Reviews

The Musical Human: John Blackings Ethnomusicology in the Twenty-First

Century
SUZEL ANA REILY (ed.)
Aldershot, Hants, Ashgate, 2006
234 pp., ISBN: 0-7546-5138-X (47.50)
In The Musical Human, Suzel Ana Reily and eight other scholars examine the legacy
of John Blacking and reassess the relevance of Blackings theoretical paradigms for
ethnomusicology in the 21st century. Each author discusses particular aspects of
Blackings work in relation to their own research and, in doing so, shows how
Blackings work still has much to contribute to contemporary debates in
ethnomusicology. In the opening chapter Suzel Ana Reily introduces the reader to
John Blacking the human being. Reily is passionate in her belief that Blacking was
one of the few scholars within ethnomusicology to have provided the discipline with
both an extensive body of field data as well as a wide range of readings of the
material (p. 12). Throughout the chapter Reily moves effortlessly from bibliographic
details regarding Blackings academic and personal life to provide the reader with an
analytical analysis of Blackings theoretical ideas and scholarly output.
Following on from Reily, Keith Howards discussion of Blackings approach to
fieldwork among the Venda forms the basis for Chapter 2. In particular, Howard
draws attention to the meticulous methods employed by Blacking to record his
fieldwork data. Howard claims that the reflexive methods used by Blacking during his
fieldwork placed him ahead of his time, so much so that Blackings initial 20 months
of fieldwork provided him with enough ethnographic data for the rest of his career
and enabled him to engage in scholarly debates in many areas outside ethnomusicol-
ogy.
In Chapter 3 Jaco Kruger focuses upon notions of tonal reinterpretation in Venda
guitar songs. Throughout the chapter Kruger uses the Venda metaphor The
offspring of the mouse follow the ancestral tracks (Nwana wa mbveha ha hangwi
mukwita) (p. 40) to investigate how new forms of meaning are constructed by
musicians when they reinterpret traditional songs. Through deep analysis, including
the use of pictures and musical transcriptions, the author demonstrates how
alternative local meanings are formulated in response to global influences. Without
this detailed analysis of Venda guitar songs, their history and how they have
ISSN 1741-1912 (print)/ISSN 1741-1920 (online)/06/020315-24
# 2006 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/17411910600955253
Ethnomusicology Forum
Vol. 15, No. 2, November 2006, pp. 315338
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developed, Kruger states that A diminishing world apparently conditioned by
overwhelming homogenizing forces easily fools us into technical explanations of
globalization which may misinterpret the meaning of local musics (p. 65).
Deborah James appropriates the title of Blackings (1964) book, Black Background,
a biography written in conjunction with a young Venda girl, as her title for Chapter 4.
Here James combines the life histories of contemporary Venda women with
Blackings theoretical discussions of virtual time in order to examine how life
histories and changing practices influence the role of music and dance activities in
communities in Vendaland. At the centre of the James discussion is the dance known
as kiba, a dance traditionally performed by men, which has only recently been
acknowledged as a female performance genre (p. 75). James writes about how
participation by women migrants in kiba, in which they draw upon their experiences
of participating in initiation ceremonies, has led to special kinds of relationships
forming between the participants. James states that it is in the studying of the
endorsing/configuring and the transforming possibilities of this performance
genre for the women involved that Blackings legacy should be employed in relation
to the study of popular and/or migrant styles (p. 74).
Leaving the ethnographic context of Vendaland, Chapter 5 examines musicality in
early childhood as a sign that all humans are inherently musical. Here Fumiko Fujita
focuses upon her research with infants and children in Japanese nurseries and
discusses how Blackings research on Venda childrens songs (1967) still has relevance
for ethnomusicology. By examining how the learning process of young children
emerges through their negotiation with the environment (p. 97), Fumiko
demonstrates that young children develop mechanisms in conjunction with their
speech development which enable them to acquire their musical skills, which are
marked by both cultural and biological factors (p. 105).
In Chapter 6 John Baily focuses upon Blackings (1992) concept of the biology of
music making in his comparison of the playing styles of two plucked lutes, the rubab
and the dutar, from Afghanistan. In this chapter Baily discusses the original Social
Science Research Council grant application (Blacking and Baily 1973), which later
enabled him to undertake field research in Afghanistan. Central to Bailys research
methodology was the learning of musical instruments in the field, although, as Baily
states, at that time [l]earning to perform was to be regarded as a side-issue, a bonus,
but not something to be considered seriously (p. 146); indeed, no mention was
made of this approach on the original grant application. Today, Baily (2001) regards
learning to perform as an integral part of ethnomusicological fieldwork and this is
shown through the clarity with which the author describes the interaction between
the human body and the playing of Afghani lutes. Concluding this chapter, Baily (p.
122) calls for further research into the area of cognitive ethnomusicology in order
that more scholars may apply Blackings ideas concerning the interface between
humans and musical instruments.
In Chapter 7 Helena Wulff turns our attention away from the body in relation to
instrumental playing techniques and focuses on the dancing body, another area of
316 Reviews
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ethnomusicological enquiry to which Blacking contributed substantially (1969ae,
1973, 1985). Wulff first examines the painful movements performed by girls in the
various Venda initiation schools before using Blackings findings to investigate
notions of pleasure, pain and power in connection with the ballet body. Through her
analysis Wulff states that pain can be a means of disciplining the body (Foucault
1979); however, pain can also lead to transcendental states of flow (Csikszentmihalyi
1999) where it is transformed into pleasure. Wulff refers to this transformation
as flow, when dancers forget the technique and the dancing become effortless
(p. 137).
In the penultimate chapter Rebecca Sager outlines Blackings theory of identity and
transcendental states and applies this to her own research regarding Haitian Vodou
singing and spirit possession. Sager writes that [s]ince music can engage emotions
while coordinating interaction between self and others, the power of musical
experience is that it may bring about an individuals full emotional development and
social integration (p. 146). Understanding the semiotic qualities of Vodou singing
and the movement of the body in performance is integral to Sagers analysis of Vodou
possession. Such an approach enables the author to highlight the ways in which the
musical experience of individuals is central to the creation of transcendent states
that meld the self and the other in common humanity (p. 168).
In the final chapter Britta Sweers examines the legacy of Blackings work
concerning the application of ethnomusicological methods to the study of Western
European art music. Sweers begins by quoting Kerman, who states that Blacking has
not done anything to help us with Western music, however much he may have helped
us with the repertory of Venda childrens songs (1985, p. 167, emphasis in original).
Throughout the chapter Sweers discusses many of the criticisms levelled at Blacking
in relation to some of his broad statements on music and his deeply felt belief that an
understanding of Venda music could help explain Western European art music.
However, Sweers highlights the fact that, in spite of their criticisms of ethnomusicol-
ogy, many music departments deeply rooted in the study of historical musicology are
now employing ethnomusicologists to teach various forms of world and popular
musics. The author also notes that ethnomusicology has much to offer historical
musicologists, many of whom now focus their analysis within the wider cultural
context relating to specific periods of musical development. In conclusion, Sweers
doubts that ethnomusicology will ever replace historical musicology but the author
does stress that ethnomusicology can provide an extremely enriching complement to
historical musicology, providing a specific method for viewing music through the
eyes of the other, and it is for this reason that Blackings research on the Venda is so
important.
This book is more than a posthumous salute to one of arguably the great
ethnomusicologists of the 20th century. Although it is retrospective to a degree, the
main purpose of The Musical Human is to propagate some of Blackings important
theoretical paradigms and show how they have been used in relation to the analysis of
different studies of music and dance in the various parts of the world. Among the
Ethnomusicology Forum 317
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ethnomusicologists (and anthropologists) Suzel Ana Reily has brought together to
contribute to this volume, some were Blackings students and colleagues. However,
the volume also includes essays by scholars who never met John Blacking but who
have found inspiration in his work and found it to be applicable to their own
research. The Musical Human is a testament to Blackings belief that human beings
are innately musical. The book does not set out to provide an overview of Blackings
scholarly output. Instead, it more than achieves its aim of demonstrating the
relevance of Blackings ideas for ethnomusicology in the 21st century and for future
generations of ethnomusicologists.
References
Baily, John. 2001. Learning to perform as a research technique in ethnomusicology. British Journal
of Ethnomusicology 10 (2): 8598.
Blacking, John. 1964. Black background: The childhood of a South African girl . London and New
York: Abelard Schuman.
***. 1967. Venda childrens songs: A study in ethnomusicological analysis . Johannesburg:
Witwatersrand University Press.
***. 1969a. Initiation and the balance of power: The Tshikanda Girls Initiation School of the
Venda of the Northern Transvaal. Ethnological and Linguistic Studies in Honour of N. J. van
Warmelo. Pretoria: Department of Bantu Administration and Development, pp. 318.
***. 1969b. Songs, dances, mimes and symbolism of the Venda girls initiation schools, Part I,
Vhusha. African Studies 28 (1): 335.
***. 1969c. Songs, dances, mimes and symbolism of the Venda girls initiation schools, Part II,
Milayo. African Studies 28 (2): 69118.
***. 1969d. Songs, dances, mimes and symbolism of the Venda girls initiation schools, Part III,
Domba. African Studies 28 (3): 14999.
***. 1969e. Songs, dances, mimes and symbolism of the Venda girls initiation schools, Part IV,
The great Domba song. African Studies 28 (4): 21566.
***. 1973. How musical is man? . Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press.
***. 1985. Movement, dance, music, and the Venda girls initiation cycle. In Society and the
dance: The social anthropology of process and performance, edited by P. Spencer. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, pp. 6491.
***. 1992. The biology of music-making? In Ethnomusicology: An introduction, edited by H.
Myers. London: Macmillan, pp. 30114.
Blacking, John, and John Baily. 1973. A cross-cultural study of music skills. Unpublished SSRC
application for a research grant.
Csikszentmihalyi, Mihalyi. 1990. Flow. New York: Harper Perennial.
Foucault, Michel. 1979. Discipline and punishment: The birth of the prison. New York: Vintage.
Kerman, Josef. 1985. Contemplating music: Challenges to musicology. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press.
JONATHAN MCINTOSH
University of Western Australia, Perth WA, Australia
jonathanmcintosh@yahoo.com
318 Reviews
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Unplayed Melodies: Javanese Gamelan and the Genesis of Music Theory
MARC PERLMAN
Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, University of California Press, 2004
254 pp., ISBN: 0-520-23956-3
On one level this book addresses a topic that is not only familiar but also one on
which we might have thought the last word had been said at least ten years ago. On
another it presents a subtly subversive interpretation which takes us far from the
confines of Javanese gamelan towards a reconsideration of music theory in its
broadest sense. There are thus two strands: the main one investigates the behaviour of
melody in Javanese gamelan music, sandwiched in six chapters between the outer
two, which adopt a comparative approach to musical cognition and creativity.
Indeed, the first of these two chapters hardly discusses gamelan music at all. One
lesson to take from this approach is that music theory sits rather uncomfortably in an
oral, intuitive tradition and it is well known that moves towards a written theory of
gamelan music, as well as some of its key terminology, were inspired by a dialogue
between Javanese and Western intellectuals. The principal Javanese theorists discussed
in this book, as well as its author himself, are of the same generation and all have wide
experience of both Javanese and Western modes of thought (and, of course, all are
expert gamelan performers and teachers).
Drawing on his doctoral dissertation (Wesleyan University, 1994) entitled
Unplayed melodies: Music theory in postcolonial Java, Perlman announces his
aim to examine Javanese concepts of unplayed melody and also, crucially, to
distinguish between the study of music as music and, in the case of this study, as a
product of how musicians think creatively about their music, discovering, rather than
merely replicating, a received tradition. As such the book sits well within mainstream
ethnomusicology. Adopting a postmodern stance, Perlman argues that a variety of
disparate models may coexist within even a small community (p. 17). He refers to
this as disarticulated knowledge (p. 17) and explores the tension between classical
(rule based) and nonclassical (fuzzy boundaries within family resemblances) (pp.
19, 36). We must be careful not to equate music theory with either, despite the
temptation to see it as a set of rules.
Central to the discussion of unplayed melodies is the nature of the core melody of
Javanese gamelan music, very much a played one, known as balungan (skeleton). This
is almost all that is given (or needed) in notation to represent the whole piece, which
obviously enhances the balungans status. The word has no literal sense of melody
and for that word the best Javanese equivalent is lagu. This is where much debate has
occurred over the last 50 years, lurching from acceptance of the balungans role as the
main melody in a gamelan composition to its replacement, most notably in
Sumarsams concept of inner melody, by ideas of truer melodic guides which are
actually unplayed. An examination of the wide variety of types of balungan will lead
to the conclusion that many could not possibly serve as a useful melodic guide and
they could hardly be described as melodies at all. The idea that vocal music assumes
Ethnomusicology Forum 319
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primacy, even in a predominantly instrumental genre such as gamelan, makes good
sense. It comes as no great surprise, therefore, to learn that the Javanese find lagu first
in vocal melodies. The late Martopangrawit, a highly influential teacher, theorist and
gamelan performer, attached great importance to humming as a mnemonic aid.
Perlman gives a fascinating example which reveals that vocal parts, and that of the
most vocal of instruments, the bowed rebab, were dominant in Martopangrawits
choice of what to include in his hummed paraphrase of the piece. This should help
answer the strange question left hanging on p. 168 as to why Sumarsam idealized the
rebab part, added to which is the fact that the Javanese regard it as the melodic leader.
(Also, the books cover photo focuses on the rebab, played by one of the Javanese
musicians studied in its pages: the late Suhardi.) The actual notation of
Martopangrawits humming does not, however, indicate what it sounded like (except
to those who already know the parts it performed).
Following the ideas of Martopangrawit, Perlman rescues the balungan, to the
extent of agreeing that it both does and does not guide the elaborating parts. In other
words, a set of rules or expectations has exceptions, and they are rather plentiful in
the case of the balungan, but they do not thereby negate the concept or function. He
brilliantly summarizes the problem, paving the way for his detailed examination of
melodic guidance in gamelan music, as follows:
The idea of the balungans guidance . . . evokes a simplified world, but it is no less
indigenous for that. However, the disarticulation between the ideal and reality of
the balungan-as-guide left a conceptual space that some musicians could fill with
virtual melodic guides. (p. 116)
What these virtual melodic guides might be is explored in three case studies,
spanning the 1960s to 1980s: in chronological order, those of Suhardi, Sumarsam and
Supanggah. As already implied, Sumarsams inner melody represents the most
radical and imaginative hypothesis. Common to Suhardis and Supanggahs
approaches is a focus on the idea of balungan and a search for the true melody
behind it. Perlman classes Suhardis concept of lagu as pedagogical in motivation,
while Supanggahs essential balungan and Sumarsams inner melody are
described as theoretical, responding to a need to indigenize gamelan theory, in
Sumarsams words, in line with a nationalistic, postcolonial agenda. Western theorists
had concentrated on an outer realm of audible melodies, while Sumarsam, an
insider, could explore the inner realm of the musicians intuition to redress the
misinterpretations by Western ethnomusicologists (p. 169).
Interestingly, the matter of humming returns: while Sumarsam argued that the
practice proved the existence of an inner melody, Supanggah downgraded it
somewhat by observing that musicians would tend to hum the part with which
they were most familiar. The important point to take from the discussion is that there
is not (and cannot be) such a thing as the unplayed melody. A key to understanding
how the Javanese think about their music lies in their famed indirectness (to the
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point of avoiding a straight yes or no as too crude) and love of riddles, stylization
and poetic connotation. At the same time we are warned against generalization and
falling into stereotypical Orientalist views of the inscrutable Oriental.
Following the central discussion of unplayed melodies in Javanese gamelan music,
Perlman returns to his meditation on the genesis of music theory. The gamut is wide,
spanning the late Renaissance to the 20th century, and much of the discussion
concerns Lippiuss theories of trias harmonica and Rameaus basse fondamentale.
What we get is emphatically not a comparison of how those European concepts
worked with what had been discovered about Javanese unplayed melodies, and in fact
not a single example is given, although a perfectly clear verbal summary of the
common features is. (I personally find it quite hard to see the similarities.) This is not
a return to the more unfruitful kind of comparative musicology but what Perlman
describes as a repatriation of ethnomusicology, which is by no means a new idea, yet
it replaces comparisons of superficial musical similarities with at least the potential to
deepen our understanding of our own culture, through exposure to others, by means
of a comparison of musical processes: towards universals in cognitive processes rather
than cognitive content. That also renders irrelevant the question of whether chord
roots and fundamental basses are the ideal or most obvious points of comparison
between European and Javanese music, and Perlman concedes that, in itself, his quest
for the ancestry of the chord root may not be of great moment (p. 199).
Perlmans great achievement is in balancing his extensive knowledge of the
workings of Javanese gamelan music and its cultural framework with a masterly
consideration of what this local musical analysis might tell us about attitudes to
music in the broadest context. As such, his book will obviously be essential reading to
anyone interested in gamelan music, at its simplest and most complex levels (though
the relative brevity restrained him from divulging all but a fraction of his knowledge),
but it should also be read by ethnomusicologists and anyone else who is concerned
with how music works and how it is perceived. It has already been enthusiastically
welcomed into the fields of ethnomusicology and music theory, as witnessed by the
many American awards it has received. The lack of a CD may seem odd in this day
and age, and of course one would have been welcome, though to expect audio
examples of unplayed melodies is palpably unreasonable, even if Martopangrawits
humming might have transported us at least towards that imaginary domain.
Another necessity forced on the publication is that examples are sometimes separated
from their explanation and discussion, which can be confusing. The music examples
combine the customary cipher system of gamelan music with European staff
notation, inevitably modified to fit the unique tunings. In one of them (Example
10, p. 52) the effective range of the gende`r barung is skewed, with around four notes
removed from the top instead of the bottom. None of these minor points detracts
from the books authoritative analysis and fertility of ideas, offering a radical
reinterpretation of how cognitive processes shape music theory, though, in the case of
Javanese gamelan, a relatively young and fragile one.
Ethnomusicology Forum 321
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NEIL SORRELL
University of York, UK
nfis1@york.ac.uk
The Black Cows Footprint: Time, Space and Music in the Lives of the Kotas of
South India
RICHARD K. WOLF
Urbana, IL, University of Illinois Press, 2006
352 pp. (with CD), ISBN: 0-252-03116-4 ($85.00)
Indian edition: Delhi, Permanent Black
ISBN: 81-7824-126-9
The music of South Asian tribal communities a term used unblushingly in the
subcontinent remains one of the most under-researched areas of Indic musicology
and yet one of the most intriguing. Richard Wolf s welcome new study of Kota music
and culture not only provides rich new data on the music of an important tribal
community, but also offers new ways of thinking about tribal music, and music in
general, that escape traditional categories and acknowledge both the distinctive and
the universal in Kota life.
The Kota, one of several minority groups living in the Nilgiri mountains of South
India, were formerly regarded as musical service providers to their Toda and Badaga
neighbours, but Wolf finds that this subservient role has now been abandoned: he
describes a contemporary reality in which music is an integral component of the
Kotas own culture, and of vital importance for Kota identity, although its
transmission becomes problematic in the modern world. The study focuses on the
village of Kolmel, and is grounded in extensive fieldwork and observant participation,
with reference also to the work of earlier scholars of Nilgiri peoples, such as
Mandelbaum and Emmenau.
The author has ambitions well beyond straightforward descriptive ethnography. He
describes his study as an inquiry into the ways in which the Kotas . . . make and
remake aspects of themselves and their world through music, dance and other
activities, an inquiry motivated by an interest in how aspects of space, place and
time are socially deployed or constructed. His hypothesis is that the meanings and
emotive significance of their music for Kotas derive from its temporal and spatial
contexts and associations. Music is thus no different from other, non-musical cultural
phenomena which signify in similar ways, and can be analysed in similar terms:
Critical aspects of musics cultural meaning within and beyond the Kota context
may be discovered by examining phenomena that are non-musical, or not directly
musical (p. 219). After an extensive introduction placing his subject in the context of
tribal music and broader perspectives, and outlining his fieldwork methods, we
have chapters on Kota instrumental and vocal music and dance genres; the
transmission of music and musical culture; points of anchor in musical
performance, topography, the calendar and other domains; and two major religious
322 Reviews
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ritual complexes involving music, the god ceremony and both primary and
secondary funerary rituals, interpreted as ways of ceremonializing the self . There
are also chapters ranging further beyond music, on the capacity of places for bearing
meaning, and on sources of affect in Kota culture. In the final chapter spatio-
temporal forms of identity discussed in the book are summarized with reference to
the philosophy of temporal experience. There is a glossary and a commendably
thorough index. There are four short music examples, transcribed and analysed with
meticulous attention to detail, and 16 pages of photographs. The CD that
accompanies the book (US edition only), and is referred to frequently in the text,
forms a valuable addition to the sound documentation of South Asian tribal music
and makes up for the rather small number of examples transcribed and analysed in
the book; it contains no fewer than 39 tracks, and includes instrumental and vocal
examples, syllabic vocalization of instrumental music, and forest sounds, carefully
listed with page references to relevant discussion in the text.
Sometimes the exploration of non-musical domains seems to become an end in
itself, and the connections of, say, the layout of the Kota house with music appear
somewhat distant (pp. 95ff.). But elsewhere the focus on space-time relationships
throws into prominence tangible interconnections that might otherwise have gone
unnoticed or appeared random, such as the temporal implications of the shawms
ritual roles for the spaces in which learners can practise (p. 107). The attention given
to affective aspects of experience is welcome, and, by drawing on his fieldwork for
anecdotes and interviews, Wolf is able to include the reported or observed
experiences of both individuals and groups in his narrative. At times analogies
appear, to this reader at least, overstretched or concepts elusive. Gaps in a drum
pattern, created artfully by players for rhythmic effect, hardly seem comparable with
gaps in an inadequately trained musicians knowledge (p. 127). The concept
spacetime, derived from anthropology and explained as a definable pattern with
respect to both time and space within which a set of related events is performed (p.
3), is a useful shorthand that reminds and helps us to integrate spatial and temporal
factors in the analysis of a musical event, but its explanatory force seems limited by its
all-inclusiveness. This reviewer feels on firmer ground with Wolf s taxonomy of four
spatiotemporal concepts: anchoring, centripetence, centrifugality and interlocking,
all of which can be used to link musical performance and other forms of social
interaction (p. 4 and passim). Thus, anchoring can be seen in the periodic re-
alignment of a shawm melody with its percussion accompaniment or in the re-
alignment of society and the supernatural world in the celebration of a calendrical
festival. Sophisticated taxonomies of spatio-temporal and other concepts are
introduced from time to time, often drawing on semiotic theory, but they are
applied flexibly to reflect complexity in real-life data, and there are many examples
where the authors insight and discrimination highlight the variety and richness of
lived experience.
This book offers a wealth of data, ideas and perceptions. It is a challenging read, as
the author draws with seemingly effortless versatility from intellectual disciplines as
Ethnomusicology Forum 323
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diverse as anthropology, semiotics, philosophy, phenomenology, linguistics, cogni-
tion, South Asian studies and ethnomusicology. But it thereby addresses a much
broader theme than that of tribal music in South Asia, while at the same time
making a notable contribution to that field by re-focusing it in new directions. Wolf
succeeds in describing music and other cultural domains as what Blacking would
have called dialectically interrelated parts of a total system (1971), but it is a system
of relations that extends far beyond the Nilgiris. This book gives the reader a strong
sense of having been welcomed into a Kota village, of having tasted vicariously the
emotional tenor of Kota life, and having thereby learned much about music, space,
time, meaning and human experience.
Reference
Blacking, John. 1971. Deep and surface structures in Venda music. Yearbook of the International Folk
Music Council 3: 91108.
RICHARD WIDDESS
SOAS, University of London, UK
rw4@soas.ac.uk
Performing Democracy: Bulgarian Music and Musicians in Transition
DONNA A. BUCHANAN
Chicago, IL, and London, University of Chicago Press, 2006
xxiv/519 pp. (with CD), ISBN: 0-226-07826-4 (cloth $75.00), 0-226-07827-2 (pbk
$30.00)
Performing Democracy focuses on the interplay of music, politics and social identity
during the turbulent decade of 1986 to 1996, when Bulgaria moved from Soviet
influenced socialism to democracy and aspiring capitalism. Based on intensive
fieldwork and research which spanned more than 15 years and contributed to a
dissertation and several articles, this expansive publication provides a detailed
chronicle of musical life in Bulgaria during this critical decade. Building on inquiry
into musical performance as social process and musical life as social life (Seeger
1987), the author examines how conceptualizations and implications of democracy
were played out musically and how musicians performed socialism in the service of
Communist principles (p. xix). This is achieved through a focus on the folk ensemble
as established after World War II, further elaborated through the experiences of
individual members (primarily instrumentalists) of these ensembles and illustrated
with contextualized musical analysis and transcriptions.
Events in contemporary Bulgaria pivot around 10 November 1989, when the 78-
year-old Premier Todor Zhivkov (Eastern Europes longest ruling dictator) was
removed from power. This is the most recent of several before and after
conceptualizations which mark nationalist discourse in Bulgaria and which include
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9 September 1944 (the formation of the Peoples Republic of Bulgaria) and 1878
(the liberation from Ottoman rule which began in 1393). While cautious of the
essentializing dichotomies common in discussing modernizing states in general, and
in anthropological studies of Europe in particular, Buchanan acknowledges the
relevance of such oppositional constructs in light of their prevalence in Bulgarian
discourse. The coherence of the books narrative derives in large measure from the
authors engagement with the ongoing oppositions of before/after, or past/present,
rural/urban, socialist/democratic, East/West. Indeed, Buchanan argues that the entire
folk ensemble world was created to bridge these dichotomies, where it retained, to
varying extents, the distinctive landscape of both shores; but as an innovative,
hybridic type of cultural performance, both nationalist and socialist in form and
content, it took on a significance and life of its own (p. 8).
The book adeptly straddles this 1989 divide as the author eschews chronology in
favour of multidimensional, emergent and contested narratives (following Clifford
1986). In doing so, Buchanan turns to the notion of ethnohistoricism, as influenced
by Herzfeld (1997) and Abu-Lughod (1991), and its attention to ethnographically
solicited perceptions of the past, which, though often multivalent and even disparate,
usually connect to the economic and political realities shaping the moments they
capture (p. 27). The result as presented here is intended to privilege systemic
processes over simple chronology, paradigmatic conceptualizations over syntagmatic
associations, and the synchronicity of manifold events and practices over their
diachronic occurrence or evolution (p. xvii).
The books twelve chapters (organized into three sections) present different sides of
the same story, and can be read as self-contained case studies (a feature advantageous
to course reading lists). Informed by an ethnographic commensalism (Chapter 2)
which incorporates the authors narrative presentational voice with the voices of
other, ethnographically derived participants in ways in which the two are interrelated
though not synonymous, the book is characterized by clear writing ever mindful of
positionality and intention (Chapter 5 provides a particularly interesting example of
dialogic writing).
Socialist Culture in Transition orients the reader historically, ethnographically,
musically, conceptually and theoretically in five chapters whose 223 pages comprise
almost half of the text. The first chapter introduces the oppositions inherent in
Bulgaria through anecdotes of ethnographic encounter, historical summary and
Bulgarian self-conceptualization. An illuminating examination of the terms natsiya
(nation), narod (people) and narodno (national) leads the author to conclude that
narodno is an inherently cosmopolitan concept (following Turino 2000) in its fusion
of socialist politics, village traditions and West European artistic ideals (p. 43).
Despite an international origin, its forms are local and here manifest in the ensemble
(narodni ansambli ), orchestra (narodni orkestri ), music (narodna muzika) and
musicians (narodni muzikanti ) which the book then goes on to explore as
constitutive of new cosmopolitan lifeways and identities. Subsequent chapters trace
the transformation of music and musicianship from the village square (Chapter 3) to
Ethnomusicology Forum 325
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the folk orchestra of the 1980s (Chapters 4 and 5), with particular attention to the
Koutev and Radio Ensembles and the development of obrabotki (musical arrange-
ments). Of the numerous factors which Buchanan shows contribute to the
development of an idealized national identity as communicated by these folk
orchestras, the so-called Ottoman legacy and influential Rom subculture (in
particular as they relate to concepts of authenticity) are discussed comprehensively
and adeptly not only in this section, but as recurrent themes in the book.
Nationalist Narratives: Marketing Bulgarian Identities through Folk Ensemble
Tableaus consists of four chapters which focus on a different ensemble and
distinctive (regional) perspectives on nationalist discourse through performance. The
author here explores variations of the absolute transformation of everyday village
life into ideologically driven theatrical displays of music and dance packaged for
commercial consumption and selective in substance, especially regarding religious
and minority culture (p. 229). Chapter 6 begins with the Koutev Ensemble (founded
by Phillip Koutev in 1951), which was the first Bulgarian professional and national
ensemble and also the first to receive funding from the federal government.
Subsequent chapters trace regional paths of ensemble representation and perfor-
mance: Pirin (Chapter 7), with an extended analysis of the political implications of a
name (Pirin vs. Macedonia); Rodopa (Chapter 8) and discourses of authenticity
(with extended exploration of the cultural and musical perceptions of the Ottoman
legacy); Thrace (Chapter 9) and Ensemble Trakiyas interest in folkloric theatre and
the formulation of a national (neotraditional) canon.
The final three chapters, found in Ethnography and Antistructure, provide
distinctive case studies which realign the discussion in relation to the world music
market and transnational commodification. The first of these focuses on the
ensemble Balkana and on Le myste`re des voix bulgares (which features the womens
folk choirs of the Radio and Koutev Ensembles singing complex obrabotki ). Here
Buchanan adroitly untangles the complex of processes and personalities which
contributed to the redefining of neotraditional musical styles, once associated with
professional folk ensembles, as part of the international world beat or global pop
market during these transition years. She also examines how gendered stereotypes
associated with female choristers transformed narodna muzika from a manifestation
of socialist cultural policy into an exotic commercial product marked by an
Orientalist mystique (p. 343). The following chapter (Chapter 11) offers a compelling
case study of song as social history. By comparing various performances of the
traditional song Dilmano, dilbero (Dilmano, beautiful girl), Buchanan explores its
different layers of meaning as the social, economic and political factors which
influence music-making shift. The final chapter explores the impact of democratiza-
tion and privatization in Bulgaria in the early and mid-1990s by considering popfolk,
newly composed Macedonian songs and the demise and transformation of the folk
ensemble sphere. Buchanan concludes by returning to those ensemble musicians
whose voices informed previous chapters and examining how they have continued to
negotiate emergent social, political and economic realities in order to maintain a
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living through alternative (music) paths sometimes tracing their lives to America
and to a variety of transnational musical ventures, sometimes following them to
retirement or to the disillusionment of silence.
Thirty-one recordings complement the text, of which 25 illustrate the final three
chapters. This disproportionate representation addresses issues of access, since other
repertoires discussed in the book are more readily available, either through
commercial releases or as found in Rice (1994, 2004). These recorded examples,
together with song texts, transcriptions, numerous figures and plates are all found on
the accompanying CD-ROM. Indeed, my one reservation concerns this format, since
(with the exception of a few song texts) all supporting and illustrative material is
found only on the CD-ROM. Although this renders the work extremely useful in
teaching, it inhibits easy reading, given that a computer is required to access a given
song text, plate or transcription at the appropriate point in the text.
Neither this nor a very few editorial slips should in any way detract from the
undisputable strength of Buchanans work, which is exemplary in its scholarship,
clarity of thought, lucid writing and intellectual breadth. This is an extraordinarily rich
book which illuminates a myriad of issues with precision and insight; given its
breadth, depth and detail, it is sure to become an invaluable resource in Balkan studies.
In addition to making a substantial contribution to ethnomusicological literature on
Eastern Europe in general and Bulgaria in particular, the books innovative approach
to ethnographic narrative, together with its creative engagement with current issues,
makes it a notable addition to ethnomusicology as a whole. As such, it should quickly
find a place on many a required undergraduate and graduate reading list.
References
Abu-Lughod, Lila. 1991. Writing against culture. In Recapturing anthropology: Working in the
present , edited by G. Fox Richard. Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research Press, pp.
13762.
Clifford, James. 1986. Introduction: Partial truths. In Writing culture: The poetics and politics of
ethnography, edited by James Clifford and George Marcus. Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA:
University of California Press, pp. 126.
Herzfeld, Michael. 1997. Cultural intimacy: Social poetics in the nation-state. New York: Routledge.
Rice, Timothy. 1994. May it ll your soul: Experiencing Bulgarian music . Chicago, IL: University of
Chicago Press.
***. 2004. Music in Bulgaria: Experiencing music, expressing culture. New York and Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Seeger, Anthony. 1987. Why Suya sing: A musical anthropology of an Amazonian people. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Turino, Thomas. 2000. Nationalists, cosmopolitans, and popular music in Zimbabwe. Chicago, IL:
University of Chicago Press.
LOUISE WRAZEN
Department of Music, York University, Canada
lwrazen@yorku.ca
Ethnomusicology Forum 327
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Maluf: Reflections on the Arab Andalusian Music of Tunisia
RUTH F. DAVIS
Lanham, MD, Scarecrow Press, 2004
xi/135 pp., ISBN: 0-8108-5138-5 (cloth $30.00)
This book reassembles and expands upon the authors previously published research
on the Arab Andalusian music (al-musqa al-andalusiyya) of Tunisia, where the genre
is referred to simply as maluf (familiar or customary). The author sums up her
main contributions clearly, pointing out that this is:
the first book in the English language on Tunisian music, or on any other national
tradition of al-musqa al-andalusiyya, and the only book in any language to survey
changes in the Tunisian tradition, since its modern revival in the early twentieth
century, within the framework of social, political, and musical developments in
Tunisia and the wider Middle East. (p. vi)
Maluf , like its sister traditions of al-musqa al-andalusiyya in Morocco, Algeria, and
Libya, is understood to be the product of the mass migrations of Muslims and Jews
from the Iberian Peninsula fleeing the Christian reconquista between the 10th and
17th centuries CE. Although Tunisian scholars continue to debate whether the
repertoire was imported in its entirety or instead developed locally in Tunisia and
merely enriched by exiled Andalusians, it is generally accepted that this music thrived
and developed in Sufi lodges and cafes (many associated with Andalusian
communities) of the urban coastal regions of northern Tunisia. During the early
20th century, the maluf was co-opted by the emerging nationalist elite as a symbol of
the modern nation-state. In order to achieve this status, however, several major
changes had to be made. Maluf was taken out of the Sufi lodges and cafes and placed
on the concert stage. State-sponsored music institutions were established, Western
notation was employed in transcribing and transmitting the tradition and European
instrumentation and orchestration were introduced. These tools provided maluf
with a new spirit and dimension purportedly consonant with the countrys
secularizing and modernizing agenda. Maluf: Reflections on the Arab Andalusian
Music of Tunisia is largely about the nature of this transformation, the cultural
politics driving it and its impact on musical practice.
The first chapter of the book situates maluf within the larger context of Middle
Eastern music. It details the structural, melodic and rhythmic components of the
nuba, the large-scale song cycle characterized by unity of melodic mode and diversity
of rhythmic modes. An analysis of nubat al-ska leads Davis elegantly to liken the
aesthetics of the nuba to those of the Arab garden: circular walls mirror the cyclic
nature of the nuba, several structural levels operate simultaneously and all paths lead
to a (tonal) centre.
The second chapter presents and evaluates the contribution of the Baron Rodolphe
dErlanger to the study of Arabic music generally and Tunisian music specifically.
From 1921 to 1932 the Baron, a French aristocrat, lived in the idyllic cliff-top village
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of Sidi Bou Said just north of Tunis. Tunisians generally remember dErlanger as an
enthusiastic patron of maluf who bemoaned what he perceived as the decline of this
music due to the limitations of the oral tradition. By collaborating with local
musicians, he sought to contribute to its revival by identifying and codifying the
theoretical basis for the music. To that end, he published the monumental six-volume
work La musique arabe, which consisted of French translations of major Arabic music
treatises as well as a codification of the Arabic musical scale, melodic modes,
rhythmic patterns and compositional forms.
DErlanger was also a co-organizer of the historic 1932 Cairo Congress of Arab
Music. One of the outcomes of this international congress was an imperative for
representatives to establish music conservatories for the preservation and develop-
ment of Arabic music traditions in their home countries. In Tunisia, this took the
form of the Rashidiyya Institute, which was established in 1934. Chapter 3 focuses on
the institutes aims and initiatives, with a particular emphasis on the implications and
ramifications of the transformation from oral to written modes of transmission.
At first, the adoption of musical notation was a pragmatic response to the
Rashidiyyas attempt to form an ensemble comprised of the most prominent sheikhs
of Tunis. Since each sheikh had a unique interpretation of the melodies, the first
rehearsals of the ensemble were chaotic. Notation was introduced as a means of
getting all the musicians to play the same version. Each sheikh was asked to play his
own version, and then a composite transcription was made from all the versions.
Although the new, authoritative version was unfamiliar to everyone . . . each shaykh
recognised the portions he had contributed and everyone had to admit that this was
the version they had agreed upon (p. 53).
Did this result in the freezing of a previously malleable tradition? Through a
comparative analysis of four versions of a vocal section of nubat al-a/s
:
bahan (the
original from 1935, the official published score of the late 1950s and master notations
for performances in 1962 and 1982), Davis concludes that the notation of tradition
did not result in a single authoritative version of the maluf ; rather, the transcriptions
enabled successive leaders of the Rashidiyya ensemble to propose their own versions,
some closer to the original than others.
As part of the larger project of culturally unifying the nation, maluf was
designated Tunisias official national musical heritage after independence in 1956. The
Rashidiyya provided all the materials necessary for the government to introduce
maluf to areas where it was previously unknown. In addition to circulating the
official notated versions of maluf , it provided provincial centres with musical
instruments and set up a cycle of maluf festivals and competitions across the country.
Chapter 4 examines the maluf of Testour, a town founded by Andalusian refugees
and boasting a strong maluf tradition of its own. Through another comparative
analysis of four different versions of a nuba extract, Davis interrogates the
assumption that the official, published maluf notations led to the demise of regional
traditions. She demonstrates that, although the published versions of the maluf were
Ethnomusicology Forum 329
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distributed around the country, the maluf of Testour shows little evidence of being
replaced, or even influenced, by the published version from Tunis.
The penultimate chapter of the book traces the relationship between maluf and
mass-mediated songs. In addition to its goal of creating a national music, the
Rashidiyya was formed in partial response to the increasing vogue for new Egyptian
(or Egyptian-inspired) popular songs disparaged by critics. At the time of its
establishment, the Rashidiyya was seen as replacing the commercial imperative of
professional musicians by the moral imperative of dedicated amateurs (p. 97). By
the 1980s, however, the Rashidiyya was criticized by some for turning the maluf into
a museum piece with little or no relevance in modern Tunisian society. Then, in the
1990s, the state monopoly on music education and amateur music making was
broken as new president Ben Ali came to power. The final chapter examines this
period, when the first private music conservatories appeared, each with its own
emphases and specializations. Davis describes how popular artists reinterpreted the
maluf repertoire in new ways, such as returning to the pre-Rashidiyya aesthetics of
smaller, more improvisational ensembles. Informal clubs recreating the lost
experience of the salon gatherings were formed, and very successful all-female maluf
ensembles were established. The opening up of the maluf repertoire to these
alternative modes of performance was partly due to the new governments policy of
cultural decentralization.
Readers looking for thick ethnographic description or an engagement with theories
of nationalism and postcolonialism may be disappointed; a concluding chapter
comparing the story of maluf to other musical nationalisms in the region, however
speculative, would have been a welcome addition to the book. Apart from these
misgivings (and a few editorial oversights some of the in-text citations are absent
from the list of references), this is an important work that provides a critical, clear
and concise analysis of the impact of Tunisian cultural nationalism on, and through,
the medium of music.
RICHARD C. JANKOWSKY
Tufts University, MA, USA
richard.jankowsky@tufts.edu
The British Barbershopper: a Study in Socio-Musical Values
LIZ GARNETT
Aldershot, Hants, Ashgate, 2005
xii/201 pp., ISBN: 0-7546-3559-7 ($84.95/42.50)
For more than 40 years, the UK has been home to the most enthusiastic barbershop
singing movement outside the United States, with over 4000 singers actively involved
in choruses. Liz Garnett, in The British Barbershopper: a Study in Socio-Musical
Values , explores this diasporan practice with an eye to how the musical practices and
the social activities of the movement help to construct self-identity among its
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participants. At the outset of her study, Garnett questions how someone might sing
barbershop but not be a barbershopper. Her book responds to this question,
portraying what it means to be a British barbershopper and how this chosen identity
draws on the musical and social values associated with the style.
The author has interviewed many British participants from both the mens (BABS,
British Association of Barbershop Singers) and womens (LABBS, Ladies Association
of British Barbershop Singers) societies, reviewed primary and secondary documents
and provided insights from her own participation in barbershop singing. The result is
a very focused, readable and astute study that should find an appreciative audience
among scholars of popular music, ethnomusicologists, musicologists, sociologists
and, indeed, among barbershop participants. It constitutes a substantive contribution
to the study of identity, musical meaning, musical institutions and the sociology of
music, and it is one of only three scholarly monographs on barbershop singing.
Perhaps I should put a disclaimer on this review. In examining the narratives that
barbershoppers relate of their conversion to barbershop experiences, Liz Garnett
also looks the reflexive statements by scholars who have written about barbershop,
and my own narratives come in for perceptive scrutiny. In her conclusion (p. 181),
Garnett discusses the critical reaction to my background and subject position among
barbershoppers after the publication of my book Four Parts, No Waiting: a Social
History of American Barbershop Harmony (2003), and so I was intrigued to find
myself as a minor subject of this current study, rather than simply a secondary source.
Garnetts concern with scholarly authority is in line with the wider net that she casts
over barbershop discourse and the identities, values, ideologies and meanings
constructed through participation in the movement.
In contrast to the arguments in my own book, Garnett finds that British
barbershopping is less beholden to the intersection of nostalgia and the national
imaginary than its counterpart in the US, and she argues that the British movement
has been less affected by the debate over race and racial origins of the style. Although
the British barbershop societies affiliate with the American societies and take their
aesthetic cues and contest adjudication from them, there are, she argues, reasons to
look at the peculiarity of the British context and the special relationship to the text
and its reception among barbershoppers in the UK. Her focus on the ethnographic
present and on the motivations of barbershoppers allows this book to intersect nicely
with Robert A. Stebbins book, The Barber Shop Singer: Inside the Social World of a
Musical Hobby (1996).
In a series of essay-like chapters, the author explores: the metaphoric tension
between harmony as musical practice and as a social ideal (Chapter 2); how, with
little national connection to a barbershop historical past, British singers consecrate
their invented tradition with an intense dedication to the rituals of membership
(Chapter 3); how barbershop evangelism resembles that of religious sects (Chapter 4);
and how gender separation in barbershop has or has not resulted in a separate-
but-equal status (Chapter 5). Chapter 6 constitutes a search for the rationale behind
one of barbershop harmonys most idiosyncratic mannerisms, the refusal to perform
Ethnomusicology Forum 331
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pieces in strict metrical fashion. Barbershop arrangers and performers have preferred
an often phrase-by-phrase interpretation (balladizing) with frequent shifts of
tempo and dynamics. Garnett argues convincingly that the history of barbershop
performance practice has inculcated within barbershoppers a figural rather than a
structural mode of musical understanding, leading them to associate excessively
local interpretative gestures (i.e. confined to a phrase or two) with heartfelt
emotional content.
The author is at her descriptive and analytic best when she considers a mainstay of
contemporary barbershopping: tag-singing. A tag is equivalent to a coda in a
barbershop arrangement a short condensation in dramatic barbershop style of the
songs principal melodic and textual material, with opportunities to lock and ring
chords (produce extended sound through tuning consonant chords in just
intonation). It has become common for barbershop quartets at internal events
such as post-performance afterglows to sing just the decontextualized tags, and
singers who have never sung together in a quartet may launch together into one tag
after another (social tag singing). Garnett brings a keen ethnographic eye to the
analysis of the social interaction and communication involved in this practice. She
also distinguishes, interestingly, between the boisterous tags sung in standard
barbershop style (the screamers) and less canonical and more difficult forms of
tag performed late at night (the quiet or after hours tags). She assesses the lure of
the tag for barbershoppers, finding its appeal in its fragmentary and evanescent
nature, intended as vehicle for intimate musical communication among small groups
of insiders and not packaged for performance to an audience. Garnett eloquently
argues that tag singing creates a special bond among participants: to match vocal
qualities in the pursuit of expanded sound is to surrender a key marker of individual
identity (the grain of the voice), and to share a gestural representation of musical
shape is to share a way to inhabit [ones body] (p. 150).
It was not always clear to me, however, why the author employs certain theoretical
discourses and not others. For example, Garnetts approach to the ideological
practices of barbershoppers might suggest a nod to social movement theory or to
subcultural studies (especially as she considers the contrast between barbershopping
as a hobby and a lifestyle), but she chooses to refer to Weberian and post-Weberian
church-sect theory. This literature does indeed have valuable things to say about the
evangelical tone of barbershop outreach, but, overall, the effort seems a bit of a
stretch. Similarly, the detour into Judith Butlers theory of the performativity of
gender identity seems overwrought as a means of making the point that barbershop
identities are constructed. These concerns point to what I experienced as a minor flaw
of the book: a somewhat stiff relationship between theory and data. Nevertheless, a
number of interesting results are obtained from these juxtapositions of theory and
data, such as in the penultimate chapter, Chapter 8 (To be a barbershopper:
Theorizing music and identity). Here, drawing on Anthony Giddens, Garnett
classifies the entire institutional structure of barbershopping including its contest/
adjudication system, its chapter organization and its training and educational
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practices as a surveillance system designed to maintain a globally hegemonic
conception of the barbershop style. This is quite a powerful insight and I would have
loved to have seen it integrated more fully into the discussions of gender and of
British institutional autonomy.
Such insights, which are liberally sprinkled throughout this terrific book, illustrate
the fact that the author has illuminated not just the British form of barbershopping
but all of contemporary barbershop singing, and that, in doing so, she has made a
signal contribution to the study of how contemporary Westerners further the project
of the self through participation in networks and institutions of musical
performance.
References
Averill, Gage. 2003. Four parts, no waiting: A social history of American barbershop harmony. New
York: Oxford University Press.
Stebbins, Robert A. 1996. The barber shop singer: Inside the social world of a musical hobby. Toronto:
University of Toronto Press.
GAGE AVERILL
University of Toronto, Canada
gage.averill@utoronto.ca
Chinese Music in Australia: Victoria, 1850s to mid-1990s
WANG ZHENG TING
Melbourne, Australia Asia Foundation, 1997
103 pp., ISBN: 0-646-34344-0 ($20.00)
The author of this book, Wang Zheng Ting, is a specialist in traditional Chinese
music and an immigrant from China who now lives in Melbourne, where he
established a Chinese traditional ensemble in 1989. In its formative years it was
known as the Wang Zheng Ting Ensemble or the Melbourne Chinese Music
Ensemble, but later it was formally named the Australian Chinese Music Ensemble
(pp. 6883). Wang, who plays the sheng (mouth organ) in the ensemble, is a
graduate of the Shanghai Conservatory of Music and an MA graduate in
ethnomusicology from Monash University (p. 69). The book is based on his thesis.
This book provides a useful outline of how Chinese traditional music was
established in Victoria, and how Australias changing policy on Chinese immigration
into the country affects this music culture directly and indirectly. It begins with an
introduction giving some background to the research and fieldwork, followed by an
overview of the following chapters. Wang defines his scope as Chinese music that is
mainly traditional. However, he also refers to contemporary music and new
compositions for Chinese instruments that have strong Chinese characteristics
(based mainly on an-hemitonic pentatonic scales) (p. 1). For the rest of the book,
Ethnomusicology Forum 333
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charting the course of how this traditional music became increasingly established in
Victoria he also tells the story of the Chinese people.
The second chapter is A brief history of Chinese music from ancient China
through to the mid-1990s. Spanning nine pages, such a brief history cannot be
comprehensive, but provides an appropriate background. Wang draws from a small
set of references, primarily by Chinese authors. The section on the most recent
period, After the Cultural Revolution, 1976mid 1990s (pp. 1314), is rather short
and provides less comparative material for the corresponding years in Australia.
Wang could, for example, have explained further the achievements of some young
Chinese composers of Chinese music using Western composition techniques and the
increasing number of music graduates from the conservatories.
Chapter 3, Opera and music in the gold-rush years, outlines the social problems
in late Qing Dynasty that led some Chinese to seek employment overseas. Although it
lacks data on the numbers of immigrants, this chapter is fascinating reading. Wang
describes how the Australian government attempted to restrict the number of
Chinese immigrants. Many of the Chinese who were already in Australia were
confined in their mining communities for practical reasons (in particular, their
inability to speak English) as well as for their own safety (problems caused by other
ethnic groups were common for several decades). Despite such restrictions, early
generations of Chinese were keen on Cantonese opera whenever they had leisure
time. Opera performance occasions were potentially the only social opportunities for
many of the miners, as well as a source of entertainment and education. Cantonese
opera was the most popular since the majority of Chinese immigrants came from
Guangdong and Fujian provinces, where this opera was common. Other genres that
the miners were unfamiliar with, or which were not in Cantonese, such as Beijing
opera, received little support. Exceptions included music for self-expression and
music used in festivals and processions.
Chapter 4 covers the years 1912 to 1949. By 1911, the Chinese population in
Victoria had declined so significantly that many Chinese traditional music
entertainment businesses ceased their activities. Some music making continued to
support charity functions, festivals and other occasions. Chinese who had been
trained in Western instruments, especially those who had grown up in Australia,
began to contribute to a different facet of this music culture. With a slight
improvement in Australias attitude to the Chinese settlers during this period, some
of the music produced by the Chinese musicians in this period was political in nature
(pp. 489).
Chapter 5 is titled Chinese music by organised groups in Victoria, 19491995.
Here, Wang acknowledges the hard work of many volunteers in revitalizing,
establishing and promoting Chinese traditional music. Three groups are presented
in detail: the Gangzhou Society Cantonese Opera Group, the Chao Feng Chinese
Orchestra and the Australian Chinese Music Ensemble. Wangs personal fieldwork
observations, coupled with his interviews with different stakeholders and further
research, make this chapter a valuable contribution to Chinese music discourse. The
334 Reviews
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Gangzhou group, established in 1960, serves as a social focus for the members, who
are first-generation immigrants. The groups weekly rehearsals are much more
important to these members than the very occasional performances. The Chao Feng
Chinese Orchestra, established in the early 1980s, relies on a large number of
volunteer musicians of varying degrees of skills, who are in general much younger
than the members of the Gangzhou group, and they can manage large performances.
The Australian Chinese Music Ensemble has only a few members, but they are
professional players. One of the points Wang raises is that the ensemble works best in
performances they give for the wider community. Performances for the predomi-
nantly Chinese community were less well received because of differences of opinion
about what Chinese music should be: the organizers of such events seem more likely
to maintain the older more traditional ideas towards Chinese music and Chinese
musicians (p. 81).
Chapter 6 is titled Other performances of Chinese music from the late 1980s to
the mid 1990s. Wangs fieldwork has taken him to interview Chinese buskers,
musicians in restaurants, Chinese music demonstrators in museums and musicians in
Chinese religious rites. A glimpse of Melbourne Chinatown is provided by Wangs
description of live Chinese music played in new Chinese restaurants, which is soon
replaced by background music with cassette tapes when the restaurants have
secured regular streams of customers. Chinese immigrants from Indo-China receive
some attention in a section on the Heavenly Queen Temple (pp. 8991) where a
cassette tape plays Buddhist music in the background. Wang says that the music has
some Western influences, and a music keyboard is used alongside Chinese traditional
instruments. Further, the religious chant or chorus on the tape is in Mandarin, a
language that many of the Chinese believers cannot understand. This material cries
out for more elaboration such as interviews with believers and Temple officials, and
music transcription (e.g. does the keyboard also provide the regular drum pattern
typical of some of the pop songs on cassette?).
In his final chapter, Wang summarizes key points from preceding chapters and
proceeds to discuss some advantages of Chinese music development in Australia. The
multicultural society in Australia has provided ample opportunities for cultural
interaction, including creating new genres of music. Wang also highlights the fact that
among immigrants and Australian-born Chinese are some proficient Chinese music
performers. Some of them have already contributed their expertise in Australia, for
example, establishing Chinese music programmes in mainstream schools (pp. 956).
The book has Chinese- and English-language bibliographies, but unfortunately
lacks an index and suffers from numerous typos. As a major work on Chinese music
in Victoria, it could have benefited from a general outline of Chinese music in
Australia as a whole, and in particular the music of the Chinese communities in
Sydney, which has the highest concentration of Chinese in Australia. Expanding on
the descriptions of Chinese immigrants from elsewhere (e.g. Southeast Asia or the
student population) would also have enriched this story, as would more data on the
rise in interest in Western music among the Chinese in Australia. An introduction to
Ethnomusicology Forum 335
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the music of the minority groups in the Australian context would add credibility to
the study.
Within the general theme of Chinese immigration history and the related culture
change, Wang has done very well in maintaining his focus on the Chinese eventually
settling in Victoria and their traditional music culture. Despite my own comments
about the book in terms of its scope for improvement, overall I have gained much
from reading it and I look forward to further elaboration of it in future.
DAVID WONG
The Open University, UK
d.t.w.wong@open.ac.uk
Diasporas and Interculturalism in Asian Performing Arts: Translating Traditions
HAE-KYUNG UM (ed.)
London and New York, RoutledgeCurzon, 2005
xi/235 pp., ISBN: 0-700-71586-X (20.00)
Arising from two panels at a conference held at Leiden University in 2000 on
Audiences, Patrons and Performers in the Performing Arts of Asia, this is a broad
book, encompassing essays on theatre, dance and music, from anthropologists,
ethnomusicologists and cultural studies scholars among others. It comes from two
angles: intercultural performances and transnationalism within Asia and changing
traditions among Asian diasporas living in Asia and the West. Chapters range from
detailed case studies (Lau, Eckersall) to broad overviews (Mackerras, Um). The task
of drawing together the diverse threads falls to Um, who sets the theoretical
background with definitions of diaspora and performance in her introduction, and
Mackerras, who offers a reflective afterword, concluding that [d]iversity is likely to
remain a hallmark of world culture for the indefinite future (p. 227).
The first part of the book, Asian diasporas and performing arts, opens with a
chapter by Charles Mackerras on the role of the performing arts in modernizing
culture and in establishing identity, drawing upon his previous considerable body of
work on the cultures and arts of Chinese minority nationalities. Here he considers
not only the art of diasporas within China, but also the performing arts of the
worldwide Chinese diaspora and the influence of returning overseas Chinese,
including tourists, on traditions in the homeland. Each of these topics is deserving
of its own chapter, and there is little room for expansiveness here, but Mackerras
concludes that, despite a shift away from tradition towards modernity, there is no
danger that Chinese/minority identities will vanish among the various diasporas
(p. 27).
Mackerrass chapter is followed by a detailed study of two Chinese music societies
in Singapore by Frederick Lau, and here emerge several themes that recur in
subsequent studies: the adoption of local, often elite, cultures into larger
homogenizing national identity projects and the importance of music/theatre groups
336 Reviews
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as social organizations for diaspora communities. Lau describes how certain regional
Chinese genres, prestigious Teochow opera and instrumental music, are supported by
the Singaporean government as representing a suitably authentic, historical and
Confucian Chineseness, while others, such as street opera, rely on private support.
The two music societies have thus evolved from social organizations for sub-ethnic
male elites to embodiments of national discourse (p. 38).
Rather than allegiance to regional identity, the Korean diaspora living in China and
the former Soviet Union face are called upon to show loyalty to political entities in
their divided homeland. In her chapter, Um Hae-kyung describes the construction of
identity and performing arts among the Koreans living in these two multi-cultural
societies, both of which enshrined minority cultural rights in their constitutions. The
chapter is a broad overview, outlining over a century of migration and culture. While
the Koreans in the CIS are again negotiating their identity in the face of geo-political
changes, the Chinese Korean diaspora is relatively stable; both communities continue
to produce theatrical representations of their migration history.
Two chapters on the Japanese diaspora follow: one by Shuhei Hosokawa on the
performance of Japaneseness in the Sao Paulo carnival and one by Deborah Wong on
taiko drumming groups in the USA, which draws with considerable insight on her
years as a participant in one such group. The history of Japanese participation in
Brazilian carnival reveals the ambivalence of this diaspora community towards their
ethnic and national identity, which they play out in private and public arenas, adding
Japanese motifs to established carnival forms. Wongs engaging chapter describes
disputes over authenticity and authority in Asian-America taiko. The positioning of
such taiko as Japanese or Asian-American music was already contested, but questions
of ownership have become particularly charged since one group has asserted its
copyright over key elements of the repertoire.
Disputes over authenticity and authority continue to feature in subsequent
contributions, as the focus shifts to performing arts of the South Asian diaspora in
the UK. Magdalen Gorringes chapter on arangetrams (debut performances) describes
how a temple dance, stripped of its original erotic connotations, has been adopted as
a symbolic display of timeless Indian identity in London, privileging Hindu culture
above all others. The research of Gerry Farrell, Jayeeta Bhowmick and Graham Welch
maps the complex of regional identities and musics to be found among South Asian
Britons (with a useful glossary listing genre names). Hindu classical and filmi music
provides some kind of unifying force, but it is through bhangra that second-
generation Asian musicians voice both their ethnic and their local identities, and
indeed feed back into the music of India.
In contrast to the view that diaspora groups under stress tend to be more
conservative in their performing arts, Giovanni Giuriati argues, drawing upon his
work on the Cambodian diaspora in the US, that musical change is faster among
refugee communities. The function of music in this relatively recent diaspora (with a
history of under 30 years) has rapidly shifted from what Giurati terms necessary
Ethnomusicology Forum 337
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use (e.g. to accompany rituals) to music as cultural identity (p. 132), and has had
to adapt to new contexts.
The enduring nature of diaspora identity is illustrated in Paula Boss chapter on the
music of the Nagi community, descendants of Portuguese-Malays who migrated to
Flores, East Indonesia, in the mid-17th century. While sharing similar popular music
forms with their Lamaholot neighbours, the Nagi assert their elite identity through
the use of Portuguese instruments in their traditional music ensembles and through
pop songs that refer to their homeland and to the Catholic religion.
The second part of the volume consists of just three chapters on intercultural
performances: Elizabeth Wichmann Walczac on English-language Beijing opera
(jingju) projects in Hawaii, Peter Eckersall on Japanese-Australian theatrical
collaboration and Yayoi Uno Everett on elements of gagaku in Western art music
by Japanese and Western composers. Wichmann Walczac and Eckersall both reflect
upon their experience in working upon such collaborations. Eckersall argues that
globalization and isolationism can be resisted through intercultural performances
that leave the gaps showing in a hybrid montage, foregrounding confusion rather
than aiming for a seamless universalism that reinforces Orientalist tendencies (p.
209). Wichmann Walczac describes the perceived boundaries of authenticity for
recent jingju in Shanghai and Nanjing, as well as for the participants and audiences of
the student performances she has mounted. Uno Everett puts flesh on the bones of
theories of hybridization, with well-illustrated and detailed analyses of the use of
gagaku in compositions by Takemitsu, Messiaen and Shinohara.
As with many volumes of this type, there is some unevenness, and insufficient
cross-referencing between articles. Given the constraints of word limits, some authors
struggle to balance the need to explain the complex social background of the
diasporas concerned with descriptions of their performing art and its functions.
Nevertheless, there are several excellent contributions that will become required
reading, both for those interested in diaspora cultures generally and for those seeking
to expand their perspective on the home cultures of these diasporas.
ROWAN PEASE
SOAS, University of London, UK
rp4@soas.ac.uk
338 Reviews
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