Week 9 questions
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Dec 6, 2023
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Week Nine: Music as Culture
I)
Rice, Timothy. 2014.
Ethnomusicology: a Very Short Introduction
. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
(Chapter 5: pp. 65-78)
1. What is Rice’s definition of culture? How can you simplify that into a short but complete
definition?
-
Rice says that culture refers to all forms of human knowledge, creativity, values and to
their expression in music, language, cosmology, religion, ethics, plastic arts, dance, the
making and use of tools, dwellings, cooking, clothing and body decorations. In short,
Culture is the collective identities developed by member of a specific group.
Local concepts about music (66-68)
2. Rice gives three examples of ways that people think differently about music in different
cultures. What are they?
-
In European culture we generally believe that music is an unmitigated good
-
In cultures influenced by strict interpretations of Islam, music is evil because of its
association with wine and women and that it distracts believers from their religious
duties.
-
Devotees of Sufism believe that forms of musical performance are path to union with
god.
1
Music Teaching and Learning (68-71)
3. John Blacking wrote a book called
How Musical is Man?
in which he contrasted what role
music plays in the lives of the Venda people of Zimbabwe and South Africa with the role it plays
in the lives of most people in western, capitalist countries. What is that contrast?
-
In the west music is mostly seen as entertainment only. The contrast is in Zimbabwe and
South Africa music is thought as to be very ceremonial. And meaningful.
4. Rice notes that the question of “who gets to learn music?” varies across cultures. What are the
examples he gives for this?
-
In societies like Venda music is available for everyone to learn where children’s music is
an important childhood activity. Where it is a required part of initiation into adulthood or
where it is an obligatory feature of adulthood.
-
In Flathead Indian society in the United States, Merriam found that all men must learn a
powerful song during their adolescent “vision quest”.
Identity and Music (71-73)
5. We touched on the idea of “Agency” previously, and how in the modern western world we use
music to construct parts of our identities. He gives three specific examples that have to do with
either creating or blurring boundaries – what are these? Can you think of any others?
2
-
Gender and Music (73-75)
6. Rice notes that in various cultures the traditional male/female duality is often linked to other
dualities (e.g. public/private, expressive/modest, rational/emotional,), but he also talks about how
musicians can either support (i.e. go along with) or challenge (i.e. fight against) those roles.
What examples does he give? Can you think of others?
-
Some Moroccan Berber songs may criticize a prospective groom in an. Arranged
marriage which saves the girl from a danger, but never challenge the existing social
practice of arranged marriages.
-
In Euro-American cultures all female choirs were formed to create performative space
where supposed female values of cooperation and independent from men can be worked
out.
Music, Trance, Possession, Ecstasy, and Emotion (76-78)
7. Music is known to play a part in bringing about states of trance, possession, ecstasy, and deep
emotion. Studies in the 1960s claimed to find that there was something inherent in the music
that, for example, induced trance. What did Roget’s work in the 1980s have to say about this?
-
Rouget documented “the disconcerting variability of the relation between music and the
onset of trance.”
3
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Rouget argued that not all trance music is based on repeated, loud drumbeats at a certain
tempo or on repetitive melodic patterns, as Neher had suggested, although those are
characteristics of a genre of popular electronic dance music called “trance music.”
-
Rouget reasoned that if music were aa direct trance cause then everyone at a music-trance
event would go into trance.
8. What point does Rice make about “human universals” and the part that ethnomusicologists can
play in the study of them?
-
Claims for human universals in music making that rely on observed practices are few and far
between.
-
Recourse to a shared biology is potentially more fruitful, but it moves ethnomusicologists
away from the lifeblood of their discipline, that is, ethnography grounded in intensive
fieldwork in particular culture and the claims that resulted about why exactly people in
particular place and time make music in a particular way.
……………
II)
Levin, Thoedore. 2006.
Where Rivers and Mountains Sing: Sound, Music, and
Nomadism in Tuva and Beyond
. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. (pp 48-51)
9. How does the sound of an
igil
differ from a violin?
-
When you make a sound on the igil, it’s like spreading open the fan. An igil, they can
completely fill a sonic space.
4
10. What are the two “sound systems” in Tuvan music?
-
Timbre and pitch centered enters zone sound of turbulence and stays there with no movement
of pitch.
……………
III)
Hamm, Wolfgang. (translation Geraldine Blecker). Notes for
TUVA Choomej - Throat
Singing From the Center of Asia
. World Network. NW55838. 1993. CD. (pp. 20-27)
11. Which overtones are typically used in
choomei
overtone singing?
-
Mainly the sixth and twelfth overtone.
12. How many choomei overtone singing styles are there, and how do they differ?
-
Sygyt: high register, bright sharp overtones that. Sound like whistling
-
Kargyraa: Deep, sustained breath and open vowels
-
Choomej: middle high register, softer than sygyt
-
Borbanganady: softer and more ssteady than kargyraa but similr
-
Ezengileer: dynamic pulsing in galloping rhythm
-
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