von Helmholtz
(252-61). According
to
Helmholtz it is an error to believe that
European
music
theory
is the
expression
of
natural
laws;
instead it results from aesthetic
principles
of
historically
limited
validity.
The use of the methods of natural science for
musicology
is not to
legiti-
mate music
theory
but rather to show where the effect of natural laws ends to
give
way
to human
creativity.
With this
enlightening
statement Helmholtz not
only
broke with an old tradition of
thinking
but also
provoked rigorous
reactions of
contemporaries
like
Hugo
Riemann. Dahlhaus takes
up
Helmholtz's
arguments
to
clarify
the scientific status of music
theory.
He calls it a
dogmatics
and
compares
it to the
juridical
sciences,
which are
justified primarily by
their
consistency
and
applicability,
not
by any
reference to nature
(256).
The
dogmatics usually
called it
music
theory,
and are a historical
phenomenon
restricted to the
period
from the
17th to the 19th
century.
So,
the
concept
of music
theory,
understood as a coherent
system
of
style principles,
becomes
subject
to relativism and virtual
pluralization
into a
multiplicity
of
possible
music theories.
In this
way
Dahlhaus has
put
the
problem
of music
theory
into the
right
context.
European
music
theory
is not an
imperialist theory
but a
theory
based on
an incorrect
self-image,
which
actually joined
the drift to
imperialism.
It was the
explicit
or tacit
assumption
that music
theory
follows eternal laws that can be
proven by
natural
sciences,
that had for a
long
time
grounded
the
bearing
of West-
ern music towards the world. The
consequences
of this
insight
can be drawn in
two directions: in the direction of
history
there arises the
question
how the
suggestion
of music
theory's plausibility
can be
explained.
It will be a task for the
historical cultural studies of music to deconstruct the
myth
of music
theory's
self-
evidence that evolved out of the
antique
tradition of
Pythagorean thinking;
to
show how the
Enlightenment
resulted in a kind of creative
mis-enlightening
of
this
myth;
and to
explain
how the factual success of
European
music
theory
in
musical
practice
and education has stabilized the
suggestion
of
plausibility by
conceptualizing
it in
analogy
to the
general
success of
technologies
that are based
on natural sciences. The other direction that has to be
explored
concerns the
secondary
effects of that
suggestion.
It can be asked how the inherent contradic-
tion of a
supposed
universal
dogmatics
has distorted the
European
encounter
with
non-European
music,
as well as the encounter of
non-Europeans
with Euro-
pean
music. In this
way
the
general
imbalance of
power significant
for the colonial
context will become discernible from the
specific self-righteous
attitude of Euro-
pean
music
being just
a fortunate result of theoretical misbelief.
What remains is the
question,
of how far music can be
investigated by
means
of the sciences of nature. The
discipline
of acoustics has
gradually
revealed a lot
of hard facts that meanwhile have become
implemented
into the latest
computer-
ized sound
technology.
On this level there seem to be few secrets left to be uncov-
172
History,
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|RASM 43
(2012)
1: 139-186
and
Postcoloniality |
ered. With the increase of electronic
technologies
for the
manipulation
of the ear
the
parameter
of sound has become an
objectifiable entity;
at the same time the
processes by
which sound is translated
by
the human brain into music has become
a concrete miracle. The human
capacity
for the aesthetic
appreciation
of
sounding
phenomena
seems to be
potentially
unlimited
-
an observation not
easily
operationalized
into a scientific
methodology
In a similar
way
the
apparent
contingency
involved in the
differing
musical evolutions that
happened
in the
world remains
opaque
to scientific
explanation.
So,
the human interface
becomes a scientific
challenge
for a
psychology
of
cognition
as well as for a
history
of
style;
since the reference of an absolute music
theory
is
missing,
a scientific
approach
has to
manage
with an
interplay
of
psychological
and cultural
variables,
because
every possible
test
person
is
pre-formed by
musical
knowledge.
Yet
Helmholtz referred to a nature of
things concerning
music as a vast field of
pos-
sibilities that become concrete
only through
the intervention of
principles
of
style
which have to be seen as
historically unique
inventions of human
creativity. They
follow their own
logic
without ever
being
reducible to a law of
necessary
evolu-
tion
(ibid., 254).
It was Helmholtz's achievement to show the historic conditional-
ly
of
European
music in a
way
that matched
equally
a future
perspective
of
global
pluralism.
But,
of
course,
the idea of a
plurality
of music theories is
only
a makeshift.
The association of musical
practice
with music
theory
is no more a universal rule
than music
theory
itself. The
transitory
existence of more or less closed musical
cultures
guided by
a consistent
theory
is a historical fact that can be admired but
hardly
be
justified
as
superior
without reference to
precisely
that
theory.
There is
no
higher
reason for the
disqualification
of a music that follows its
proper
but
unverbalized aesthetics without the
pretension
and
support
of theoretical
dogmatics. Inversely,
it could even be
argued
that a theoretical
obligation
of
musical cultures
might
be a
cul-de-sac,
since it results in one-sided
specialization
and inhibits intercultural cross-fertilization. The
development
of
European
music
itself
during
the 20th
century
could be cited as an
example
for the
struggle against
these limitations. So once more the idea of isolated musical cultures becomes
questionable
and traceable to its historical context of a
temporary symbiosis
of
theory
and
practice
in
European history. Apart
from
this,
the
undisputed auxiliary
function of music
theory
has
granted
the
global
diffusion of selected items
extracted from the Western
dogmatics
that are used on a habitual basis.
So far
European
music
theory
has been identified as an ideal construction
unjustifiable by
the standards of modern natural science. Now it is
possible
to
rethink the
right
order of the different claims for scientific
validity.
The
physics
of
vibration and
auditory perception clearly represent
the hard side of
knowledge,
while the
writing
of
history
must
acquire
its scientific value
through
critical
reflection of the social forces that
might shape
it. The
psychology
of music can
also
produce scientifically
valid
results,
but
hardly
in the inter-cultural
range
173
IRASM 43
(2012)
1: 139-186
| ^Sp^Si^fy1068'
since there is no
empirical
method that could abstract from the cultural context.
Music
theory,
to the
contrary,
has
finally
lost its
historically
evolved status as a
hard science and
approached
musical aesthetics in a field where scientific
knowledge mingles
with cultural invention. It is scientific
only
in a technical sense
and
actually belongs
to the
proper
world of artistic creation. As a
consequence
of
this,
its
appropriate place
must be within a
virtually imaginable
historical
theory
of musical
creativity.
Surely,
such a
theory
seems
Utopian
since there is neither a
discipline
occu-
pied
with it nor are the sources
easily
available that would be
necessary
to
support
such an
undertaking.
It crosses all the borders that dissect the world of music into
creations of art and authentic
traditions,
into narratives of
avant-garde
and
myths
of cultural
resistance,
or into a stable
sphere
of canonical works and an ever-
changing sphere
of
ephemeral
innovation called
popular
music.
Nevertheless,
in
order to advance the
project
of
Europe's de-centering,
it seems
extremely
fruitful
to
imagine
such an historical
theory
of musical
creativity.
It would
suspend
the
established association of creation with a
European concept
of art and would be
able to understand
every history
of music in terms of order and
change;
it could
offer an
conceptual bypass
to enclosed discourses of
identity
and
difference;
and
finally
it could break
up
the double bind of
high
culture,
that
alternatively
quotes
values of tradition and
innovation,
and
thereby
uses a
contradictory
discourse
specific
to
European
modernism as a rhetorical trick for the mainte-
nance of cultural hierarchies. If we
try
to consider music as a result of theoretical
as well as a
practical
creation within
specific
historical
contexts,
and the relation-
ship
of
theory
and
practice
as a mutual and
ambiguous
one that differs funda-
mentally
from the relation of natural science and
technology,
we
might
be able to
develop
a
conceptual
framework that carries on the claim for
objectivity
into a
historical science of music as culture. This will also restore the
concept
of music
itself as non-exclusive and make it
unnecessary
to elude into
badly fitting
terms
of sound38 or
(sub-)culture
for
any
music not
corresponding
to academic
Western music
theory.
7. Music of the Subaltern and the
Epistemology
of
Uncertainty
To write a
history
of musical
creativity
-
or, better,
creativities
-
is far from
being
an attractive
job. Apparently
the issue of
creativity
has never been a serious
topic beyond
the borders of Western art music. It is not
easy
to
escape
the tradi-
tion of mainstream
thinking
that divides the realm of music into works that were
38
In the media and in the art world sound is
-
at least in
Germany
-
often
(mis-)used
for
designating postcolonial
music,
in order to avoid confrontation with the
hegemonic
academic
concept
of Music.
174
History,
I
)RASM 43
(2012)
1: 139-186
and
Postcoloniality |
created
by composers
and musical artifacts that
allegedly emerged
from an
anonymous
folk or an ethnic tradition of a
people
without
history
The idea of
artistic creation that evolved in
Europe
since the Renaissance is as much histori-
cally shaped,
as the modern
concept
of
ethnicity,
that has
accompanied
the colonial
search for familiar
political
structures suitable for the
implementation
of indirect
rule. So the discourses
concerning
music were
caught up
in a scheme of
thinking
which associated creation
exclusively
with Western
-
or at least Westernized
-
artists. It is
part
of the
paradoxical
merits of world music to have discovered the
existence of
non-European
creators and artists other than of the Westernized
type.
The
seemingly
sudden
emergence
of this
phenomenon
reflects the
previous
exclusion of
non-Europeans
from the
concept
of
creation,
even if the label world
music artist was introduced
by
the music
industry only
for the end of better
promotion.
A
consequence
that can be drawn from
this,
is to
transpose
this new
pattern
of
perception
into the
past
and look for a hidden
history
of creators
-
a
task
only yet sporadically begun.
The
specific
kind of exclusion of the
non-European
musical artist within the
wider colonial context can rather
adequately
be correlated to the
concept
of
subalternity. Subalternity
is a condition of silence ... For this
very
reason,
the
silenced subaltern needs a
representative.
However,
from the moment in which
he submits himself to
being represented by
a
mediator,
he becomes an
object
in
the hands of this
spokesperson
to be traded in economic and
power
circuits. Self-
definition is no
longer
under his control . . .
Paradoxically,
the subaltern's
legiti-
macy
is conferred
upon
him
only by
his
spokesperson,
who then
usurps
his
place
in the
public imagination
and reduces him to a
generic
other. 39 The
concept
of
subalternity
that was
developed
first within the context of South Asian
anti-/post-
colonial
thinking
has been taken
up
until now
only peripherally
in ethnomusico-
logical
discourses. This
may
be due to the
professional entanglement
of ethnomu-
sicologists
themselves with the role of
spokespersons
which is a double one: not
only
the subaltern can't
speak (Spivak),
also their music can't
speak
as a
medium since it needs
interpretation
in the
language
of words
(Kramer).
It is the
structural need for
Ethnomusicologists
to defend the music of the subaltern in the
Western academia that creates their uncomfortable
position
as
interpreters suspect
of
paternalism.
But scientific reason should not let itself be bullied
by
the
legitimate critique
of this relation of
representation.
There are
good
reasons to
appreciate
the
concept
of
subalternity
for it catches the
sociological
and the
epistemological aspect
of this
relation. For
Ethnomusicology
it clarifies that there is a silence that
goes beyond
the
non-verbality
of music. There is the structural
silencing
of a music that can't
39
Jose Jorge
de
Carvalho,
O olhar
etnografico
e a voc
subalterna,
Serie
Antropologia
167, 1-30,
quoted
in Lima and
Any
a,
84.
175
IRASM 43
(2012) 1 '
1: 139-186 I
|
J'
and
^rier:
Music Global
History,
1 '
|
and
Postcoloniality
be
adequately
described
by
the
concepts
of a
discipline
that calls itself
musicology.
There is the silence of the subaltern musician who has learned to
compensate
his
inferiority
in the verbal field
by expressing
himself
through
music. There is the
silence of the written
sources,
which have
systematically ignored
subaltern culture
and
may
reveal its traces
only through
an inverted
reading
of
prohibitions
and
persecutions
documented in
writing;
and there is
possibly
the
conspirative
silence
of the
subaltern,
which once
acquired
in
defense,
becomes
permanently
inter-
nalized as a habit.
The idea to let the subalterns
speak
for themselves seems obvious as a
spontaneous
reaction to this
dilemma;
but
especially
for musicians this often
means to force them
unhappily
into the
wrong
medium of
expression.
It is music
that fills the
gap
between his condensed
experience
of
subalternity
and a remote
academic audience that is moved
by philanthropic curiosity.
So the musician who
has been refused
any vocabulary
for
defending
his music in the rhetorical arena
of
hegemonic
culture in a
literary
sense can't
speak.

Furthermore the subaltern
subject
lives a
fragmented
existence that is alienated from the models of
identity
propagated by
the elites. His
experience
of time
may
be
incongruent
with the
concepts
of time of a narrative of
history
that is not his own. The subaltern
subject
of a
globalizing
world is not the untouched child of nature accessible
through
ethnographic immediacy.
Confronted with the
ethnographer
as his
hegemonic
other
he/she
is
constantly
in
danger
of
simply reproducing
the
pattern
of subordi-
nation and
speechlessness.
On the other hand a historical
approach
has to abandon all
naivety
concern-
ing
the
credibility
of its sources. It must
develop
some fantasia in order to
imagine
in what
ways
subaltern
reality might
have left traces on the surface of document-
ed
history,
and must formulate concrete
hypotheses
about the
perceptions
and
intentions of the
respective
authors. The historian will encounter situations where
a
single testimony
contradicts
profoundly
the bulk of written references
-
and
might
be
right.
The difficulties met
by
a
historiography
of subaltern culture
resemble in
many ways
the
problems
that were stirred
up by
feminist historians.
Feminist
historiography
can be seen in a
pioneering
role for the
methodological
maneuver of
uncovering
silenced
history.
It has the
slight advantage
that the
statistical
symmetry
of sexes
empirically
contradicts their unbalanced
representa-
tion in such an evident
way
that it
proves
that there is
something
to be uncovered.
In contrast the
writing
of the
history
of subaltern culture has
permanently
to ward
off the constraint to
justify
the existence of its
object
of
study,
and has to overcome
a
skepticism
that
argues
it
might
invent
problems
that do not exist. For the
academic mainstream in the field of
history
the need for research into subaltern
culture seems to be still far from obvious. It is
only
in a
specialized
domain like
the
study
of
European
folk culture of
early
modern
times,
where similar
problems
arise. In this context Peter Burke
has,
already
in the
1970s,
articulated
important
176
J. Kroier: Music
and
Global
History,
I
|
IRASM 43
(2012)
1: 139-186
and
Postcoloniality |
reflections on the
methodological problems
of research into these dark clouds
of historical matter.40
I have encountered these
problems during
a recent
study (2010)
on the
dynamics
of urban culture of the
period
around 1900. As one
example
I had
chosen New Orleans as the
alleged birthplace
of
early jazz,
not
being
aware at first
of the
methodological delicacy
of this issue. There is a vast literature on the
topic,
which
gives
the
superficial impression
of
completeness.
But,
fortunately,
there is
also a new
generation currently working
to rewrite
jazz history according
to
contemporary
standards in
postcolonial
studies,
the
study
of
Afro-modernity,
and critical
approaches
in
history.
It is an
enlightening experience
to
study
the
difference between the old and the new school in its contrast of
position,
method
and
genre.
The stock of older
literature,
which was written
against
the massive
background
of conservative
anti-jazz polemics,
had the
tendency
to follow a
model of holistic narration that was
by
the time
gradually
dressed
up
with
elements of oral
history.
Its authors were identified with a role that was described
by
Carvalho as
spokespersons
in
representation
of the silenced
subaltern;
mostly
they
became conscious of this dilemma and
began
to evoke the unmediated voice
of the other
-
a
pattern typical
for the attitude of Western intellectuals on behalf
of the colonial other that has been criticized in detail
by Gayatri Spivak (2008).
The new school of
writing
in
jazz history
that is
spearheaded
in the case of New
Orleans
by
the work of Charles Hersch
(2007),
has
given up
this
tutelizing
stance
and is concerned with the reconstruction of concrete historical contexts. It is based
on the critical deconstruction of racialized discourses on music
put
forward
by
Ronald
Radano,
Guthrie R
Ramsey
and
others,
and uses a
constructivistically
reflected
terminology.
It is sensitive to
phenomena
of double
meaning
and to the
semiotic
complexities
induced
by
colonial and racial
power
structures.
On the whole there is an undeniable
progress
to be
acknowledged
concern-
ing
the
independence
from
distorting
biases that established colonial exclusion of
the silenced subaltern
or,
to the
contrary,
in a well-intended
mis-inclusion,
which
resulted in a
properly
canonical
jazz history
written
by sympathetic representa-
tives. In all it can
only
be welcomed that an old culture war that had
accompa-
nied
jazz
from its
beginning
has become
negotiable
and
given way
to a more
realistic
picture
of
history
and its dialectics.
Apart
from
this,
several errors of
historical detail could be corrected
against
the
power
of
repetition
of a
largely
incestuous literature of
jazz
enthusiasts. But this scientific
upgrade
is,
from a
strictly epistemological point
of
view,
not without
ambiguity.
For an scholar not
himself
deeply
involved in the matter it
may
seem dubious to see well established
lines of traditions
disappear
into
oblivion,
while others
suddenly appear
on the
scene that
apparently escaped
the attention of all observers who have left written
40
Burke treats these
problems
within the context of restricted
literacy
and discusses methods for
the historian to draw indirect conclusions from his sources.
177
IRASM
,20,2)
,39-1.6
|
HM*
traces. It is hard to
imagine
the amount of
silencing
to which subaltern music was
subjected
without
slight feelings
of
paranoia.
The narrow frame of
perception
that
was set
by
white
jazz
enthusiasts for what
they thought
relevant to be
presented
to
the
general
American
public
as authentic Afro- American art
apparently
was
paired
with an
empirical
blindness for all the
seemingly peripheral
musics that
today
would be
highly appreciated
as
missing
links of a
history
music.41 Also we shouldn't
forget
that in the context of the US- American South the
evolution of
jazz
was
historically paralleled by
a racist backlash that echoed the
humiliation of the American Civil War. This created a climate
certainly
not favor-
able for a balanced
perception
of black subaltern culture. There was
hardly
a social
standpoint
thinkable that allowed it to
picture jazz
in a
positive way
without a
distancing
from some sort of inferior culture that could
put
blacks in a bad
light.
So the
epistemology
of African- American music has been
-
and still is
-
also a
political
one
shaped by
the dialectics of
post-emancipation history.
The recent
flourishing
of Afro-centric counter-discourses
suspecting
undreamed
resources of black tradition and
creativity
that were silenced
by
white
historiogra-
phy
is not without reason. But the
legitimate
enthusiasm for the
discovering
of
suppressed
cultural
expressions
sometimes raises the
question
of how a line of
demarcation towards invention of tradition can be defined on one
side,
and
fictional literature on the other. Of
course,
in the USA this is also a
political question.
Furthermore there is no reason to
disqualify
a fictional
literature,
which is associ-
ated with
many outstanding examples
for the
pioneering transgression
of
ruling
regimes
of social
perception.42
However,
it seems not
unproblematic
to
mingle
an
approach
that tries to restore
musicology's
claim for
objectivity by
means of correct
historical contextualizations with
purposeful
counter-narratives that don't feel
obliged
to define their
position
towards
speculation.
The idea of subaltern
history
as a
history
of the silenced subaltern seems to be
an attractive method for the
countering
of neo-colonial
hegemony
in the field of
written
knowledge.
But this not
only politicizes epistemology
in a
potentially
unnecessary way.
It also
complicates
the
epistemological setup
since the
category
of
subalternity
itself can
easily slip away
under the
pressure
of a
silencing regime.
In a recent
study
on the
macro-sociology
of
jazz
in the twenties Annette
Kulp
has
worked with the
conceptual
framework of
subalternity.
She uses the
concepts
of
subaltern versus dominant culture to describe the
process
of re- valuation that
jazz
music underwent
during
the twenties. She
convincingly
shows how
jazz
as a
41
It is hard to
explain why
New Orleans' Black Indians were never mentioned in literature on Afro-
American
music,
even
though they
claim their
origins
from the 19th
century;
see Kroier
2010,
27.
42
In the
past
it was
typically
fictional writers
coming
from a remote social
background
who were
the
only
ones to describe
phenomena
of subaltern culture that were
systematically
overlooked
by
local
authors.
Furthermore,
literary
studies
had,
due to their
openness concerning
content,
temporarily
ac-
quired
a
pioneering
role for the
study
of African- American culture in the USA.
178
History,
I
|RASM 43
(2012)
1: 139-186
and
Postcoloniality |
means of black self-assertion met with certain
changing
cultural desires within
American
society
to
provoke
the crossover of this music into mainstream mass
culture. Nevertheless one could
argue
that her restricted frame of time
implicitly
devalues the
concept
of
subalternity.
The kind of
jazz
that succeeded
getting
broader
recognition
was no
longer
silenced,
but now
competing
in the field of
American culture and has become a well-documented
part
of
jazz history Probably
we have to assume different
degrees
of
invisibility
that are
shifting through
time
and
space.
The silence of a music that is
habitually zapped away
in the radio
by
a
majority
of decent citizens is not the same as the silence of a music that sounds
open
in the streets but is never recorded or even
officially registered,
and is not
the same as the silence of a music that flourishes in clandestine circles and avoids
any
confrontation with dominant culture.
Furthermore,
the
question
arises how
jazz
could
actually
fall back into
subalternity
after
ragtime
as its historic forerun-
ner had
acquired
a certain
respectability Perhaps
we should better consider a
general duality
of a
socially
visible and a silenced
part
music,
which makes this
appear
to us
only through
restricted
epistemological
windows
depending
on the social and historical
standpoint. Apparently,
there remains a
need to
adjust
the
operationalization
of the
concept
of subaltern culture with
respect
to the vector of historical time.
So
why
should
ethnomusicology adopt
the
approach
of subaltern
history
if it
offers
only
uncertain
knowledge
and
hardly
fixable
concepts?
Doesn't it lead back
to the
speculative imponderables
of
and
away
from the
empirical reliability
of
ethnography
and musical
analysis?
We have to abandon
the
positivistic
idea of
objective knowledge
that is
usually
attributed to the natural
sciences
-
in
ignorance
of the fact that even in those fields this idea has become
questionable
under the influence of science studies
postulating
that all
knowledge
is more or less
socially
and
culturally shaped.
But this doesn't mean that there is
no valid
knowledge possible.
For a
historically
oriented cultural science it means
to return to the critical attitude that once had
inspired
Friedrich
Engels
to look
beyond
the
pretty
facades of the boulevards of Manchester to discover hidden
behind them the miserable huts of the
working
class. The truth of such a science
can't be measured from the
accuracy
of
single
results or from the
completeness
of
the
representations
of
knowledge
it
produces.
It can't be blamed for
discovering
contradictions if these are contradictions of
history
In order to see what
Engels
saw it is sufficient to be a realist. Scientific
responsibility
demands an
inquiry
into
where and
why
dominant narratives become false in a wider sense and to
ques-
tion
any
discoursive exclusion. We can't evade the task of
measuring
silences,

as
Gayatri Spivak
has
put
it
(286, quoting
Pierre
Macherey),
if cultural science
shall serve the
goals
of
enlightenment
but not of cultural
hegemony,
even if the
data
brought
to
light by
such an
enterprise may appear formally
weak in
comparison
to the results of naive
empirism.
179
IRASM 43
(2012)
1: 139-186
|
an^PosicS
HiSt0ry'
So the
category
of
subalternity
must be
integrated theoretically
into our
understanding
of culture and
history simply
for reasons of scientific
veracity.
The
discovering
of subaltern histories
might
be born out of a
political impulse
within
a colonial or neo-colonial
context;
but their scientific relevance lies in their role as
a
necessary complement
to a
history
that,
stripped
of all national
biases,
wants to
understand the inter connectedness of a
globalized
world. The
political
counter-
discourses of subaltern
(mis-)representation
and
identity
are the midwives of a
correction of scientific horizons. A
history
of music that is not
only
conscious of
global
streams of information and commodities but also of mechanisms of
discrimination and
exclusion,
of
voluntary ignorance
and defensive
camouflage
working
on a
global range
is not
engaged
for
particular
interests but for historical
justice. Against
a consumerist cult of oblivion that follows the
spirit
of neo-liberal
globalization
as well as
against
a
self-righteous
refusal of a
cosmopolitan
consciousness I
plea
for an
understanding
of music that is not
only historically
informed but able to restore the
meaning
and value of music that is
grounded
in
its historical circumstances and in its
complex relationship
within the
antagonistic
history
of
European
domination. This includes the
project
of
writing
an inverted
duplicate
of the
history
of Western music: written from the
peripheral angle
of
view it describes Western music as
experienced
within the frame of the
imperial-
ist
expansion
of Western
modernity.
This will not
only
further the self-under-
standing
of a
European
music in latent crisis of
identity;
it can also restore the
artistic
dignity
of so-called world-music
by giving
it back its unwritten
history.
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Sazetak
Glazba, globalna povijest
i
postkolonijalizam
Tijekom posljednjih desetljeca gospodarska
stvarnost
globalizacije potaknula je
u
drustvenim znanostima obrat u
smjeru novog shvacanja globalne povijesti koja pokusava
istraziti
pretpovijesti sadasnje globalizacije. Zajedno
s
usponom postkolonijalne teorije
to
ukljucuje
i izazov za
ideje
o
povijesti glazbe
sto ih
jos upotrebljavaju odgovarajuce discipli-
ne.
Zapocinjuci ponovnim razmatranjem
recentnih
rasprava
unutar
etnomuzikologije
o
glazbama svijeta
i
globalizaciji, ovaj
clanak
nastoji
ukratko
prikazati mogucnosti povije-
snog
obrata nove vrste
kozmopolitske muzikologije kontekstualiziranjem
etnomuzikolo-
gije
s obzirom na
njezine povijesne izvore, tj. objektivizaciju glazbe
sto
ju je potaknuo
Hermann von Helmholtz. S
tog polazista raspravlja
se o
glavnim posljedicama ovoga
obra-
ta:
relativizaciji opcih pojmova
tradicionalno i
popularno, mogucnosti argumentiranja
kojim
bi se
izbjegli
kulturni ratovi o
multikulturalizmu,
te kriticko
razmatranje epistemoloskog
statusa
teorije glazbe. Potencijali ovakvog pristupa protustavljaju
se
potom
metodickim
poteskocama
s
kojima
se susrecu
pokusaji dekoloniziranja povijesti glazbe.
Clanak
je
potaknut
konkretnim
problemima
na
koje
se naislo
prilikom povijesnog istrazivanja postko-
lonijalne glazbe
i
slijedi
dekonstruktivisticki
pristup
u odnosu na
njemacku komparativnu
muzikologiju. Cilj je
clanka obradba teme o
glazbi
i
postkolonijalizmu
na sistematicki i trans-
disciplinaran
nacin te
poticanje daljnje rasprave
o kulturi i
globalizaciji
s
povijesnog stajalista.
Njegov programatski podtekst posljedica je pokusaja
da se unakrsno
prozmu
recentni
diskursi u
etnomuzikologiji, kulturologiji, sociologiji
i
povijesnim znanostima, umjesto
da se
slijedi
dobro uhodana
povezanost etnomuzikologije
s
antropologijom.
186

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