COMPREHENSIVE

 EXAM  

COLLECTIVE  MEMORY  EMBODIED  IN  MUSIC  

By Andrea Kuzmich
Committee: Louise Wrazen (supervisor), Rob Simms, Sherry Johnson
York University, Music Department, January 20, 2014

PART  I  

INTRODUCTION   1  
THE  CURRENCY  OF  MEMORY  STUDIES:  A  CRISIS  IN  MEMORY   3  
MOST  PRESSING  AND  CURRENT  ISSUES   4  

DEFINITIONS  AND  DIFFERENTIATIONS   6  

A  LOAD  OF  TERMS   6  
MEMORY  OR  HISTORY?  IT’S  ALL  CONSTRUCTED….   6  

APPROACHES  TO  THE  STUDY  OF  COLLECTIVE  MEMORY   12  

THE  FOUNDATIONS:  HALBWACHS,  HOBSBAWM,  CONNERTON  AND  NORA   13  
CONTEMPORARY  APPROACHES   20  
THE  STUDY  OF  COLLECTIVE  MEMORY  AND  COMPATIBLITY  WITH  ETHNOMUSICOLOGY   23  

PART  II  

PRECURSORS  TO  THE  STUDY  OF  COLLECTIVE  MEMORY  IN  ETHNOMUSICOLOGY   27  

DIAOLOGISM  AND  DEBATE   31  

TERDIMAN:  DECONSTRUCTING  COLLECTIVE  MEMORIES  REVEALS  HOW  POWER  
STRUCTURES  FUNCTION   32  
LIPSITZ  AND  THE  COUNTER  CULTURAL  DIALOGUE  IN  COLLECTIVE  MEMORY   34  
FLOYD,  THE  POWER  OF  BLACK  MUSIC,  AND  COLLECTIVE  MEMORY  OF  THE  DISTANT  
SPIRITUAL  PAST   36  
ONGOING  DEBATES  EMBODIED  IN  MUSICAL  FORM   43  

EMOTIONS,  ACOUSTEMOLOGY  AND  EFFICACY  OF  MUSIC  TO  SUSTAIN  MEMORY   51  

FELD  AND  ACOUSTEMOLOGY:  SONIC  SENSIBILITIES  AND  MEANING   54  
QURESHI  FOLLOWS  THE  AFFECT:  AFFECT  AND  FEELINGS  OF  MUSICAL  DISCOURSE   56  
SHELEMAY  FOLLOWS  THE  AFFECT:  ENCODING  MUSIC  MEMORIES   59  
EMOFF:  AESTHETICS  OF  REMEMBERING   62  

CONCLUSION   69  

BIBLIOGRAPHY   72  
 Memory is the scaffolding upon which all mental life is constructed. (Fischbald
and Coyle 1995: ix)

Every social act is permeated with memory. (Olick et al. 2011: 37)

INTRODUCTION

Memory is the central faculty of temporal existence (ibid.) and as philosopher

Edward Casey clearly observes:

every fiber of our bodies, every cell of our brains, holds memories—as does
everything physical outside bodies and brains, even those inanimate objects that
bear the marks of their past histories upon them in mute profusion. (2000 [1987]:
xix)

Today, memory is the subject of a diverse array of public discourses, media and academic

fields and has become an “all-encompassing sociocultural phenomenon,”

interdisciplinary and international in scope (Erll 2011: 1). Popular phrases such as “truth

and reconciliation,” “thriving heritage industry” or “commemorative fever” are

indications of how “memory provokes a close interplay among politics, public media, art

and academic research” (Erll 2011: 3). And while the conceptualization of memory is

varied, more and more approaches across a spectrum of disciplines recognize the inherent

collective or social nature of memory (Misztal 2003: 1).

Contemporary usage of the term “collective memory” is sourced to Halbwachs’

1925 Social Frameworks of Memory (1992 [1925]). The premise established here, which

forms the foundation of collective, social, and cultural memory studies, disfavours the

psychological interpretation of individual memory since all memory, individual or

collective, is socially constructed. “Memory is a matter of how minds work together in

society” and is “structured by social arrangements” (Olick and Robins 1998: 109). This

thus delineates the quintessential post-modern, post-structuralist view that meaning is

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socially constituted even though memory is individually retained.1 The body of

scholarship on social, collective and cultural memory today is quite varied and

comprehensive but essentially involves the study of the variety of “forms through which

we are shaped by the past, conscious and unconscious, public and private, material and

communicative, consensual and challenged” (ibid.: 112). Collective memory has

particular currency in today’s fast-paced, highly mediated information-overloaded world

because it offers an alternative “mode of contemplation” (Olick and Robins 1998: 120),

which is necessary for the construction of identity and the formation of community

(Hobsbawm (1993); Macintyre (1984), Hobsbawm (1972) and Bellah (1985) in Olick and

Robins 1998, 122). Indeed, as the opening quote by Fischbald and Coyle suggests, it is

necessary for all mental constructs.

This paper is particularly concerned with the subject of collective memory in

music scholarship, and how such scholarship theorizes the embodiment of collective

memory in music. Following the lead of ethnomusicologists like Caroline Bithell (2006)

and Kay Kaufman Shelemay (1998; 2006), this paper recognizes the unique position of

ethnomusicology to address the study of collective memory. It is necessary, however, to

provide an overview of the currency of memory studies and the most pressing issues of

the field in order to foreground the particular importance of studying collective memory

in a musical context. With this intention, the first part of this paper address terminologies,

foundational thought and the most current methodological approaches to the study of

collective memory. Despite a concerning absence of references to music scholarship in

1
That meaning is socially constructed sources back to Saussure’s structuralist view of language. According
to Stuart Hall, this structuralist view highlights how any understanding of reality is mediated through
language, which ultimately relies on social conventions (Hall 2003: 15-61).

2
memory studies,2 I occasionally make reference to it; however, music scholarship is more

substantially addressed in subsequent sections, starting with a small segment dedicated to

the precursors of memory studies in music. This is followed by sections that address: the

dialogical nature of music and the embodiment of possible conflicting memories; and the

concern for the efficacy of music to retain and trigger memories.

THE CURRENCY OF MEMORY STUDIES: A CRISIS IN MEMORY

Memory studies is an interdisciplinary and complex field with no single unifying

theory regarding how individuals or collectives recall. It is generally believed, however,

that we are amidst a crisis in memory. Our postmodern world – with its cyber and virtual

experiences, technological and communication expansions, explosion of images,

thoughts, and ways of being – is a concern for many scholars. According to Pierre Nora,

a formidable presence in memory studies, modernity does not allow communities to

intimately know memory; instead, memory is archived and atomized (Nora 1996: 2, 7).

True memory provides a “broad panoramic view” while in modernity “memory is

intensely … televisual.” The “ubiquity of visual images… and immediacy of live

broadcasts” results in a preoccupation with oral histories, biographies, authoritative

documentaries, reruns and rewrites, which Nora believes only offer “artificial close-up”

“hyper-real” attempts to view the past (Nora 1996: 13-14; Olick et al. 2011: 6).

Sociologist Barbara Misztal further clarifies this suggesting that traditional societies’

conceptualizations of the past and present differ from modern society (2003: 28). The

regular repetition of “orally transmitted histories [in traditional societies] means that most

knowledge of the past is shared” compared to contemporary societies where that

2
Out of three comprehensive surveys, Olick et al. (2011), Erll (2011), and Misztal (2003), only the latter
cites one music-oriented source (Shelemay (1998)).

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knowledge is fragmented (ibid.: 24). And what fragments are shared is in large part

determined by the media (Lowenthal (1998) in Misztal 2003: 24).

The new roles of globalization and media, it is argued, have resulted in a

homogenization of traditional identities, a condition that ironically calls for an increased

need for collective identity (Misztal 2003: 134-5). George  Lipsitz,  a  professor  of  ethnic  

studies  at  the  University  of  California,  recognizes  the  corporate  culture’s  economic  

motivation  for  collective  amnesia:  to  create  marketable  homogenized  consumers.  

They  manufacture  artificial  demands  for  their  products  and  “fashion  a  symbolic  

order  conducive  to  corporate  America  [in  order  to  undermine]  local  knowledge  and  

sense  of  history,”  which  might  otherwise  recognize  the  artifice  in  consumerism  

(2001:  259).3  This  thus  explains  Nora’s  concern  for  minorities  who  need  to  create  

“protective  enclaves”  via  “commemorative  vigilance”  otherwise  “history  would  soon  

sweep  them  away”  (1996:  7).

MOST PRESSING AND CURRENT ISSUES

Undeniably, the current climate concerning memory is challenging. Misztal

suggests with the onset of newer technologies, linear time is being replaced by

instantaneous time and global simultaneity (2003: 115; Also see Assmann and Conrad

(2010: 4) with respect to global simultaneity). Cultural memory specialists Aleida

Assmann and Sebastian Conrad remark that “under the impact of the digital as a forceful

accelerant, memories themselves have become more mobile, ephemeral and fluid,

undergoing constant transformations” and memory mobility appears to be beyond agency

and control, “along largely unforeseen trajectories” (2010: 4). Instead of dismissing the

3
Also see: Assmann A. (2010: 8-9) and Connerton’s description of how market economy is incompatible
with memory because of its imposition of linear time and its planned obsolescence (1989: 64-5).

4
study of collective memory as something impractical, Assmann and Conrad attempt to

make a claim for studying memory beyond traditional trajectories and as a dynamic

phenomenon. Scholarship of collective memory was typically bound by the role of

nations and their need to manage society. “[C]oming to terms with the past was primarily

a national project” (ibid.: 2). But now “it has become impossible to understand the

trajectories of memory outside a global frame of reference,” whether they be state or non-

state actors (ibid.). In reflecting on how memories are “on the move” Assmann and

Conrad express the need to study memory for “heterogenous and potentially conflicting

memories,” noting how “[c]lear-cut territorial boundaries of memory communities”

cannot help but be shaped by “global tourism, [and] worldwide exchange of academic

discourse.” Thus they call for a “new framework” that promotes the “circulation,

comparison, and self-reflective assessment of” memory narratives (ibid.: 2-3).

More contemporary methodologies account for the dynamics of memory,

something I address later, which is also relevant to the musical scholarship. Likewise, the

global or transnational scope of memory is current in much of the music scholarship I

review. For instance, Rachel Harris (2004) and Helen Rees (2000) both acknowledge

how the transnational and global affect the memory of minority musics in China. Also

interesting is Ron Emoff’s documentation of how global and transnational memories

enter spirit possession practices of two small minority tribes on the east coast of

Madagascar (2002). The global and transnational qualifiers, however, are far more clearly

the subject of Kay Kaufman Shelemay’s ethnography of the Syrian Jewish pizmonim

tradition (paraliturgical songs of Syrian-Jewish origin), where her primary ethnographic

work occurs in New York but also includes other centres of practice like Egypt, Mexico

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and Damascus (1988). In general, however, scholarship in music affords an interesting

angle to the crisis of memory because it reveals qualities of musical experience that recall

the conditions of traditional societies and orally transmitted histories, thereby

sidestepping some of the contemporary conditions of this crisis.

Having introduced the currency of the issues with which memory studies engage,

I will offer some definitions and mark some differences, not only between collective,

social and cultural memory but also between these and other concepts like tradition, the

past, and history – an important distinction that recognizes the significance of framing

social and/or cultural issues around collective memory.

DEFINITIONS AND DIFFERENTIATIONS

Memory is an active cultural process of remembering and of forgetting that is

fundamental to our ability to conceive the world. (Misztal 2003: 1)
A LOAD OF TERMS

As Misztal explains, memory is a cultural process that is essential to construct

meaning, to reflect, and to make sense of the world. The “cultural” qualifier reinforces

the social grounding of memory – memory does not exist without a social framework.

We remember as members of social collectives, hence Halbwachs’ manuscript on

collective memory. The terms collective, social and cultural memory are often used

interchangeably. When they differ, cultural memory is often associated with tradition and

longer-termed memories; social memory may reference the subject of social sciences and

generally more immediate memories; and collective memory is thought of as the all-

encompassing umbrella term, which also addresses more immediate collective memories

not yet institutionalized into tradition, such as oral histories or communicative memory

(“memory of people who have first hand knowledge of the events” (Misztal 2003: 130)),

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and generational memories, which involves the collective memories from the formative

years of a living generation. I do not make these differentiations in this paper, and unless

otherwise stated, collective, social and cultural memory are used interchangeably. In

general, they may be defined as a representation or expression of a past that is commonly

shared by a group, is collectively commemorated or culturally embodied, and

substantiates past, present and future group identity (ibid.: 6, 13, 133).

There is, however, some heuristic value to momentarily explore the possible

differences between these terminologies as identified by some scholars. For instance, Jan

Assmann and John Czaplicka (1995) understand cultural memory as a move away from

the immediacy of generational and communicative memory (away from “lived memory”)

to their institutionalization into rituals, memorials, museums, canons, archives, and other

expressive cultural forms. Agnes Heller describes cultural memory as memory

“embodied in objectivations that store meaning [to be shared] in a concentrated manner”

(Heller 2001: 1031). Keying into the “political or ideological functionalizations of the

past,” Astrid Erll’s description of cultural memory ties it to a “distant horizon” that is not

always measured by historical-chronological time. Instead, it reflects the way of

remembering the past as the past transforms into “foundational history,” by either being

an event that is tied to a “distant past and/or a vision of a distant future” (2011: 32-3).

A rather important differentiation to make, however, reflects how the qualifier

“collective” may be understood either as a metonymy or a metaphor and identifies the

difference between an “individualist” and a “collectivist” approach to memory. While

these two approaches are presented independently of each other below and in some

research, in reality they are inseparable processes and effective research on collective

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memory must recognize this.

As a metonymy, “collective” substitutes for the social and cultural contexts that

influence individual memory, what Halbwachs would call the social frameworks. This

individualist perspective is also sometimes referred to as the cognitive level (Esposito

(2002) in Erll 2011: 98) because memory is seen as purely an individual, mental act and

meaning of all cultural symbols is a personal, subjective experience existing only in the

individual’s mind. Most often collective memory from this individualist perspective is the

subject of oral history, social psychology and neurosciences (Erll 2008: 4-5; 2011: 96-

98). The qualifier “collective” may also suggest the aggregation of individual memories,

in which case the term “collected” memory can be applied (Olick 1999). Research of this

type is typically associated sociological surveys, like Shumman and Scott’s on

generations and collective memory, which correlates the mention of specific historic

events with age and race (1989).

The issue with the individualist approach is that it does not adequately account for

symbolic representations of memory and so some disciplines, like history, sociology,

literary and media studies, gravitate to a collectivist point of view (Erll 2008: 5; 2011:

98). The collectivist approach sees culture as “patterns of publicly available symbols

objectified in society" (Olick 1999: 336) and the term collective memory metaphorically

represents “the symbolic order, the media, institutions, and practices by which social

groups construct a shared past” (Erll 2008: 5). Songs, literature, museums, or other forms

of objectification are not memories themselves. Nor can they be understood through the

aggregation of individual memories. Rather, they represent the collective phenomenon of

memory. They are the “media of cultural memory, which encode information and can

8
prompt remembering or forgetting” (Erll 2011:100). According to Olick, they function as

mnemonic technologies that influence cognitive and even neurological process (1999:

342-3).

As Olick pointedly remarks, however, both perspectives are essential to the study

of collective memory and “are never completely separate processes, even analytically”

(1999: 346). A similar observation can be applied to all the terms associated with

collective memory, which must be seen as circulating within the dynamics of how

memory is experienced, such that the cognitive and social level of memory continuously

interact, just as communicative and cultural memory must interact. Moreover, it is within

this dynamic perspective that the broader understanding of collective memory becomes a

useful academic framework that cannot simply be equated with myth or tradition. This is

because it enables relationships to be made between “such phenomena as ancient myths

and the personal recollection of recent experience” (Erll 2008: 2) and furthers a

conceptual and methodological discourse that unifies the research in the varied

disciplines, such as those in psychology, sociology, neurosciences and cultural studies.

(Olick 1999: 340; Erll 2008: 2; 2011: 37, 99).

Many of the music scholars engage with a number of the concepts discussed

above though they rarely apply this terminology. For example, Gabriel Solis’s study of

the jazz pianist Theloneous Monk (2004) can be seen as engaging the cognitive level with

his interest in how individuals personally experience Monk’s legacy; and also at the

metaphorical cultural level when he discusses the influence of institutions and collectives

on this legacy. Shelemay (1998) with her focus on individual recollection can be

understood as having a more cognitive focus.

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MEMORY OR HISTORY? IT’S ALL CONSTRUCTED….

From the 1980s memory studies have been challenging history's monopoly over
the past. (Misztal 2003: 103)

Questions about the differences between memory and history reflect another issue

with terminology that needs clarification. According to Halbwachs, history represents the

past in a condensed, schematic and impersonal way, loaded with “dates, arbitrary

definitions, and reminders of events” (Halbwachs 1980 [1950]: 53). In comparison,

memory presents “a richer portrait with greater continuity” (ibid.: 52). Moreover, it does

not follow a linear sense of time. Instead, it flows back and forth and arguably offers a

more organic experience, in line with how people actually experience time (ibid.: 53-4,

80-83). On the other hand, sequential and chronological discourse of history subscribes to

linear time, which was artificially conceived with the industrial revolution, the invention

of the mechanical clock, and the systematic management of people and things for the

sake of market economy success and the growth of capital (Misztal 2003: 108-115).4

Pierre Nora has similar concerns over the distinctions between history and memory. The

former being an artificial intellectual concern, an attempt to control memory versus the

latter embodied in living societies, tied to the present and in permanent evolution (1996:

3).

Erll notes that often history and memory are seen antagonistically, “loaded with

emotionally charged binary oppositions” (dead vs living; above vs below; scientifically

objective intellectual vs personally subjective experienced, etc.) (Erll 2008: 6-7). Erll

provides a fruitful understanding of this opposition by realizing it does not need to exit.

Instead, she sees history and memory as different modes of remembering:

4
Also see Olick et al. (2011: 7,13); Halbwachs (1980: chapter 2); Connerton (1998: 64-6).

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 Myth, religious memory, political history, trauma, family remembrance, or
generational memory are different modes of referring to the past. Seen in this
way, history is but yet another mode of cultural memory, and historiography its
specific medium. (Erll 2008:7)

Though Jay Winter identifies a marked difference between the two – seeing history as a

discipline, and memory an affect – like Erll, he sees them as part of the same process, as

overlapping performative acts (Winter 2010: 12). Ethnomusicologists in particular note

how the boundaries between memory and history are blurred (Shelemay 2006: 18), and

Philip Bohlman even believes this blurred boundary is itself the field of

ethnomusicological fieldwork (1997: 140-2). While the differences between the two have

occupied many scholars’ attention, Misztal pointedly remarks that any thorough research

in one must always include tools and observations of the other (2003: 124).

Significantly, history is no longer seen as a teleological, objectively retrieved

narrative of our past. In our post-colonial, gender-informed world, we recognize that too

many voices in the past have been excluded from official histories. Indeed, as Stephen

Blum cites musicologist Carl Dahlhaus, “history is ethnically as well as socially variable”

((1977: 145) in Blum 1991: 4). For that matter, history is also not singular but there exist

multiple and possibly competing histories (Nora 1996: xxii; Kritzman 1996: ix). Bohlman

discusses different types of histories involved in researching Jewish musical practice in

Burgenland Austria. There is an official past concerning the conflict between Habsburg

and Ottoman empires that coincides with his ethnographic research and explains the

initial settlement of Jews in Burgenland. Then there are more obscure histories, which

reflect distant and more immediate past musical and ritual practices from the region

(1997: 141). Romero similarly identifies different pasts in his study of Peruvian music,

though he frames these histories as existing in debated form within musical expressions

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(2001). In particular, Bithell (2006), Bohlman (1997), Blum (1991) and others recognizes

how debates over the past are inherent to ethnomusicological fieldworks and the issue is

central to the study of embodied memory in music (see the section on dialogism and

debate).

Collective memory is also not singular. Both memory and history are

constructions. Yet an essential distinction between the two concerns how memory is also

a biological phenomenon and is a subject of the physical sciences. Even within a science-

based perspective, however, memory is understood as subjectively constructed: it is not

the simple recall of information in storage. Indeed, different parts of the brain are

involved in memory recall. Moreover, widely held connectivist theories recognize that

memory is not monolithic but instead comprised of memory superimposed on past

memory; memory is a pattern of activity that combines stored information with material

from the present (Schacter 1995: 24).

The idea that storage and retrieval of explicit memories involves binding together
different kinds of information from diverse cortical sites provides a biological
basis for the notion that retrieval of memory is a complex construction involving
many different sources of information. (ibid.: 19)

Olick et al.’s overview of the state of psychological research in memory studies observes:

We now know that we do not perceive every aspect of the situation, that not every
aspect of the situation we do perceive is converted into engrams [i.e., the basic
units of memory], that a situation perceived as unitary is preserved in fragments
(hence the value–added quality of the term ‘engrams’), and that the act of
‘remembering’ often involves the new combination of stored engrams, noise,
extrapolation, and features of the present. As such, remembering is a matter not of
retrieval but the combination and creation. (Olick et al 2011: 45)

APPROACHES TO THE STUDY OF COLLECTIVE MEMORY

The above overview covers many of the underlying ideas that guide memory

studies today. What follows identifies past scholarship that grounds these ideas and

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influences the current theories and methodological approaches in memory studies that are

particularly useful to how music can embody collective memory. It starts with the

foundations of collective memory that are traced to Maurice Halbwachs (1877-1945) at

the turn of the twentieth century, and follows with the next wave of scholars Eric

Hobsbawm, Paul Connerton and Pierre Nora. While all three have a focus on

commemoration, Hobsbawm’s contribution concerns the national politics of memories,

Connerton addresses the corporeal embodiment of memories, and Nora is more

concerned with the episodic nature of memories through his formidable idea of “sites of

memory.” More contemporary approaches to the study of collective memory, such as the

dynamics of memory approach or Erll’s mediality of memory, are then discussed as

frameworks that better reflect the complex dynamics of memory processes.

THE FOUNDATIONS: HALBWACHS, HOBSBAWM, CONNERTON AND NORA

Almost all discussions of collective, social, and cultural memory make reference

to Maurice Halbwachs’ (1877-1945) work in the early twentieth century. His work is

considered the foundation of memory studies, though many of his contemporaries also

theorized on the subject (Olick et al. 2011: 5, 21, 22). Halbwachs’ ideas follow from

Emile Durkheim’s recognition that social cohesion and organization require a vision of a

common past, which Durkheim explored through the nature of commemorations

(Durkheim 2011 [1915]: 136; Misztal 2003: 4-5, 50). As mentioned, the basis of

Halbwachs’ theorizing is that independence in memory does not exist. As individuals we

experience processes of memory (remembering and recall) in groups, whether it be a

socially experienced memory or whether it be that the memory process occurs through

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the codes and concepts we learned through membership to a group (Halbwachs 1992

[1925]: 38-9). While he does acknowledge that it is individuals who remember

(Halbwachs 1980 [1950]: 48), the collective memory can be seen as the schemata that

frame the way individuals remember, hence The Social Frameworks (Cadres Socials) of

Memory. Each group to which a person belongs has its own framework, its own

schemata, and shapes individual memory this way.

Halbwachs’ extensive (and at times inconsistent) theorizings, provide the

foundation for the massive subject collective memory studies has become. For instance,

he accounted not only for more immediate collective memories, like those of a

generation, but also the more long-term ones associated with traditions, commemorations

and ritual which contribute to “more radically collectivist” approaches to the subject

(Olick 1999: 336; Olick et al. 2011: 20-1).

Underlying Halbwachs’ theories is a presentist perspective, which assumes that

the past is defined by the present: “remembrance is in very large measure a reconstruction

of the past achieved with data borrowed from the present” (Halbwachs 1980 [1950]: 69).

This has implications for the politicization of memory, which Halbwachs also discusses

but is further developed by subsequent scholars, like Eric Hobsbawm and Terrance

Ranger (1983) who study the invention of communal rituals and traditions as forms of

social control. The presentist approach applied to collective memory assumes the

determinism of elites and political powers to mold collective memory by inventing new

traditions and rituals through public commemorations, education systems, mass media,

and other dominant controlled means. The approach is concerned about the selectivity of

social memory, and in particular who is responsible and why. Scholarship in this vein is

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almost always nationalist in focus, with celebration and censorship used as the methods

to manage collective memory in order to legitimize and/or stabilize political order

(Misztal 2003: 56-60). The contemporary usefulness of this approach, however, is

questioned primarily because is gives the populous no agency. In particular, Misztal

questions its applicability to democratic societies where pluralistic debate

counterbalances state power. Lewis Coser also suggests that this model only functions for

times of radical change (1992: 28). In the music scholarship I review, even for

communist regimes where there is no pluralistic debate, this analytical perspective is not

applied.

Paul Connerton’s contribution is particularly useful to the study of music and

collective memory because he stresses the role of commemorative performance and its

incorporation of memory into the body. He identifies a qualitative difference in the

knowledge of the past attained through inscribed practices (practices that make use of

devices to store and retrieve information such as the written record) versus the

performative practices of incorporation (though he also recognizes that inscribing can be

argued as a form of incorporation). In comparison to myths or even written history, the

commemorative act reinforces bodily relationships with past narratives, which he

believes allows less room for the interpretation of oral or written histories (1989: 77).5

Connerton also suggests that by repeating commemorations one can preserve the

experience of a quality of time (what he identifies as ritual time) identical to that which

existed hundreds of years ago (ibid.: 66), an observation worth exploring with respect to

5
There exist some conceptual challenges with this perspective since it appears to contradict an observation
I explore on page 68 concerning how text tends to fix meaning on the more ambiguous or fluid nature of
music.

15
experiences of ancestry and ritualized past. Many music scholars reference Connerton’s

incorporation concept for its stress on embodiment and forms of knowledge that differ

from inscribing practices (for example: Qureshi 2000; Shelemay 1998; Harris 2004; Solis

2008; Emoff 2002). While they do not engage his writings in great detail, his concept of

incorporation sets the foundation for the efficacy of music in embodying collective

memory (see the final section of this paper).

Pierre Nora’s influence came from his epic work Les Lieux de Memorie, a six-

volume set of essays he edited concerning different elements of French culture. The

conceptual framework for his scholarship assumes that true memory no longer exists,

(ideas I already addressed at the start of the overview). Thus, instead of “centres of

memory” where true memory exists in traditional societies, Nora proposes “sites of

memory” (lieux de memoire). Sites of memory are “any significant entity (material or

otherwise) that becomes a symbolic memorial for a specific community” (Nora 1996:

xvii). They can be understood as places, concepts, practices, or objects that are artificially

fabricated to recall the past and set order and meaning to the modern world (Holtrof

2000-2008). Literally, any cultural phenomenon can become a site of memory. “It is the

intentional symbolic signification … that first makes a cultural object a site of memory”

(Erll 2011: 24-5).

Thus, while each of the essays on France in Nora’s collection “stand for aspects of

a common past, they do not, in their variety, amount to a binding comprehensive

memory, but instead leave the reader with a fragmented image of the French past” (Erll

2011: 23). The fragmented nature is like a rhizome where each individual selects and

16
finds meaning from the wealth of sites of memory offered. Such does not allow for

hierarchy of ideas or the configuration into a coherent narrative, although they are

considered highly effective episodic memories significant for identity construction (Erll

2011: 106).

The model’s ability to account for a multitude of memories and a multitude of

entry points to study memory continues to make Nora’s model popular among memory

studies. Nora, however, makes some questionable assumptions reflecting his pastoral

view of traditional societies and their lack of a need for commemorative sites (Erll 2011:

25; Holtrof 2000-8). And most critiqued is the nation-centeredness of Nora’s research.

Scholars are currently trying to readdress this theory within postcolonial, multicultural,

diasporic and transnational contexts (Erll 2011: 26). In particular, and foreshadowing the

dynamics of memory model, Erll’s stress on the importance of how media factors into the

creation and circulation of memory sees a move from “sites” of memory to “dynamics” of

memory, “from discrete artifacts to ‘circulating’ artifacts” (Erll 2009: 3).

It appears that not as many music scholars have engaged with Nora’s concepts. Of

the few who do, Susan Kaiser (2011) is most detailed. In particular, Kaiser considers

whether a previous generation's memory can survive through sites of memory. Her

interest concerns contemporary Argentinian youth and how they identify with the

dictatorship of the previous generation. Examining rock concerts as a centre for the

younger generation’s collective participation, she analyzes band names, lyrics and titles

of ‘festive’ popular songs. The sonic nature of the music is not addressed except for the

fact that the musical performances and recordings of the songs coalesce groups of youth

17
together, thereby identifying them as a mnemonic community that produces sites of

memory. Readings of memory are hence derived from these textual references, which

embody the terrors of the past dictatorship and articulate a spirit of resistance. She thus

sees the younger generation adopting the previous generation’s memories as their own.

Identifying these as postmemories, a term she sources to Marianne Hirsch, she remarks

on their poignancy: “although more mediated and less connected to the past, postmemory

is in itself a powerful and highly significant form of memory” (Kaiser 2011: 115). The

power of Argentinian Rock and its ability to keep the memories alive is attributed to its

ability to link the past with the present; in particular the recall of past dictatorship

brutality is contextualized in contemporary Argentinian police brutality (ibid.: 125).

Thus, these sites of memory, which involve singing and dancing to musicians singing

about the dictatorship, are a way of writing memory and reconstructing this past, even if

that past was not something personally experienced (ibid.: 116).

Other than Kaiser, Solis and Shelemay are the other music scholars that cite Nora.

While it may appear that Shelemay makes only a simple acknowledgement of Nora’s

ideas through a footnote towards the end of her article (2006: 32), in both her article and

her book (1998) she treats the pizmonin as sites “where memory crystallizes and secrets

itself” (Nora 1996: 7). This is especially so in the ‘preludes’ to each of her book’s

chapters, where she discusses in detail layers of memory and historical context of a single

pizmon on an occasion of its performance. Indeed her framing of songs as heterotopic

spaces or as “compound aural memories” (a term she sources to Stuart Feder ((1992: 241)

in Shelemay: 1998: 10, 213)) adds something of a dynamic dimension to her treatment,

18
such that a song then becomes a space where both individual and collective, conscious

and unconscious, mental and physical aspects of music memory circulate and are

explored (1998: 10). It is through the analysis of these complex and dynamic sites that

Shelemay uncovers a history (2006: 32).

Similarly, Solis’ study of Theloneous Monk’s music identifies the dynamics

around sites of memory, though in his study of the legacy of Monk (a jazz pianist) the

dynamics reflect a debate between competing memories:

Monk concerts and other projects involving his collected works are generally
attempts to construct and lay claim to Monk’s legacy. In Pierre Nora’s terms, they
become lieux de memoire, sites through which memory is concentrated and put to
particular social ends. (Solis 2004: 112, my italics)

In particular, Solis explores an underlying debate between institutionalized mainstream

and individual alternative views of jazz, upon which I elaborate in greater detail further in

the section on dialogism and debate.

The idea that a song or a musical practice acts as a site of memory permeates

much of ethnomusicological literature. Describing music as a “crucible” of memories

(Newman 1991: 269), or a “repository” of cultural meanings (Floyd 1995: 8), and then

applying ethnographic analysis that explores the dynamic social uses of these musics and

memories does indeed treat music as a site of memory. Thus, it can easily be argued that

Samuel A. Floyd’s and Jason Berry’s analysis of African American music, Harris’ and

Rees’ analysis of minority musics in China, Romero’s study of Peruvian music or Emoff’s

study of spirit possession in Madagascar engage with the concept. It can even be argued

that Mirjana Lausevic’s study (2007) of the Balkan music craze in America treats music

as a site of memory that coalesces a group around idealized belief of the music’s long-

19
term cultural function. Moreover, there are so many descriptions within ethnographies

like Lausevic’s that may not directly engage with the term collective memory but can be

interpreted as sites of memory and analyzed further within this framework to uncover

deeper cultural meaning.

CONTEMPORARY APPROACHES

Many contemporary scholars of memory critique the above theories and

frameworks for their inability to account for the more elusive memories that are: not

stabilized in acts of commemoration; are not rationally manipulated to counter or to

support hegemonic control; nor appear to result from a coherent dialectic between past

and present. Scholars do not deny the possibility for these but, in also acknowledging the

irrational behaviour of groups and individuals and the fluctuation and flexibility of

identity, they apply methods of study that recognizes collective memory in constant

transformation and as a process of negotiation. This approach is called the dynamics of

memory approach.

An important aspect of this approach is also acknowledging both the permanent

and the changing qualities of the past. This differs from presentist principles, i.e., that the

present dictates how memory represents the past, and especially Hobsbawm and Ranger's

approach that claims hegemonic control over the past by manipulating memories through

invented traditions. Scholars who apply the dynamics of memory approach recognize a

certain conservancy in the past, some inherent continuity that cannot be denied. Some

pasts, like traumatic ones, cannot be erased (Misztal 2003: 69). Some other pasts continue

to exist in multiple discourses of identity (see Qureshi 2000); and yet others are present

through psychological, social, linguistic and political processes. These ideas as they relate

20
to music are explored in greater detail in the section on dialogism and debate.

Typically, the dynamics of memory approach does not address commemorations

because these have been studied as stabilizing acts of memory and identity in resistance

to change, though this is a questionable assumption to make. Instead, transformative

moments of group identity are studied through narratives of recollection and analyzed for

how, when and why some social events are more likely to form part of collective memory

than others.

According to Misztal, the dynamics of memory approach represents a broad

stream of current analysis but also lacks a clear focus (2003: 73). What studies of this

approach do have in common is their modeling of memory as fluid and transformative.

Moreover, framed within “the outcome of multiple competing discourses,” they are seen

within a context of conflict, contest or controversy that in the social sciences further

elucidates political culture (ibid.).

Erll, coming from a literary studies perspective, suggests framing memory within

media, which provides more focus to the dynamics approach to memory.

Cultural memory studies can be grasped as a field that ‘focuses on the essential
question of the media of storage, communication, dissemination, and
interpretation. The history of memory is, in this perspective, the history of its
media’. (J. Assmann (in his afterword to Esposito 2002: 414) in Erll 2011: 119)

Erll’s stress on the importance of how media factors into the creation and circulation of

collective memory sees a move from “sites” of memory to “dynamics” of memory, “from

discrete artifacts to ‘circulating’ artifacts” (Erll 2009: 3). Thus the dynamics of memory

approach sees memory as performative as well as reproductive. “It’s as much a matter of

acting out a relationship to the past from a particular point in the present as it is a matter

21
of preserving and retrieving earlier stories” (ibid.: 2). The basis of this approach thus

suggests an exhaustive analysis of the media mediating memories, which notably

parallels the ethnographic and analytical approach of many ethnomusicologists.

As thematically established from the block quote above, Erll proposes to study the

“mediality of memory” in all its dynamic and complex engagement with media. The

emphasis is on the recognition of media, in the broadest sense of the word, as the means

by which memory is communicated, i.e., the “media-dependence of remembering” (Erll

2011: 104, 116). Media is constitutive of memory and acts as the interface between

individuals and collective memories. As J. Assmann notes in the quote above, the history

of memory can be seen as a history of media, and some interesting relations can be made

between orality, literate societies and revolutions in memory. For instance, oral societies

use memory specialists, like griots, praise singers, or lore masters, to recall and retell

history. Because they do not use written text, word-for-word recall is not expected nor

needed and some amount of flexibility and creativity exists in their memory practices

(Misztal 2003: 29; Le Goff 1992: 56-7).6 In contrast, literate societies produce canonical

texts, though as Erll notes, canonical texts must continually be circulated and re-

appropriated by later generations for them to remain purposeful (2011: 33). Thus, J.

Assman identifies a ritual coherence in oral cultures and a textual coherence in literate

ones ((1992) in Erll 2011: 33). Olick even goes so far as to suggest how mnemonic

technologies, like writing or photography, not only extend the capacity of memory but

also “stimulate our neurological passages in particular ways” (1999: 342). The

6
Seeger (1991) and Emoff (2002) provide examples of how collective memory functions through music in
oral societies.

22
significance of this concerns the prejudices of media technology and how things are

remembered. Therefore, it is important to acknowledge the biases and privileges of media

when understanding how collective memory creates meaning. Moreover, it is also

important to recognize the nature of music as a unique media, which can retain some of

these memory qualities of oral societies.

Recognizing the multimedia quality of our media landscape, Erll notes that the

dynamics of how meaning is produced is “not so much in one technology [but] in the

interstices and interactions between different media” (Erll et al. 2009: 7).

Cultural memory [is thus viewed] as a transmedia phenomenon, which is realized,

over and over, by means of those media technologies that a community has at its
disposal and to which it ascribes the potential of creating ever greater immediacy
and memorial truths. (Erll 2009: 9)

Moreover, Erll warns against an “ahistoric” view of media and notes that this transmedia

phenomenon is at play by both material (technological) and social factors (institutions,

cultural groups, etc.), within specific historical and cultural contexts (Erll 2011: 125).

THE STUDY OF COLLECTIVE MEMORY AND COMPATIBLITY WITH ETHNOMUSICOLOGY

The study of the context of context in the analysis of musical structures,

processes, and events, enables us [as ethnomusicologists] to understand more
fully how performances achieve their particular location, intention, and form.
(Coplan 1991: 47)

It follows that music can be analyzed as a type of media of memory which

inescapably interacts in a complex of many other media, including language, writing,

pictures, recordings, etc.7 This is something David B. Coplan readily observes in the

quote above but is also acknowledged by all ethnomusicological inquiries that are

7
Shelemay (2006) contextualizes this dynamic as part of the efficacy of music as a media of memory,
which she explains through “elaborate encoding,” something I explore in the last section of this paper.

23
concerned with how music functions as part of culture. Towards the end of the twentieth

century, ethnomusicologists have been theorizing the importance of such a dynamic

(diachronic and synchronic) understanding of music as cultural processes. Books like

Shadows in the Field: New Perspectives for Fieldwork in Ethnomusicology (Barz and

Cooley 1997) or Ethnomusicology And Modern Music History (Blum 1991) are just a few

examples that call for a dynamic understanding of music – whether the intent be

methodological for the former or more theoretical for the latter. This dynamic

understanding is also echoed in both Bithell (2006) and Shelemay (2006), who deal with

larger conceptualization issues of collective memory in music.

Kaiser, in her research on Argentinian pop music, suggests that memories can be

modeled after discourse theory since memories “are located in a variety of cultural

artifacts” (2011: 115). The details of this methodology parallel ethnomusicological

scholarship that treats music as both sonic experience and the discourse (understood in

the broadest sense of the word) surrounding the musical product. Thus music in

performance, practice and recording is cross referenced with the collection of stories,

liner notes, videos, compositions, critiques, scholarly studies, interviews, publicity

campaigns, and other official and unofficial activities and rhetoric surrounding the

practice of a music. And these may further be correlated to social, cultural and political

positionings of the musicians, audience, cultural officials, business personnel and others

who are involved in the practice of the music. While it is not always possible to cover all

these dynamics, knowing that this is how musical text is conceptualized offers an

analytical viewpoint that recognizes the possibility for a complex interplay between a

musical practice and the social, economic and rhetorical conditions surrounding that

24
practice.

Thus Gabriel (2004), in exploring the dynamics of memory regarding the legacy

of jazz pianist Thelonious Monk, uses an ethnographic approach to understand how a

hyperreal “Monk” gives meaning to individuals and collectives. In other words, he

recognizes “Monk” as “a collection of recordings, video footage, and stories” (2004: 7)

and advocates for an ethnographic approach in order to recognize how meanings are

derived from the circulation of these many texts.

Similarly, Shelemay, citing Anthony Seeger, notes how music cannot be analyzed

“separately from other parts of a people’s artistic, philosophical, and social life” (Seeger

(1979: 272) in Shelemay 1998: 149). The concern is to move away from evaluating

music as a product to exploring music as process “that is part of the very construction and

interpretation of social and conceptual relationships and processes” (Seeger 2004: xiv).

Such approaches inherently concern themselves with examining music as a dynamic

transmedia complex. Thus, Shelemay not only analyzes the sonic aspects or the lyrical

content of pizmonim, or ethnographically reports details of a single pizmon performance,

but also contextualizes these within the larger Sephardic Jewish and Arabic musical

practices, religious traditions, and life celebrations and the transnational experience and

identity of immigrant Syrian Jews, in NY city, Cairo, Jerusalem, Damascus and Mexico –

all of which shed light on the musical memories experienced.

Shelemay, however, points out another important relationship between

ethnomusicology and memory: even though memory concepts like commemoration or

memorialization are explicit in ethnomusicological studies, “these important themes have

25
remained in the background” (Shelemay 1989: 6). Indeed, the relationship between past

and present that is so significant to the study of living traditions cannot help but engage

memory work. Thus, Harris notes her study of musical change on Sibe minority in north-

east China is actually a study of “the old people of Cabcal villages, their memories, and

their maintenance of a living musical tradition which is fast disappearing” (2004: 199,

italics mine). Ethnomusicologists collect memories during interview and are

“instrumental in elaborating memories in and about musical performance into narratives

about the past” (Shelemay 2006: 18, 21). Thus memory work is not only inherent within

ethnomusicological fieldwork, ethnomusicology’s recognition of the dynamic and process

orientation of culture and cultural products is well equipped with evaluating music as part

of a “transmedia phenomenon.”

PART II

The rest of this comprehensive exam engages with scholarship (primarily

ethnomusicological) that investigates the embodiment of collective memory in music.

Major conceptual themes, theories, and methodologies within this scholarship are

highlighted under three subsections: Precursors to the Study of Collective Memory in

Music; Dialogism and Debate; and Emotions, Acoustemology and Efficacy of Music to

Sustain Memory. The first of these sections overviews conceptual concerns about the past

that are relevant to the ethnomusicological study of memory highlighted from the book

Ethnomusicology and Modern Music History (EAMMH) (Blum 1991). Amongst the

music literature, it is one of the earliest texts to address issues relevant to memory and

music and identifies how long-standing some of these ideas have been in

26
ethnomusicology, though they have not been typically framed around the study of

memory. The book also introduces the idea of immanent music history, as the history that

is embodied in or is told by a music. Moreover, a key theme of how music can resolve

opposing modes of life (Blum 1991: 1, 5) is also overviewed in EAMMH and is further

explored in the second section on dialogism and debate. In this second section - by

expanding on ideas of dialogism, intertextuality and deconstruction to highlight processes

of memory – I explore the variety of past memories that can exist within a music: ancient,

ritual, official, oppositional, imagined, nostalgia – all of which may exist in debate within

a single musical form. The final section addresses the more ephemeral musical qualities

of music such as body and emotional memories and relates these to the efficacy of music

as a media of memory.

PRECURSORS TO THE STUDY OF COLLECTIVE MEMORY IN

ETHNOMUSICOLOGY

Increasingly, writers dealing with questions of unofficial, unconventional, or

simply vernacular relationships people cultivate with history have come to think
in terms of memory—both personal memory and collective, social, or cultural
memory. (Solis 2004: 8)

Ethnomusicology and Modern Music History, a book that predates the currency of

memory as a focus in academia, highlights and foreshadows many of the underlying

issues of collective memory in music. As already noted (see page 11), Blum identifies a

variability and mutability in the numerous de-centred histories that are associated with

ethnomusicological research. With such a conceptualization of history, Blum further

recognizes songs as “an indispensible medium” for these histories, which sometimes exist

in opposition to official or other histories (1991: 5). David B. Coplan, a contributor to the

27
collection, points to the importance of songs and other oral genres to uncover untold

histories, especially within colonial and postcolonial contexts; moreover, for distant

pasts, oral genres are probably the only available source and Coplan calls on

ethnographic methods to help translate expressions of collective memory into historical

products (1991: 46-7). Daniel Newman thus suggests the term immanent music history as

one of three paradigms to guide readers through the collection of essays. The term

explicates how music ‘writes’ history. “History here is the subject of music: music is the

medium – the crucible in which time and its memories are collected, reconstituted, and

preserved – and history, its message” (1991: 269). And while Newman does not explicitly

link the term to embodied collective memory, it can clearly be inferred, though it has not

been adopted much by subsequent scholarship.

Three of the articles in the collection that Newman associates with immanent

music history (Babiracki, Seeger, and Coplan) reflect the need for diachronic

ethnomusicological analysis. Collective memory needs to be teased out of the musical

artifact through detailed analysis of the sonic form of the music in question and further

contextualized in historical knowledge of the culture in question. Hence, what seems to

be a South Indian minority’s adoption of a Hindu musical genre is not read by Babiracki

as an indication of assimilation into the majority Hindu caste system. Instead, her

ethnographic historical approach suggests it to be a long-standing survival technique

(1991). This reading of collective memory (or immanent music history) from the musical

form is revealed sonically through the distinct Mundas style of its performance, which is

further contextualized into the historical practice of the Mundas to incorporate outside

threats (Babiracki 1991: 226). The idea that the collective memory embodied in music

28
reflects a complex traditional use of music for social survival is also demonstrated in

Anthony Seeger’s article about the Suya Indians in Brazil (1991).

Similar to above, Seeger observes how the Suya’s learning of foreign songs is not

an indication of foreign assimilation. Instead, he identifies it as the “taking” of songs,

along with other forms required for social reproduction – like women and material

culture – which he traces back to their oldest myths of existence. Seeger references such

an incident in mid-twentieth century. After their long migration to their current home in

the Xingu National Park, the Suya launched a surprise attack on a group and stole not

desired technology (specialized pots for processing cassava) but the women who made

the technology. Moreover, these women also brought their ceremonial songs, eventually

replacing songs of the female fertility ceremony. The immanent music history, the history

being ‘written,’ reflects a vagueness of detail that Le Goff attributes to oral societies, yet

continues to live with the Suya every time they routinely perform the songs (ibid.: 33).

David Coplan’s paper “Ethnomusicology and the Meaning of Tradition” also deals

with immanent music history. Similar to Babiracki’s and Seeger’s, it uses comprehensive

musical and ethnographic analysis to tease out the collective memory. But in this case,

Coplan deals with feelings and memory as collectively recalled and experienced within

an emerging song tradition. Framing his paper over concerns for the conceptualization of

tradition, he argues how a newly developed migrant-song expression from Lesotho can

still be considered traditional. In so doing, Coplan makes an interesting relationship

between musical performance, memory, and “the re-creation of the emotional qualities of

experience” (1991: 45). The song form is known as sefela, and relates the struggles of

29
contemporary migrant life by drawing on already established verbal genres, such as

praise poetry, war anthems, or folk narratives, among others. What is truly key to this

song form’s continuity with other Southern Bantu expressive culture is the subordination

of narrative to imagery and the “emotional and aesthetic logic of incremental effect.”

According to Coplan, Basotho are most concerned with the “flow of feeling” which has

the power to heal through its expressivity (ibid.: 44-5). Thus, in this sense, music is a

“reapplication of memory and the creation and re-creation of the emotional qualities of

experience” (ibid.: 45). Coplan identifies the recreation of feelings and/or emotions in

musical performance to music’s efficacy with memory: “the ability of oral genres to

reverberate between past and present is greatly dependent on their capacity for emotional

expression” (ibid.: 45), something Qureshi (2000) and Shelemay (1998; 2006) also

address, which is further explored in the final section of this paper (the section on the

efficacy of music as a medium of memory).

Rees (2000) makes an important qualification to the concept of immanent music

history, which can aid in teasing out collective memory from musical artifacts. In Echoes

of History, Helen Rees discusses the evolution of the Dongjing music from the Lijiang

county located in China’s southern province of Yunnan. While the book is not overtly

about memory, one of its frameworks for analysis is Neuman’s paradigm of immanent

music history, which I have already noted as being closely related to collective memory.

Theoretically, Rees suggests that there are subtle and obvious forms of immanent music

history (2000: 98), where the latter comes from the lexical meaning of the text and can

retell a story. The former, however, requires the same sort of ethnographic and historical

30
research I identified with Seeger, Coplan, and Babiracki and, according to Rees, can

explain sounds heard in the music that do not necessarily jive with official narratives that

accompany the music. In particular, Dongjing music, packaged for the burgeoning

Chinese tourist trade in 1989, was labeled ancient Naxi music (Naxi guyuye). Its sonic

resemblance toan sizhu (silk and bamboo) ensemble music, however, hints to a different

history. Coupling this sonic information with knowledge of local history and culture, as

well as the details of human activity uncovered through ethnography, Rees reveals much

more about recent history of the people and the music, i.e., not only that the music is of

Han origin but also the varied “stories of ethnic interactions, changing social mores and

ideologies” that are associated with the music (Rees 2000: 1997).

DIAOLOGISM AND DEBATE

Peruvian music specialist, Raul Romero, suggests that the collective memory

embodied within a single musical expression can account for hundreds or even thousands

of individual memories. By their sheer quantity, they cannot possibly exist in consensus,

therefore, they must exist in conflict or debate. The nature of debated pasts and/or

conflicting memories that can coexist within a single performance is the subject of this

section. It is another prominent theme in music scholarship and is further explored here

under a complex and dynamic view of collective memory.

This section first explores the dialogical nature of collective memory in relation to

intertextuality, discourse analysis and deconstruction techniques, with reference to the

work of literary critic Richard Terdiman, American studies scholar George Lipsitz, and

African American studies scholar Samuel Floyd. Analyzing this dialogical nature through

deconstruction techniques and discourse analysis, Terdiman identifies cultural memory as

31
a hegemonic tool that naturalizes ideas, behaviours and values of the dominant class. In

comparison, Lipsitz’s and Floyd’s analyses of how American cultural expressions

develop and/or circulate unearth counter-culture memories and values within the

collective memory dialogue. Interestingly, Floyd theorizes a form of dialogism specific to

African American musical forms that draws attention to the ritual and distant past, which

in turn accounts for mythical and/or metaphysical experiences of collective memory.

More tangible references to the distant past, however, play heavily in debates over

authenticity. Romero most thoroughly explores this framing of the debated past, which he

relates to identity construction. A number of other music scholars also address the

subject, most often in context of imagined, engineered or idealized pasts (Solis, Harris,

Reese, Lausevic and Shelemay). No matter what the debate, no matter what memories are

unearthed in an analysis, or how conflicting they may be, the musical form represents a

consensus of these memories and so this section concludes with a short remark on the

malleability of the past embodied in musical form.

TERDIMAN: DECONSTRUCTING COLLECTIVE MEMORIES REVEALS HOW POWER STRUCTURES

FUNCTION

Dialogical analysis originated as a literary technique to explore how a single work

is in a reflective relationship, or in ‘dialogue’ with other authors and works of literature.

Its application in collective memory studies can be equated with intertextuality in that it

suggests a reading of a text is a complex process that relies not just on the intent of the

author but engages the interpretation of the reader and a network of other texts in the

process. This echoes the dynamics of Erll’s transmedia model as discussed on page 23 of

this paper. The idea that past texts are drawn upon in the reading process already suggests

32
something of collective memory, and literary critic Richard Terdiman in particular relates

it to more elusive and mystic qualities of collective memory:

dialogism… is a memory model. It seeks to recall the semantic and social history
carried by a culture's language, but which tends to be forgotten, to be blanked, in
the characteristic form of cultural mystification. (Terdiman 1985: 23; also cited in
Lipsitz 1991: 100)

Terdiman’s interest in dialogism and his introduction of the term “materials

memory” further explain how memory functions in modern society and how

poststructuralist deconstruction techniques can demystify “the enigma of the past” that

cultural objects carry (Terdiman 1985: 35). As a “notion for understanding the

conservative character built into social existence and practice,” materials memory allows

for the implicit or unconscious memory bound in an object, symbol, or practice (ibid.:

20). He locates its usefulness within the discourse of domination and what the Frankfurt

School labels the “culture” or “consciousness” industry – the nineteenth century

establishment of a complex media and educational system that involves “increasingly

programmed collective experiences in shopping, in entertainment, in sport and in

national-political celebration” (ibid.: 19).

Terdiman see concepts like Bourdieu’s “habitus” or Foucault’s “discourse” –

understood as the cultural complex of language, social practices, and institutions that

explain the unconscious regulative nature of the consciousness industry – as an

automated mechanism of memory by which ideology materializes or naturalizes itself

(ibid.: 20). This mechanism of memory, also recognized as “archival consciousness,”

results from the unnatural abstractions required of modernity, where things are so

33
atomized that perception of and relation to the whole is fundamentally obscured and

implicates modernity’s loss of “mnemonic harmony” (ibid.). Terdiman’s recognition of

materials memory thus reflects an important insight that locates a dynamic approach to

collective memory within the functional processes of discourse or habitus. Furthermore,

deconstruction techniques are the means of identifying this materials memory:

deconstruction aims to detect the unspoken, labyrinthine multivocality of any

word, and thereby to revive the memory of its place in a system not just linguistic
but, much more radically, socialized and historicized. (ibid.: 34)

And so again, it appears that discourse analysis is fundamental to understanding

how collective memory functions. Within a cultural studies perspective, however, it is

important to recognize that discourse “is not a purely a ‘linguistic’ concept” (Hall 1997:

44) but also encompasses media, art, news, fashion, advertising, education, government

and corporate systems, and all other institutionalized patterns of knowledge. In

comparison to discourse analysis around dominant-subordinate frameworks, which is the

point of Terdiman’s article, deconstruction and analysis of the discourse surrounding

memory and music are not necessarily to uncover how power structures function,

although this may be revealed in the process; rather it is used to trace memory paths and

residues. As is elaborated below, Lipsitz’s deconstruction of Rock and Roll (R&R) and

popular musical forms that have subsequently evolved, follows Terdiman’s line of

thought but reverses the dominant-subordinate framework and instead highlights memory

discourse that counters corporate culture.

LIPSITZ AND THE COUNTER CULTURAL DIALOGUE IN COLLECTIVE MEMORY

Lipsitz’s textual analysis is applied to a variety of art forms, from TV to literature

34
to music. According to Lipsitz, in times of mass communication and corporate agenda,

oppositional culture is maintained through collective memory within popular cultural

forms. The dialogical nature of these art forms enables individuals to “enter a dialogue

already in progress” and “rich with contradictions” (Lipsitz 1990: 108). Tracing the

dialogue of Rock and Roll to a pre-industrial working class world, Lipsitz notes how their

work ethics, organic community and ritual celebrations conflict with the atomistic and

consumer demands of corporate capitalism. So, for example, while popular music can be

seen as “a site for the iteration and reiteration of dominant values” that in particular

reinforce corporate capitalism (ibid.), its lineage to rock and roll can also direct

individuals into a dialogue that recalls the democratic, egalitarian, counter-cultural

sentiments that initially inspired the art form.

As suggested in the above example, multiple and possible conflicting meanings

can be assigned to cultural products. According to Lipsitz this is typical of dialogical

analysis because meaning is not essentialized in the artistic form; rather it must be read

from how the form functions and circulates. Lipsitz points out two other important

criteria for dialogical analysis. The first concerns the need to connect affect to agency.

While Lipsitz does not explicitly theorize how this is done, throughout the narratives of

musical life that he retells, it is clear how affect and aesthetic experiences at the

individual level are instrumental in understanding musical culture and change. (Examples

include: Jerry Leiber’s reason for recording black artists being as simple as those being

the voices and rhythms he fell in love with (ibid.: 140); Johnny Otis’ description of what

works in performance concerns not pigeon holing styles but whether the performance is

strong and has artistry (ibid.: 141); and Billy Peak’s innovative contribution to Rod

35
Stewart’s band through the aesthetic melding of influences that enabled a “hard-driving St

Louis boogie-woogie guitar riff ‘that told a story and told it in overdrive’”(Peak quoted in

Lipsitz 1990: 264).) The other criteria important for dialogical analysis addresses how the

origins of a popular cultural form can be meaningful to its contemporary forms and/or

derivatives (Lipsitz 1990: 101-2), as I discussed above with the democratic egalitarian

tendencies of R&R and popular music.

Lipsitz discusses a host of other cultural expressions besides R&R, such as TV

shows, film, literature and the Mardi Gras Indian tradition. To all of these he applies his

dialogical analysis. In general, Lipsitz’s arguments reflect a complex of changing

economic conditions, social status, urban and suburban transformation, ethnic and racial

interactions, as well as a host of other conditions in the perception and reception of

popular culture. It is worth mentioning that within his analysis of the New Orleans' Mardi

Gras Indian tradition he suggests a collective memory tied to African cultural memory, a

theme more thoroughly explored by Floyd in The Power of Black Music.

FLOYD, THE POWER OF BLACK MUSIC, AND COLLECTIVE MEMORY OF THE DISTANT
SPIRITUAL PAST

The use of collective memory is instrumental in binding groups together in order

to cope with extreme changes in social conditions. For this reason, some scholars of

African American music reflect on just how significant collective memory functioned for

Africans who went through what might seem like insurmountable and radical changes

when they were displaced from their homeland, stripped of all their dignity and familiar

associations, and forced into the unimaginable conditions of slavery in the New World.

Both Jason Berry (1988) and Samuel A. Floyd Jr. (1995) do just that in maintaining that

36
the cultural memories in African-American music trace back to Africa. Berry makes an

initial link between African cultural memory and African American music and dance

through a “spiritual sensibility.” In reflecting on the musical practices in New Orleans,

Berry claims this sensibility was established through the percussive and dance activities

in Congo square, where the musical “urges of the mother culture formed a vital link with

rituals of the past [and] connected people to their [African] history” (1988: 3). Floyd

elaborates on this further in his book The Power of Black Music.

Floyd believes that African culture survived in music not simply through the

retention and incorporation of African musical characteristics but through a complex of

“musical tendencies, mythological beliefs and assumptions, and interpretive strategies”

that are the same in the African homeland as in the African diaspora and exist as African

cultural memory (1995: 5). He develops a theory of intertextuality called signifyin(g), a

form of musical dialogism that accounts for this African cultural memory through the

circulation and re-articulation of African musical characteristics that he labels ‘ring

tropes’ or ‘ring traits.' This is significant since he identifies these traits as ubiquitous

among the spiritual practices across the African continent.

The ring shout represented the only social situation in the new world which

allowed disparate African slaves to unite and recognize not just similarities in musical

practice but also in spiritual practice (Stuckey in Floyd 1995: 6). Speaking of the ring

shouts, Floyd asserts,

these dances, in their ritual context, enforced and reaffirmed community,

discipline, identity and African cultural memory – an identity and memory that
the slave owners sought to eradicate in order to make better slaves. (ibid.: 39)

37
 Similar to Lipsitz, Floyd’s dialogical analysis reveals something of an ongoing

dialogue between counterculture and the dominant class (though in this case it is defined

racially as black versus white instead of working class versus corporate mainstream). His

analysis, however, especially as it relates to this African complex, maintains something

of an elusive, mystic, phenomenological view of culture memory, which according to

Floyd explains the memory’s continued persistence and essentially explains “the power of

black music.” The following elaborates first on Floyd’s signifyin(g), its base line

association with survival through trickery and how these rhetorical tricks function

musically. Following this is an account of Floyd’s phenomenological aspects of cultural

memory.

Signifyin(g)8 originally stems from an article by Henry Louis Gates Jr. (1983),

and Floyd, in applying it to the cultural study of music, recognizes it as the “dialogical,

conversational character of black music” (1991: 277). It explains the creative and

innovative circulation and/or re-articulation of African musical retentions that can be

heard across African American musical genres, from spirituals, blues and gospel music,

through ragtime, jazz and R&B, to the concert hall music of African American classical

composers. As suggested by the term itself, “signifyin(g)” has a rhetorical effect, aspects

of which are attributed to the trickster archetype, found in much African mythology and

folklore, and “directs attention to the connotative, context-bound significance of words,

which is accessible only to those who share the unique cultural values of a given speech

community” (Dubey 2010: 648-9). The term is derived from the toast-tale of the

8
It is also sometimes referenced as signifyin’ or signifying.

38
signifying monkey, who is a trickster that uses rhetorics to cunningly evade the wrath of

the lion and thus symbolizes a coping mechanism for white suppression.

For city dwellers, the Signifying Monkey is a key mythological figure in the
African American’s struggle for adjustment, dignity, and equality: a trickster who
will baffle, circumvent, and even subdue agents of oppression with the same wit,
cunning, and guile as tricksters past. (Floyd 1995: 94; also see 91-2)

This trickster agency, through the signifying monkey, is tied to something of a

pan-African origin that implicates itself all over Africa and the African diaspora.9

Signifyin(g) musically is a form of empowerment that applies “black musical discourse”

to white European and American musical forms. Incorporating African musical

characteristics – such as call and response devices, polyrhythms, blue and bent notes,

ostinati, timbral distortions, rhythmic play, game-rivalry, and many others – is in effect

applying rhetorical strategies. Repetition, circulation, re-articulation of African musical

characteristics on the original European or American musics, and then on the derivatives,

is the process whereby white texts are turned into black ones. Moreover, it is a process

orientation, concerned with how things are performed rather than what is performed, that

differentiates African American from European music (Floyd 1995: 96-7). For example,

Floyd recognizes improvisation as a critical act as well as an act of revision, which can

improve a piece of music as is demonstrated by Louis Armstrong’s brilliant troping on

“banal Tin Pan Alley and Broadway show tunes” (ibid.: 233). Floyd consequently sees at

a deeper cultural level how important the role signifyin(g) musically was for African

Americans since it enabled their first opportunity for legitimate professional

development, which ironically (and as further evidence of their rhetorical tricks) started

9
See Gates Jr. (1983: 687) for reference to different trickster characters in Nigeria, Brazil, Cuba, Haiti, the
United States and elsewhere among African diaspora.

39
with minstrelsy, a white entertainment practice steeped in racists views that subordinated

blacks as a class.10 Indeed, Floyd notes how African American musicians became

“signifiers par excellence—musical tricksters who would help define the music and the

culture of the United States” (ibid.: 99).

As Terdiman suggests and Lipsitz also highlights, dialogical analysis can account

for the more elusive enigmatic qualities of collective memory. But for Terdiman,

deconstruction of these enigmatic qualities is to expose the naturalizing ideologies of

dominant structures. In contrast, both Lipsitz’s and Floyd’s use of dialogical analysis

uncovers music-related memory narratives that demonstrate more of an ongoing dynamic

between subordinate and dominant groups. And indeed, when we are not aware of this

dynamic, the way cultural expressions appear to embody different streams of this

dynamic can at times seem like an enigma, possibly even mythical. But for Floyd, the

mythical represents yet another layer of dialogical analysis. Citing Joseph Campbell,

Floyd notes that his interest in mythology is less concerned with ideologies and

projections from the brain than with feelings and experiences from the heart (1995: 23).

As such, his analysis of collective memory further explores the mythical and its

association with unconscious wordless influences, intuition, affect and feelings, which in

this instance links cultural memory to spiritual practice and to the persistence of ring

tropes.

For Floyd, collective memory is not always consciously known though it is

naturally experienced and felt. It refers to:

10
See Ostendorf (1979) for an excellent description of this development.

40
 nonfactual and nonreferential motivations, actions, and beliefs that members of a
culture seem, without direct knowledge or deliberate training, to ‘know’—that feel
unequivocally ‘true’ and ‘right’ when encountered, experienced, and executed.
(ibid.: 8)

He further defines the term as:

a repository of meanings that comprise the subjective knowledge of a people, its

immanent thoughts, its structures, and its practices; these thoughts, structures, and
practices are transferred and understood unconsciously but become conscious and
culturally objective in practice and perception. (ibid.)

As such, cultural memory at its deepest level, at its fundamental level of transference, has

some intangible nature of a unifying cultural knowledge. This becomes more tangible and

conscious through instinctual and intuitive acts that produce cultural expressions like

music, poetry, or art (ibid.: 229-30). Floyd attributes an African spirituality to the

unifying cultural knowledge of African American cultural memory.

According to Floyd, motor memory (for dance and percussive or other musical

acts) and ring tropes are the intuitive, instinctual manifestations of African cultural

memory that stem from this African spirituality (ibid.: 57, 229-30). In chapter one, Floyd

discusses at length the link between drum, dance and song and African religious systems.

Floyd highlights common elements of all African religious systems and notes not only

how religious ritual is inseparable from and pervasive in everyday life, but that

drumming, dance and song were themselves inseparable from African ritual. Thus it

highlights the propensity, at an everyday level, for musical expression, and especially

such expression to exhibit these elements of drum dance and song (ibid.: 19). It explains

the instinctual act of ring tropes as a spiritual persistence.

Floyd’s definition of cultural memory proposes that intuitive acts bridge the

metaphysical and physical worlds; moreover, as intuition, they do not necessarily result

41
in a conscious awareness but may result in some feeling that a collective past exists

(ibid.: 239). To further explore this, Floyd references Sidney Bechet’s understandings of

“the memory behind the music” (ibid.: 8, 239). Bechet was a New Orleans based Creole

clarinetist and saxophonist, and a descendant of slaves. He believed that memory of his

people’s troubles existed in the music (Bechet in Floyd 1995: 8). Speaking more

specifically, Bechet discussed how the blues recalled the troubles of his grandfather,

Omar, who experienced the harsh and bitter reality of slavery (ibid.: 8-9). But Bechet also

notes that the music does not necessarily need to recall a specific person rather than “the

feeling of someone back there” (ibid.: 9) Moreover, for Bechet and for Floyd’s argument

concerning African American cultural memory in general, musical recall does not just

involve this elusive sensation but also a performative one. It requires one to be part of a

process with some distant origins. Thus Bechet explains:

… no matter where it's played, you gotta hear it starting way behind you. There's
the drum beating from Congo Square and there's the song starting in a field just
over the trees. The good musicianer, he's playing with it, and he's playing after it.
He's finishing something. (Bechet in Floyd 1995: 9)

Floyd relates this sense or feeling of collective memory to not only Bechet’s “feeling of

someone back there” but also to how at an intuitive level we can judge the

“appropriateness and effectiveness” of a piece of music (Floyd 1995: 230). Thus, he links

the spiritual with aesthetic expectation:

“[C]ultural memory, as a reference to vaguely ‘known’ musical and cultural

processes and procedures, is a valid and meaningful way of accounting for the
subjective, spiritual quality of the music and aesthetic behaviors of a culture”
(Floyd, 9).

42
Undoubtedly a discussion of feelings and the unconscious nature of memories treads

some speculative ground but Floyd’s work highlights some interesting relationships

between the unconscious nature of collective memory, feelings, and musical expressions

that will be further explored in the final section on this paper. For now, I turn to more

tangible interest in the collective memory of the distant past.

ONGOING DEBATES EMBODIED IN MUSICAL FORM

Often the recollection of the ritual or distant past play into the collective memory

debate around issues of authority, authenticity and identity. A number of scholars such as

Rees (2000), Harris (2004), Lausevic (2007) and Solis (2007) contribute to the subject

but not as comprehensively as Romero in his monograph, Debating the Past: Music,

Memory, and Identity in the Andes (2001). So it makes sense to first review Romero’s

contribution and then elaborate on it with reference to these other authors.

Romero draws on Arjun Appadurai’s concept of debated past, which builds on the

scholarly legacy of Clifford Geertz and Maurice Bloch. The idea recognizes a ritualized

past that is stable, static and “denies duration,” and a non-ritual, mundane past that deals

with pragmatic life concerns, such as agriculture and politics (Appadurai 1981: 202). As

Appadurai proposes, the debated past concerns how these two pasts influence each other,

especially in relation to the authority of authenticity, which must form a continuity with

the past for its credibility. Focusing on the musical practices of the Mantro Valley of

Peru, Romero explores the wealth of these debated pasts and sheds light on: i) the

longevity and survival of cultural memory within musical forms; ii) the connection

between authenticity and the temporal limits of cultural memory; and iii) the malleability

of the past by different groups in order to maintain authority through authenticity,

43
particularly as they exist in relation to the political and economic concerns facing

modernity. I extend this last point to include reference to other scholarship on music and

memory in order to provide a better understanding the malleability of the past and issues

of authenticity.

The debates underlying the longevity and survival of collective memory in a

musical expression are complex and may be explained when considering the nature of

extant rituals, lost rituals and ones re-appropriated for performance. Extant rituals from

the distant past do not generate debate. The herranza fertility ritual is an extant ritual that

exemplifies Geertz’s ritualized past. Long-term memories are enacted in these rituals that

are inherited from distant origins. No one remembers these origins yet the rituals remain

uncontested and must not be experimented on or altered. Despite the lack of debate over

these rituals, however, Romero notes their continuation exists in opposition to hegemonic

nationalizing agendas and represent a collective memory of the past that is significant for

local identity construction.

As Romero demonstrates, collective memory, no matter how recent or distant a

past it recalls, or how much debate it generates, only survives in its association with

identity construction. Romero exemplifies this with reference to the disappearance of two

rituals, the huauco and the waylarsh. The huauco was a solo instrumental music that

accompanied agricultural labour. But Romero attributes the loss of the huauco not to the

onset of farming technology that displaced the need for this agricultural labour, but to the

huauco’s lack of social function, which made it unimportant to the Valley’s identity. In

comparison, the waylarsh (a harvest dance ritual performed by youth) got re-appropriated

for performance in the festival system as a huyalas (the Spanish word for waylarsh).

44
Much debate exists among individuals, festival committees, and even academic symposia

regarding the structure of the huyalas. But this debate over representation simultaneously

represents consensus for the waylarsh’s recreation into huyalas, which, according to

Romero, points to the mestizo’s feelings of responsibility for lost ancient rural customs

and reflects their desire of belonging to a more distant past (ibid.: 64). Thus, survival of

collective memory is directly linked to the construction and maintenance of identity.11

Also significant for identity construction and maintenance are questions of

authenticity, which Romero links to the temporal limits of collective memory through his

study of the orquesta tipica (traditional orchestra). The orquesta tipica, considered most

representative of mestizo peasantry in the valley, consists of Andean harp, violin,

clarinet, and saxophones (and may also use electric instruments) (ibid.: 68). Both the

clarinet and saxophone are non-indigenous instruments; however, heated debate

circulates around the inauthenticity of the saxophone. In comparison, the clarinet is

embraced and strongly associated with a sense of lo antiguo (the antique), despite it being

introduced only thirty years earlier than the saxophone. Interestingly, the residents

themselves recognize that their sense of what is authentic and lo antiguo, is based “more

on aspiration than historical fact” (ibid.: 87). Romero suggests this aspiration is tied to the

orquestas origins in the early twentieth century. This was a time when the indigenous

Indian population of the valley made a fluid and relatively painless transition into viable

mestizo class. Because of the fluidity to this new order, it was considered the start of an

11
Erll discusses the relation between collective memory and identity construction through terms like
archived, stored and semantic collective memory (which are more identity neutral) and collective
autobiographical memory, which is more identity building. Recognizing the possibility for debate with
respect to these different types of memory, she states that these types of memories are in constant
negotiation with each other, thereby archived memories can be revived to become functional
autobiographical if the social will exists (Errl 2011: 106-7).

45
era, a primordial time which define the limits of collective memory12 and thus

authenticate the clarinet (ibid.: 89).

In further understanding the issues of authenticity and collective memory, Romeo

explores an imagined past assumed by the dominant class in Lima, the capital of Peru.

Similar to his observations on the orquestas, and trailing Lipsitz’s observations that

oppositional culture is maintained through the collective memory of popular cultural

expressions (see page 35), Romero reveals that dominant control over collective memory

are circumvented by the agency people have to manifest their aspirations musically. The

intellectual elite of Lima assumed an idealized Incaic past in their search for a national

unifying narrative. This in part was achieved by the collection of local Andean crafts,

which were disconnected from the locals who actually produced them and turned into

distant symbols of an imagined homogenized Andean culture. In turn, it was assumed

that this past and its unifying national narrative would be adopted by minority Andean

communities who migrated into the city. But Andean music could not be assimilated into

this homogenous representation in large part due to the economics of popular culture, as

witnessed in the Coliseos (popular public coliseums). Coliseos were places that the

growing migrant community spent their leisure time, entertained by regional music and

dances. Since private entrepreneurs rather than national officials administered these

venues, they became important sites of resistance that allowed for a multitude of ethnic

migrant expressions via music and dance, which distinguished it from the homogenized

national identity the elites desired (ibid.: 96, 130).

The above examples reveal an important dynamic concerning the authentic past,

12
According to Erll, this is a demonstration of how cultural memory is tied to “foundational history” (as
discussed on page 7 of this paper).

46
which is more significantly connected to the agency of a group and the collective

memory it defines than to historical facts. Scattered throughout the literature on music

and memory are a many more such examples that await to be more thoroughly researched

and documented. Typically the pasts they recall can be seen as invented, imagined,

appropriated, and/or idealized – though this simple labeling does not provide adequate

understanding of the complexity of its associated collective memory. One example I

discussed earlier of an invented past, or perhaps better understood as appropriated

tradition, concerns the Dongjing music labeled as ancient music of the Naxi minority. As

Rees (2000) describes, despite the music’s recent Han origins as silk and bamboo

ensemble music, Dongjing has gone through many changes – changes that have less to

do with its sonic form and more to do with the social mores and ideologies associated

with the music that has led the Naxi to value it as their own identity-building ancient

cultural expression. Another example of an imagined past and an appropriation of a

recent tradition refers to Harris’ observations regarding the Sibe opera, which is claimed

to be an ancient Sibe tradition. Harris, however, argues that the operatic form is a more

recent appropriation of Han origins with no extant similar counterpart in the Sibes’

ancestral homeland (2004: 81). Although not directly applying the term collective

memory, the references Lausevic (2007) makes to idealized pasts and “adopted ethnicity”

concerning America’s fascination with Balkan music similarly identifies an appropriated

tradition and/or imagined past. Shelemay (1998) speaks more to idealized than imagined

memories when talking about the musical practices of Syrian Jews. In this case, the

textual ambiguities in pizmonin, which fail to overtly acknowledge the conflicts and

political realities that Syrian Jews have had to survive, function to unite widely dispersed

47
groups together, “evoking memories, however idealized, of a shared past” (1998: 91;

228). Similar to this need for idealizing the past, Emoff discusses imagined pasts for their

curative properties in relation to Malagasy spirit possession (2002: 109; 118; chapter 8).

In all these examples, agency of the group in question is fundamental to

determining the authenticity or acceptance of the past recalled. In other words, agency of

the group defines collective memory, despite attempts to alter or engineer an alternative

version. But in the book Monk’s Music: Theloneous Monk and Jazz History in the

Making (2008), Solis reveals instances where public and commercial institutions

successfully take part in the competition for authenticity. What pasts these institutions

recall and how they affect collective memory can be understood through Solis’ study, as

he evaluates the wealth of sites that lay claim to Monk’s legacy – from individual

musicians to the complex workings of public and commercial institutions that have

evolved since the U.S. Congressed passed a bill declaring jazz a national treasure. In

particular, Solis’ interest lies in the process of including Monk into the jazz canon and the

institutionalization of the “classical” label as it applies to Monk’s music.13

Solis’ assessment distinguishes between the canons that naturally develop

between musicians and their practice versus the institutionalized forms that has taken

shape over the thirty years since jazz was declared a national treasure. The

institutionalized forms are more explicit attempts to lay claim on Monk’s legacy and turn

him into a “classic.” In the case of Monk, these involve big band arrangements,

compilations and collections of authoritative versions of Monk’s music, series dedicated

to Monk, repertory bands, academic pursuits, and other institutional activities, such as

13
According to memory specialist Astrid Erll, the canon is “a memory system,” and critiques of canons
reveal collective memory and social order (2011: 75-6).

48
those administered by the Thelonious Monk Institute for Jazz, Jazz at Lincoln Center, the

Smithsonian Institution and other academic and archival institutions. These

institutionalizing activities emphasize compositional output or a discrete list of stylistic

features – both of which fix the musical form. This differs considerably from how

individual musicians (especially those associated with the avant-garde) emphasize the

fidelity of Monk’s playing, which suggests more of a process orientation towards the

music.

According to Solis, the institutionalization of Monk’s music involves an artificial

application of Western art music values and the rhetorics of authenticity and historicity to

foster a particular meaning of jazz in order to secure political and economic benefits.

Among other things, these benefits involve funding for jazz projects and access to

industry and market. Solis’ analysis consequently reveals that the underlying memory

formations for the institutionalization process draws from colonial nineteenth century

European ideologies. Furthermore, Solis suggests that the classical label effectively

erases the African from jazz which has now become “America’s classical music” (Solis

2007, 201). In contrast, the process orientation towards the music sees Monk as a “great

ancestral figure” that harkens back to African origins (2007: 158). According to Solis, the

above exposes a dichotomy between mainstream and alternative jazz that reveals more

about the place of jazz in American culture and an importance/unimportance of race in

collective memory (ibid.: 159).

No matter what the debate, no matter what memories are unearthed in an analysis,

or how conflicting they may be, the musical form itself represents a consensus of these

memories, even if momentarily, and this final part of this section on dialogism and debate

49
explores the nature of this consensus and the malleability or fluidity of the past embodied

in a musical form. The idea that a collection of memories, some potentially conflicting,

can exist simultaneously in a single artistic expression is an underlying assumption of the

dynamics of memory approach and a repeated theme in ethnomusicology. It is Romero’s

main conceptual point (2001: 2-5); Blum identifies this nature in EAMMH (1991: 5);

Lipsitz discusses this as a criteria for his dialogical analysis (as discussed on page 35);

and Rees (2000) touches upon it with respect to music’s fluidity of meanings. A number

of other scholars also postulate on this. Shelemay describes music as a heterotopic space

that enables a host of different forms of memory; in a similar vein, she also appropriates

Feder’s characterization of songs as “compound aural memories” (as referenced on page

18). Qureshi, talking specifically of the memories embodied in the sarangi (a bowed

South Asian instrument), also notes the potential for multiple pasts that may be

privileged, contested, or forgotten (2000: 827). Emoff talks about heightened moments of

melodic and rhythmic improvisation where multiple pasts can coexist and make sense.

He also discusses the “integrative power” of music, which for Harris (2004) and Seeger

(1991) enables the act of mimesis, where the Self can become the Other in order to adopt

and internalize that which is feared or presumed powerful of the Other. But this aspect of

mimesis is only part of the integrative power, for music not only acts as “interface”

between foreign and familiar (Harris 2004: 199-200), but also for individual and

collective memory, ancestry and everyday life, centre and periphery, and a host of other

such issues that may be embodied in musical practice.

That music can reference a multitude of memories may also be explained by the

idea of condensation, a term Erll uses in discussing the relationship between memory and

50
literature. Condensation involves compacting several complex ideas, feelings, images

into a single composite object. Thus condensation can lead to numerous interpretations,

referencing different associations of past events (Erll 2011: 145-6), as was clearly

explored by Romero and others. Erll further proposes that one way to read memory (and

gain insight into the dynamics of cultural memory) is to “look at the various narratives,

which unfold condensed mnemonic objects into meaningful stories” (ibid.: 146). In many

ways this is the work of ethnomusicological ethnography, which draws on individual

memories of musical experience and frames them into meaningful narratives and

histories (Shelemay 2006). But the nature of some memories, especially those associated

with music, can appear elusive, making it very challenging to narrativize or weave into

coherent stories.

EMOTIONS, ACOUSTEMOLOGY AND EFFICACY OF MUSIC TO SUSTAIN

MEMORY

The final section of this comprehensive exam addresses these more elusive

collective memories that are embodied in music. In particular this section examines the

emotions, feelings, and a variety of somatic sensations that play heavily into how music

acts as a powerful and efficient media of memory. Any study on music and memory

would not be complete without this discussion. Yet the discussion gets frustrating for the

apparent inadequacies of academia to accommodate concepts like emotions, feelings and

somatic sensations, and a certain level of speculation is required. As such, this section

represents ethnomusicological and other scholarly questions not just on the nature of

memory in music but the nature of how academia can conceptualize the complexity of

memory.

51
 In large part, the scholars I review in this section recognize the embodiment of

memory and the multi-sensory and synesthetic qualities of musical experience that make

the embodiment possible. Thus, they propose concepts like acoustemology (Feld 1997);

compound aural memories (Feder in Shelemay 1998: 10, 213; 2006: 35); a special kind

of “materials memory” (Qureshi 2000); and the aesthetics of remembering (Emoff 2002).

The rest of this section explores these concepts. Qureshi and Emoff’s discussions apply

Feld’s concept of acoustemology, while Shelemay, recognizing the compound nature of

music related memories, frames her analysis of music and memory around individual

experiences of elaborate encoding. Underpinning all of these approaches are what

Qureshi describes as the “conceptual hurdles” of Western academia (2000: 809) and their

inability to account for our emotions and the full set of human senses, both of which are

often associated with the mnemonic efficacy of music.

The literature on memory is no exception these conceptual hurdles. It tends to

overlook the full range of perceptions from the sensorium which can be significant in the

process of retaining or recollecting memory. Instead it condenses these perceptions into a

narrative or it privileges the visual sense above all others. There is something called a

narrativist paradigm in memory studies that suggests all memories need to be fashioned

into a story or narrative in order to be meaningful (Erll 2011: 145; Young (1988: 97) in

Misztal 2003: 97; Hutton (1993: 34) in Misztal 2003: 117). As already mentioned,

memory (both individual and collective) is unable to recall entire events. Instead it recalls

pieces of events and only when these events are combined (are re-collected) is meaning

possible (Erll 2011: 146-7). Erll further notes that many types of memory are non-

narrative, such as visual, olfactory, and unconscious memories; however, she assumes

52
they derive their meaning only through narativization (Erll 2011: 147). Another line of

thought connecting memory to imagination supports the narrative paradigm through the

belief that memory must be represented by the visual. “Memory is the experience of the

past mediated by representation, so it is the construction of images that puts memories

before our eyes and which reveals what experience means” (Misztal 2003: 119, my

italics).

While Misztal reinforces the visualization of memory in the summary of

“Remembering Process,” the penultimate chapter of her book (ibid.: 124), earlier she

draws on the work of Henri Bergson, Michael Polanyi, Marcel Proust and others that

recognize forms of memory and knowledge that do not necessarily fit this privileging of

the visual. Instead these authors demonstrate the complex nature of memory, unconscious

recall and intuition that was already referenced in my discussion of Floyd (see page 41)

and is explored by other scholars of music and memory. Misztal’s reference to Michael

Polanyi’s well-known quote “we know more than we can tell” suggests an elusive “tacit

knowledge” of tradition that helps order and guide our perceptions ((1967:4) in Misztal

2003: 94-95) and suggests forms of perception that cannot be narrativized. Her short

discussion of Proust’s contribution to memory studies engages in complex philosophical

thought concerning the perception of reality versus the authenticity of this perception.

This observation is grounded in Proust’s famous reference to involuntary remembering

through re-encounters with the flavour of a madeleine cookie from childhood. According

to Proust, the authenticity of this experience transcends the bifurcation of past and

present. It is something that exists in both past and present yet is more essential than

53
either. It allows one to “float” in timelessness that affords not only some experience of

universal understanding but also results in a joyousness since one is liberated from time

and the fears of mortality ((Proust [1922] 1989, Part 3: 905) in Misztal 2003: 110-11).

While Proust’s insights come through the form of the novel in seven parts, they have

made their way in to memory studies in reference to his recognition of involuntary

memory and emotions associated with multi-sensory perceptions that stem from tactile

sensations (Bogouslavski 2009: 130; Boym 2002: 50).14

FELD AND ACOUSTEMOLOGY: SONIC SENSIBILITIES AND MEANING

Proust’s recognition of involuntary memory that goes beyond logocentrism (see

Olick et al. 2011: 10-11) and that explores the possibility of meaning from emotions and

other senses is also explored by Steven Feld through his concept of acoustemology. The

term developed from Feld’s study of the Kaluli people of Bosavi in Papua New Guinea.

Guided by their sensing and sensuality of naming physical places, Feld offers

acoustemology as an analytical tool to sense place as a multi-sensory synesthetic

experience, rather than default to a visual perception of place. Feld confers with

philosopher Edward Casey that the visualized format is an outdated model of memory

that exists only within the mind and denies the possibility of body, place and

commemorative memory (Casey 2000: xi). Feld’s work concerning the conceptualization

of place tries to correct for the “historical centrality of visualism in Western analytical

discourses” (Feld 1997: 96) and recognizes that space is far more than just its visual

14
Given that many music scholars, such as Floyd, Shelemay and Emoff, highlight a sense of celebration
and joyousness similar to the one just discussed, the relationship between involuntary memory, becoming
“an extra temporal being,” and joyousness seems a worthy one to follow in studies of collective memory
and music.

54
representation. Drawing from Murray Schaeffer, Edward Carpenter, and Marshal

McLuhan, and noting from anthropological literature an auditory-visual divide that

associates the visual with analytical and reflective qualities and the auditory with active

and generative ones (1996: 94-6), Feld incorporates concepts of acoustics, body

sensations and emotions into the perception of space. Thus he introduces the term

acoustemology as “the exploration of sonic sensibilities, specifically of ways in which

sound is central to making sense, to knowing, to experiential truth” (ibid.: 97).

Recognizing that the sonic sensibilities engage far more than just the aural, he notes:

Sound, hearing, and voice mark a special bodily nexus for sensation and emotion
because of their coordination of brain, nervous system, head, ear, chest, muscles,
respiration, and breathing. (ibid.)

Furthermore he sees an importance for recognizing this multisensory sonic

experience with the possibilities for its ‘resounding” or echoing in memory (ibid.: 100,

93). This in turn plays into the power of music as a carrier and transmitter of memory.

Additionally, the idea of acoustemology highlights the multi-sensory experiences of

sound and their association with emotions and memories, which provide a meaning that

may not necessarily be narrativized or explained by the traditional analytical channels in

academia.

To some extent, memory studies do recognize the importance of emotions and

body sensations. Misztal discusses a number of scholars who have made some significant

observations in how emotions play into the strength and longevity of memory. Moreover

these observations are directly tied with somatic experiences, hence supporting Feld’s

concept of acoustemology. And while memory studies recognizes how the experience of

intense emotions “blurs the Cartesian mind-body distinction" (she cites two scholars

55
((Prager 1998); (Brism 1999) in Misztal 2003: 80-1) to support this point) few scholars

seem to accommodate the issue (Misztal 2003: 80-1).

QURESHI FOLLOWS THE AFFECT: AFFECT AND FEELINGS OF MUSICAL DISCOURSE

In her efforts to discover what the sarangi (a bowed South Asian instrument)

means, Qureshi is sufficiently discouraged by the inadequacies of academia to deal with

the sonic sensorium (2000: 806-808). Alternatively, she suggests locating meaning

through the use of subjective experiences, what she sometimes refers to as “meaning-

feeling experiences” (Leavitt (1996: 530) in Qureshi 2000: 810). The “multisensory

memories” of these experiences then have to be deconstructed from the aesthetic

discourse in which they are framed (Qureshi 2000: 811). She thus incorporates Feld’s

acoustemological perspective into Terdiman’s deconstruction of materials memory (ibid.:

810). Recognizing that embodied meanings of the instrument are circulated through

discourse she notes that it is not just the sound that gets embodied but discourse itself is

“suffused with affect” and gets embodied (ibid.: 812). While she notes that the sarangi

“offers a special kind of materials memory in its dual capacity as both a physical body

and its embodied acoustic identity” (ibid.: 811), she also highlights a particular

conservative aspect of this memory: a persistent memory thread running through the

debated pasts that stems from the highly charged emotional associations with the sarangi.

In her explanation, she marks an important difference towards understanding

sarangi musical performance and how it relates to identity.

[W]hat is being "rehearsed" in a sarangi performance is more than culture; it is

culturally honed body sensations and emotions that deeply touch individual and
social identities… these identities are marked by different pasts: for some, the

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 sarangi is a privileged site for retaining cultural memory, but for others, it
becomes a contested site for reconstructing the past. (ibid.: 827)

Citing Stoller, she identifies how these “honed body sensations and emotions” are

habitually associated with the sarangi as “performative, embodied practices [that] key

cultural memories” ((1994) in Qureshi 2000: 811). Thus she follows the memory paths of

these subjective feelings and calls upon locating them in the historical, i.e., in the

construction of the past and the social, political and cultural influences that induce the

subjective affect perceived (Qureshi 2000: 829-30).

Part of her analysis explains the sarangi’s “shifting retrospective of collective

memories” that reflects the debated pasts. Among other things, she considers: the

instrument’s mythological and religious origins; its function as concert stage music or as

accompaniment for bards, jogis (devotional beggars) and tawaifs (courtesan singers of

North India); its melodies; and its sound, which is often described as an articulation of

emotional abandon, weeping and separation. Similar to Romero,15 she generalizes on

three qualities of pastness that figure into people’s individual and collective identities: a

religious or devotional oriented past; the sanctioned sexuality of tawaifs from eighteenth

and nineteenth century which still “lingers on, long re-enacted in film culture” (828); and

a more recent cosmopolitan concert-stage music orientation. In particular, she discusses

the contestation between the latter two. There is something of a national project designed

to reconstruct the past around the professionalization and classicization of the sarangi.

15
Romero identifies three types of pasts: a pre-Hispanic, undisputed ritualized past; the pre-capitalist
agricultural past; and a more contemporary or modern past stemming from the 20th century (2001: 145).
The latter two engender debate, as already discussed with the waylarsh/huyalas or orcquesta tipica
examples (see page 44).

57
Some internationally known sarangi players who refuse to accompany singers or use

tawaif style grace notes are literally trying to mute the historical associations with

courtesans. But the intensely charged and complex feelings associated with the sarangi’s

accompaniment of tawaifs are difficult to dispel. Indeed it is from knowing this intensely

affective historicity of the object that Qureshi describes the task of contemporary

practitioners to concertize the sarangi as a “striking… shift toward an abstracted auditory

aesthetic [that divests] elite patrons of their deeply anchored memories.” These memories

are rooted in a complex of feelings associated with the feudal moral codes and

expectations of tawaif relations that run from one extreme to the other: from utter disdain

for the sarangi as a marker of “culturally sanctioned sensuality abhorrent to bourgeois

gender norms,” to the sweet tempting and longing of repressed intimacy. And it would

appear that these emotions are just too powerful to silence.

Her study thus reveals the inadequacies of traditional frameworks to explain the

meanings of something musically related because of its inability to conceptualize the

sonic sensorium and its associated memories and emotions. For this reason she follows

subjective feelings and aesthetic experiences associated with the musical instrument. Like

other scholars, she uses discourse analysis, and explains how an instrument exists as a

“material repositor[y] of past meanings” by following the memory traces of these

subjective feelings. Interestingly, Qureshi also notes how the circulation of embodied

meanings through discourse not only acts as “a tool of control, shaped and disseminated

by a dominant class… [but] also becomes a doorway to a sentimental education for

outsiders” (2000: 811) thus providing an academic framework to analyze how foreigners

58
may experience the ancientness of a traditional music.

SHELEMAY FOLLOWS THE AFFECT: ENCODING MUSIC MEMORIES

Similar to Qureshi, Shelemay (2006) in her article “Music, Memory and History”

discusses the use of affect and emotions to guide research and analysis of memory in

music. But while Qureshi applies a more collectivist approach, Shelemay’s approach

comes from the collective-as-metonym qualifier, which addresses the influences of socio-

cultural contexts on individual memory. In particular she draws on psychological terms

and processes, such as autobiographical memory and encoding, to explain how affect

through the social musical context makes music – and in particular the pizmon tradition –

a powerful media of memory. While Qureshi addresses the complex of emotions and

physical feelings that, through music, define the power of discourse, Shelemay, describes

how music’s associated affect elaborates individual memory encoding of musical

activities, thus reiterating and recoding musical memories to make them more powerful

and sustaining.

As mentioned, Shelemay comes more from an individualist perspective. She

views memory as primarily an individual cognitive faculty and frames much of her

analysis around individual autobiographical memory, some that is conscious and surfaces

to recall easily and some that is not (2006: 18). Her metonymical understanding of

collective memory recognizes memory as a social phenomenon that is connected to the

collective knowledge shaped by collective experience and expectations (ibid.); thus

“music-making and subsequent recollection of musical experience” cue autobiographical

memories which are inherently linked to the collective memory of the community (ibid.:

59
21). Because memories of pizmonin most often are formed and triggered in ceremonial

social situations (like a bar mitzvah) and in important social institutions (like a

community hall or synagogue), the study of pizmonin offers a good subject for the

analysis of memory and music.

Besides this grounding in the psychology of individual memory, Shelemay’s

methodological approach to the study of memory in music is based on new historicism,

which involves taking an isolated anecdote from ethnography as an entryway into cultural

analysis,16 as a “departure for both exploring a site of memory and anchoring historical

discourse” (ibid.: 19). But the path she subsequently follows takes cues from the explicit

“deep-seated feelings” in such anecdotes, which highlight the psychological and aesthetic

values that solidify musical memories into historical narrative (ibid.: 19 and 34, fn6).

Shelemay claims that associated affect is one of the most important aspects of

music as a media of memory (ibid.: 27-8) and she draws on concepts of encoding to

further explain. The encoding process of musical memories is complex, “elaborative” and

“crucial to the maintenance of memory” (ibid.: 26). “Elaborative encoding” makes

connections between the event in memory to other memories, modes of experience, and

sensory expectations (ibid.: 26-7; also citing Schacter (1996)). The musical transmission

process, by its nature of engaging in different forms of re-inscribing and reconstituting

practices (in the form of diaries, transcriptions, rhetoric, recordings, and song

performance), involves multiple elaborative encodings that not only engage in different

sensory modalities and experiences but also continually make new and/or reestablish

16
She accredits this approach to Stephen Greenblat (1990a) and Joel Fineman (1989) (2006: 19).

60
existing connections to memories and experiences, thus helping to maintain the memory.

Coupling this process of elaborative encoding with affect heightens the possibility

for sustaining memories and thus Shelemay points to the episodes from which musical

memories of the pizmon performance are drawn. These are usually important life cycle or

para-religious events that are emotionally ladened. These affective episodes make

memories more powerful, both in the encoding and recall processes (ibid.: 28). Of

particular interest is how emotions and affect may go beyond conscious awareness for the

memories or the events surrounding them but which ethnographic inquiry may help to

reveal. Feelings, often in the form of nostalgia - though not always verbalized as such -

thus heighten the “elaborative encoding” of musical memories (ibid.: 29).

With respect to pizmonim in particular, Shelemay describes the song tradition as a

memory making mechanism because it not only does all of the above but also because as

contrafacta, the tradition involves re-embedding para-liturgical text into existent

melodies, adding a new layer of affect, re-encoding already valued musical memories

(ibid.).

The experience of a past memory and associated emotions are in this way
converted into a new long-term memory, one that will include the fact that the
listener was emotionally aroused the last time he or she remembered the incident.
(ibid.: 30)

Utlimately, she links the survival of a tradition with the survival and management

of memory:

All of these levels of memory and transformations of affect are part of the on-
going life of pizmon transmission and performance as they are remembered and
articulated by performers (and researchers). (ibid.)

Inherent within the continuity of a musical tradition is the repetition and reinvention of

musical performance, something also very crucial within memory processes (ibid.: 21).

61
The process of repetition reiterates the many encodings of memory already discussed.

And reinvention simply references the personal levels of ornamentation or structured

improvisation (such as in a rubato-styled introduction before a pizmon), which again,

only contribute to the elaborate encoding. Thus she highlights important relationships

between individual, feeling and musical performance to explain how collective memories

survive within music.

A lot more details elucidating the dynamics of the pizmon tradition can be found

in her book (1998), though the details of elaborate encoding are not so clearly explained

or explored. What the book does point to, which her explanations of elaborate encoding

and management of memory support, is how the pizmon tradition functions as “the

musical construction of remembrances, an expressive outcome or residue of the process

of remembering” (1998: 6). In this way she ties aesthetics with memory, a framework that

Emoff explores in his own ethnography on music in Malagasy possession ceremonies.

Emoff, expanding on Feld’s acoustemological perspective with reference to

anthropologist Edward Scheiffelin’s work on meaning through social performance,

proposes an “aesthetics of remembering” which offers yet another framework to explain

the efficacy of music in retaining and triggering memories.

EMOFF: AESTHETICS OF REMEMBERING

Memory is effectively played, or played with, by tromba musicians, who aurally

empower varied pasts. (Emoff 2002: 106)

Recollecting from the Past: Musical Practice and Spirit Possession on the East

Coast of Madagascar (Emoff 2002) is a study into the aesthetics that guide the musical

practice and ceremonial recollection of two marginalized ethnic groups (the Antandroy

62
and the Betsimisaraka) in Tamatave, a town on the east coast of Madagascar. In

particular, Emoff explores the “aesthetics of remembering” which he also equates to the

“aesthetics of spirituality” (2002: 152), an aesthetic that recognizes the heightened

creative inter-disciplinary expression during possession ceremonies, its performativity

with the past, and its significance to the empowering act of meaning construction. This

latter point may otherwise be understood as the healing properties of the ceremony.

Tromba is the term used to reference the Malagasy royal ancestral spirits,

possession ceremony, the possessed, and/or the belief system enabling all this. And

tromba possession practice, which “occasions for the emergence of collective as well as

personal recollection” (ibid.: 1), is inconceivable without music (ibid.: 50). It is a

complex ceremonial recall, which is “at once individual, collective and imagined” (ibid.:

4). By maneuvering between past and present, ancestral and everyday, foreign and

familiar, tromba possession practices allow for “other modes of power,” and enable

healing powers, which Emoff often describes throughout the book as “joyousness” (ibid.:

119, 152) not so unlike the joyousness that Proust suggests. In Malagasy terms, one

might equate this joyousness with maresaka. The word translates as “good talk” (ibid.: 3)

but as an aesthetic, it relies on the sound-social experience of music (ibid.: 5) and refers

to when the music is just right, there is groove, and a general good feeling ensues (ibid.:

60). It is also defined by the imperative of its presence in possession; possession cannot

occur without maresaka (ibid.: 63).

As mentioned, a major underlying theoretical concept that enables Emoff to study

this aesthetics of remembering is Feld’s accoustemology (ibid.: 24). Emoff locates

63
acoustemology within a larger discussion of performativity and construction of meaning

by tying meaning through sonic sensibilities with Edward Schieffelin’s understanding of

how meaning is constructed through performance in social rather than cognitive space

(Schieffelin (1985) in Emoff 2002: 11). According to Emoff, understanding comes from

feeling, not from knowing (2002: 10) and significance is not in the past but in the process

of how it is remembered – in this way, it may account for the coexistence of apparently

conflicting pasts. He uses the term “performative transactions” to identify how, for

example, pasts can be “experienced, sensed, and played with, beyond being simply

known” (ibid.: 11).

Initially, Emoff discussed performative transactions with respect to how he

learned to play the kaiamba (shaker) and valiha (stringed instrument). He, like all other

Malagasy, had to ‘feel’ not ‘know’ the music and musical phrases; such a mode of

transmission accounts for the variety of unique performative/interpretive styles that exist

(ibid.: 10). And in a similar way, this is how Malagasy also experience their past.

“[S]tories and histories in tromba practice most often rely upon enactment, engagement,

and experience.” Moreover, these stories and histories, “like musical compositions, are

also actively interpreted and fluid” (ibid.), which follows Le Goff’s description of how the

past functions in oral societies. Without the concreteness of the written word, Malagsy’s

oral tradition does not fix a “static” mythical past (ibid.). And most important, it is the

performative context, especially in the moments of heightened melodic and rhythmic

improvisation, that the past – whether real or imaginary, unified or fragmented – makes

64
sense. Thus the sonic sensibilities intertwine with physical, emotional, as well as social

experiences, and it is during heightened stimulus of these sensibilities when the power of

the music is equated with the power of recollection, and becomes a healing act that

generates significant meaning. For this reason Emoff notes that “musical performance

…not only empowers collective recollection [but also] transforms the past into something

alive and palpable” (ibid.: 8). In particular, Emoff evaluates the physicality as well as the

aesthetic qualities of the music to further explain the power of music.

The physicality of the sound of the music is what calls the spirit and allows for

continued possession (ibid.: 44). From ceremonies that Emoff has attended, he notes

“penetration of sound waves into the body or its force upon it seemed to parallel the

infusion of spirit into that body” (ibid.: 46). Musicians hasten to the side of a body

showing initial signs of possession to “play and clap forcefully towards the ears and the

head,” enticing tromba to enter by “driving tactile sound waves” (ibid.). Emoff further

notes how the physical experience of polyrhythms lends itself to a “temporal” reordering.

The nature of shifting polyrhythms between the valiha and kaiamba manifests a temporal

distortion, an aural illusion making listeners aware of and/or making them shift between

different time feels. Metaphorically, it allows for a sense of timelessness required for

recalling the ancestors, or it allows participants to sync historical time with everyday time

(ibid.: 63). Most significant in achieving the heightened creative state that allows for the

acoustic as well as the spiritual temporal experience are the ‘micropoetics’ of

performance, in other words, the constant reordering of subtle variants when repeating

small melodic units (ibid.: 75-6, 86).

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 An interesting aspect of the physicality of the sound of music concerns how text

and narrative are downplayed in Malagasy possession ceremonies. This already echoes

Seeger’s study of Suya who learn the songs of others without knowing what the words

mean. And Coplan also underplays narrative with his analysis of sefela migrant songs.

Lipsizt and Harris also make reference to the unimportance of text. Lipsizt does so in

citing Chernoff’s research on Ghanian music, who claims that master Ghanaian musicians

may not even know the subject matter of the songs they sing to understand and “value the

songs’ expression of their deepest traditional sentimtents” (Chernoff (1979: 123-124) in

Lipsitz 1990: 244). Harris talks about this with respect to the shaman rituals of the Sibe,

where the audience would participate in the ritual by singing non-sense vocable refrains.

In particular, these, along with the other drums, bells, and song, were believed to focus

the power of the group onto the Shaman and the healing practice (2004: 137-9).

Shelemay speaks of a textual ambiguity in the pizmon, which more specifically fails to

overtly acknowledge the conflict and political realities Syrian Jews have had to survive.

This, along with how the pizmonim relies on the borrowing of melodies, is discussed as

part of a larger question of how the songs function as agents of continuity, as a survival

mechanism for a community that has undergone extraordinary dislocation. Emoff notes

that in the music of both Antandroy and Betsimisaraka possession ceremonies, text has

no narrative function and often has no melodic attributes either. Rather, it is used to

evoke images and add to the overall soundscape. He even suggests that texts, which occur

in non-possession ceremonial Malagasy music, hinder or even take the place of “the

actual appearance and embodiment of ancestral spirits” (Emoff 2002: 74-5).

66
 The scholarship cited above obviously stresses the sonic and social component

over the textual component of the music. Elaborating a little more on Emoff’s suggestion,

perhaps text is omitted because it hinders music’s ambiguous nature that enables it to

integrate past and present, ancestral and everyday, foreign and familiar. The integrative

power of music is an important theme in Emoff’s study and also relates to a number of

other scholars. As already mentioned briefly in the transition to this final section, Harris

speaks to such an integrative nature in music’s enabling of mimesis or how it functions as

an “interface” for both the internal and external, the Self and Other (2004: 199-200). This

riding of duality is also a common theme through other scholarship. For Shelemay (1998)

the duality is primarily between individual and collective memory, though the themes of

self and other, centre and periphery, homeland and diaspora as well as others are also

addressed. For Rees, as for many others, this duality is more of a fluidity that references

multiple memories not necessarily related via duality.

The subject of textual function aside, Emoff clearly relates specific aesthetic

qualities with the remembering process in Malagasy possession ceremonies. These,

however, are integrated into a larger Malagasy aesthetic and spiritual nature. The

aesthetics of remembering focuses on the power emergent in sound, its “spiritual

efficacy,” its integrative power and creativity of remembering through social musical act

(Emoff 2002: 148, 152). In particular, this perspective differentiates music’s integrative

power from the power of resistance. Resistance is too simplistic a concept to explain the

integration of colonial or foreign memories or objects within the possession ceremony.

67
 Resistance theories in which other people are portrayed merely or primarily as
reacting against more powerful forces might denude the actual complexities of
people, their practices, and beliefs. (ibid.: 149)

Instead, Emoff sees the incorporation of the Other as an integrative power that reflects

deep-seated values and Malagasy spirituality. It speaks to the necessity of Malagasy

imagination and creativity in ceremonial recollection that

necessarily calls upon enacting varied pasts and often fragmenting, reassessing,
and altering them in their enactment. [It] also involves collectively extracting
from the past to empower, embellish, and make sense of the present. (ibid.: 106)

Thus, the possession characters of Suddam Hussein or George Bush and Bill Clinton are

not depicting the specifics of these foreign more powerful leaders but something that is

simply not Malagasy (ibid.: 156-158). Their effect is primarily for entertainment, to

“engender more maresaka” (ibid.: 155). Similarly, bricolage of foreign objects, like

magazine photos, foreign-produced perfume, or Christian icons, or even the use of the

prepared accordion, add to the mix of sensory perceptions during the ceremony and

reflect the integrative power, the revaluing, recycling of the Other into “a Malagasy

scheme of empowerment” (ibid.: 158).

It is not difficult to link Emoff’s integrative power of music or the heightened use

of melodic and rhythmic improvisation with Qureshi’s complex embodiment of music

and discourse or with Shelemay’s framework of elaborate encoding. All three are focused

on the synesthetic multi-sensory aspects of musical performance that make music such a

powerful media of memory. Shelemay’s elaborate encoding provides an explanation

grounded in individual psychological framework that can accommodate both Qureshi’s

and Emoff’s details. Yet Shelemay (1998; 2006) does not seem to acknowledge the

68
somatic experiences as heavily as the other two, and especially such experiences as they

are felt in a collective. As Qureshi eloquently explains:

The physical sensation of sound not only activates feeling, it also activates links
with others who feel. In an instant, the sound of music can create bonds of shared
responses that are as deep and intimate as they are broad and universal. (2000:
810)

Emoff, in connecting aesthetic and spiritual aspects of remembering, takes it to a

metaphysical understanding that, while difficult to speak about objectively, affords an

alternative framework for understanding. What Emoff does do to help objectify these

enigmatic qualities of memory in music is to recognize the performative and

phenomenological aspects of memory work in ceremonial recollection, in support of

which he provides wonderful descriptions of musical “performative transactions” and

other details of the multi-sensory synesthetic nature of ceremonies that heightened

sensual social experiences and produce a meaningful present.

CONCLUSION

The length of this comprehensive exam is clearly an indication of the numerous

and complex ways to account for the collective memory embodied in music. Indeed, the

question of understanding and modeling collective memory is complex enough without

even considering how it is incorporated in music. Yet in some way, accounting for

collective memory in music highlights some important limitations of academia that

actually sheds light on important aspects of how collective memory functions. As

suggested in my introduction, musical expression seems to recall the conditions of

traditional societies where the oral nature of history and memory appear to be

momentarily relived, re-experienced. It is for this reason that I note how musical

69
expression can side step the contemporary crisis of memory.

Today, the concept of collective memory, understood within the dynamic

transmedial framework, affords a functional model for social or cultural change.

Recognizing the constructed nature of memory and history (i.e., that debated pasts can

possibly exist in any one artifact), deconstruction analysis (also referred in this paper as

discourse or dialogical analysis) reflects how collective memory needs to be teased out.

In other words, it calls for detailed scholarship and analysis. Whether it be framed

through Erll’s transmedia model of memory, Coplan’s description of the context of

context, Qureshi’s embodiment of musical discourse, or Shelemay’s elaborate encoding,

Emoff’s aesthetics of remembering, or otherwise, detailed research is critical to uncover

the complex ways collective memory becomes embedded in any social or cultural

expression.

Towards the end of the twentieth century, however, ethnomusicology seems

particularly well positioned to deal with the issues raised in memory studies. As Harris

points out, the raw data of much ethnography, especially about traditional musics, are the

collective memories of ethnographic subjects, those who experience the tradition. When

expressed this way, it is so evidently clear that the issue of collective memory is central

to the concern of ethnomusicology. Yet there remains a rather large disconnect between

the work of ethnomusicologists and memory studies in general.

Perhaps part of this may be accounted for the ability of ethnomusicology to tackle

issues often sidestepped in the other disciplines of academia, and by this, of course, I am

referring to meaning and knowledge derived through feelings and emotions. From the

foundational thinkers in collective memory, Connerton pinpoints the idea that the body

70
incorporates memory, which leads to a different type of knowledge of the past than those

of inscription. But scholars on memory and music develop this far more with concepts

like acoustemology, compound memories, and others. Lipsitz (1991), Qureshi (2000) and

Shelemay (2006) are perhaps the most outspoken about the use of affect to direct studies

of memory and music. As Qureshi, Feld and Emoff also note, somatic experiences and

the social context of these experiences are essential characteristics to consider when

dealing with the embodiment of memory in music. Floyd’s attention to how intuition

bridges the physical and metaphysical is another worthy insight to make note of when

trying to account for embodied collective memory. The essential insights from all of

these scholars is to understand that music’s structure can embody a number of debated

pasts. As such it is not necessary to recall “incontrovertible accounts of past personalities

and deeds” (Emoff 2002: 10). Instead it is a social and spiritual experience as well as

sensual experience of recall that is significant and meaningful.

As a final point, I insist on recalling Nora’s concept, “sites of memory” – or

perhaps Erll’s more contemporary understanding “dynamics of memory.” As mentioned

in the summary of that section, a music that embodies collective memory can easily be

interpreted as such a site (or dynamic). With the emphasis on episodic types of memory

that can account for a variety of interpretations and entry points into research and

analysis, the model is a very practical one. Success of how it subsequently is used will of

course reflect the quality of scholarship and the incorporation of the issues I have raised

throughout this paper.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

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Sebastian Conrad, 1-16. Great Britain: Palgrave Macmillan.

Assmann, Jan and and John Czaplicka. 1995. “Collective Memory and Cultural Identity.”
New German Critique 65: 125-133.

Babiracki, Carol. “Music and the History of Tribe Caste interaction in Chotanagpur.”
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