Understanding Titon (ch. 2)

Titon, throughout his paper, presents the idea that understanding is more important than explanation, and that the history of ethnomusicology has been laden with explanations and data-gathering, and only now is moving towards a focus on understanding and experience. In shifting the focus and position to understanding, he emphasizes people over objects, interpretation over analysis, and humanities over science. His definition of music as a socially constructed, cultural phenomenon also reflects an idea that music is a group activity, and that the self merges with the others until the reemergence of universal knowledge. In using this definition of music defining people, giving people knowledge, and bringing them together, Titon makes a case for music as a replacement for language as the basic form of communication. Music is about the person and experience, not about analysis and comparison.
Titon also addresses the fundamental flaws of current ethnomusicology: the authority of representation, the quest narrative, and the incompatibility with poststructuralist thought. He acknowledges that he cannot give adequate answers for these flaws, but at the same time makes note that the disappearance of self comes with the experience of music-making, and that the communal experience can answer for the ethnomusicologist’s authority and lack of self. In the postscript, Titon mentions that in experiencing music as a visitor, one avoids the quest-narrative and instead musicology is based on visiting and friendship. Having dealt with the three main flaws of ethnomusicology, Titon ends with saying that fieldwork brings mutual gain and shared experiences.
Titon often takes an idealistic view of ethnomusicology, equating music and field relationships directly with friendship. He also writes of the naiveté that an ideal field relationship will always result in friendship. If such a relationship, one that is more contractual or involves student/teacher roles, ends with little mutual gain, is the study flawed? Does the ethnographer still have authority?

The creation of S.E.M: what changed and what remained

The Ethnomusicology newsletter for the Society of Ethnomusicology has changed greatly over a span of 50 years, but in many ways it has remained similar with its core ideas. In examining old 1950s newsletters, I found the 6th issue to be most interesting, for it was in this newsletter that the formation of S.E.M. was announced. The society came from the American Society for Comparative Musicology, which had stagnated several years after its creation in 1933. The ASCM itself built upon the ideas of the GVM, a German group to which ASCM subscribed their members. The depression wiped these groups away, basically, and not until 1953 did a group of ethnomusicologists meet in Boston at an anthropological conference. A small group of enthusiasts put together the first newsletter, because they thought that the newsletter needed to be well-established before a group could be imagined. After the mailing list grew from 75 to 600, S.E.M. was thought up and the primary concerns voiced furthering communication and promoting research. These objectives, though obvious goals for a newsletter, have remained at the core of the newsletter. In the 2001 winter newsletter of Ethnomusicology, the official object remains to provide “advancement of research and study in the field of ethnomusicology,” a vague goal, but one that is necessarily vague because the definition of ethnomusicology keeps changing. These changes are especially evident in the 1950s. In issue six, one agreement the founders of S.E.M. come upon is that ethnomusicology is not limited to primitive music. By denoting the music they primarily study as primitive, they are already limiting their views, and creating comparative musicology, a word that reinforces antiquated ideas of ethnomusicology. The change from comparative musicology to ethnomusicology came around this time period, and yet research was still decidedly comparison-based. Examples of these comparisons abound in the 1956 issue. One example addresses the universal laws that determine tonal construction in tribal music, another compares Navajo and Apache music and culture, and yet another provides an overview of African rhythm patterns and compares the parts to western concepts. These comparisons have mostly made their way out of ethnomusicological research, because of much more understanding and respect for the researched cultures. There is still the same type of focus on cultures, however. In the 1956 issue, the end of the newsletter asks for information on courses on ethnomusicology. The newsletter asks for information about courses dealing with folk and primitive music, primitive music alone, or Oriental music. This is hardly how one would refer to such music now; to indicate that a culture’s music is primitive or Oriental is close to forms of racism. Funnily enough, in the 2001 winter issue of Ethnomusicology, it is interesting to read the titles of three articles in a row: Powwows and Identity on the Piedmont and Coastal Plains of North Carolina, All That Is Not Give Is Lost: Irish Traditional Music, Copyright, and Common Property, and The Sonic Dimensions of Nationalism in Modern China Musical Representation and Transformation.

Moving - Critical Review

Wong introduces her research on taiko, or rather how she defends going about her research on taiko. The research is based on autoethnography, and she explains how she first was the performer, then the ethnographer, and that the two are very different but she strived to put them together. She speaks of the draw that Asian-American culture had on her, as an Asian-American, and notes that taiko has continued to be defined and dominated by the Asian-American culture. In her final statements, she confesses that she yearns to find or to start a taiko group that would be completely about Asian-American identity, or even feminist Asian-American identity. Her idea is that performance ethnography will help her create encounters to forward social change. It is a fine idea. However, in practicing performance ethnography, relationships might become strained, because of how the research is written and presented to the scholars, and not aimed towards the fellow musicians. How can an ethnographer who wishes taiko was more visionary or progressive comment on it without too much bias or underlying motivations? Is the change of a kind of performance due to performance ethnography still representative of the previous culture and traditions?

Fieldwork: Zoo

In regards to fieldwork, I plan on researching the music played by entertainers at the Roger Williams Park Zoo, specifically Spooky Zoo festivities during the month of October. This is my favorite time to be at the zoo and its a popular time to be there for many others as well. I want to research something that speaks not only to a university student, but to a community broader than College Hill, and focusing on music played will provide an interesting on how musician’s and entertainers relate to the community around them. The Zoo is a place where many different ages and types of people visit, and therefore the setting will be an interesting one and will hopefully provide some insight on a part of Rhode Island tradition.

There are many questions to be considered. Is the focus on the musician? Are the musicians paid, or providing a free gift for the community? Do they play children-friendly tunes, and if they do, what constitutes this type of genre? What is the composition of the audience? Do the same entertainers play every year?

Handler and Linnekin Critical Review

In attempting to define tradition, Handler and Linnekin offer two meanings that have been used previously, one that embraces the idea of tradition as a tangible bounded structure, and one that offers the idea that tradition is only symbolic. Much of the paper is devoted to debunking the first idea of boundedness and handed-down traits, an old concept of tradition dating back to Burke and the 19th century. While their critique of the old definition is a valid point emphasizing the inseparable aspect of the past and present, the idea of tradition as being either genuine or spurious comes up as a point that needs to be addressed. At this point they take a few pages to bash upon the ingenuity of the Quebecois and Hawaiian traditions, taking care to note that the cultures chose to portray themselves the way they wanted seen by the outside. Upon conclusion, Handler and Linnekin decide that the terms of genuine and spurious are synonymous, in that genuine traditions are spurious and vice versa, if tradition is always defined in the present.

In considering tradition, it is true that much is created as a sort of preservation or homage to the past. Is this considered more of a tradition than what had actually taken place? If these reconstructive traditions take the place of an older continued tradition, are the two weighed similarly in a reseacher’s study? Is one still valued more than another? Though the argument is that traditions should not be looked as relations with the past, in society emphasis and importance has been placed on tradition in accordance with historical longevity (i.e. the stature of Ivy-league institutions or the infallibility of Biblical scriptures).

24 Hour Music Log

Sunday, September14, 2008

The day started as all Sundays do: at noon.
12:15 Ob la di, Ob la dah - Beatles (from a friend singing in the refectory over breakfast)
12:30 The Flaming Lips (from this same friend singing)
12:45 Super Smash Brothers (playing in the background as I make my way to my room)
12:52 Love Fool - The Cardigans (from Mac speakers in the lounge during group study)

12:54-1:31 (The following music occurs from my computer with headphones on:)

7/4 Shoreline - Broken Social Scene
Simply - De La Soul
Gobbledigook - Sigur Ros
Calendar Girl - Stars
The Upper Peninsula - Sufjan Stevens
A Postcard to Nina - Jens Lekman
Sir Duke - Stevie Wonder
Notorious Thugs - Notorious BIG feat. Bone Thugs and Harmony
Waiting Room - Fugazi

1:41 Love In This Club - Usher (someone singing while studying, chorus of people (5) joins in)
1:50 U+Me=Us (Calculus) - 2Gether (group of students singing)
3:58 Neutral Milk Hotel (AEPi Barbeque)
4:05 Hey Leonardo (She Likes Me For Me) - Blessed Union of Souls (I sang this out loud)
6:20 Bare Naked Ladies (speakers connected to a computer while I was drying dishes)
6:40 Dear Catastrophe Waitress (album) - Belle and Sebastian (speakers)
7:00 Crane Wife (album) - The Decemberists (speakers)
7:50 female singing pop (echo from basement speakers while in my room)
7:55 Rikki Don't Lose That Number - Steely Dan (I sang this out loud)
8:00 Push it - Salt 'n Pepa (someone singing it)
9:11 R+B with female vocals (friends computer during meeting)
10:30 Electronica sounding music (ringtone from friend's phone)
11:00 Leaving - Jesse McCartney (I was singing with 2 people)
11:20 Rap music (from a car on thayer)
11:30 Classical Music (I was whistling)
11:35 Rock You Like a Hurricane - Scorpions (I was singing)
11:37 Rap music (from a car on thayer)
11:45 Make It Rain - Fat Joe feat. Lil Wayne (I was singing)
11:48 Wouldn't It Be Nice - Beach Boys (My friend singing)
12:00 Canon in D - Pachelbel (I was humming)
12:20 Colors of the Wind - Pocahontas (friends serenading me on the lawn)
1:00 9th Symphony - Beethoven (My friend and I were singing)
1:20 Rhapsody in Blue - Gershwin (fantasia 2000 from computer speakers)
8:30 September - Earth, Wind, and Fire (cell phone alarm)
10:00 Killer Queen - Queen (I was singing in the shower)

Such was my day.
~Trevor T