OF MUSIC

ALAN P. MERRIAM

U N I V E R S I T Y P R E S S 1 9 6 4
Northwestern University P r e s s
Evanston, Illinois 6 0 2 0 8 - 4 1 7 0

C o p y r i g h t © 1 9 6 4 by Alan P. M e r r i a m . F i r s t published 1 9 6 4 by
N o r t h w e s t e r n U n i v e r s i t y Press. F i r s t paperback edition published 1 9 8 0
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N a t u r a l History, Chicago. P h o t o g r a p h by J u s t i n e Cordwell and E d w a r d
Dams.

Material from the following has been quoted with the permission of the publisher:
Louis Harap, Social Roots of the Arts, International Publishers, 1949. By permission of
International Publishers Co., Inc. S. F. Nadel, The Foundations of Social Anthropology,
T h e Free Press of Glencoe, 1951, and Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd. A. R. Radcliffe-
Brown, The Andaman Islanders, T h e Free Press of Glencoe, 1948, and Cambridge
University Press. Curt Sachs, The History of Musical Instruments. Copyright 1940 by
W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York, N.Y. Reprinted by permission of the pub-
lisher and of J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd. Harold Gomes Cassidy, The Sciences and the Arts:
A Netv Alliance, Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc., 1962. Bert Kaplan (ed.), Studying
Personality Cross-Culturally, Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc., 1961. Gertrude E. Dole
and Robert L. Carneiro (eds.), Essays in the Science of Culture in Honor of Leslie A.
White, Thomas Y. Crowell, 1960, pp. 2 1 6 - 3 0 . Frank Skinner, Underscore, Skinner
Music Co., 1950. Melville J. Herskovits, Life in a Haitian Valley, Alfred A. Knopf,
1937. Melville J. Herskovits and Frances S. Herskovits, Trinidad Village, Alfred A.
Knopf, 1947. George Davis, Music-Cueing for Radio-Drama. Copyright 1947 by
Boosey & Hawkes, Inc. Reprinted by permission of the copyright owner. Paul R.
Farnsworth, The Social Psychology of Music, Dryden Press, 1958. Susanne K. Langer,
Problems of Art: Ten Philosophical Lectures, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1957. Kenneth L.
Little, The Mende of Sierra Leone, Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd., 1951. Geoffrey
Gorer, Africa Dances, Faber and Faber, 1935, and W. W. Norton and Company, Inc.
Charles Morris, Signs, Language and Behavior, George Braziller, Inc., 1955. Margaret
Mead, Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies, William Morrow and
Company, Inc., 1935. Copyright 1935 by Margaret Mead. Published as a Mentor Book
by arrangement with William Morrow and Company, Inc., by the New American
Library of World Literature.
 PREFACE

This book is the result of some fifteen years of thinking and of discussion
with colleagues and students in the fields of cultural anthropology and
ethnomusicology, two disciplines whose boundary lines are not always
clear and perhaps should not be. Of anthropology little need be said by
way of explanation, for its content is reasonably clear and its objectives
at least moderately well-defined. Such is not the case, however, with
ethnomusicology which has undergone a remarkable efflorescence in the
past decade during which younger scholars, particularly in the United
States, have subjected it to renewed and intensive examination. As so
frequently occurs, the resulting discussion has served to blur some of the
simple pre-existing concepts delimiting the field, and it is no longer easy
to say precisely where it begins and ends, what its purposes are, what
kinds of materials it handles or how it is to handle them. One point,
however, has clearly re-emerged, and this is that ethnomusicology is
approachable from two directions, the anthropological and the musi-
cological. Given these two possibilities, it is equally clear that since we
are all human, anthropologists approaching ethnomusicology tend to
stress anthropological aspects, and musicologists, the musicological as-
pects. Both groups agree, however, that the ultimate objective is the
fusion of the two taken as an ideal inevitably modified by practical
reality.

W h e n one turns to the literature of ethnomusicology, he quickly finds

that this ideal has not yet been achieved, for an overwhelming number
of books, articles, and monographs is devoted to studies only of music,
which is often treated as an object in itself without reference to the
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THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF MUSIC

cultural matrix out of which it is produced. Ethnomusicology has con-

centrated its efforts primarily upon music sound and structure, thus em-
phasizing its musicological component and in great part ignoring the
anthropological. This, of course, is a matter of degree which does not
involve absolute dominance of one approach over the other, but the re-
sult has been that the anthropological aspect of ethnomusicology has
remained less developed and, most important, less clearly understood
than the musicological. No matter how tentative the ethnomusicologist
may feel about his tools of analysis, the fact remains that musicological
techniques have been applied to a surprising number of the musics of
the world with significant though certainly not final results; the ques-
tions concerning human behavior and ideation in conjunction with music
have barely been asked.
Thus the musicologist may have more reason than even he knows to
wonder what the anthropological approach may be and what kinds of
theory and data may arise from it. At the same time, the non-cthnomusi-
cologist anthropologist is often bewildered by the proportion of the lit-
erature which deals with technical matters beyond his ken and which is
thus far too often assumed to be beyond his interest.
There is an anthropology of music, and it is within the grasp of both
musicologist and anthropologist. For the former it provides the baseline
from which all music sounds are produced and the framework within
which those sounds and processes of sounds are finally understood. For
the latter it contributes further understanding both of the products and
processes of man's life, precisely because music is simply another element
in the complexity of man's learned behavior. W i t h o u t people thinking,
acting, and creating, music sound cannot exist; we understand the sound
much better than we understand the total organization of its production.
This book, then, is an attempt to fill the gap which exists in ethno-
musicology; to provide a theoretical framework for the study of music
as human behavior; and to clarify the kinds of processes which derive
from the anthropological, contribute to the musicological, and increase
our knowledge of both conceived within the broad rubric of behavioral
studies. As such it is neither a complete overview of ethnomusicology
nor a final attempt to fuse the two approaches to the field.
In attempting to provide a theory and methodology for the study of
music as human behavior, I have drawn upon several kinds of informa-
tion. One of these is comprised of studies of creative behavior and mate-
rials not concerned with music as such, that is, studies of the visual arts,
oral literature, and less frequently, dance, drama, and architecture. T h e
reason for this is that I am constantly struck by the similarities of the
problems which are the concern of all students of creative behavior,
viii
 Preface
T h e folklorist is as involved with the techniques of diffusion analysis as
is the ethnomusicojogist; the student of the visual arts must devote
serious and detailed attention to problems of the artist. Most important,
all of us are concerned with understanding why man behaves as he does,
and to reach that understanding it seems evident that in the future as in
the past we shall have to probe many identical problems. My feelings
in this matter are due in no small part to my long association with the
American Council of Learned Societies which from 1948 to 1950 granted
me fellowships specifically to encourage my interdisciplinary studies in
music and anthropology. It has been my good fortune, too, to have
worked closely in the past several years with Roy Sieber, whose knowledge
and understanding of problems of art, particularly African art, are en-
cyclopedic. We have argued in the past and we will argue in the future,
but I am richer for the experience and grateful for these arguments which
I trust will continue for many years between us. I am pleased, too, to
acknowledge the discussions I have had with Warren L. d'Azevedo, par-
ticularly those concerning problems of aesthetics; I have tried to resolve
some of these problems in Chapter 13 of this book, and many of the
ideas therein were stimulated by our exchanges. Both Paul J. Bohannan
and Alan Lomax have given me permission to quote from unpublished
manuscripts of theirs, and I hope I have done so with due discretion and
sympathy for their views.
In writing, I have drawn upon a number of examples of music be-
havior from widespread areas of the world, and I should like to indicate
clearly that in doing so I make no necessary implication of historic con-
nections of similar phenomena except where this is specifically stated.
T h e interest of these examples arises from the possibility that in music
behavior, similar responses are made to like situations. This is the pur-
pose of the comparative method: to suggest problems which are not
unique to a single culture, but which have wider import in the considera-
tion of human behavior.
Those examples which I have chosen are, for the most part, drawn
from three major world areas—Africa south of the Sahara, North Amer-
ica, and Oceania—and as such they reflect the areas of my major in-
terest and knowledge. W h e r e appropriate, I have drawn from other areas
as well, and I have included a number of references to music phenomena
from Western culture, particularly in connection with jazz. T h e reader
will find frequent mention of the Flathead Indians of Western Montana,
and the Basongye of the Kasai Province of the former Belgian Congo.
It has been among these two peoples that I have conducted my major
field research in problems of ethnography and ethnomusicology, and it
is a pleasure to acknowledge the support of those agencies which made
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THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF MUSIC
my work possible. Research among the Flathead was carried out first in
1950 under a grant from the Montana State University Music School
Foundation, and further work was made possible in 1958 by the Gradu-
ate School of Northwestern University. Among the Basongye, research
was supported in the Bala village of Lupupa in 1959-60 by grants to me
from the National Science Foundation and the Belgian American Educa-
tional Foundation, and to Mrs. Merriam from the Northwestern Univer-
sity Program of African Studies. Of major importance also was the close
cooperation of l'lnstitut pour la Recherche Scientifique en Afrique Cen-
trale ( I R S A C ) and l'Universite Lovanium. Final typing of the manu-
script of this book was made possible by a grant in aid of research from
the Graduate School of Indiana University.
It seems fashionable to use a Preface to thank one's wife, who is
almost inevitably pictured as long-suffering; indeed, one might be tempted
to suspect either that most authors' wives lead lives of pain or that they
are shrewish to a remarkable degree and must be carefully appeased. But
I am as certain as any man can be that Barbara has enjoyed the writing
of this book almost as much as I, and that we stand firmly together in
the sharing of whatever may have been achieved by it. She has taken full
part in all field research, and read and criticized this manuscript; I am
grateful for all these things, and many more.
This book is dedicated to the memory of Melville J. Herskovits, who
was first my teacher, then my colleague, and always my friend. My re-
spect, admiration, and affection for Mel are a matter of written record;
let it here suffice to say again that I shall always owe him debts of in-
tellectual stimulation that can only be repaid by my attempts to stimu-
late others. If this book stands as an effort in that direction, then I am
satisfied.
APM
Bloomington, Indiana
October 13, 1963

x
 CONTENTS

Preface vii

PART ONE: ETHNOMUSICOLOGY

CHAPTER i T h e Study of Ethnomusicology 3
CHAPTER ii Toward a Theory for Ethnomusicology 17
CHAPTER in Method and Technique 37

PART T W O : C O N C E P T S AND B E H A V I O R
CHAPTER iv Concepts 63

CHAPTER v Synesthesia and Intersense Modalities 85

CHAPTER vi Physical and Verbal Behavior 103
CHAPTER VII Social Behavior: T h e Musician 123
CHAPTER VIII Learning 145

CHAPTER I X T h e Process of Composition 165

P A R T T H R E E : P R O B L E M S AND R E S U L T S
CHAPTER x T h e Study of Song Texts 187
CHAPTER X I Uses and Functions 209
CHAPTER XII Music as Symbolic Behavior 229
CHAPTER XIII Aesthetics and the Interrelationship of the Arts 259
CHAPTER xiv Music and Culture History 277
CHAPTER xv Music and Cultural Dynamics 303
References Cited 321
Index 345
xi